美国国家公共电台 NPR A Tenn. Man Recently Discovered The Largest Prime Number Known To Humankind

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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

This past week, John Pace found the largest prime number known to humankind.

JOHN PACE: Four, six, seven, three, three, three, one, eight, three, three, five, nine, two...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And that number goes on to more than 23 million digits².

PACE: It's longer than anybody really wants to sit down and hear.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: If you're not great at math, here's a primer. Prime numbers can only be divided by 1 and themselves. But Pace is not a mathematician³. He's actually a FedEx employee from Germantown, Tenn., and he found his prime as part of an online collective called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search or GIMPS. Pace and thousands of volunteers ran software on their personal computers, crunching⁴ numbers day in and day out. Now, anyone can participate. You just need a computer, an Internet connection and a lot of patience. Pace began his prime hunt 14 years ago.

PACE: There was a $100,000 prize attached to finding the first prime that had a 10 million digit¹ result. And I was like, well, you know, I've got as much a chance as anybody else.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: John Pace's prime number currently holds the title for the largest. But there are other bigger ones out there, and they're important, especially when it comes to cryptography, Internet security and the future of computing⁵.

PACE: When they ultimately get to, you know, quantum computers - however long that takes - they'll be able to crack current encryption in milliseconds. So there's going to be a need for extremely large prime numbers. And I'd like to at least have left some legacy⁶ that, you know, I've helped contribute something to society.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So get hunting. There are still lots of prime numbers to be found.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE REDNECK MANIFESTO'S "DRUM DRUM")