Somewhere out there on the number line, huge prime numbers are lurking, waiting to be discovered. On Wednesday, a new one was. The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, an organization devoted to ...

The proof itself relies on a kind of logic that’s like the simple division ... and in one of those buckets every prime number is guaranteed to become composite if any of its digits, including ...

A 26-year-old graduate student in the US has made mathematical history by discovering the largest known prime number. The new number is 6,320,430 digits long. It took just over two years to find ...

Now, through a collaborative effort, utilising computers distributed around the world, they’ve discovered that the number 2 77,232,917 – 1 is prime. The discovery was initially made on 26 th ...

Thousands of computers across the world are currently scouring the number line in a scavenger hunt for rare mathematical gems. Enthusiasts looking for larger and larger prime numbers, which are ...

For example, the prime number three is two squared, minus one. Seven is two cubed, minus one. Not all prime numbers work out that way, but the rare ones that do are called Mersenne primes.

The outcome of the game depends on the answer to a mathematical puzzle that is almost 180 years old: Are there an infinite number of prime number twins? Prime numbers, such as 2, 3, 5, 7 ...

A factor is a number that goes into another. The factors of 10 for example are 1, 2, 5 and 10. Prime numbers are a special set of numbers that only have two factors: themselves and 1. An example ...

What is a common factor? Understand what a common factor is and find the highest and lowest common factors of two numbers. What is a prime? Understand what a prime number is.