A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography. Everyone knows that a prime number is one that cannot be ...

For centuries, prime numbers have captured the imaginations of mathematicians, who continue to search for new patterns that help identify them and the way they’re distributed among other numbers.

Computing prime factors may sound like an elementary math problem, but try it with a large number, say one that contains more than 600 digits, and the task becomes enormously challenging and ...

If you've graduated high-school and you're reading this article, you probably at least know the following about prime numbers: Primes are the set of all numbers that can only be equally divided by 1 ...

“We’ve been stuck and running out of ideas on the problem for a long time, so it’s automatically exciting when anyone comes up with new insights,” said James Maynard, a mathematician at the University ...

Prime numbers are more than just numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one. They are a mathematical mystery, the secrets of which mathematicians have been trying to uncover ever since ...

as the atoms of arithmetic, prime numbers have always occupied a special place on the number line. Now, Jared Duker Lichtman, a 26-year-old graduate student at the University of Oxford, has resolved a ...

Researchers report that they have designed and built a quantum computer from five atoms in an ion trap. The computer uses laser pulses to carry out Shor's algorithm on each atom, to correctly factor ...

A Japanese mathematician claims to have the proof for the ABC conjecture, a statement about the relationship between prime numbers that has been called the most important unsolved problem in number ...

When Data Pointed’s Stephen Von Worley stumbled upon a program that creates diagrams of numbers’ prime factors on Brent Yorgey’s The Math Less Traveled, he decided to take the diagrams and make them ...