As of October 2024, we have found the biggest prime number we know of — and it took almost 6 years to find it. To generate this number, you multiply 2 by itself 136,279,841 times (resulting in an ...

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 ...

Mathematicians have unveiled a new record-breaking prime number: 2 74,207,281 – 1. It’s now the highest prime number ever discovered, eclipsing the previous record by 5 million. The prime’s discoverer ...

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 ...

Prime numbers are tricky things. We learn in school that they’re numbers with no factors other than 1 and themselves, and that mathematicians have known for thousands of years that an infinite number ...

Despite finding no specific examples, researchers have proved the existence of a pervasive kind of prime number so delicate that changing any of its infinite digits renders it composite. Take a look ...

The online computer game “Is this prime?” tests a player’s knowledge of prime numbers—and just surpassed 2,999,999 attempts. Give it a whirl. The Greek mathematician Euclid may very well have proved, ...

There's a new behemoth in the ongoing search for ever-larger prime numbers — and it's nearly 25 million digits long. A prime is a number that can be divided only by two whole numbers: itself and 1.