The news of the discovery of a new, largest known prime broke about a week ago but I've only gotten around to writing about it here. It was of course a Mersenne prime discovered via GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.
The number containing digits is where itself must be prime of course. It is the 49th known Mersenne prime defined as a prime expressible in the form where is prime. The first Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, and 127 corresponding to values of 2, 3, 5, and 7 respectively.
Note that p being prime is not sufficient to ensure that 2^p - 1 will be prime. As a counter example take . The resulting number is not prime. Here are links to some more interesting information about Mersenne primes:
on 27th of October 2024
Update:
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