Wednesday, 3 December 2025

Exercise (3.5).15

Determine the prime decomposition of

$$ 8^8 − 1 = 16 777 215 $$


We have

$$ \begin{align} 16 777 215 & = (8^4-1)(8^4+1) \\ \\ & = (8^2-1)(8^2+1) \times 4097  \\ \\ & = 63 \times 65 \times 4097 \end{align} $$

We can factorise these separately

$ 63 = 3^2 \times 7 $

$ 65 = 5 \times 13 $

$ 4097 = 17 \times 241 $

And so

$$ 8^8 -1 = 3^2 \times 5 \times 7 \times 13 \times 17 \times 241 $$