Talk:Sublime number/Archive 1

Archive 1

Soft linebreak question

Is there some way we can break up that big number so that people viewing the article in a small window don't see that huge ugly gap? Anton Mravcek (talk) 19:32, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

How about expressing it as

$(2^{126})(2^{61}-1)(2^{31}-1)(2^{19}-1)(2^{7}-1)(2^{5}-1)(2^{3}-1)$

as it is in the referenced article? This seems better to me, and it is certainly shorter. Cheers, Doctormatt (talk) 19:55, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I've just doublechecked that factorization in Mathematica. Thank you very much for suggesting it. Anton Mravcek (talk) 13:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

{{2, 126}, {7, 1}, {31, 1}, {127, 1}, {524287, 1}, {2147483647, 1}, {2305843009213693951, 1}}

Wait a minute, I spoke too soon. I tried

(2^126)(2^61 − 1)(2^31 − 1)(2^19 − 1)(2^7 − 1)(2^5 − 1)(2^3 − 1)

and the output was 7237005577332262213973186563042994240829374041602535252466099000494570602496 − ⁶. Not sure what that superscript 6 at the end means. Anton Mravcek (talk) 13:47, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, it was a glitch caused by some hidden character during cut and paste. I typed the expression afresh and the result matches a(2) in Sloane's A081357. Anton Mravcek (talk) 13:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

What's the point?

If the only sublime numbers are 12 and a bazillion and four, do they really deserve their own article? 75.118.170.35 (talk) 19:56, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

It's possible there are more undiscovered sublime numbers but it's not about how many there are. There are no known Wall-Sun-Sun primes but they have an article. See Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Notability (numbers) for guidelines about when to deserve an article. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:12, 19 April 2010 (UTC)