A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography.

In 2017, however, a developer named Mihai Preda designed an open-source program called GpuOwl to continue the Mersenne prime research through these muc-improved machines.

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the largest known prime number, 2 77,232,917 -1, having 23,249,425 digits.

The largest-ever prime number has been discovered at the University of Central Missouri. It breaks the previous record by almost 5 million digits.

Prime numbers near to each other tend to avoid repeating their last digits, the mathematicians say: that is, a prime that ends in 1 is less likely to be followed by another ending in 1 than one ...