A new algorithm brings together the advantages of randomness and deterministic processes to reliably construct large prime numbers. The post How to Build a Big Prime Number first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Prime numbers are tricky things. We learn in school that they’re numbers with no factors other than 1 and themselves, and that mathematicians have known for thousands of years that an infinite number of them exist. Producing one on command doesn’t seem as if it should be difficult. But it is. Constructing arbitrarily large prime numbers is remarkably complicated. You basically have two…