A 41-million-digit prime number is the biggest ever found – but mathematicians’ search for perfection will continue
- Written by John Voight, Professor of Mathematics , University of Sydney
Imagine a number made up of a vast string of ones: 1111111…111. Specifically, 136,279,841 ones in a row. If we stacked up that many sheets of paper, the resulting tower would stretch into the stratosphere.
If we write this number in a computer in binary form (using only ones and zeroes), it would fill up only about 16 megabytes, no more than...





