Amateur mathematician Luke Durant has made history by discovering the largest known prime number, boasting an astonishing 41 million digits. The new record shatters the previous benchmark by over 16 million digits.
Durant’s remarkable achievement was facilitated by a free software program called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), which he used to sift through possibilities using an algorithm. His efforts required harnessing thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) across 24 data centers in 17 countries, effectively rendering ordinary personal computers obsolete.
The newly confirmed prime number is also the 52nd known Mersenne prime and contains 41,024,320 decimal digits. While it may not have practical applications at present, experts argue that large prime numbers paved the way for important cryptography algorithms, which have revolutionized data security.
Durant’s discovery has earned him a $3,000 cash prize from GIMPS, with additional prizes of $150,000 and $250,000 awaiting those who discover the first hundred-million-digit prime and the first billion-digit prime, respectively.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/mathematics/largest-known-prime-number-spanning-41-million-digits-discovered-by-amateur-mathematician-using-free-software