The largest known prime number has been discovered by an amateur researcher and former Nvidia employee. The new number is 2 136,279,841 – 1, which beats the previous title holder (2 82,589,933 – 1) by ...

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 ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

Prime numbers are only divisible by themselves and one. Robert Brook via Getty Images In the 17th century, French monk and mathematician Marin Mersenne developed a method to find prime numbers: values ...

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.

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