Prime numbers are all the rage these days. I can tell something’s up when random people start asking me about the randomness of primes—without even knowing that I’m a mathematician! In the past couple ...

A 300-billion-digit number is the biggest known pseudoprime, a number which looks like a prime but isn’t. The techniques used to find this behemoth could help keep online transactions secure. The ...

A million-dollar puzzle relating to prime numbers could be tackled using only a mid-sized quantum computer. Instead mathematicians find ways to count primes below ever bigger values of X and compare ...

Peruvian mathematician Harald Helfgott gained worldwide attention in 2013 when he solved a 271-year-old problem: the so-called Goldbach’s weak conjecture, according to which every odd number greater ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A laptop represents today’s tools fueling the global search for massive prime numbers, essential for both mathematics and ...