Uses of Mersenne primes in math

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There is an international search for Mersenne primes. The project is huge. But what are the uses of Mersenne Primes in math? Do they have any other properties other than being of the form $2^n-1$?

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They are not particularly useful, but there happen to be special tests for primality that work only for numbers of Mersenne form but are faster than general primality tests for other numbers of the same size.

Therefore, at any given time the largest known prime is likely to be a Mersenne prime, simply because they are easier to find.

In other words, they are useful for breaking the largest-known-prime record.