You know what would be really cool? A prime number made up of a prime number of digits.

Oh, no, wait…that’s not cool. That’s really nerdy. And, plus, I’ve already thought of several of them. Only in the one- and two-digit range, though.

So far.

Regular Trog readers know how much I love stories like this:

A University of Central Missouri professor has discovered a 17 million digit prime number, far exceeding the previous record of just under 13 million digits.

The number in question is 2 to the power of 57,885,161 minus 1. It’s so big that a file containing the number takes up 22.5MB.

It was discovered through one of those “grassroots computing” methods. Individuals with regular desktop computers can have their CPU hooked up to an effort, and then, when your computer is sleeping, the larger effort adds your computing power to all the rest of it and, viola! Mega-super-ultra computer, finding out really awesome stuff.

Not as awesome as:

But then, what is?

For the record, I haven’t hooked my computer up to any grassroots computing effort, just because I can’t decide between the prime number one and the “find new planets” one. Although, given all the asteroid and meteor news lately…