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 seven – are divisible only by themselves and one, and play an important role in computer encryption.
The new prime is more than 22 million digits long, five million longer than the previous largest known prime.
Primes this large could prove useful to computing in the future.
via BBC News
January 21, 2016