Guidelines for Submissions to the prime_blob Table

Introduction

Remember, the whole point of the auxiliary 'prime_blob' table is to hold primes that can not be placed in the main table 'prime'.  The most common reasons are:

The prime has no short description

Some primes do not have simple algebraic expressions to define them.  This is especially true of some of the prime proven by methods such as ECPP.  Others have algebraic expressions, but they are longer than the 255 characters allowed in the main 'prime' table.

The prime is too hard to calculate

Other primes may have a short description, but like p(2448422) take too long to calculate.  The full digit parser always checks for a prime_blob entry containing the entire expansion before recalculating; so adding such primes to the 'prime_blob' table will keep the server from timing out on these difficult primes.

Below we discuss each of the form fields you must complete, but first, two hints:

If you are entering a long formula

If you are here because the algebraic expression for your prime is over 255 characters, the just fill in the person field and the number field (with the formula).  The server will then calculate the expansion and use it as the number, it will form a short version of this number for the description field, and finally it will move the formula to the explanation ('text') field. 

If you are entering a long decimal expansion

Again start with the person and the number field, and then add a reasonable short explanation of this prime to the explanation ('text') field.  Make sure that your browser did not truncate when you cut and paste--some browsers truncate after about 32k characters.

The description field

This is used to describe the prime.  It should be plain text, not HTML, and often you should just leave it blank and let the server fill it in with something like this:

• "69943392751539865432...(15032 other digits)...6238463797677935111"

The one time you might not want to is if the prime has a short description, but is hard to calculate, then descriptions like the following will be more informative:

• "[e*10^1230]/36037"
• "'css_descramble.c.gz'*65536+2083"
• p(2448422)

Note the use of double-quotes around the expressions that are not parsable.

The explanation field (text)

This should explain what this this number is.  You may use HTML, links...  Try to make it as accessible to the general public as possible.  You can write as much as necessary (up to 16k) but keep it as short as is reasonable.

As always, our editors reserve the right to edit all fields of all entries!