A team of Mersenne organization at the University of Central Missouri, headed by Curtis Cooper has claimed that they have found the largest prime number. This number is 274,207,281 – 1 and this number has 22 million digits.
The new prime number is named as M74207281 (calculated by multiplying together 74,207,281 twos then subtracting one).
The new record has broken the old record by approximately 5 million digits. Interestingly older prime number has also been discovered by same team.
Head of team Curtis Cooper announced this via a press release.
What is GIMPS ?
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) is a collaboration of volunteers to find special larger prime numbers known as Mersenne. Mersenne is one less than a power of two. The official discovery date is January 7th.
GIMPS team developed a software named prime95 to search new and bigger prime number.