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World’s largest prime number discovered – and it’s a doozy

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The world’s largest prime number has been discovered, but we can’t show it because it’s so large it would take up 21 standard-sized novels to turn into text. Called M136279841, its shorthand version is 2136,279,841-1. That comes to 41,024,320 digits.

If you remember your math lessons from school, a prime number is any number that can only be evenly divided by itself or 1. It’s one of the most basic concepts in mathematics and how they work has produced some of the most profound questions in the field, such as is there a pattern inside prime numbers? How are they distributed? What about the sum of two primes, or primes that form palindromes that read the same forward and backwards?

If this seems too esoteric, prime numbers are used every time someone uses the internet. Modern encryption techniques are based on equations with two solutions, each of which produces a prime number – one that can be used to encrypt data and the other to decrypt it.

The new largest prime number was discovered by Luke Durant of San Jose, California, who is an amateur researcher and former NVIDIA employee, on October 11, 2024 and confirmed by independent computation on October 12. However, Durant didn’t use a pencil and paper – a lot of paper, like 11,000 sheets just to write out the results, which fill up a 39.9 MB text file.

Instead, he was one of a number of volunteers who have downloaded free software to do the number crunching as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) that’s been running since 1996. Today, the search is essentially a giant cloud supercomputer that is based on thousands of server GPUs, spanning 24 data center regions over 17 countries.

GPUs are an important key to the search because these graphic processors have proven to be extremely good at dealing with more than digital images. In recent years, they’ve become key to Large Language Model AIs and for the complex calculations involving prime numbers. In this case, it’s a class called Mersenne primes, which can be expressed by the formula Mn = 2n – 1, where M is the prime number and n is an integer. These have been central to number theory since the days of Euclid in Ancient Greece.

According to the GIMP organization, the new prime is 16 million digits larger than the previous record prime number and the 52nd known Mersenne prime ever discovered. As the primes become larger, they become increasingly difficult to find. The new record holder was found on an NVIDIA A100 GPU server running in Dublin, Ireland and confirmed in San Antonio, Texas, netting Durant a prize of US$3,000, which he is donating to charity.

Source: GIMPS

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October 25, 2024

Planet’s largest wind turbine record broken again at 26-MW

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China, the undisputed global leader in wind energy, has just set another world record for the world’s tallest and highest-capacity offshore wind turbine, taller than the Eiffel Tower, The Chrysler Building, and longer than the longest US aircraft carrier.

Dongfang Electric Corporation (DEC) is building these massive 1,115-foot-tall (340-m), 26-MW wind turbines at its factory in Fuzhou, Fujian Province.

The nacelle hub height sits at 607 ft (185 m), while the blade diameter is a whopping 1,107 ft (310 m). It has a blade swept area of 812,424 square feet (75,477 sq m). Do you know what else has about that much wingspan? Twelve Boeing 747s. You’d need an area the size of 14 NFL football fields, or a decent city block, to lay it down. It’s a bit big.

Dongfang employees celebrate as they roll out the 26 MW wind turbine nacelle

Even with such a large profile, DEC says its offshore turbines are resistant to typhoons and corrosion. It was engineered with a “dual anti-typhoon design” to allow it to withstand extreme typhoons, but details are scarce as to what the design entails.

According to Donfang, “it has the ability to withstand a Category 17 super typhoon.” That entails winds of up to 137 mph (220 km/h), about the same as a Category 4 hurricane. UNICEF describes these super typhoons as having “extremely destructive power, sinking large ships, potentially causing severe damage and serious flooding.” So it’s certainly impressive if these whopping airfoils can survive such a maelstrom.

This record-breaking behemoth can generate about 100 GWh of electricity a year assuming wind speeds averaging 22 mph (36 km/h), making a single unit capable of powering roughly 55,000 Chinese homes – or about 9,200 American homes.

A tech at Dongfang's factory operates a robotic arm while assembling the 26 MW wind turbine components — A tech at Dongfang’s factory operates a robotic arm while assembling the 26 MW wind turbine components

Dongfang’s 26-MW turbine surpasses the previous largest turbine: Mingyang’s 20-MW offshore wind turbine by a hefty amount in size and capacity.

China’s current level of wind energy is right around 470 GW of wind power, more than triple that of the second-ranked USA with 148 GW of wind capacity. Germany ranks third with 69 GW of clean wind energy.

Random thoughts: Running at maximum capacity and assuming no infrastructure losses, 470 GW of electricity could theoretically power around 388 million US households. As of the 2023 US Census, there are only around 140 million housing units in the United States.

And as ridiculously massive as this turbine is, there’s every chance it’ll soon be dwarfed by others even bigger. As we discussed back in 2021, when our minds were boggled by a mere 16-MW Mingyang turbine, the longer a wind turbine’s blades get, the greater the incentive becomes to make them even longer, since the swept area of a circle varies with the square of the radius.

Put it this way; if you double the blade length of a turbine, you get four times as much swept area and thus four times greater power generation capabilities – but if you add the same extra length again, you gain an extra five times the original swept area, and end up larger by a factor of nine.

So these might already be some of the largest machines the world has ever seen – but there’s every reason to believe they’re going to get a lot bigger. Amazing stuff!

Source: Dongfang Electric Corp

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October 24, 2024

Defense contractor announces its largest swarm-capable ocean drone yet

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Saronic, a defense-technology company based in Austin, Texas, has announced the Corsair, its largest autonomous surface vessel yet. It’s a 24-ft (7.3-m) sleek ship with customizable capabilities that can be deployed in “the thousands” for the US Navy.

Think “drone” and you’re likely to think of any one of the many autonomous machines that fly through the air. But there are surface-based ocean drone ships as well, and the US Department of Defense (DoD), through its Replicator initiative, is looking to stockpile them. According to Replicator’s mission, the program “will deliver all-domain attritable autonomous systems to warfighters at a scale of multiple thousands across multiple warfighting domains, within 18-24 months, or by August 2025.”

With an announcement this week, Saronic has signaled that it’s ready to take up the challenge.

“At 24 feet, Corsair is the largest ASV in Saronic’s line of autonomous systems,” says the company in a post on Medium. “Corsair is designed to meet the urgent operational requirements of the U.S. Navy and its allies, to deter adversaries, and serve as a force multiplier.”

The ship can operate autonomously over a range of 1,000 nautical miles, has a payload capacity of 1,000 lb (454 kg) and can reach speeds of over 35 knots (40 mph). Each Corsair can operate on its own, or it can work together with more of its kind to function as a swarm. “Corsair can support a wide range of strategic blue-water operations,” says the company, “from maritime domain awareness to delivery of kinetic and non-kinetic effects – extending naval power while keeping sailors out of harm’s way.”

Saronic says one of Corsair’s main benefits is that the ship is completely customizable from its payload to the type of software and AI technology embedded on board.

“Corsair is the answer to our maritime forces’ need for an attritable autonomous platform that can be delivered to the fight in the hundreds or thousands without compromising on reliability, performance, or capability,” said Saronic co-founder and CEO, Dino Mavrookas. “With Corsair, we are ready to help the Navy realize its vision of a hybrid fleet of manned and unmanned systems.”

At a press conference, as reported by Breaking Defense, Saronic indicated that it is currently working on prototypes, but mass production is not far behind.

“We’re building five prototypes, all of which are currently in development,” Mavrookas told reporters. “We have done live demonstrations already with end users, and we are moving and ramping into high-rate production and manufacturing as we speak. So, we will be building hundreds and hundreds of Corsairs next year with the ability to scale that into the thousands.”

The company, which was founded in 2022, is certainly well funded enough to begin spooling up operations, having raised $175 million in series B funding in July.

The Corsairs will join Saronic’s other vessels to provide the DoD with a choice of three ships in total from which to build its autonomous fleets. These include the Spyglass, a 6-ft-long (1.8-m) vessel, which is “equipped with advanced sensors and a configurable payload bay to enhance domain awareness and deliver diverse effects in contested waters.” There’s also the Cutlass, which clocks in at a length of 14 ft (4.3 m) and is “built to perform critical roles for the Joint Force, including deploying loitering munitions, connecting communications nodes in adaptive C2 networks, and identifying, classifying, and tracking other surface craft.”

Source: Saronic

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October 23, 2024

World’s largest carbon fiber composite Neutron rocket is AFP-laid

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Rocket Lab is making innovative strides in space travel with the Neutron medium payload rocket – namely, it’s the largest composite rocket ever made. Initially, hundreds of layers and thousands of square feet of carbon fiber were laid onto a mold by hand, taking a large team several weeks to complete.

Now, with Rocket Lab’s new Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) machine, it can be done in a single day.

You can think of it as being similar to a 39 ft tall (12 m), 75-ton, autonomous 3D printer that spits out carbon-fiber layers at 328 ft (100 m) per minute. Instead of “printing” pieces, it lays carbon fiber sheets in various directions, layer by layer, to build strength and rigidity into each structure. The AFP is capable of traveling laterally up to 98 feet (30 meters) making it fully capable of laying the largest pieces – the 91 ft (28 m) long interstage and fairing of the Neutron rocket.

These structures would have taken weeks to hand-lay. The AFP can print these in 24 hours

The AFP is also responsible for layering the 22.9 ft (7 m) diameter first stage and the 16.4 ft (5 m) diameter second stage tank.

While working on a piece, a fully automated, built-in inspection system scans for defects or imperfections in the carbon composite structure and will pause to alert the operator before proceeding to the next layer.

SpaceX’s Starship is primarily made of stainless steel (300-series “HFS,” like the “bullet proof” stuff the Cybertruck is made of) while Boeing’s Starliner uses mostly aluminum alloys. Initially, SpaceX considered using CF composites for the Starship but opted for stainless steel for its cost-effectiveness, temperature resistance, and durability.

The AFP head spins in 360-degrees to lay CF as quickly as possible from any direction

Rocket Lab expects the usage of the AFP to save over 150,000 man-hours of construction of the world’s largest composite reusable rockets by making them more affordable as well as faster and easier to produce.

According to Rocket Lab’s website, the company aims to launch the first Neutron rocket sometime in 2025.