Prime factorisation Mystery Cache

This cache has been archived.

AZRedrock: No response from cache owner. Cache archived.

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7.15. Archive or unarchive a geocache

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Hidden : 8/21/2012
Difficulty:
4 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:


Prime factorisation is the decomposition of a non-prime integer into its smaller, unique prime constituents. If the numbers are large, this job becomes very time-consuming since no efficient, non-quantum algorithms are known. The largest known number factorised to date had only 232 decimal digits and that took the equivalent of 2000 years on a single PC. Even larger numbers could easily take billions of years (on average) to factorise, and this property is what many cryptographic algorithms are based on.
By comparison, my mobile phone can find the prime factors of a 14 digit number in a heartbeat. So, for this exercise, a number somewhere between those two should be difficult enough without being trivial. By some stroke of luck(?), it turns out that the seven and eight digits in the north and west coordinates for this cache combine to two different 15 digit prime numbers (NW and WN). The product of those two numbers is 37350804400392468415792033501.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Fbhgu fvqr

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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