A prime number has exactly two factors, itself and one. The first ten prime numbers are \({2}\), \({3}\), \({5}\), \({7}\), \({11}\), \({13}\), \({17}\), \({19 ...

In 1998, Ask Ars was an early feature of the newly launched Ars Technica. Now, as then, it's all about your questions and our community's answers. We occasionally dig into our question bag, provide ...

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 ...

A prime number is a number with exactly two factors. Prime numbers are only divisible by 1 and itself. Another way to think of prime numbers is that they are only ever found as answers in their own ...

A prime number is an integer, or whole number, that has only two factors — 1 and itself. Put another way, a prime number can be divided evenly only by 1 and by itself. Prime numbers also must be ...

Is 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727 prime? Before you ask the Internet for an answer, can you consider how you might answer that question without a ...

Prime numbers just got less lonely. A proof announced this week claims to show that the number of primes with a near-neighbour that is also a prime number is infinite – although the “near-neighbour” ...

The twin primes conjecture is one of the most important and difficult questions in mathematics. Two mathematicians have solved a parallel version of the problem for small number systems. On September ...

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