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Amazing, but it seems true: http://mersenne.org/ is currently reporting the discoveries of the 45th and 46th known presumptive Mersenne primes.
Mersenne primes are prime numbers that can be written in the form 2n - 1, where n is also a prime number. These numbers are named after the French mathematician Marin Mersenne who studied them in the 17th century.
As of 2021, there are 51 known Mersenne primes. The largest known Mersenne prime has 24,862,048 digits and was discovered in 2018.
Mersenne primes are typically discovered using computers and specialized software. The process involves checking if numbers of the form 2n - 1 are prime by using efficient algorithms such as the Lucas-Lehmer test.
Discovering new Mersenne primes can help in advancing the field of mathematics and computer science. These numbers have important applications in number theory and cryptography, and their discovery can also lead to the development of more efficient algorithms and faster computing methods.
The two new Mersenne primes, 282,589,933 - 1 and 224,862,048 - 1, were discovered by a collaborative effort of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project. The first prime was discovered in December 2018 and the second in December 2019.