The Biggest Prime Number Displayed As RGB Web Colors

Earlier this month a mathematician working with the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, found the biggest prime number ever — 17 million digits long — 2 57,885,161 minus 1.

The internet got super hyped up about this, and has been fiddling around with the number. Here's a new use for them: Flicker user pbump decided to turn the digits into art:

I took the raw numeric data from the new, 17-million-digit prime, broke it into 6-digit chunks, converted that to RGB colors, and made an image.

RBG web code identified colors by a six-digit number, so each six-digit chunk stands for a color. Here's all 17 million digits:

And here's a close up on the individual six-digit chunks turned into colors: