The number 42

The number 42 [+ favourites]

The following Biblical sighting is from 2 Kings 2:23-24 (23) And he [Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and twochildren of them.
In the New Testament, Matthew 1:17, (King James Version) "So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations"
Adding these 3 fourteen's together produces 42! i.e. There were 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus Christ.
Forty-two months was how long the profanation of the holy city was to last (Revelation 11:2 )
It took God 6 days to create the universe. He rested on the 7th day which is considered to be a holy day by many. 6*7 =42
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.)
The angle at which light reflects off of water to create a rainbow is 42 degrees.
The Sri Yantra is drawn from nine triangles, four pointed downward and five pointed upward, thus forming 42 (6x7)[sic] triangular fragments around a central triangle. There is probably no other set of triangles which interlock with such integral perfection.
42 is the natural vibration frequency of human DNA
It is 4.2 light-years to the nearest star from our solar-system?
The chamber in the Cheops pyramid is exactly 42 metres over the ground
The total number of dots on a pair of dice is 42
42 is 4 tens and 2 ones. 4 is the only perfect number (the number is a perfect square AND it is the only number to have the same number of letters as the number represents) 2 squared is 4, the perfect number.
42 is the number of the beast 6*6+6=42
The latest evolutionary "Missing Link" is 4.2 million years old
Water is most dense at 4.2 degrees celsius. Ice therefore floats on water, and allows marine life to survive below it.
The integer part of the square root of proton mass divided by electron mass gives 42
The element Molybdenum is vital for plant life on earth. The Atomic Number of Molybdenum is 42
42 occurs infinitely many times in then number PI.
When PI is rounded to the third decimal place contains the number 42
Consider the following: ( ( 1 * 2 * 3 ) - 4 + 5 ) * 6 = 42
Convert the letters of the word "Iron sulfide" into numbers of the alphabet. (Iron sulfide being (for the record) the true name of fools gold.) I.e:

I R O N S U L F I D E
9 18 15 14 19 21 12 6 9 4 5
Now then, Adding up the first 3 digits yields a total of 42. Adding up the next 3 digits makes 54, which is what 42 would be in base 10, if 42 was originally written as base 13 (The significance of which is widely known). Adding up the rest gets you 36, which is 42 written in base 12.

""Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value""
[  Edited by Decius at   ]

i think some of those findings of 42 are a bit of a stretch. the integer part of a proton mass especially. but its not suprising, there are other numbers such as e that appear all over the place (e is the exponetial base for which y=e^x and dy/dx=e^x. (the gradient of the curve at any point is the same as its y value)). there are also others, eg the number mentioned in by robert langdon in the da vinci code (though i cant remeber what it is).

i wonder if douglas adams had the same thoughts as you did when he used 42 as the meaning of life the universe and everything, in the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, or whether it is purely coincidence.

"So Schrodinger's Cat is not only neither dead nor alive, but might also be sexually aroused by elbows and peanut butter?"

I highly doubt it coincidence..

then again people seem to have plenty time on their hands to attempt to find correlations between the two.

"I'm a human being, God Dammit!! My life has value!!!"

Besides being The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, the number 42 is as amazingly as unremarkable as any other random number.
It's got a couple of mathematical properties that are possibly shared with some million other numbers. It appears randomly pretty much anywhere if you want a useless convoluted way to make it appear.
Try to find how many times 57 appears in the Bible, in chemical reactions or in David Letterman. There's got to be some astounding coincidence there.
About the Guide, what mister Adams himself had to say about the number 42 is:

"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."

You'll certainly notice that the quote has 42 words, so he's probably hiding something.
I'm new to the forums, by the way. Looks like a nice place.
Hhmm, i wonder if 42% of users reading this actually checked if there were forty-two words in the quote. I'll bet there's even a way to make that true if you got a weird idea of what to consider a word.

""For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.""