They’re millions of digits long, and it takes an army of mathematicians and machines to hunt them down — what’s not to love about monster primes? Adam Spencer, comedian and lifelong math geek, shares his passion for these odd numbers, and for the mysterious magic of math.
Australia’s own, radio host Adam Spencer fills Sydney’s drive-time mornings with smart math and science talk. It’s great to see mathematics presented in a refreshingly comedic way.
For those playing at home the current largest prime number known is 17,425,170 digits long. If you typed it into notepad and hit save, it’d create a 22MB file.
If you’re still not convinced you should watch this TED Talk, then know that you’ll be missing out on a robot that solves a randomly shuffled rubix cube in just 5 seconds !
