To find large primes to use in RSA encryption, we need to test randomly generated numbers for primality. One way to do this is trial division: Divide the number by smaller numbers and see if you ...

Known as “Graham’s Number”, this sequence is so astronomically large there is not enough ... and scientists have calculated that the last digits are 262464195387. But no-one knows how ...

Mersenne’s simple method, which is one of many devised to find primes, is subtracting one from powers of two. For example, the prime number ... finding these huge prime numbers,” per the ...

The new prime number was found as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (Gimps), a global quest to find a particular type of large prime numbers. Mersenne primes are named after a ...