Demystify the Primes

No longer prime numbers confine to the mathematical citadel. Three finest mathematicians found a way to use primes to protect our credit card number as they travel through the electronic shopping malls, or the global marketplaces. Today, without the power of prime numbers e-business doesn’t exist. Every time you place an order on a website your co is using the security provided by the existence of prime number with a 100 digits. Over a million primes have already been put to use to protect the world of electronic commerce.

The security of this system depends on our inability to answer basic questions about prime numbers. Mathematicians know enough about the primes to build these internet codes, but not enough to break them. The more we demystify the primes, the less secure these internet codes are becoming. These numbers are the keys to the locks that protect the world’s electronic secrets. And this is the reason why Number Theory and business have become such strange bedfellows.

……At the turn of 21 century we were still completely in the dark as to the nature of the most fundamental numbers in mathematics.

Marcus du Sautoy, The music of primes, 2001






Righteous are you, O Lord,
And your laws are right.
The statutes you have laid down are righteous;
They are fully trustworthy.
My zeal wears me out.
For my enemies ignore your words.
Yours promises have been thoroughly tested’
And your servant loves them.
Though I am lowly and despised,
I do not forget your precepts.
Your righteousness is everlasting and your law is true.
Trouble and distress have come upon me,
But your commands are my delight.
Your statutes are forever right;
give me understanding that I may live


Psalm 119:139