Prime numbers are all the rage these days. I can tell something’s up when random people start asking me about the randomness of primes—without even knowing that I’m a mathematician! In the past couple ...

A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography. Everyone knows that a prime number is one that cannot be ...

An amateur mathematician from San Jose, US, has discovered the largest prime number yet with over 41 million digits. Prime numbers, the building blocks of mathematics, are divisible only by themselves ...

To determine if a number is prime, you can use the following steps: (i) Check if the number is greater than 1. Prime numbers must be greater than 1. (ii) Check divisibility: Divide the number by all ...

A shard of smooth bone etched with irregular marks dating back 20,000 years puzzled archaeologists until they noticed something unique – the etchings, lines like tally marks, may have represented ...

We have constructed a Carmichael number with 10,333,229,505 prime factors, and have also constructed Carmichael numbers with k prime factors for every k between 3 and 19,565,220. These computations ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. GIMPS began 20 years ago with a simple premise: individuals have home computers that can check primality of Mersenne numbers in ...