An amateur mathematician has found a new prime number that has 16 million more digits than the previous record.
Luke Durant, an amateur researcher and former Nvidia employee, discovered the largest prime number ever. The new prime number is 2136.279.841 – 1, beating the previous record of 282.589.933 – 1 when more than 16 digits, according to Live Science. Prime numbers are natural numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves. The smallest prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11. In theory, the set of prime numbers is infinite, but finding them becomes increasingly difficult as the value gets larger.
To find new prime numbers, Luke Durant used a free program called Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) to algorithmically run through all possibilities. His effort required the use of thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) across 24 data centers in 17 countries, an achievement that “ended the 28-year dominance of conventional personal computers in digital search.” giant element”, according to the announcement on the GIMPS website.
The newly confirmed prime number contains 41,024,320 digits. This is also the 52nd known Mersenne prime number, the prime number sequence is named after Marin Mersenne, a French priest and scientist who composed the formula for finding prime numbers by expressing them in the form 2p – 1 where p is a positive integer. Although not the only way to detect prime numbers, this method is easier than other methods.
According to the team behind GIMPS, there are many cryptographic algorithms developed based on prime numbers. The discovery helped Durant receive a $3,000 bonus from GIMPS. A prize worth 150,000 – 250,000 USD will be awarded to the person who discovers the first prime numbers with hundreds of millions and billions of digits, respectively.