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 ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. GIMPS began 20 years ago with a simple premise: individuals have home computers that can check primality of Mersenne numbers in ...

You have most likely heard the term factor before. 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 ...

Two mathematicians have found a strange pattern in prime numbers — showing that the numbers are not distributed as randomly as theorists often assume. “Every single person we’ve told this ends up ...

Two mathematicians have found a strange pattern in prime numbers—showing that the numbers are not distributed as randomly as theorists often assume. “Every single person we’ve told this ends up ...

The new number, expressed as 2 13,466,917-1, contains 4,053,946 digits and would take the best part of three weeks to write out longhand. The prime number - a number that can only be divided by one ...