Prime number the 1970s, mathematicians and physicists have speculated that the zeros of the Riemann zeta function are connected to the energy levels of quantum systems. Prime numbers are also significant in quantum information science, thanks to mathematical structures such as mutually unbiased bases and symmetric informationally complete positive-operator-valued measures. The evolutionary strategy used by cicadas of the genus "Magicicada" makes use of prime numbers. These insects spend most of their lives as grubs underground. They only pupate and then emerge from their burrows after 7, 13 or 17 years, at which point they fly about, breed, and then die after a
Prime number a special form, including the special number field sieve. the largest number known to have been factored by a general-purpose algorithm is RSA-768, which has 232 decimal digits (768 bits) and is the product of two large primes. Shor's algorithm can factor any integer in a polynomial number of steps on a quantum computer. However, current technology can only run this algorithm for very small numbers. the largest number that has been factored by a quantum computer running Shor's algorithm is 21. Several public-key cryptography algorithms, such as RSA and the Diffie–Hellman key exchange, are based on large prime numbers