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 ...

What is your favorite number? For many people, it may be an irrational number such as pi (π), Euler's number (e) or the square root of 2. Even among the natural numbers (positive integers), there are ...

The Riemann hypothesis is the most important open question in number theory—if not all of mathematics. It has occupied experts for more than 160 years. And the problem appeared both in mathematician ...

An effort in which thousands of people donate their computers' unused processing power uncovers the largest prime number so far known. Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote ...

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 ...

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