While the large hadron collider is out of action, fans of scientific enormousness will be pleased to hear that not one but two new large prime numbers have been discovered. They are:

2^37,156,667 - 1
and
2^43,112,609 - 1

This second one is now the largest known prime, at 12,978,189 digits long. You can see the entire thing written out here, if you can’t wait for the poster to come out.

As you can see, both are Mersenne primes: prime numbers of the form 2ⁿ-1, for some n. The largest was discovered by Edson Smith at UCLA, and the other by Hans-Michael Elvenich in Langenfeld, Germany, both as part of the collaborative programme GIMPS (the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search). Smith’s put together an FAQ about his discovery.

If you want to get involved in GIMPS yourself, there’s serious money at stake courtesy of an anonymous, loaded, prime-enthusiast.

The Guardian has won its legal battle against Matthias Rath - a vitamin-magnate who told desperate South Africans that his pills could cure AIDS, while “so-called anti-retroviral… drugs severely damage all cells in the body - including white blood cells - thereby not improving but rather worsening immune deficiencies and expanding the AIDS epidemic.” Ben Glodacre of Bad Science - who wrote the piece in the Graun that attracted Rath’s unsuccessful lawsuit - is justifiably pleased and proud. Meanwhile Rath is doubtless spitting mad, and hopefully, shortly, bust.