I know what you're thinking. "How can I go on in a world where NASA has failed to name Node 3 of the International Space Station after Stephen Colbert??" Fear not nation! The world of mathematics has already solved the problem.

The prime numbers SB is working to discover have officially been named Colbert Numbers, to honor Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report and leader of the Colbert Nation.

Sure, Colbert has had planes, ice cream, and even bald eagles named after him. But this is the first time he has ever had an intangible concept named after him.

And by definition, all Colbert Numbers are over a million digits long, making them the largest, most important things ever named for anyone, ever.

Seventeen or Bust has already found five Colbert Numbers and we're continuing our search for the final six. We're not just advancing mathematics anymore -- we're uncovering scientific proof of Stephen T. Colbert's greatness!

YOU CAN HELP DISCOVER THE NEXT COLBERT NUMBER: DOWNLOAD SB TODAY! (available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux)

Seventeen or Bust users can now run a specially configured version of Prime95 directly on our server!

This represents a huge step forward in terms of speed and efficiency so we're recommending that anyone with previous versions of SB migrate to the new software.

Major Enhancements

• Mac OS X (intel) clients now available!
• Full multi-core support
• 64-bit processor support
• 15% faster per thread than SB v2.5.0
• P-1 factoring (with cEM credit for factors)
• Separate network thread - no delays
• Now communicates on port 80
• 98.2% less network traffic
• Better save-file handling (no registry keys in windows!)

Remember though, this is not a "drop-in" replacement for previous SB clients. This is brand new software. So even if you're a current user, you still have to follow the instructions in "Step 3" on the download page. Also, if your current version of SB is about to finish a full test, try to let it complete before removing SB because you can't migrate workunits.

Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux clients are all available now so
Download and setup the new client!

Special thanks to George Woltman whose work made this release possible.

And drop by the forums if you run into any trouble or have questions about the new client. Thanks for your continued support and for crunching SB!

The discovery of SB's 10th prime last year was a huge breakthrough for SB. But now it has also helped prove a new mathematical theorem as well.

Phil Moore and I were recently able to author and publish a journal paper in INTEGERS that establishes the Mixed Sierpinski Theorem.

Huge thanks to Phil Moore for his independent verification of the prime 67607 + 2^16389 and for spearheading the effort to formally publish our research.

Thanks are also in order for legendary prime researcher and co-author Payam Samidoost whose foundational work with dual primes forms the basis of our proof. And of course, none of this would be computationally feasible without GIMPS founder and co-author George Woltman.

The full paper is available here or you can retrieve it directly from INTEGERS by scrolling down to paper #A61 here.

Thanks again to all SB participants for everything you do. We really appreciate you. Have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2009!

33661•2^7031232+1 is prime! The double checking effort uncovered this new prime showing once again why it is so important to conduct these re-testing efforts. Most re-tests conclusively verify the original result but if the first test had even a single memory error during the computation, there's a chance a prime could have been missed. That's what likely happened here. The discoverer, Sturle Sunde is a giant in the prime searching world. He is the #2 overall contributor to SB and also the #4 all-time contributor to GIMPS!

This result was reported at 2:03PM EST on October 17th. We've checked and re-checked the primality several times and have now submitted it to The Prime Page where it currently stands as the 10th largest known prime number ever discovered [2,116,617 digits].

Sturle, a member of team Busty Seventeen from Oslo, Norway tells us that he started crunching SB 4 years ago to "give [him] a new set of work outside of GIMPS." He currently has 160 computers crunching GIMPS and another 110 crunching SB. Only 10 of his computers were running the crucial double-check work that lead to this new discovery. He manages all his computers from the University of Oslo with intelligent scripts that only utilize them when other users aren't logged in.

We've opened a thread to comment on the discovery in the forums. Our records confirm Sturle completed over 9,000 tests before finding this result so he is quite a deserving discoverer. That said, he couldn't have done it alone and neither could we. You all keep this effort going with your dedicated crunching and your contributions are what led to this latest find. Congratulations to the entire Seventeen or Bust community!

19249 * 2^13018586 + 1 is prime!!!! SB has done it again, discovering a new largest ever non-Mersenne prime. This latest result was submitted at 00:33 EST on March 26th by Konstantin Agafonov, a member of team TSC! Russia. Konstantin is from Korolev, Russia where he works as a systems administrator for a construction company.

Before joining SB, Konstantin participated in other DC projects like Find-a-Drug, where he was the 5th largest overall contributor! Konstantin says he has used up to 100 computers on SB. This particular prime was found on one of his 3GHz Pentium 4s running Windows.

To read more about the discovery, check out the official Press Release.

Thanks to all our dedicated number crunching volunteers... some of whom have been crunching for five years now! Every one of you helped make this discovery possible! Congratulations and Happy Cinco de Mayo!