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 ...

New Delhi: In a development that has stirred the mathematical world, two researchers have taken a route to unlock hidden patterns in prime numbers – one that blends old wisdom with unexpected tools.

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.

Update, Jan. 4, 2018: On Wednesday, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search announced that a computer owned by Jonathan Pace in Germantown, Tennessee, discovered a new prime number. At 23,249,425 ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American When I saw a math paper with the phrase ...

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 ...