Use your computer’s idle time to look for a record prime. Just as amateur astronomers are given bits of the night sky to look for new supernova, you get a bit of the infinite expanse of numbers to search for a new record Mersenne prime. Established by George Woltman there have been 5 discoveries by amateur prime number hunters. But no one under 18 has found a record prime using the GIMPS software (although the 25^th and 26^th Mersenne primes were discovered by high school students Laura Nickel and Landon Curt Noll,. Why not get your school involved in the hunt.

What is your computer doing when it is looking for primes? Why are Mersenne primes easier to find than other primes? Click here to find out