For many years before the advent of the digital age, the largest known prime number was 2127-1, requiring 39 digits to express it. With the help of computers, since 1952, the record has been beaten many times.
The largest prime found to date is 274,207,281 – 1 which equals the Mersenne number 74,207,281 and was obtained in the collaborative project GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search) by the Dr. Curtis Cooper in the University of Missouri at 2016 January 1. The number has a total of 17.425.170 decimal digits.
The large prime study is based on the expression Mp=2p – 1. The numerical values ??of this expression when p is a natural number called Mersenne numbers, since this mathematical wrote the first terms of this sequence that are primes.
These numbers have been obtained mostly with programs running primality tests like Lucas-Lehmer with big numbers and are developed by such organizations.
In 2008 the reward for discovering a prime number of 22 million digits was 100.000$.
The next reward of the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) to discover a new prime with with at least 100 millons of digits is about 150.000$.
The 3 largest known primes:
- 274,207,281 – 1 (2016-01-07)
- 257,885,161 – 1 (2013-01-25)
- 243,112,609 – 1 (2008-08-23)
All exceed the 10 million barrier and all were discovered by the GIMPS Organization.
Can you be the next to find the largest prime number?