Seventeen or Bust is a distributed computing project to prove
the Sierpinski Conjecture. It has a website at
http://www.seventeenorbust.com.
When the project started, there were 17 candidate Sierpinski
numbers left to challenge the conjecture; the project sets out to
find a number n for each of these k values so
that k.2n+1 is prime. If
primes are found for all seventeen candidates, the theorem will be
proven; if the conjecture is actually wrong, the search will
go on forever, hence the name 'Seventeen or Bust'.
So far, five candidates have been eliminated by SoB, until 4 Jan 2003:
- 44131.2995972+1 is prime
- 46157.2698207+1 is prime
- 54767.21337287+1 is prime
- 65567.21013803+1 is prime
- 69109.21157446+1 is prime
Update December 20, the sixth has been found:
5359.25054502+1 is prime.
Proving that a number of this form is prime is relatively easy because of Proth's Theorem, but with numbers this big (the 54767 one has 402569 digits!) it still takes a long time.
To make it faster, many many possible n values are first eliminated for each k by the SoB team, using an algorithm known as Eratosthenes' Sieve. By making sure candidate numbers have no "small" factors (say, none below 2,000,000,000), their number is greatly reduced.
The remaining numbers are sent to Internet users participating in the project, a cast of thousands. They can test each number using Proth's Theorem, a process that takes hours or days depending on the speed of the computer.
It's expected to take a few more years to finish.