A collaborative computer project has discovered the largest known prime number. The new prime number is nearly one million digits larger than the previous record prime number, in a special class ...

A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography.

Jon Pace, a longtime FedEx employee, has loved math since high school. Then he discovered the world's largest prime.

The largest prime number ever found weighs in at 13 million digits long. There are only 46 of these rare, huge numbers -- so far -- and mathematicians are continuing the search by using the ...

There’s a new largest known prime number in town, with a whopping 23,249,425 digits. The figure is calculated by multiplying 2 by itself 77,232,917 times and then subtracting 1. Announced on ...