A New 17 Million Digit Prime Number Discovered Known as World ‘s Largest Prime Number

world largest prime number

Scientists and mathematicians are always working on ways to prove or disprove certain theories. Research seemingly never ends and often results in new discoveries. Researcher Curtis Cooper from the University of Central Missouri has recently discovered the world’s largest prime number. The prime number the researcher worked out has 17,425,170 digits.

Cooper made the discovery using the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search or GIMPS program that networks PCs all around the world to search for a special type of prime number. Cooper’s discovery is The number — 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times, written mathematically as 257,885,161-1 — is the first prime discovered in four years.

You can see an abbreviated version of the new prime number, or download all 17,425,170 digits in a massive, 22MB text file.

Prime numbers, which are divisible only by themselves and one, have little mathematical importance. Yet the oddities have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians.

The first prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and so on. The number 10 is not prime because it is divisible by 2 and 5, for example. There are an infinite number of primes: The curious or numerologically inclined can peruse a list of the first 50 million primes online.

Via: Fox News