At 05:02 PM 12/1/01 -0800, Spike wrote:
>In any case, the doubling time is getting wonderfully short.
>I don't know what this has to do with the singularity, if anything,
>but I had fun calculating it. {8-] Perhaps Damien will comment
>with respect to his notions on page 86 of The Spike.
Well, the mid-2000 material on pp. 86-7 of THE SPIKE is really a report on
Spike's (mysterious) calculation of the then-next Mersenne prime. He
predicted a nearly 80% chance of finding a three million digit prime by
November 2001, and it popped up pretty much at the outer boundary of that
call. Except that this one, as I understand, jumped right past 3 million
and went to 4 million digits. The claim in the book is that a log plot of
largest primes against time `shows a remarkably straight line heading for
the three million digit prime and beyond' (p. 87). But maybe it's even
faster than exponential now. Spike?
Damien Broderick
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