Mathematics is regarded as a pure science, working with pure concepts, concepts that outside of this sphere can easily be called ambiguous. Mathematicians like truth and the truth is they have been working to discover the largest prime number ever.

A prime number is so special because its basic characteristic is that it can only be divided by one and itself. Examples of such numbers that come in mind are 2 and 3 and 7 but can you think of a prime number 13 million digit long? I know you can’t because mathematicians calculated that a normal human being would be capable of writing by hand this number in a mind boggling two and a half months.

This new prime number was discovered by Edson Smith of the University of California L.A. He hunted it down using 75 computers linked through a network in order to create a super-computer. The method “prime number hunters” use to identify new ones is a formula that can be represented as such: 2P-1, two to the power of P minus 1, P being a prime number.

The hunt is even more interesting because the discovery of such a large prime number is rewarded by The Electronic Frontier Foundation with $100,000.

The EFF is an organization that supports freedom in the networked world, claiming to be the first line of defense when such rights are under attack on the Internet. They say that discovering new prime numbers is important in the field of mathematics but even more we can look at these achievements and think of ways we can solve other problems.

The EFF has a prize of $150,000 in store for the group that discovers the next prime number, a mind staggering 100-million-digit number. The hunt is on for any mathematics enthusiast with a thing for numbers, armed with a super computer or for an extremely lucky average Joe. Anything’s possible, right?