WhoopWhoopWhoop…This is Not a Test

Geek alert:

A new largest prime number has been discovered, mersenne.org reported Tuesday. 2^57,885,161-1, which is also the 48^th Mersenne prime, was discovered on the computer of Dr. Curtis Cooper, a professor at the University of Central Missouri.

A Mersenne prime is a prime number that can be written in the form M_p = 2ⁿ-1, and they’re extremely rare finds. Of all the numbers between 0 and 25,964,951 there are 1,622,441 that are prime, but only 42 are Mersenne primes.

Ars Technica