The fine folks over at mersenne.org are reporting that they might have found a new Mersenne Prime, the 45th. This would be the largest known explict prime (I think that means they know all the digits). There is a chance the number will have over 10 million digits. Reading one digit a second for 24 hours a day, that would require over 115 days to read. Verification is underway on two separate systems, they report, and that will take almost another two weeks. Two weeks to determine is a specific number is prime or not! Amazing.

Link here: http://mersenne.org/prime.htm

Oh, and here’s a picture of Siena after shucking some corn: