42 – The Answer to Life, Universe and Everything beyond, the Mystery behind number 42

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I stumbled upon the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and the mysteries surrounding 42, the number that has an answer to Life Universe and everything above and beyond it.

 

mysteries number 42

 

In the Mystery, Sci-Fi novel, According to the super computer Deep Thought, the answer is “42“. The problem was that no one knew what the question was. According to the book, another computer was created to discover the question, that computer being the planet Earth.

In the sequel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, it is discovered that the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything (possibly slightly distorted) is: “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”
While 6 x 9 = 54 in base 10, it does equal 42 in base 13, which author Adams claimed was completely serendipitous.
[sws_blockquote align=”left” alignment=”alignleft” cite=”David Attenborough ” quotestyles=”style01″]An understanding of the natural world and what’s in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment. [/sws_blockquote]

 

It made me do a research in knowing what exactly is surrounding the number 42 and is it for real or just a frictional thought. The results, which, was based upon the research was mind boggling. Although, it didn’t completely answer the main question, but it opened you a lot of speculations and probably, a source which could be built upon to reach to a concerete solution.

Narrator: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

 

Faster your seat belts, here I go.

Douglas Adams was asked many times why he chose the number 42. Many theories were proposed, but he rejected them all. On November 3, 1993, he gave an answer on alt.fan.douglas-adams (UseNet group):

The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought ’42 will do’ I typed it out. End of story.

Adams described his choice as ‘a completely ordinary number, a number not just divisible by two but also six and seven. In fact it’s the sort of number that you could without any fear introduce to your parents’.

But, I think there is more to it, something that he knows and doesn’t want to share it among other. So I went into getting information from various domain of knowledge and there were the finding. Number 42, hold significance, not only in Astronomy but also, in Technology, Religions, science, mathematics and more

 

Let’s cover one at a time

 

Astronomy

  • Messier object M42, a magnitude 5.0 diffuse nebula in the constellation Orion, also known as the Orion Nebula
  • The New General Catalogue object NGC 42, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus
  • In January 2004, asteroid 2001 DA42 was given the permanent name 25924 Douglasadams, for the author Douglas Adams who popularized the number 42 and died in 2001. Brian G. Marsden, the director of the Minor Planet Center and the secretary for the naming committee, remarked that, with even his initials in the provisional designation, “This was sort of made for him, wasn’t it?”
  • JULIET, named after the tragic heroine in Shakespeare’s black comedy Romeo and Juliet, this small moon of Uranus has an equatorial radius of 42km.
  • The Earth is 42 orders of magnitude (based on powers of ten) larger than the Planck Length (in case you dont know what that is, it is the smallest length that humans have been able to measure; all below the Planck Length is impossible to measure because time and space merge, and relativity ceases to be the rule. The Planck Length is 1 x 10^-35m.)
    more could be found here
  • The REAL Hubble is (d / s) distance over speed of galaxies. As we cannot measure the speed accurately, the Constant is not known but scientists think it is betwixt 100 and 40, therefore it could be FORTY-TWO.

 

 

Mathematics

Some interesting patterns surround the number 42, here are some of them

  • Given 27 same-size cubes whose nominal values progress from 1 to 27, a 3×3×3 magic cube can be constructed such that every row, column, and corridor, and every diagonal passing through the center, comprises 3 cubes whose sum of values is 42.
  • Forty-two is a pronic number and an abundant number; its prime factorization 2 · 3 · 7 makes it the second sphenic number and also the second of the form { 2 · 3 · r }. As with all sphenic numbers of this form, the aliquot sum is abundant by 12. 42 is also the second sphenic number to be bracketed by twin primes; 30 is also a pronic number and also rests between two primes. 42 has a 14 member aliquot sequence42, 54, 66, 78, 90, 144, 259, 45, 33, 15, 9, 4, 3, 1, 0 and is itself part of the aliquot sequence commencing with the first sphenic number 30. Further, 42 is the 10th member of the 3-aliquot tree.
  • It is a Catalan number. Consequently; 42 is the number of noncrossing partitions of a set of five elements, the number of triangulations of aheptagon, the number of rooted ordered binary trees with six leaves, the number of ways in which five pairs of nested parentheses can be arranged, etc.
  • In base 10, this number is a Harshad number and a self number, while it is a repdigit in base 4 (as 222).
  • Take ANY number, square its digits, and then add them up. Do the same thing with the answer. If you keep doing this indefinitely your final answer will either be a 1, or you’ll enter a loop of solutions that -culminate- with the number 42.
  • The Department of Mathematics at the Muenster-University are most interested in the relation between the numbers 42 and 17. Here some examples: – the 17th prime number is 59, and this is the sum of 17 and 42. – If dig(n) means the sum of the digits of n, there are numbers with dig(n)+(dig(n)+1)=n (we call them ‘additive dig-numbers’) and there are numbers with dig(n)*(dig(n)+1)=n (the so called ‘multiplicative dig-numbers’) You can show that there is only one ‘additive dig-number’: 17=(1+7)+((1+7)+1) You can also show that there are only four ‘multiplicative dig-numbers’: 12=(1+2)*((1+2)+1) 42=(4+2)*((4+2)+1) 90=(9+0)*((9+0)+1) 156=(1+5+6)*((1+5+6)+1) And you see: 42 is one of them.
  • 42 occurs infinitely many times in then number PI.

Science

  • The atomic number of molybdenum.
  • The angle in degrees for which a rainbow appears or the critical angle.
  • In 1966, mathematician Paul Cooper theorized that the fastest, most efficient way to travel across continents would be to bore a straight hollow tube directly through the Earth, connecting a set of antipodes, evacuate it (remove the air), and then just fall through. The first half of the journey consists of free-fall acceleration, while the second half consists of an exactly equal deceleration. The time for such a journey works out to be 42 minutes. Remarkably, even if the tube does not pass through the exact center of the Earth, the time for a journey powered entirely by gravity always works out to be 42 minutes, as long as the tube remains friction-free, as while gravity’s force would be lessened, so would the distance traveled at an equal rate. 
  • 42 is the natural vibration frequency of the human DNA
  • The Efficiency of human respiration is 42

Technology

  • Magic numbers used by programmers:
    • The glyph, or character, corresponding to the number 42 in the ASCII character set, is *, the asterisk, commonly known as the wildcard character.
    • In the TIFF image file format, the second 16-bit word of every file is 42, which is used together with the first word to indicate byte order.
    • In the reiser4 file system, 42 is the inode number of the root directory.
    • In the military IRIG 106 Chapter 10 data recording standard, the hex value 0x464F52545974776F (ASCII “FORTYtwo”) is used as a magic number to identify directory blocks.
  • The GNU C Library, a set of standard routines available for use in computer programming, contains a function—memfrob()—which performs an XOR combination of a given variable and the binary pattern 00101010 (42) as an XOR cipher.
  • 42 is the result given by the web search engines Google, Wolfram Alpha and Bing when the query “the answer to life the universe and everything” is entered as a search.
  • The type 42 vacuum tube was one of the most popular audio output amplifiers of the 1930s.
  • One of Advanced Micro Devices’ Overlocking CPU was named Phenom 42, with the number being partially from the book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
  • Microsoft’s Windows 3.1 logo has 42 little squares forming its left side trail.
  • In Win32 API, ShellExecute always return 42 as its result.
  • Facebook chat has a special emoticon that can be used on its chat feature. When a person types “:42:” on it, the number appears white in a red box. This is not possible with any other number. (Try this)
  • Tiling a plane using regular hexagons, which is honeycomb in appearance, is approximated in a topological sense to an accuracy of better than 1% using a stretcher bond brick pattern with bricks of 42 squares (6 by 7).

Religion

  • In Japanese culture, the number 42 is considered unlucky because the numerals when pronounced separately — “shi ni” (four two) — sound like the phrase, “unto death“.
  • There are 42 principles of Ma’at, the Ancient Egyptian personification of physical and moral law, order, and truth. In the judgement scene described in the Egyptian and the Book of the Coming/Going Forth by Day (the Book of the Dead (which evolved from the Coffin Texts and the Pyramid Texts)), there are 42 gods and goddesses of Egypt, personifying the principles of Ma’at, who ask questions of the departed, while Thoth records the answers, and the deceased’s heart is weighed against the feather of Truth (Ma’at). These 42 correspond to the 42Nomes (Governmental Units) of Egypt. If the departed successfully answers all 42, s/he becomes an Osiris.
  • The Kabbalah speaks about the 42 Authioth.
    42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabbalistic tradition. In Kabbalah, the most significant name is that of the En Sof (also known as “Ein Sof”, “Infinite” or “Endless”), who is above the Sefirot (sometimes spelled “Sephirot”). The Forty-Two-Lettered Name contains four combined names which are spelled in Hebrew letters (spelled in letters = 42 letters), which is the name of Azilut (or “Atziluth” “Emanation”). While there are obvious links between the Forty-Two Lettered Name of the Babylonian Talmud (see further up this page) and the Kabbalah’s Forty-Two Lettered Name, they are probably not identical because of the Kabbalah’s emphasis on numbers. The Kabbalah also contains a Forty-Five Lettered Name and a Seventy-Two Lettered Name.
  • In the Talmud it is written that the divine name of 42 letters is the greatest of the mysteries. These 42 letters contain the names of the 10 Sephiroth.
  • 42=”The number of judges required to sit by the body of the Egyptian dead pending the examination and without which the deceased had no portion in Amenti”
  • The number 42 appears in various contexts in Christianity. There are 42 generations (names) in the Gospel of Matthew’s version of the Genealogy of Jesus; it is prophesied that for 42 months the Beast will hold dominion over the Earth (Revelation 13:5); 42 men of Beth-azmaveth were counted in the census of men of Israel upon return from exile (Ezra 2:24); Godsent bears to maul 42 of the teenage boys who mocked Elisha for his baldness (2 Kings 2:23), etc.
  • The total sum of the area covered by the city of Jerusalem measures 42 square miles.
  • In Judaism, the number (in the Babylonian Talmud, compiled 375 AD to 499 AD) of the “Forty-Two Lettered Name” ascribed to God. Rab (or Rabhs), a 3rd century source in the Talmud stated “The Forty-Two Lettered Name is entrusted only to him who is pious, meek, middle-aged, free from bad temper, sober, and not insistent on his rights”. [Source: Talmud Kidduschin 71a, Translated by Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein]. Maimonides felt that the original Talmudic Forty-Two Lettered Name was perhaps composed of several combined divine names [Maimonides “Moreh”]. The apparently unpronouncable Tetragrammaton provides the backdrop from the Twelve-Lettered Name and the Forty-Two Lettered Name of the Talmud.
  • In Western Hermetic sphere work 42 is the sum of the values of the ‘true’ spheres, 3,4,5,6,7,8 & 9 each of which represent one aspect of the body of God through which we observe the world. 1 and 2 are considered modalities of existence and 10 is the completion we see from our own sphere, 11. The sum of the squares of each of these numbers make 216, or 6 x 6 x 6, the number of the beast, which is also the number of the names of God the Jews had to say once a year in the holy of holies to assure blessings from on high. The ‘beast’ is the perfect sphere, represented in 3 dimensions by 3 bounding circles, each with 6 radii, hence 666 being the number of the beast and directly being linked to 216 and 42. This is the foundation of Western Hermetic sphere work and is echoed in Pythagoreanism.
  • The Gutenberg Bible is also known as the “42-line Bible”, as the book contained 42 lines per page.
  • The Forty-Two Articles (1552), largely the work of Thomas Cranmer, were intended to summarise Anglican doctrine, as it now existed under the reign of Edward VI.

Sports

  • Cricket has 42 laws.
  • The number of times Celtic F.C. have won the Scottish league title.
  • The jersey number of Jackie Robinson, which is the only number retired by all Major League Baseball teams. Although the number was retired in 1997, Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees, the last professional baseball player to wear number 42, is currently still using it.
  • The jersey number of basketball Hall of Famer and one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History James Worthy, small forward for the Los Angeles Lakers, who retired his jersey number in 1995.
  • The jersey number of football Hall of Famer, Ronnie Lott, safety for the San Francisco 49ers, who retired his jersey number in 2003.
  • The jersey number of Pat Tillman, which was retired on November 13, 2004 by Arizona State University.
  • The number of laws of cricket.
  • Rule 42 is the historic name of a Gaelic Athletic Association rule (now codified in Rule 5.1 and Rule 44) that in practice prohibits the playing of “foreign sports” (generally association football and the rugby codes) at GAA grounds.
  • Major League Baseball has so far retired only one number across the entire league. That number is 42 and it was worn by Jackie Robinson.
Some more context, signifying the number 42
  • +42 is the historic Country calling code for the former country of Czechoslovakia
  • There are 42 US gallons in a barrel of oil.
  • Tower 42 is a skyscraper in the City of London, formerly known as the NatWest Tower.
  • The name of a Texan trick-taking game played with dominoes (see 42 (dominoes)).
  • The number of spots (or pips, circular patches or pits) on a pair of standard six-sided dice.
  • In New York City, 42nd Street is a main and very popular two-way thoroughfare. Landmarks on it include the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Terminal, the main branch of the New York Public Library, and Times Square. The New York City street is also the setting for a movie by the same name (which also gave fame to its eponymous title song), and which later inspired a musical adaptation, 42nd Street.
  • Popular gadget magazine Stuff did not produce an issue numbered 42, in honor of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, instead, the 41st issue was followed by the 43rd.
  • The designation within ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 of its working group on Architecture was chosen to be “WG 42” because architecture is the answer to “Life, the Universe and Everything”, skipping over designations 26 through 41.
  • Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States of America.
  • Using the encoding A=1, B=2, C=3, etc., the sum of the codes of the letters in the words “BIG BANG” is 42.
  • 42 is the number of the Loire department of France.
  • 5+4 (The parts from 54) = 9; 4+2 (The parts from 42) = 6 “What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9” The answer is all yours.
  • The Specific heat capacity of water is 4200 J/kg oC(Jewls/Kilograms x degrees celsius)
  • Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert died aged 42; they had 42 grandchildren and their great-grandson, Edward VIII, abdicated at the age of 42.
  • The world’s first book printed with movable type is the Gutenberg Bible which has 42 lines per page.
  • On page 42 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry discovers he’s a wizard.
  • Titanic was travelling at a speed equivalent to 42km/hour when it collided with an iceberg.
  • The marine battalion 42 Commando insists that it be known as “Four two, Sir!”
  • In east Asia, including parts of China, tall buildings often avoid having a 42nd floor because of tetraphobia fear of the number four because the words “four” and “death” sound the same (si or sei). Likewise, four 14, 24, etc.
  • Elvis Presley died at the age of 42.
  • Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear’s spaceship is named 42.
  • The atomic bomb that devastated Nagasaki, Japan, contained the destructive power of 42 million sticks of dynamite.
  • The three best-selling music albums Michael Jackson’s Thriller, AC/DC’s Back in Black and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon last 42 minutes.
  • The type 42 vacuum tube was one of the most popular audio output amplifiers of the 1930s.
  • A marathon course is 42km and 195m.
  • In the Book of Revelation, it is prophesised that the beast will hold dominion over the earth for 42 months.
  • When the growing numbers of Large Hadron Collider scientists acquired more office space recently, they named their new complex Building 42.

Convinced yet? You should be, so many relations can’t be co-incidence. Let us know your thought on number 42 and do try the type in :42: in Facebook chat and see the MAGIC

 

Just in case if you were interested to buy and read the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Check out!

 

Sources: Wikipedia, telegraph UK, The Independent UK

 

Dhawal Damania

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