Largest prime number found so far

no need to apologize. glad i could shed some light.

ok instead of spending all the time thinking about finding the largest prime number, should'nt these people wasting their time on something pointless anyway spend there time trying to devise a rule to find any prime number...unless thats imposible and i dont know it.

Originally posted by porgasm
ok instead of spending all the time thinking about finding the largest prime number, should'nt these people wasting their time on something pointless anyway spend there time trying to devise a rule to find any prime number...unless thats imposible and i dont know it.

Mathematically, primes numbers aren't pointless. They're the most important numbers there are.

People have been trying to find formulas or functions that could churn out primes numbers. Many have suceeded, but theur formulas aren't consistant.

Mathematicians are speculating that there maybe some sort of fractal spacing between the primes. They need primes to do this.