Using a notion called integer partitions, mathematicians have discovered a new way to detect prime numbers while also ...

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 ...

Three is a prime number, it’s only factors are three and one, so it can only be divided into one group of three, or three group of one. There is no other combination. Now four is not a prime ...

An odd new paper without peer review claims prime numbers have "genes," "roots," and “offspring." Prime numbers are essential to modern life because they underpin all of encryption. What is ...

One way to do this is to sieve out a prime if the number that’s two spots to its left is not prime (or you could look two spots to the right — either sieve will work). Using the leftward sieve, you’ll ...

Although it is hard to determine the truth of this story, 57 has since been known in nerd circles as the Grothendieck “prime number”—even though it is divisible by 3 and therefore not a ...

SHAPIRO: There are some uses for prime numbers in fields like cryptography and communication. But Luke Durant says he's not aware of any practical application for this new number. SUMMERS ...

For every Mersenne prime, there is also an even perfect number. (In one of the oldest unfinished problems in mathematics, it is not known whether there are any odd perfect numbers.) Perfect ...

While there are no practical applications for such astonishingly large prime numbers today, that does not diminish the significance to those involved in the project. “This find is more of a ...

This was the first new Mersenne prime discovered since 2018. "For a large whole number — say, with a few thousand digits — it becomes more and more time-consuming to check whether or not that ...