https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/we-have-a-new-prime-number-and-its-23-million-digits-long/

Somewhere out there on the number line, huge prime numbers are lurking, waiting to be discovered. On Wednesday, a new one was. The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, an organization devoted to doing exactly what its name suggests, announced that it had discovered a new prime number, the largest ever found: 277,232,917−1. That’s more than 77 million 2s all multiplied together, minus 1. I’d write it all out for you, but there’s a big problem: It’s 23,249,425 digits long. (So, it goes by its nickname: M77232917.)


Be sure to check out the chart showing the finding of prime numbers over the centuries... any guesses on why there was a sudden uptick? ;)