
PrimeGrid has found a new largest generalised Fermat prime - ikeboy
http://aperiodical.com/2017/09/919444-1048576-plus-1-is-prime/
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jack9
Is there a practical reason this is useful information? Increasingly large
prime numbers will be found, so why is this valuable outside bottling up
factorization work...for theoretical future division problems? Google has not
been helpful.

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JshWright
I think this is a pretty classic "because it's there".

It's pretty unlikely finding a single new prime will reveal anything
interesting (though it's certainly not impossible that it would lead to the
discovery of some previously unknown pattern or progression)

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colejohnson66
Exactly. Primes of this size are found simply for the “because why not?”
factor

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beams_of_light
Ok.

