(CNN) — 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 ...

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 ...

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.

Mathematicians have unveiled a new record-breaking prime number: 2 74,207,281 – 1. It’s now the highest prime number ever discovered, eclipsing the previous record by 5 million. The prime’s discoverer ...

A prime number discovery in December was made in the unlikeliest of places: on a church computer in a Memphis suburb. The background software running on the computer unearthed a rare kind of prime ...

This month, GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, announced the discovery of the largest known prime number: 2^74,207,281-1. That's two, multiplied 74,207,281 times, with 1 ...

Despite finding no specific examples, researchers have proved the existence of a pervasive kind of prime number so delicate that changing any of its infinite digits renders it composite. Take a look ...

Prime numbers, whole numbers greater than one with only two factors (one and themselves), are fundamental in mathematics. They serve as building blocks for all other whole numbers, a concept known as ...

Prime numbers are tricky things. We learn in school that they’re numbers with no factors other than 1 and themselves, and that mathematicians have known for thousands of years that an infinite number ...