what is the actual real-world application of prime numbers? Or is it just a math concept that’s neat to see and figure out but doesn’t have any actual use case?

Question

I read that they have some uses within online encryption, but to be honest I never really thought about why we learned them in school until this morning.

In: 20

Answer 1

They’re fundamental to RSA encryption, arguably one of the most important advances in digital security technology.

The principle, is that if you take two large prime numbers, the product can be computed super fast… But if I give you a a big number and ask what two primes made that number, it’s really hard… Furthermore, if I supply one prime and you supply one prime, I can get your prime by dividing the product by mine and vice versa.