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For Math Fans: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Number 42 | Scientific American

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Here is how a perfectly ordinary number captured the interest of sci-fi enthusiasts, geeks and mathematicians BY JEAN-PAUL DELAHAYE Christina Hemsley Getty Images Everyone loves unsolved mysteries. Examples include Amelia Earhart’s disappearance over the Pacific in 1937 and the daring escape of inmates Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin from Alcatraz Island in California in 1962. Moreover our interest holds even if the mystery is based on a joke. Take author Douglas Adams’s popular 1979 science-fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the first in a series of five. Toward the end of the book, the supercomputer Deep Thought reveals that the answer to the “Great Question” of “Life, the Universe and Everything” is “forty-two.” Deep Thought takes 7.5 million years to calculate the answer to the ultimate question. The characters tasked with getting that answer are disappointed because it is not very useful. Yet, as the computer points out, the question itself was vaguely f

September 21, 2020 11 min read Add Us On Google Add SciAm For Math Fans: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Number 42 Here is how a perfectly ordinary number captured the interest of sci-fi enthusiasts, geeks and mathematicians By Jean-Paul Delahaye edited by Gary Stix The ordinary number 42 has special meaning to fans of Douglas Adams's popular 1979 science-fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Christina Hemsley / Alamy Stock Photo Love math? Sign up for our weekly newsletter Proof Positive Enter your email I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific Ameri

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