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Luke Durant, a researcher and amateur mathematician, has identified the largest new prime number known to humankind. The newly discovered prime number is 2 to the power of 136,279,841, then minus one.

An effort in which thousands of people donate their computers' unused processing power uncovers the largest prime number so far known. Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote ...

Thousands of computers across the world are currently scouring the number line in a scavenger hunt for rare mathematical gems. Enthusiasts looking for larger and larger prime numbers, which are ...