Largest known Prime Number

The largest known prime number is 2136,279,841 − 1, a number which has 41,024,320 digits when written in base 10. It was found on October 12, 2024 by a computer volunteered by Luke Durant to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 with no divisors other than 1 and itself. According to Euclid's theorem there are infinitely many prime numbers, so there is no largest prime. Many of the largest known primes are Mersenne primes, numbers that are one less than a power of two, because they can utilize a specialized primality test that is faster than the general one. As of October 2024, the seven largest known primes are Mersenne primes.[2] The last eighteen record primes were Mersenne primes.[3][4] The binary representation of any Mersenne prime is composed of all ones, since the binary form of 2k − 1 is simply k ones. As of October 2024, the previously discovered prime M82589933, having 24,862,048 digits, held the record for more than 6 years, longer than any other prime since M19937 (which held the record for 7 years from 1971 to 1978). ~   / eduletchannel     / eduletchannel