The study of prime numbers is not just a historical curiosity. Number theory is also essential to modern cryptography.

First, it's a prime number (meaning it is only divisible by itself and one). Second, it's what is called a Mersenne prime (we ...

The ongoing search for ever-larger prime numbers continues apace. Primes are the atoms of arithmetic: every whole number is a unique product of primes. For example, 21 is the product of primes ...

At its peak, Durant’s project churned through about 12 times as many numbers as every other computer involved in the Mersenne prime search combined. It exceeds the previous record holder by more ...

With the rise of computing, the search for these numbers took a major turn. Projects like the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) have gathered thousands of machines in a collaborative quest.

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The historic finding is classified as a Mersenne prime, which is named after the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago. Mersenne primes are a rare kind of ...

For many people, prime numbers have faded into the background since distant grade school days. However, for Luke Durant, a 36-year-old former Nvidia programmer, prime numbers became an all ...

It would fill 20,000 pages in a book. Another way to write this number is 2 136,279,841 – 1. There are a few special things about it. First, it’s a prime number (meaning it is only divisible by itself ...