Editor's Note: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story omitted part of the calculation for the new prime number, correctly described below as 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times ...

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 ...

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 ...

Somewhere out there on the number line, huge prime numbers are lurking, waiting to be discovered. On Wednesday, a new one was. The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, an organization devoted to ...

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It’s time for a new prime to shine. The largest known prime number is now 2 74,207,281 – 1, smashing the previous record by nearly 5 million digits. This mathematical monster was discovered by Curtis ...

Prime numbers are beautiful and fascinating – and an infuriating puzzle. Easy to define, yet rowdy and disordered, the primes have no evident pattern. The more of them you list, the more erratic they ...

Naturally, I couldn't resist. I started with my cell phone number, which is the product of three small primes and an 8-digit prime (for obvious reasons, I won't say what they are). What about my ...