Mathematical record: the longest prime number found

A group of American researchers managed to find the longest prime number, which consists of 17 million digits. Prime numbers are all integers divisible without remainder only with the number 1 and with themselves, and one more than the number, such as 3, 5, 7, 11 ..

Curtis Cooper and his team from the University of Missouri have been able to come up with numbers that contain 17,425,170 digits, which on paper is more than 4,000 printed pages of A4.

By this result the researchers came to the aid techniques to study Mersen primes. It took 40 days of computing, using 360,000 processors, in order to reach a new record.

This research enables the development of practical applications, especially in cryptography.

Cooper and his team, in addition to pure science, motivated by the premium of $ 3,000 for the project by the systematic study Marsen numbers (GIMPS) is assigned to one such discovery.

Foundation for electronic border (EFF, an international nonprofit organization for the defense of human rights and freedoms in the digital form) has announced it will reward you with a $ 150,000 finding the sheer number of more than 100 million digits, and the simple discovery of $ 250,000 in the number of more than a billion digits .