and after sb?

[havoc]

what will be the purpose of sb after we found all the primes? will it be a breaktrough in mathematics? will we calculate another project based on the former sb? can the results allow another computer project to find results faster?:crazy:
if someone involved in the project can respond to it that will be cool:)

[Mystwalker]

AFAIR that section of the old home page, it's basically a theoretical question with few practical use - but that can change, of course. How knows?
Plus, there's "kind of" breakthrough as some of the biggest prime numbers known have been recently discovered by SB.

There could be other results, too, but I'm not deep enough into this stuff to be aware of...


When all remaining k values got computed (which can still take a lot of years), it's possible to expand the search for all Sierpinski numbers < 1M - another project several ppl are working on...

[jjjjL]

the results of SB will be of theoretical value to mathematicians and it will solve a widely published open-problem in number theory.

as with most number theory, the real world application of our efforts will be little if any. however, it used to be universally believed that negetive numbers had no real world application as well. it took a few hundred years before anyone realized that they mattered. same with imaginary numbers. we wouldn't be able to design electrical circuits for computers without maxwell equations that depend heavily on imaginary numbers. off the top of my head, i don't recall how long it took for imaginary numbers to go from theoretical curiosities of mathematics to nessisary tools of science but it wasn't that long. there were definately a few people who lived to see them go from obcurity to realtive importance in their own lifetime. other examples in the math world abound.

the importance of solving the Seirpinski problem is similar to other past discoveries. it is unlikely that we can predict what (if any) use this discovery may eventually have in the future.

-Louie

[havoc]

thx for the answer :) personally, i think that what we are making here on today's computers will be found as a component of tomorow computers ( like quantum or something like this... ) and of course it will serve a future computing project.