… and ages and ages, and along comes another prime number.
The largest known prime number is now almost five million digits longer than the previous record-holder.
In a computer laboratory at a satellite campus of the University of Central Missouri, an otherwise nondescript desktop computer, machine No. 5 in Room 143, multiplied 74,207,281 twos together and subtracted 1. It then checked that this number was not divisible by any positive integer except 1 and itself — the definition of a prime number.
This immense number can only be practically written down in mathematical notation using exponents: 274,207,281 – 1. The previous largest was 257,885,161 – 1, which has a mere 17 million or so digits.
Just to sum up the last few:
Jan 2016: 22 million digits
Feb 2013: 17 million digits
Sept 2008: 13 million digits
Jan 2006: 9 million digits
Dec 2003: 6 million digits
Dec 2001: 4 million digits
For some reason, they are usually discovered in December or January. A coincidence? I think not.
What is probably not a coincidence is, if you plot the number of digits against the year it was discovered, you get a surprisingly straight line:
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