Owing to the pure mathematical applications of number theory, the discovery of prime numbers follows no standard formula, nor can the largest of primes be easily created without incredible amounts of brain - or computing power.
But that hasn't stopped the EFF, the world's premier technologically aligned civil liberties group from searching the globe for the next prime record breaker.
And that's why the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) goal is particularly noteworthy: special numerical integers known as 'Mersenne primes' are being exchanged for big cash prizes in a bid to motivate more math lovers to the challenge.
Calculators have been turned into numerical metal detectors, as prime searchers are met with the ultra- difficult task of trawling through a lifetime of number data to find the next 'big' sequence.
10 years ago, the EFF awarded its first cash prize to a prime number of one million digits. Since then, the EFF have upped the stakes. They are now specifically looking for primes longer than 12 million digits long, after a recent discovery took the $100,000 prize.
The cash for that discovery was awarded by the EFF to GIMPS PrimeNet - an online organisation consisting of various universities and volunteers who share computing power and number crunching tasks in much the same way that SETI go about their search for extraterrestrial intelligence via the analysis of radio signal data.
Ironically, it was NASA astronomer Carl Sagan who first hypothesised that prime numbers could be used as a means of contacting and communicating with alien life forms in his science fiction novel Contact.
By sharing processing power, seemingly impossible number crunching tasks are now possible. And it takes much less time than it would by just a single individual.
However, the PrimeNet find, which marks the 45th known Mersenne prime in existence, is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the EFF's endeavours go. Larger cash prizes consisting of $150,000 and $250,000 await the lucky spotters of 100 million digits and a whopping 1 billion digits to win the biggest monetary prize.
Primes are increasingly sought after for their crucial role in computer encryption and within related security fields.
But those looking for a quick buck might be disappointed. Discovering the next prime is not quite as simple as pulling out a calculator.
To put the creation of prime numbers into perspective; if you were to write down each of the 12 million digits discovered in the recent PrimeNet scenario, and save each number on to your hard drive, it would take almost 98MB of disk space - and that's well before you ever discover if that number could be verified as an actual prime. Imagine doing this hundreds and thousands of times to find the next 'big' prime and you get some sort of idea.
As mentioned earlier, there are no set formulas, nor tried and true methods beyond extensive data crunching, that will pull the best results.
A number of organisations, including 'The Polymath projet' are working on the perfect algorithm, but as yet - nobody has been successful in breaking the 'prime' code, which is essentially a more efficient technique of searching for prime numbers without the massive fields of data usually required.