You just read the largest known prime number.
A team at Central Missouri State University found it last month after programming 700 computers years ago.
A prime number is a positive number divisible by only itself and 1 - 2, 3, 5, 7 and so on.
The number that the team found is 9.1 million digits long. It is a Mersenne prime known as M30402457 - that's 2 to the 30,402,457th power minus 1.
Mersenne primes are a special category expressed as 2 to the "p" power minus 1, in which "p" also is a prime number.
"We're super excited," said Boone, a chemistry professor. "We've been looking for such a number for a long time."
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1 comment:
big deal. I found that number years ago--it was just rolling around inside my mind like all numbers are. The only difference is I didn't "minus 1" like the professors did; but then again, I didn't need no stinking computer to do my work for me. Billy
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