Prime Numbers are natural numbers greater than one that cannot be formed by multiplying two smaller natural numbers.
The new prime number is super long with 22,338,618 digits! So it has a nickname- M74207281, which seems equally long!
The millions upon millions of prime numbers that mathematicians have already found are a small part of the millions still to be found. Prime numbers stand out because they are part of all other numbers.
Ancient Egyptian mathematicians knew about prime numbers, but the earliest surviving records come from Ancient Greek mathematics, particularly from a man called Euclid, (Eucleides of Alexandria). He showed how to construct a perfect number from a Mersenne prime. named after Marin Mersenne, who studied them in the early 17th century.
Cicadas spend most of their lives as grubs underground. They only leave their burrows after 7, 13 or 17 years. These are prime numbers! They breed and then die after a few weeks. Biologists think that these prime-numbered breeding cycle lengths have evolved so that the cicadas stop predators from synchronizing with these cycles.