For such enormous numbers, even Karatsuba's algorithm is too slow. A real breakthrough came in 1971 with the work of the German mathematicians Arnold Schönhage and Volker Strassen.

Eventually you’re destined to find one, and your algorithm will consistently output the first one you find. But it could take a while: If you’re looking for a prime number with 1,000 digits, even a ...

Prime numbers are whole numbers greater than 1 that are not divisible by any whole number other than 1 and itself. The first few are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 … ...

Third time’s a charm: just weeks after cracking an elusive problem involving the number 42, mathematicians have found a solution to an even harder problem for the number 3. Andrew Booker at ...

These include prime numbers that contain the sequence 666, the so-called number of the beast. The database even includes the sequence of prime numbers that contain the number 667 ( A138563 ).