[Staffslug] Primes With Complex Factors

When Gauss discovered Complex Numbers he found he could use them to factorise Primes. For instance 2 can be factorised as (1+i)*(1-i). Only half the Primes can be factorised like this, but there are Hypercomplex Numbers, like Quaternions, which can be used to carry the process further. Recently this topic seems to have attracted further research, and it seems to me this could be connected with Cryptography and its use of enormous Primes. Apparently the People's Republic of China are getting expert at cracking apparently uncrackable ciphers. Does anybody know more about this? Faictz Ce Que Vouldras: Frank Mitchell