The World’s Largest Prime Number

[riky]

The World's Largest Prime Number
      

In Muriel Spark's novella The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie the title character frequently avers that she is "in my prime," which means "the most active, thriving, or successful stage or period" of, in her case, life.

For that or some other reason, primes have fascinated mathematicians – some of them, anyway – for millennia. A long-standing goal has been to find a formula that generates prime numbers and only prime numbers. So far, nothing.

If they seem interesting to you, you'll be pleased to know that the largest one known was found just recently by a computer program.
         

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