The answer REALLY IS 42

[Rollory]

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/03/prime_numbers_get_hitched.php?utm_source=seedmag-main=rss

There is an important sequence of numbers called "the moments of the Riemann zeta function." Although we know abstractly how to define it, mathematicians have had great difficulty explicitly calculating the numbers in the sequence. We have known since the 1920s that the first two numbers are 1 and 2, but it wasn't until a few years ago that mathematicians conjectured that the third number in the sequence may be 42—a figure greatly significant to those well-versed in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It would also prove to be significant in confirming the connection between primes and quantum physics.

[Matthew Gallant]

So more like an answer is 42, really.

[Ben Sones]

What was the question again?

[Matt Perkins]

Thanks for the fish!

[balut]

Did you bring your towel?

[milo]

What was the question again?
What do you get when you multiply six by nine? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything)

Edited for linkage

[Glenn]

What do you get when you multiply six by nine?
Are you fucking with me? 54.

[Dave Markell]

Are you f*****g with me? 54.

I don't think you get it.

[gdunbar]

Don't panic!

[Glenn]

I don't think you get it.
Ah, now I see. I never read the second book.

[DeepT]

That question, what do you get when you multiply six by nine is indeed the correct question, who's correct answer is 42. The implication being, since the answer we get when we do the math is 54, that there is something very wrong with us or the universe as a whole.

[Nathan]

I thought he hinted that what it meant was that the program, Earth, was screwed up when the Golgafrinchans crashed. Arthur, as a descendant of the Golgafrinchans, provided the erroneous question "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?". The correct question is still unknown.

Or that may have been something I picked up from the later books. I didn't like them very much, so maybe the original question actually should be the 6x9 one.

[jim crawford]

Unfortunately, it's not going to pan out. This week on http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ among all the postcard-medium secrets about love and fear, someone sent this in:

Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 2:32 PM
To: frank@docdel.com

I willingly withheld the greatest discovery in mathematics from the world...It is the solution to the Riemann Hypothesis...The Riemann Hypothesis is false. The prime number 2^13466971-1 is off the critical line.
Sorry, Adams fans!

[LarryLard]

To paraphrase Pauli, not only is that not right, it's not even wrong.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Stopped at the first book? Hated the sequels? Wha? Am I in The Thread of The Damned?

[Rollory]

That question, what do you get when you multiply six by nine is indeed the correct question, who's correct answer is 42. The implication being, since the answer we get when we do the math is 54, that there is something very wrong with us or the universe as a whole.

Not entirely correct.

Six times nine does indeed equal 42 if you do the math in base 13 rather than base 10.

Douglas Adams did state explicitly that he had no idea this was the case when he picked those particular numbers.

[Rollory]

To paraphrase Pauli, not only is that not right, it's not even wrong.

I believe that was actually Enrico Fermi.