美国国家公共电台 NPR A Tenn. Man Recently Discovered The Largest Prime Number Known To Humankind
时间：2019-01-16 作者：英语课 分类：2018年NPR美国国家公共电台1月
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
This past week, John Pace found the largest prime number known to humankind.
JOHN PACE: Four, six, seven, three, three, three, one, eight, three, three, five, nine, two...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And that number goes on to more than 23 million digits 2.
PACE: It's longer than anybody really wants to sit down and hear.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: If you're not great at math, here's a primer. Prime numbers can only be divided by 1 and themselves. But Pace is not a mathematician 3. He's actually a FedEx employee from Germantown, Tenn., and he found his prime as part of an online collective called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search or GIMPS. Pace and thousands of volunteers ran software on their personal computers, crunching 4 numbers day in and day out. Now, anyone can participate. You just need a computer, an Internet connection and a lot of patience. Pace began his prime hunt 14 years ago.
PACE: There was a $100,000 prize attached to finding the first prime that had a 10 million digit 1 result. And I was like, well, you know, I've got as much a chance as anybody else.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: John Pace's prime number currently holds the title for the largest. But there are other bigger ones out there, and they're important, especially when it comes to cryptography, Internet security and the future of computing 5.
PACE: When they ultimately get to, you know, quantum computers - however long that takes - they'll be able to crack current encryption in milliseconds. So there's going to be a need for extremely large prime numbers. And I'd like to at least have left some legacy 6 that, you know, I've helped contribute something to society.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So get hunting. There are still lots of prime numbers to be found.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE REDNECK MANIFESTO'S "DRUM DRUM")
- Her telephone number differs from mine by one digit.她的电话号码和我的只差一个数字。
- Many animals have five digits.许多动物有5趾。
- The number 1000 contains four digits. 1000是四位数。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- The number 410 contains three digits. 数字 410 中包括三个数目字。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
- The man with his back to the camera is a mathematician.背对着照相机的人是位数学家。
- The mathematician analyzed his figures again.这位数学家再次分析研究了他的这些数字。
- The horses were crunching their straw at their manger. 这些马在嘎吱嘎吱地吃槽里的草。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- The dog was crunching a bone. 狗正嘎吱嘎吱地嚼骨头。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- to work in computing 从事信息处理
- Back in the dark ages of computing, in about 1980, they started a software company. 早在计算机尚未普及的时代（约1980年），他们就创办了软件公司。