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 ...

Two mathematicians have found a strange pattern in prime numbers — showing that the numbers are not distributed as randomly as theorists often assume. “Every single person we’ve told this ends up ...

“We’ve been studying primes for a long time, and no one spotted this before,” said Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the University of Montreal and University College London. “It’s crazy.” The ...

In 1998, Ask Ars was an early feature of the newly launched Ars Technica. Now, as then, it's all about your questions and our community's answers. We occasionally dig into our question bag, provide ...

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 of ...

On December 26, 2017, J. Pace, G. Woltman, S. Kurowski, A. Blosser, and their co-authors announced the discovery of a new prime number: 2⁷⁷²³²⁹¹⁷-1. It's an excellent opportunity to take a small tour ...

The p-adics form an infinite collection of number systems based on prime numbers. They’re at the heart of modern number theory. The rational numbers are the most familiar numbers: 1, -5, ½, and every ...

Most of us learned what a prime number is in our early days of math class: An integer divisible only by itself and by one. But what you may not have realized is the search for the rarest of them is an ...

Two mathematicians have found a strange pattern in prime numbers—showing that the numbers are not distributed as randomly as theorists often assume. “Every single person we’ve told this ends up ...