"The Quest for the Ultimate Prime: Unveiling the Largest Known Prime Number"
The largest known prime number is 2^(82,589,933) - 1, also known as M82589933, which has a staggering 24,862,048 digits. It was discovered in 2018 by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a distributed computing project that involves volunteers running software on their computers. Mersenne primes, named after the French monk Marin Mersenne, are a specific type of prime number. GIMPS has found a total of 17 Mersenne primes, with M82589933 being the latest discovery. Finding larger prime numbers continues to be a quest for mathematicians, and while there are strategies for determining if Mersenne numbers are prime, the search for the next one remains unpredictable.