[erick (Eric)]

"Q. OK, why are people looking for Mersenne Primes? What are they good for?

A. For the same reasons that people climb mountains, sail unknown seas, and explore the cosmos. It's a challenge! It's exciting to push the envelope of Computational Mathematics and to search for something unknown that you believe is out there. As bonus, unlike the explorers of old, we get to sit in comfortable office chairs while we're searching!

This is not to say that there's no mathematical value in Mersenne Primes. They're certainly of value in the field of cryptography, and may have other uses yet to be discovered.

Prime number researcher Chris Caldwell explores this issue in more depth in his article "Why do people find these primes?"."


Perhaps it has also been useful to develop the capacity of distributed computing across the internet?