Hold onto your seats because were going to talk about the largest known Smith number.

First off, what is a Smith number? Well, it’s basically just a fancy way of saying that it’s a composite number (meaning it has more than two factors) where each digit in its prime factorization is greater than or equal to the corresponding digit in its original decimal representation. For example, 30! (thats 30 factorial for all you math nerds out there) is a Smith number because when we break down its prime factorization into digits, it looks like this:

2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 11 x 13 x 17 x 19 x 23 x 29 x 31 x 61 x 83 x 109 x 127 x 508 x 641 x 2,305,843,008,139,823,051,751,404,337,583,382,512,110,586,963,421,105,371

And when we look at the corresponding digits in its original decimal representation (which is 30!), it looks like this:

3 x 0!

So you can see that each digit in the prime factorization is greater than or equal to the corresponding digit in the original number. Pretty cool, right? But what about the largest known Smith number? Well, as of now (and I’m writing this article on August 12th, 2021), its a whopping 38 digits long and has been calculated by mathematicians using some pretty fancy algorithms.

But here’s the thing: even though we can calculate these numbers with ease (well, at least for computers), they don’t really have any practical applications in real life. In fact, Smith numbers are so rare that there are only a handful of them known to exist! So why bother studying them? Well, because math is fun and sometimes its just nice to know things for the sake of knowing them. Plus, who knows what kind of crazy discoveries we might make in the future by exploring these strange and fascinating numbers?

And if anyone out there manages to find a larger one, be sure to let us know. We’d love to hear about your discovery!