A New Prime Number Record Just Dropped
Luke Durant, a former Nvidia researcher and major player in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), just found the largest known prime number! Known as M136279841, this massive prime is calculated by multiplying 2 together 136,279,841 times, then subtracting one. What’s wild is that Durant used a supercomputer with thousands of GPUs across 17 countries to pull it off. GIMPS has now discovered the last 18 Mersenne primes, and this new find is a huge win for the project.