A new largest known twin prime number (a prime that differs from another prime by two) has recently been discovered. What caught my attention is that the largest known twin prime number is merely 58,711 digits long, while the largest known prime number is a whopping 9,808,358 digits long (discovered Sept. 2006). Had we actually known all the prime numbers between the largest known prime number and the smallest (2), then finding all of the twin primes in between would be trivial.

Being immersed in a field like Computer Science, it’s easy to start believing that anything is possible and within our reach today. Fortunately, the world is more exciting than that. There’s still oodles of primes to be found, people willing to pay money to have them found, and wide-eyed optimists investing their time to find them.

And then there’s the relentless sprint towards the perfecting of neural networks, achieving artificial intelligence, designing exciting new user interfaces, or coming up with a more addicting way to spend one’s time. Still lots of work to be done.

Tomorrow I’ll be having a dentist appointment, followed by an interview, followed by a departure to Montreal where I’ll be attending the Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference. I’ll be back Saturday night.