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 ...
In 2017, Zapata Computing spun out of Harvard to develop quantum software and algorithms for business and they have received over $26 million in funding. A quantum computing start-up company called ...
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 ...
UCLA mathematicians appear to have won a $100,000 prize from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for discovering a 13-million-digit prime number that has long been sought by computer users. While the ...
A shard of smooth bone etched with irregular marks dating back 20,000 years puzzled archaeologists until they noticed something unique – the etchings, lines like tally marks, may have represented ...
You probably remember prime numbers from school. They’re numbers like 2, 3 and 17, which are only divisible by themselves and one. But the prime numbers you learned in school are puny compared to the ...
Prime numbers—integers that are divisible only by themselves and 1—are the easiest path into understanding both rigor and mysticism in mathematics. Euclid’s proof that there is an infinite number of ...