A prime number is a whole number that can be divided only by 1 or by itself. Like- 2, 3, 5, 7, etc. This historic discovery by California resident Luke Durant has been classified as a Mersenne prime. It is named after the French monk Marin Mersenne. He studied these numbers 350 years ago.
According to the report, Mersenne primes are quite rare and hence Durant’s discovery becomes even more significant. To explain it in simple language, for a number to be considered a Mersenne prime, it has to be written as ‘2ᵖ-1’ and Durant’s discovery fits in this sense.
It is also interesting that large prime numbers are used in some applications for Internet security. At the same time, Mersenne prime numbers are important for other reasons. The report quoted Dr. Kevin Buzzard, Professor of Pure Mathematics at Imperial College, London, as saying that finding the world’s largest prime number has also revealed the potential of computers.
It is noteworthy that such numbers cannot be found by the human mind. The help of GIMPS is taken in this work. It was established in the year 1999. The project runs on a network of volunteers and searches for large Mersenne prime numbers with the help of computers.
Durant also told GIMPS about his discovery. Then volunteers from all over the world conducted tests on computers to find out the results. After that the number was considered confirmed. This is the first Mersenne prime number to be discovered using a computer’s GPU.
