In his review of Alex Bellos's new book on numbers, Simon Singh chooses one (not mentioned in the book) as his favorite.
"All prime numbers are special, because they have no other numbers that will divide into them (except 1 and the number itself), but 1,000,000,000,000,066,600,000, 000,000,001 is particularly special because of its demonic structure. It is named in honour of Belphegor, one of the seven princes of hell, in order to acknowledge that the number contains 666 (the so-called Number of the Beast) at its heart and has 13 unlucky zeros on either side."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/04/alex-through-the-looking-glass-review-bellos-maths-demon
Singh has also suggested that the math boffins who work on "The Simpsons" see their way to including Belphegor's prime in an episode: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24724635
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About Me
- magpiemom
- I'm a collector: antique beads, textiles, children's books, and, unfortunately for my family and friends, "fascinating facts." This last category is more commonly referred to as UBIs (useless bits of information) and/or maternal spam. I'm setting up this blog to organize various petits morceaux I've accumulated over the years, the bright shiny things that have attracted the attention of a magpie mind.
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