How A Record-Breaking Prime Number With 41 Million Digits Was Discovered
The discovery of a new prime number highlights the rising price of mathematical gold. Clocking in at 41,024,320 digits, it dwarfs the previous record by a staggering 16 million digits. The largest known prime number has been discovered by an amateur researcher and former nvidia employee. Called m136279841, the value belongs to a rare class of prime numbers called mersenne primes and was found using a supercomputer system spread across 17 countries If you need a refresher, a prime number is a whole number that can only be divided by 1 and itself, such as 2, 3, 5 and 7.
An amateur mathematician has discovered the largest known prime number, a colossal 41 million digits long, using freely available software. Oct 27, 2024 11:44. The number he found, given the unstimulating name m136279841, is one of those figures so outlandishly large that it doesn’t sound real. It has 41,024,320 decimal digits.