You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts. Prime numbers are one of the most basic topics of study in the branch of mathematics called number theory. Primes are ...

“We’ve been stuck and running out of ideas on the problem for a long time, so it’s automatically exciting when anyone comes up with new insights,” said James Maynard, a mathematician at the University ...

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.

In May 2013, the mathematician Yitang Zhang launched what has proven to be a banner year and a half for the study of prime numbers, those numbers that aren’t divisible by any smaller number except 1.

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 ...

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 ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Prime numbers are numbers that are not products of smaller whole numbers. Jeremiah Bartz A shard of smooth bone etched with ...

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 prime ...

The seemingly random digits known as prime numbers are not nearly as scattershot as previously thought. A new analysis by Princeton University researchers has uncovered patterns in primes that are ...

If asked whether I prefer odd or even numbers, I am definitely on the side of odd numbers. There is something cool about the ...

Prime numbers are more than just numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one. They are a mathematical mystery, the secrets of which mathematicians have been trying to uncover ever since ...

If you have a whole lot of free time, you might be able to type out the largest known prime number. The newly found number has 23,249,425 digits, nearly one million digits more than the previous ...