How would you transfer a large number across the internet?

Question

I'm curious how one would go about transferring a very large number such as the current largest prime number across the internet. Google was useless for this question, ChatGPT recommended breaking it up and using sftp which also seems not quite right. Does anyone know how this would be accomplished and/or what required hardware would be necessary?

qbrass · Accepted Answer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_known_prime_numberThe largest known prime number (as of February 2023) is 2^82,589,933 &minus; 1Like that, I guess.

smoldesu · Answer

I guess nothing. If you put it in a very large .txt file and send it using ftp/http/smb/whatever it should work fine.What are the limitations you're anticipating here?

al2o3cr · Answer

Like qbrass already pointed out, the largest prime number isn't "very large" by file standards - it'd be about 10 megabytes.
If you can compute with the number, you can send whatever shape you keep it in to compute.
OTOH, actual "very large numbers" like Graham's number can't be computed with meaningfully - writing down even one of the _earlier_ terms in that sequence would need more digits than there are Planck volumes in the universe.

mikequinlan · Answer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity

uberman · Answer

Why is partial file ftp not the right answer in your mind? Unless the number is 2^something -1 and could just as easily be recalculated.

ftxbro · Answer

i feel like someone is doing a little april 1 trolling

How would you transfer a large number across the internet?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_known_prime_number
The largest known prime number (as of February 2023) is 2^82,589,933 − 1
Like that, I guess.

I guess nothing. If you put it in a very large .txt file and send it using ftp/http/smb/whatever it should work fine.
What are the limitations you're anticipating here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity

Why is partial file ftp not the right answer in your mind? Unless the number is 2^something -1 and could just as easily be recalculated.

i feel like someone is doing a little april 1 trolling