Recently, when someone with the nickname Pr1me came into one of the German IRC channels I’m in, I pointed out that 1 is not a prime number. He should pick the nickname Pr11me instead.
Of course, I was just joking, but out of curiousity, I looked for larger prime numbers consisting only of decimal 1s, and I found the following numbers to be prime:
- 11 (2 digits)
- 1111111111111111111 (19 digits)
- 11111111111111111111111 (23 digits)
I looked further, again just out of curiosity, to find the following interesting numbers, which are not prime:
- 11111111111111111111111111111111111111 (38 digits)
- 111111111111111111111111111111111111111 (39 digits)
- 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 (46 digits)
The first number is interesting, because it is 38 digits long and contains the 19 (= 38/2) digits number 1111111111111111111 as a prime factor. This is interesting in that it’s a highly unlikely case (considering the random nature of prime numbers), that a prime factor consisting only of repetitions of a single digit is found in just another number of that form, and that the prime factor has exactly half the digits of the composite number.
The second number has the curious-looking prime factor 900900900900990990990991.
Finally the third number has 46 digits and is a product including the 23 digits prime factor 11111111111111111111111. The probability for that to happen for a 38 digits number is already very low. It is even orders of magnitude lower for a 46 digits number.
I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories, but this is surely curious. The 46 digits number is, by the way, the largest number of that form I have found. You can come up with many ways to relate that number to the (prime) number 23, some of which are very interesting.
Update: Robert Smith (quadricode at gmail com) took this further and observed the following curiosity: In any number base he tested, a number consisting entirely of repetitions of the digit 1 would only be prime, if the number of digits is itself prime. This may be a generalization of Mersenne primes. Let’s see if we can prove this.
Comments
Frank Dreßler:
ertes:
nbloomf:
Frank Dreßler:
ertes:
rgs26: