It’s the latest in a long, long line of mystical, magical numbers. Douglas Adams delivered “42” as the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Thanks! And writers like Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea gave us the self-fulfilling prophecy of 23. Look for 23, find 23 everywhere, declare “Meaning Found!”
These cosmic associations go way back, at least back to when the Pythagoreans were whipping themselves into a perfect frenzy over the number 10. The best of the numbers, of course, are cosmic in both senses of the word (from Merriam-Webster):
(1) of or relating to the cosmos, the extraterrestrial vastness, or the universe in contrast to the earth alone
(2) of, relating to, or concerned with abstract spiritual or metaphysical ideas.
Scott Funkhouser, A visiting physics prof at The Citadel has given us another: 10^122.
