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 ...

Introducing the world's largest known prime... The largest known prime number has been discovered by a computer at a university in Missouri in the US. Prime numbers - such as two, three, five and ...

On December 26 last year, Jonathan Pace - a 51-year old electrical engineer in the US - stumbled on to the largest known prime number, having 23,249,425 digits An amateur scientist has discovered the ...

The new number, expressed as 2 13,466,917-1, contains 4,053,946 digits and would take the best part of three weeks to write out longhand. The prime number - a number that can only be divided by one ...