The ‘new’ largest known Prime Number

Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) group has reported an all new Mersenne Prime Number (a prime number of type $2^P-1$) which is, now officially the largest prime number ever discovered. This number is valued to a whopping $2^{74207281}-1$ and contains 22,338,618 digits. It is quoted as M747207281 and is almost 5 million digits longer than the previous record holding prime number M57885161.

It took non-stop calculations of an i7 computer for 31 days to prove the primality of the number. A press release about this discovery is available at GIMPS’ official website.

Original Article: The ‘new’ largest known Prime Number

Published on: Gaurav Tiwari