New world record for largest prime number

News Clips, Pre-Algebra 1 Minute

As of this week, we have a new world record for the largest known prime number:

2^{74,207,281}-1

The adjective known is important, because there are an infinite number of prime numbers (but not all of them are known). A good video describing this finding is below.

A good article is here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/01/20/the-newest-prime-number-is-more-than-22-million-digits-long/?tid=sm_tw

Published by John Quintanilla

I'm a Professor of Mathematics and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of North Texas. For eight years, I was co-director of Teach North Texas, UNT's program for preparing secondary teachers of mathematics and science.

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