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 ...

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the largest known prime number, 2 77,232,917 -1, having 23,249,425 digits. A computer volunteered by Jonathan Pace made the find on ...

A prime number is an integer, or whole number, that has only two factors — 1 and itself. Put another way, a prime number can be divided evenly only by 1 and by itself. Prime numbers also must be ...

The twin primes conjecture is one of the most important and difficult questions in mathematics. Two mathematicians have solved a parallel version of the problem for small number systems. On September ...

There's a new biggest known prime number in the universe. It's called M77232917, and it looks like this: Despite being a ridiculously huge number (just that text file, which readers can download here, ...