Prime numbers are found hidden in nature, but humans have made spectacular use of them, writes mathematician Marcus du Sautoy. Ever since humans evolved on this planet we have been trying to make ...
In this series so far, I have covered prime numbers. The Fermat primality test (primality testing), twin primes (prime gaps), and the Goldbach conjecture (sums of primes). The subject of this article ...
Like a mirror image of Bedford's Law, mathematicians have found a pattern in prime numbers that raises more questions than it answers. Share on Facebook (opens in a new window) Share on X (opens in a ...
Prime numbers, as most of us remember from math class, are numbers greater than 1 that aren't divisible by anything other than the number 1 and themselves. For example, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and 13 are the ...
This month, GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, announced the discovery of the largest known prime number: 2<sup>74,207,281</sup>-1. That's two, multiplied 74,207,281 times, with 1 ...
This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American When I saw a math paper with the phrase ...
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