A text file containing the entire number takes up 21.7 MB of space.
A prime number is a whole number greater than one that can only be divided by itself and one.
The best known primes are the small ones such as 2, 3, 5, and 7.
New, very large ones are difficult to find and of great interest to mathematicians.
It took the PC 31 days of non-stop computing to prove that the number was prime.
That happened back in September, but it remained unnoticed until routine maintenance data mined it, GIMPS reported.
The fourth time here is as exciting as the first time.
The new largest prime number has 22,338,618 digits.
So is the gigantic new prime of any use?
Mathematicians gladly confess that the discovery has no real practical use.
Its just something interesting.
Its just a huge scientific and mathematical achievement, Parker said in his video.
This is Coopers fourth record-breaking prime find, and hes up for a $3,000 prize for this discovery.
GIMPS bills itself as the largest continuously running grassroots supercomputing project on the internet.
source: www.techworm.net
