The largest known prime number was recently discovered by a team led by Curtis Cooper from the University of Central Missouri. Prime numbers can only be divided by number one or themselves, and the largest known one is 22 million digits long, which is five million digits longer than the last one, according to the BBC.
The largest known prime number, 274,207,281-1, which is labelled as M74207281, was discovered by Cooper through connecting 700 computers with the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). The discovery happened on Dec. 15 last year which after a program computed continuously for around 50 days, the University of Central Missouri website reported.
"We've worked with Information Services to make sure we are not compromising the campus computing infrastructure," Cooper said, according to the University of Central Missouri website.
GIMPS, which has been operated by Mersenne Research since 1996, hands out monetary awards for prime numbers that are discovered. The next prize of $150,000 will be for a prime number with 100 million digits, according to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.
Prime numbers can be used in various ways of computing, however, the same cannot be said for the larger numbers.
"While prime numbers are important for cryptography, this prime is too large to currently be of practical value," GIMPS said in a statement, according to the Washington Post.
Try computing for the next biggest prime number here.
