Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. It’s been nearly six years since math devotees discovered the last ...

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.

Is 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727 prime? Before you ask the Internet for an answer, can you consider how you might answer that question without a ...

Image made with elements from Canva. Let’s go back to grade school—do you remember learning about prime numbers? They’re numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one. So 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and ...

After a six-year drought, we now have a new largest known prime number, thanks to an amateur mathematics sleuth who deployed an army of graphics processing units (GPUs) to crunch through the ...

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 ...

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Prime numbers are only divisible by themselves and one. Robert Brook via Getty Images In the 17th century, French monk and mathematician Marin Mersenne developed a method to find prime numbers: values ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...

Thousands of computers across the world are currently scouring the number line in a scavenger hunt for rare mathematical gems. Enthusiasts looking for larger and larger prime numbers, which are ...