The largest known prime number has been discovered by an amateur researcher and former Nvidia employee.

The new number is 2136,279,841 – 1, which beats the previous title holder (282,589,933 – 1) by more than 16 million digits.

To find the new prime, Luke Durant used a free program called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS, to sift through the possibilities with an algorithm. His efforts required the harnessing of thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) across 24 data centers in 17 countries — a feat that "ends the 28-year reign of ordinary personal computers finding these huge prime numbers," according to a statement released on the GIMPS website.

The newly confirmed prime number contains 41,024,320 decimal digits, according to the statement. The new prime number is also the 52nd known Mersenne prime — a series named after Marin Mersenne, a French monk and polymath who devised a formula for finding prime numbers by subtracting 1 from powers of 2. (The smallest Mersenne prime is 3 — or 2 to the power of 2, minus 1.) Though far from being the only way to discover primes, the method is slightly easier than others.