The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the new largest known prime number, having 22,338,618 digits, on a university computer volunteered by Curtis Cooper for the project. The ...

You probably remember prime numbers from school. They’re numbers like 2, 3 and 17, which are only divisible by themselves and one. But the prime numbers you learned in school are puny compared to the ...

Prime numbers have captivated mathematicians for thousands of years—and now cloud computing is helping them chase the biggest ones yet. Reading time 5 minutes A shard of smooth bone etched with ...

Meet the new largest known prime number. It starts with a 4, continues on for 23 million digits, then ends with a 1. As is true with all prime numbers, it can only be evenly divided by one and itself.

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 ...