Stephen Ornes on February 25, 2008 3:56 PM
Comments (0)
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.
Continue reading 'What’s with the number 10^122, anyway?' >
Stephen Ornes on February 11, 2008 11:06 AM
Comments (0)
Lots of people say they have a favorite number; fewer people would say they have lots and lots of favorite numbers that neatly fit into a favorite number sequence. You know, like primes, Fibonacci numbers, the Extra strong Lucas Pseudoprimes. And even fewer would ever admit to having a favorite number sequence song.
But for those who do...
Neil Sloane, a fellow at AT&T, maintains the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, which contains 136,699 different sequences. The sequence used as an example on the home page is “Busy Beaver problem: maximal number of steps that an n-state Turing machine can make on an initially blank tape before eventually halting.”
Continue reading 'Time waster for mathletes: the music of the primes' >
