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New prime number is 23 million digits long


Still Waters

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Meet the new largest known prime number. It starts with a 4, continues on for 23 million digits, then ends with a 1. As is true with all prime numbers, it can only be evenly divided by one and itself.

The number—which can be written in shorthand as M77232917—is nearly one million digits longer than the last confirmed prime discovered in 2016. While it’s the fiftieth Mersenne prime discovered, not all candidates between the last two primes have yet been checked so another could be lurking between them. But that would be surprising, says Chris Caldwell, a mathematician who tracks the discovery of large prime numbers. According to Caldwell, the gap between Mersenne primes is usually much larger.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/largest-prime-number-we-know-180967739/

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It's not as big as Graham's number. Nowhere near.

Graham's number is so large that the observable universe is far too small to contain an ordinary digital representation of Graham's number, assuming that each digit occupies one Planck volume, possibly the smallest measurable space. But even the number of digits in this digital representation of Graham's number would itself be a number so large that its digital representation cannot be represented in the observable universe. Nor even can the number of digits of that number. And so forth, for a number of times far exceeding the total number of Planck volumes in the observable universe

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I congratulate the person who figured this out, but for what on earth are you planing to use it... Like is this just knowledge for knowledges sake or can this actually be applied somewhere and wasn't a big waste of time

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5 hours ago, Black Monk said:

It's not as big as Graham's number. Nowhere near.

Graham's number is so large that the observable universe is far too small to contain an ordinary digital representation of Graham's number, assuming that each digit occupies one Planck volume, possibly the smallest measurable space. But even the number of digits in this digital representation of Graham's number would itself be a number so large that its digital representation cannot be represented in the observable universe. Nor even can the number of digits of that number. And so forth, for a number of times far exceeding the total number of Planck volumes in the observable universe

This sounds like a quote from the hitch hickers guide to the galaxy. Read it in the narrators voice lol.

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16 hours ago, _KB_ said:

I congratulate the person who figured this out, but for what on earth are you planing to use it... Like is this just knowledge for knowledges sake or can this actually be applied somewhere and wasn't a big waste of time

http://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/why.html

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9 minutes ago, seanjo said:

I just added 6 to it and found the next biggest...

It's not a prime number.

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17 hours ago, seanjo said:

Yes it is! prove me wrong...

If it was, they would have seen it.

The previous largest prime was discovered towards the end of 2015, but was 5 million digits larger than the one before that was discovered in 2013.

Strange as it may seem, as numbers get bigger, the gaps between primes get bigger.

There is only one known even prime number - 2 - which is also the smallest prime.

The only known odd gap between two primes is the gap of size one between 2 and 3.

The first prime gap of size larger than 14 occurs between the primes 523 and 541.

As of October 2017, the largest known maximal gap between primes has length 1510, found by Dana Jacobsen. It is the 77th maximal gap, and it occurs after the prime 6787988999657777797.

Edited by Black Monk
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18 hours ago, _KB_ said:

Doesn't change the fact that it serves weary little practical function, though people have all kinds of interests i suppose 

What fewer people know is why these numbers are so important, and how the mathematical logic behind them has resulted in vital applications in the modern world.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/219570-what-are-prime-numbers-and-why-are-they-so-vital-to-modern-life

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On 1/5/2018 at 7:57 PM, _KB_ said:

I congratulate the person who figured this out, but for what on earth are you planing to use it... Like is this just knowledge for knowledges sake or can this actually be applied somewhere and wasn't a big waste of time

I am going to make t.shirts with the numbers on it....if i could sell it for the same amount of numbers then it would be worth it. But i am not giving up my day job just yet.

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5 minutes ago, Black Monk said:

What fewer people know is why these numbers are so important, and how the mathematical logic behind them has resulted in vital applications in the modern world.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/219570-what-are-prime-numbers-and-why-are-they-so-vital-to-modern-life

Can it make good cup of coffee?

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25 minutes ago, freetoroam said:

Can it make good cup of coffee?

I'm not bothered about that. I'm more of a tea man myself.

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3 hours ago, seanjo said:

That's not proof...and way to take a "joke" too seriously...

I'm not taking anything seriously. I just like posting interesting trivia.

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On 1/7/2018 at 2:06 PM, Black Monk said:

What fewer people know is why these numbers are so important, and how the mathematical logic behind them has resulted in vital applications in the modern world.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/219570-what-are-prime-numbers-and-why-are-they-so-vital-to-modern-life

Back in that day this might have been important but now we have computers and actually don't need to know these as we have computers that can just do the math based off the input  

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