What is the Largest Known Prime Number?

The largest known prime number is 2^82,589,933-1, and it has 24,862,048 digits.

The largest known prime number is 2^82,589,933−1. This number is a type of prime number known as a Mersenne prime. Mersenne primes are prime numbers that can be written in the form 2ⁿ−1, where both n and 2ⁿ−1 are prime.

The discovery of this particular Mersenne prime was a collaborative effort facilitated by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a distributed computing project that harnesses the power of volunteers’ computers worldwide to search for large prime numbers. The specific prime number 2^82,589,933−1 was verified on December 7, 2018.

Finding large prime numbers has been a significant pursuit in mathematics, and the discovery of the largest known prime numbers often involves complex algorithms and extensive computational resources. Mersenne primes, in particular, have been a focus of such searches due to their special form and mathematical properties.