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Largest Prime (of another kind)

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by stevepea, Jan 15, 2018.

  1. stevepea

    stevepea Senior Member

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    Not the Prius Prime, but another Prime...

    "There’s a new largest known prime number in town, with a whopping 23,249,425 digits. The figure is calculated by multiplying 2 by itself 77,232,917 times and then subtracting 1. Announced on Jan. 3, the number is almost a million digits longer than the last record-breaking prime."

    The largest known prime number was just discovered - The Washington Post
     
    #1 stevepea, Jan 15, 2018
  2. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    These are Mersenne primes that all take the form (2^n)-1. They can be calculated relatively simply by some math I don't know. There are certainly many other much smaller primes that have not yet been found because the math in general is way too hard.
     
    #2 tochatihu, Jan 15, 2018
    RCO likes this.
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