The asteroid #8191, also known as 1993 OX9, is named Mersenne after the French mathematician and philosopher Marin Mersenne, who lived from 1588 until 1648. This asteroid is a Main Belt Asteroid and hardly anything is known about it.

This asteroid is unspectacular astronomically, hence its name must be more interesting for considering this asteroid. The name of this asteroid is on the one hand a name of a mathematician and hence known to many astronomers, on the other hand it is also one of the playful names, which the Committee for Small Body Nomenclature encourages explicitly. Marin Mersenne is said to have dismissed astrology, but the same is said about Johannes Kepler and this is nowhere close to the truth. Correct is that Johannes Kepler defended astrology against superstition. This could very well be the same with Marin Mersenne because they both were in a kind of intellectual battle against Robert Fludd, who was a kind of what would now in the internet age be called a troll. Marin Mersenne made first attempts to measure the velocity of sound and he figured out the relation between tone pitches and frequencies. But his most famous work is a list of prime numbers of the form 2ⁿ-1, where n is then necessarily also prime. Such prime numbers are called Mersenne prime numbers. Mersenne correctly verified that the numbers are prime also for n = 17; 19; and 31 as well as they aren’t prime for n = 11; 23; and 29. The largest prime number, which Mersenne correctly established was for n = 127. When written in the dual system, then all Mersenne numbers (whether prime or not) consist only of the digit 1 (like 1111; 11111111; 1111111111111111111; and so on). The biggest known prime numbers are Mersenne prime numbers because they are easier to test than prime numbers of other categories. Meanwhile are fifty-one Mersenne prime numbers known. Seventeen of them were discovered by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), which was one of the first examples of distributed computing and of volunteer computing. Mersenne prime numbers can have many millions of decimal places, hence they are written as M and the exponent either subscripted or in brackets. The name of the asteroid was proposed by the discoverer because 8191 = 2¹³-1 is the fifth Mersenne prime number and the number of the asteroid. This means that the asteroid Mersenne was named Mersenne because its asteroid number is the fifth of the Mersenne prime numbers.

I’ve decided to elaborate not only on asteroids, that astrologers deem relevant, but also on asteroids, that are prominent in my own natal chart, because these are the asteroids, that I know best because I’m most interested in them. Coincidentally did I publish here already for different reasons something on Poseidon and on Cyllarus, that are both conjunct the midheaven of my natal chart. My natal Mersenne is also conjunct my natal midheaven. An asteroid conjunct my natal midheaven should indicate a chunk of my vocation. In this case probably only a very little chunk. But this little chunk certainly made me write here on the difference between the properties of numbers based on substantial math (like the Mersenne prime numbers) on the one hand and vulgar numerology on the other hand. In a similar way had also Johannes Kepler defended astrology against superstition. If you find your natal Mersenne relevant, but at a different position, then consider that Mersenne prime numbers are found through volunteered distributed computing and that prime numbers are important for cryptography.