On January 4, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a group of volunteers who use freely available software to search for Mersenne prime numbers, announced the discovery of a new “largest known prime number.” For those that need a refresher, a prime number is a positive integer that can only be divided by itself and 1. Since they follow no set pattern, the numbers are hard to discover, which is probably why mathematicians are continually challenging themselves to find the next big one.