# Largest prime number?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I've been seeing headlines all day: "Largest prime number found; it's 17,425,170 digits long." Very irritating. The largest prime number has _*not *_been found, because there is no largest prime number. Easily provable. What's been found is the largest prime number yet found.

Alas for our apparently increasing level of technical illiteracy, at least on the Internet!


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

A better term of phrase would be largest prime number found todate:

"The largest prime number yet discovered, 2 raised to the 57,885,161 power minus 1, is 17,425,170 digits long, which is 4,446,981 digits longer than the previous record holder, the 12,978,189-digit-long 2 raised to the 43,112,609 power minus 1, which was discovered in 2008.

Discovered by University of Central Missouri mathematician Curtis Cooper

The new discovery makes Cooper elligible for a $3,000 GIMPS research discovery award."

Seems a hard way to make a buck - hope he was not using my pc


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

Yes but what use is it?


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm sure they wrote the headlines figuring the "to date" or "so far" at the end of "largest prime number found" would be implied, since everyone knows there are larger prime numbers.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Math profs slam news ellipsis gaff


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

Well this one is titled "Largest known prime number discovered" which is a bit of an oxymoron - how can you discover something that is known? Of course they mean it was unknown and discovered, and once known, became the largest known - but I guess that doesn't have the same ring to it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9853143/Largest-known-prime-number-discovered.html

"the Electronic Frontier Foundation has offered $150,000 (£95,000) for the first 100 million digit prime number to be found." - right that's a new project for my programming skills then!!


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Glad we have one more number in our arsenal of signals to convince the extraterrestrials we are here. Better start transmitting though. That one emay take a while.


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