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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
 Posted - 03/27/2006 : 17:50:01 [Permalink]
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quote:
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
Forget Mohammed - Douglas Adams was the real prophet.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
On a more somber note, I heard today that the Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, author of The Cyberiad, Solaris and Tales of Pirx the Pilot died today. The Cyberiad especially is very funny. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
| Edited by - Ghost_Skeptic on 03/27/2006 23:10:45 |
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