Prime numbers are quite extraordinary. They're like "special snowflakes" - unique in the way that they don't have any other positive divisors other than the number 1 and the prime number itself.

Maths fans can’t get enough of numbers that are millions of digits long and can only be divided by themselves and one. Now, through a collaborative effort, utilising computers distributed around the ...

Meet the new largest known prime number. It starts with a 4, continues on for 23 million digits, then ends with a 1. As is true with all prime numbers, it can only be evenly divided by one and itself.

Two mathematicians have found a strange pattern in prime numbers — showing that the numbers are not distributed as randomly as theorists often assume. “Every single person we’ve told this ends up ...