MATHEMATICIANS have spent millennia trying to understand prime numbers – those only divisible by themselves and 1 – but so far no one has discovered a formula for all of them. Now mathematician Simon ...

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A prime number is an integer, or whole number, that has only two factors — 1 and itself. Put another way, a prime number can be divided evenly only by 1 and by itself. Prime numbers also must be ...

The record number, nicknamed M74207281, has more than 20 million digits. That's nearly 5 million digits longer than the previous record. If you printed each digit 1 mm wide, the number would stretch ...

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 ...

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