Shoothill's New Deep Zoom Image Graphic Assists 'The Prime Challenge'
Shropshire, United Kingdom (PRWEB UK) 18 December 2013 -- The biggest prime number ever discovered is over 17 million decimal digits long. It is equal to having 1,584,106 contacts in your phone's address book. That’s a lot of digits, but with this amazing deep zoom graphic from Shoothill, you can see them all.
The Deep Zoom created using Shoothill’s Megafiche® technology, highlights the sheer scale of this prime number, which if it were to be printed out to scale, would take 6 acres of paper.
Inside the Deep Zoom experience itself you can use the zoom controls to see when each of the previous record-breaking prime numbers were discovered, as well as relating the advances that have been made over the years.
Shoothill Managing Director, Rod Plummer, said: “It’s amazing to use the Zoom to see numbers come into focus and fully realise the scale of the original number, as well as the leaps and bounds that mathematicians have made. The challenge for us was to represent a number this huge whilst making it meaningful for people, but we think we’ve cracked it and hopefully we will inspire a few more mathematicians to add to our collective knowledge and find some of those lost primes.”
The Prime Challenge
Shoothill made this Deep Zoom image to help The Prime Challenge highlight the huge gaps in the number space that are yet to be explored.
The focus of the Prime Challenge is to find the “lost primes”; those prime numbers that have remained undiscovered in the race to always find the biggest prime. It is hoped that The Prime Challenge will also help to re-awaken interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects - a skillset that is becoming scarcer.
Steve Plank, Cloud Computing and STEM Evangelist at Microsoft, commented: “This image is an amazing representation of the sheer size of the largest ever discovered prime number, but it also shows a lot of gaps in the number space. We don’t know if there are more primes in there, although we suspect so. We’re challenging people to find them.”
The Prime Challenge is open to all and everyone is encouraged to try and find a “lost prime.”
To enter the challenge, visit http://primechallenge.org and follow the instructions online.
For more information on Shoothill, contact Victoria Hammond on 0845 421 0391.
About Shoothill:
Shoothill are one of the UK’s leading software development and data visualisation specialists, creating award-winning, bespoke solutions and bringing data and content to life through rich, interactive applications for a diverse range of blue chip clients across many different industry sectors in both the public and private sectors.
Specialisations include: Mapping, Data Visualisation, Creative Media Solutions, and Apps Development.
Shoothill draws on a team with over 90 years’ combined software development experiences and uses a range of technical capabilities to create elegant solutions that afford a high degree of scalability and functionality that could help your organisation to transform and visualise its data and content in richer, more innovative and immersive ways.
Clients include: Microsoft, MSN, Yahoo!, BT, Environment Agency, Disney, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Formula 1 Management, The Imperial War Museum, Fauna and Flora International, UNESCO and UNHCR, amongst many others.
Victoria Hammond, Shoothill, http://www.shoothill.com/, 0845 421 0391, [email protected]
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