Prime numbers have captivated mathematicians for thousands of years—and now cloud computing is helping them chase the biggest ...

A prime number that is one less than some power of ... The first few Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31 and 127. Durant made his discovery through a combination of mathematical algorithms, practical ...

a clay tablet from 1800 B.C.E. inscribed with Babylonian numbers describes a number system built on prime numbers. As the Ishango bone, the Plimpton 322 tablet and other artifacts throughout ...

A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has exactly two distinct factors, 1 and the number itself. So, if p is a prime number then its only factors will be 1 and p itself.

The largest prime number ever discovered has been found by an amateur mathematician using Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). Prime numbers, as you likely learned in school, are numbers ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. For many people ...

The outcome of the game depends on the answer to a mathematical puzzle that is almost 180 years old: Are there an infinite number of prime number twins? Prime numbers, such as 2, 3, 5, 7 ...

Luke Durant, a researcher and amateur mathematician, has identified the largest new prime number known to humankind. The newly discovered prime number is 2 to the power of 136,279,841, then minus one.

The world's largest known prime number has been discovered, but we can't show it because it's so large it would take up 21 standard-sized novels to turn into text. Called M136279841, its shorthand ...