The largest new prime number was discovered on January 7, 2016 by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) at 9:30 pm on its 20th anniversary with the largest Mersenne Prime Number.
Mersenne prime is a
prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a
prime number that can be written in the form Mn = 2^n − 1 for some
integer n.
2^74207281-1
Mathematical monster, Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg used Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) software to find this new discovery. It has 22,338,618 digits in total.
GIMPS having 360,000 CPU's peaking at 150 trillion calculations per second is considered to be the longest continuously running global project in Internet history.
Cooper's computer actually found this largest nember prime on 17 September 2015, but a bug meant the software failed to send an email alert reporting the discovery, meaning it went unnoticed until a few months later found in some routine maintenance.
It is only the 49th known Mersenne prime ever discovered, each increasingly difficult to find.
One more interesting thing any one who had good knowledge on prime numbers can freely download the software at www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm.Volunteers have a chance to earn research discovery awards of $3,000 or $50,000 if their computer discovers a new Mersenne prime. GIMPS' next major goal is to win the $150,000 award administered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation offered for finding a 100 million digit prime number.
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