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RE: TIL: Life in Numbers --- Prime numbers and their importance in Cryptography and security.

in #steemstem7 years ago (edited)

A very interesting read @pangoli, thanks for your contributions!

Presently, the largest prime number yet discovered is 277232919. It was discovered by John Pace, a 51-year-old FED-ex employee living in Tennessee on his PC. The number contains over 23.2 million digits, and would require 9000 pages of paper to write down completely!

Just wow! I can't even wrap my head around this number. MIT Professor Daskalakis once said that 2^1000 is bigger than the product of all molecules contained in the Universe and all nanoseconds since the Big Bang event. I bet you get why I find this number shockingly big!

Take care!

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It is an amazingly long one. And what's interesting is the fact that this one surpassed the previous biggest prime number by over a million digits. So who's to say what we're expecting the next one to be. Maybe five million more digits? ;-o

thanks for coming around buddy.