Luke Durant was folding his laundry right into his suitcase ahead of a trip back home to Alabama when he decided to check his computer and see if he had made history. He figured that, like every other ...

Luke Durant, a researcher and amateur mathematician, has identified the largest new prime number known to humankind. The newly discovered prime number is 2 to the power of 136,279,841, then minus one.

A prime number is a whole number, greater than 1, that only has two factors. A factor is a number that divides another number evenly, with no remainder or decimal. The factors of a prime number are ...

While I was looking for a gift for a child’s birthday, a math book fell into my hands. I am always fascinated when authors write about abstract scientific topics for children, whether it’s on Albert ...

On Jan. 25, the largest known prime number, 2^57,885,161-1, was discovered on Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) volunteer Curtis Cooper's computer. The new prime number, 2 ...

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 ...

The largest prime number discovered so far is 2 raised to the 57,885,161st power minus 1, or 2 57,885,161 - 1. It is 17,425,170 digits long. It was discovered by University of Central Missouri ...

A Missouri professor, one of a team of nearly 100,000 volunteers, has found a highly unusual 17 million digit number -- and brought a prime-hunting project closer to a $150,000 prize. Stephen ...

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