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GIMPS or the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search has announced that it has discovered the largest known prime number, which like all prime numbers, can be divided by one and itself. This record shattering prime number is a whopping 22 million digits in length and happens to be five million digits longer than the previous record holder which GIMPS discovered back in January 2013.

22 million digits, take a moment and think about the enormity of it, and the fact that it’s a full five million digits longer than its predecessor. Truly amazing. If you’re curious, the new largest prime number in the world starts with 3 and ends with 1.

GIMPS does agree in its press release that the world’s largest prime number is actually too big to be put to any practical use, however, there’s a symbolic value to this discovery, and it also highlights the capabilities of the software that helped in discovering this massive number.

The number was discovered after “31 days of non-stop computing,” interestingly the machine wasn’t a supercomputer, it was actually running an Intel Core i7 processor.

The search is far from over though, even if its get harder to find the next largest known prime number with every new one that’s discovered. Volunteers who join the search will have one major goal which is to find the largest prime number with 100 million digits, there’s a $150,000 prize attached to this goal.

Filed in General. Read more about . Source: theverge

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