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Largest known prime number discovered with over 23 million digits

Largest known prime number discovered with over 23 million digits

January 5, 2018

Jonathan Pace, an electrical engineer from Tennessee who has been searching for big primes for 14 years, has discovered the new largest known prime, at over 23 million digits long. Euclid proved that there is no largest prime number, and many mathematicians and hobbyists continue to search for large prime numbers. Some important cryptographic algorithms such as RSA critically depend on the fact that prime factorization of large numbers takes a long time. That's one of the reasons for finding larger prime numbers which can be used as cryptographic keys.