Welcome to the ultimate tribute to the numbers 42 & 37!
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Poster idea and realization by Pablo C. Budassi in 2024 – sources: Starts With a Bang’s article “42 really is the answer to these 5 fundamental questions”, wikipedia.org
The number 42 is, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”, calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, no one knows what the question is.
With 28 compelling reasons presented with visuals and words, we’ve made a pretty strong case for this iconic number. Let’s explore them in detail:
✦ 42 is the sum in every row of the smallest non-trivial magic cube.
✦ 42 is the minimal grid size for fitting hexagons in a square grid with less than 1% error.
✦ 42 is the percentage of efficiency for turning mass into energy when orbiting a spinning black hole.
✦ At normal atmospheric conditions, rainbows emerge offset at an angle of 42° relative to the light source that creates them.
✦ As explained by Ethan Siegel, we have two classes of measurements for the current expansion rate of the Universe that point to inconsistent values:
1. 42 mi/s/Mpc by measurements that are based on relics imprinted from early times, like fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background or galaxy clustering in the large-scale structure.
2. 46 mi/s/Mpc by measurements that come from individual sources at late cosmic times, like supernovae or gravitational lenses.
Figuring out which group is correct and why is one of modern cosmology’s biggest challenges. Although more science will be required to truly resolve this cosmic conundrum, “42” is well within the realm of possible—and may even be the most probable of—answers.
✦ 42 folds of a 0.1 mm thick sheet of paper would make it thick enough to reach the Moon from Earth: 0.1 mm * 2^42 = 439,804.7 km > 384,400 km (1 LD)
✦ 42 is the result of multiplying the integer part of pi by the first two decimals: 3 × 14 = 42
✦ 42 orders of magnitude separate the smallest and largest known things: 10^-16 -> 10^26
✦ 42 is the first non-trivial fifteen-sided pentadecagonal number.
✦ 42 is the sum of the first six even numbers: 2+4+6+8+10+12 = 42
✦ 42 is the sum of the numbers on a pair of dice.
✦ 42 is the smallest number that is equal to the sum its non-prime proper divisors.
✦ There are 42 possible partitions of the number ten.
✦ 42 is the dimension of the Borel subalgebra in the exceptional Lie algebra e6.
✦ 42 is the Messier object number for the closest massive star forming nebula (Orion M42).
✦ 42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabbalistic tradition.
✦ 42 is last natural number less than 100 whose representation as a sum of three cubes was found.
✦ 42 is the number of unique ways to connect four points with arrows.
✦ There are 42 lines per page in the earliest printed book (Gutenberg Bible).
✦ There are 42 ways in which five pairs of nested parentheses can be arranged.
✦ 42 is the second sphenic number (product of three distinct primes) 2 × 3 × 7
✦ 42 is the number of galactic years that the Sun-Earth system will survive before it’s destroyed.
✦ 42 is the ASCII code for the asterisk, which is a wildcard for everything.
✦ 42 is the highest possible integer in a 4-term Egyptian fraction sum adding up to one.
✦ 42 is the number of questions asked to enter the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion.
✦ 42 is the number of possible triangulations in a heptagon.
✦ 42 is the number of rooted ordered binary trees with six leaves.
✦ 42 means ‘yes’ in Chinese urban slang and is considered unlucky in Japan because it sounds like ‘dying’
As it turns out, “42” really could be the answer to the vaunted ultimate question about life, the Universe, and everything. Now, it’s up to us to figure out what that pesky, ultimate question actually is!
Who needs 42? The real star of randomness and bizarre appearances is 37. Let me show you why:
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poster idea and realization by Pablo C. Budassi in 2024 – sources: Veritasium video: “Why is this number everywhere?” , thirty-seven.org, wikipedia.org
37 is an important number for lots of reasons. Ever wondered why 37 is the magic number of times you can hit snooze before you’re officially late? Check out 28 more fascinating facts about this mystical number:
✦ Eliminating cultural trendy numbers, single digits, and extremes, 37 is the most frequently chosen random two-digit number by people.
✦ There are 37 genes in the mitochondrial genome.
✦ 37 is the number of the most uniform solids in three-dimensional space.
✦ There usually are 37 holes in the speaker part of an old telephone.
✦ 37% of the options should be sampled and rejected before picking the next better one.
✦ You get 37% chances of success when optimal stopping in the secretary problem.
✦ 37 is the human body temperature in Celsius.
✦ 37 is the first irregular prime with an irregularity index of 1, where the smallest prime number with an irregularity index of 2 is the thirty-seventh prime number, 157. Irregular primes list: 37, 59, 67, 101, 103, 131, 149, 157, 233, 257, 263, 271, 283, 293, 307, 311, 347, 353, 379, 389, 401, 409, 421, 433, 461, 463, 467, 491, 523, 541, 547, 557, 577, 587, 593, …
✦ 37 is the central cell of the smallest magic square using only primes and one.
✦ 37 is a divisor of the sum of the squares of the first 37 primes: 2^2 + 3^2 + 5^2 + 7^2 + 11^2 + 13^2 + 17^2 + 19^2 + 23^2 + 29^2 + 31^2 + 37^2 + 41^2 + 43^2 + 47^2 + 53^2 + 59^2 + 61^2 + 67^2 + 71^2 + 73^2 + 79^2 + 83^2 + 89^2 + 97^2 + 101^2 + 103^2 + 107^2 + 109^2 + 113^2 + 127^2 + 131^2 + 137^2 + 139^2 + 149^2 + 151^2 + 157^2= 263736 | {1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 18, 22, 24, 27, 33, 36, 37, 44, 54, 66, 72, 74, 81, 88, 99, 108, 111, 132, 148, 162, 198, 216, 222, 264, 296, 297, 324, 333, 396, 407, 444, 594, 648, 666, 792, 814, 888, 891, 999, 1188, 1221, 1332, 1628, 1782, 1998, 2376, 2442, 2664, 2997, 3256, 3564, 3663, 3996, 4884, 5994, 7128, 7326, 7992, 9768, 10989, 11988, 14652, 21978, 23976, 29304, 32967, 43956, 65934, 87912, 131868, 263736}
✦ 37 billion disintegrations per second is a Curie: 1 Ci = 37 109 Bq
✦ 3×7×37 equals to the lucky number 777 (seven hundred seventy-seven).
✦ There are 37 vertebrae in a Tyrannosaurus rex tail.
✦ 37 complex reflection groups exist.
✦ 37 is the solution to Waring’s problem for g(5): every positive integer is the sum of at most 37 fifth powers.
✦ There are 37 bars in the digits of a digital clock.
✦ 37 seconds passed from sighting the iceberg to hitting the Titanic.
✦ There are 37 ways to make $5 using denominations of 5.00, 1.00, 0.50, and 0.25
✦ 37 minutes is the golden section of an hour.
✦ 37 is a A019296 number giving a near-integer result for Exp(Pi*Sqrt(37)) = 199148647.9999780465518. Other entries in that sequence have even more near integer values, but 37 is the smallest one to be close by 4 digits.
✦ There are 37 movements in Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies.
✦ Shakespeare wrote 37 plays: All’s Well That Ends Well (1601–05), Antony and Cleopatra (1606–07), As You Like It (1598–1600), The Comedy of Errors (1589–94), Coriolanus (c. 1608), Cymbeline (1608–10), Hamlet (c. 1599–1601), Henry IV, Part 1 (c. 1596–97), Henry IV, Part 2 (1597–98), Henry V (c. 1599), Henry VI, Part 1 (1589–92), Henry VI, Part 2 (1590–92), Henry VI, Part 3 (1590–93), Henry VIII (first produced 1613), Julius Caesar (first produced 1599–1600), King John (c. 1594–96), King Lear (1605–06), Love’s Labour’s Lost (between 1588 and 1597), Macbeth (1606–07), Measure for Measure (c. 1603–04), The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596–97), The Merry Wives of, Windsor (between 1597 and 1601), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595–96), Much Ado About Nothing (probably 1598–99), Othello (1603–04), Pericles (c. 1606–08), Richard II (1595–96), Richard III (c. 1592–94), Romeo and Juliet (c. 1594–96), The Taming of the, Shrew (between 1590–94), The Tempest (c. 1611), Timon of Athens (between 1605–08), Titus Andronicus (between 1589–92), Troilus and Cressida (c. 1601–02), Twelfth Night (c. 1600–02), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (probably between 1590–94) and The Winter’s Tale (c. 1609–11)
✦ 37 is the median value for the second prime factor of an integer.
✦ There are 37 miracles in the Bible.
✦ There are 37 slots in a European roulette.
✦ 37 is the smallest non-supersingular prime and also a cuban prime, a Padovan prime, a lucky prime, a sexy prime, and a permutable prime.
✦ The smallest angle of a 3-4-5 triangle is 36.87º.
✦ A “perfect” bridge hand sums 37 high card points: four aces (4×4), four kings (3×4), four queens (2×4), and one jack(1).
You be the judge of which number takes the crown. And hey, if math and numbers aren’t your thing, just remember: they’re still the invisible forces running the show!
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