Talk:Sublime number

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[edit] Soft linebreak question

Is there some way we can break up that big number so that people viewing the article in a small window don't see that huge ugly gap? Anton Mravcek (talk) 19:32, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

How about expressing it as

(2¹²⁶)(2⁶¹ − 1)(2³¹ − 1)(2¹⁹ − 1)(2⁷ − 1)(2⁵ − 1)(2³ − 1)

as it is in the referenced article? This seems better to me, and it is certainly shorter. Cheers, Doctormatt (talk) 19:55, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I've just doublechecked that factorization in Mathematica. Thank you very much for suggesting it. Anton Mravcek (talk) 13:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

{{2, 126}, {7, 1}, {31, 1}, {127, 1}, {524287, 1}, {2147483647, 1}, {2305843009213693951, 1}}

Wait a minute, I spoke too soon. I tried

(2^126)(2^61 − 1)(2^31 − 1)(2^19 − 1)(2^7 − 1)(2^5 − 1)(2^3 − 1)

and the output was 7237005577332262213973186563042994240829374041602535252466099000494570602496 − ⁶. Not sure what that superscript 6 at the end means. Anton Mravcek (talk) 13:47, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, it was a glitch caused by some hidden character during cut and paste. I typed the expression afresh and the result matches a(2) in Sloane's A081357. Anton Mravcek (talk) 13:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)