In his popular science fiction story, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams introduced the cult-classic notion of the number 42 being the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything. While he admitted it was merely a joke and wanted "an ordinary, smallish number," I've used the notion of it over the years to spin a few stories of my own. In particular, a friend of mine in grad school was an avid, self-described numerologist. From him, I learned that a number like 777 represents the trinity of God in the Christian bible (symmetric with 666 being the "fallen angel" or "mark of the beast" -- the devil). And that 444 was the mark of Jesus Christ, and so on, and on, and on.

As a scientist and science fiction writer, after I heard some more about his numerological obsessions, I spent an hour or so searching around our research lab for my eyeballs because they had rolled out of their sockets so hard I heard them bounce off at least a dozen different objects before I heard them rolling across the dusty floor, sloshing their way to some dark corner of absurdity. Once I rinsed them off and snapped them back in place, I suggested that "anyone can make up anything they like about any set of numbers with a bit of creativity. It doesn't mean there's any actual physical value to numerology or astrology for that matter." Of course, my friend was also an avid fan of President BIll Clinton and spent many hours tucked away in the back of a dark closet office watching Clinton's speeches, mimicking his voice patterns and famous hand gestures, so I didn't have to dig too deeply to get my point across.

I suggested the number 42, as an example, and explained the science fiction source of it that he hadn't known. He quickly Webcrawlered his way to any online story he could find in the late 1990s. I immediately suggested that the answer to life, the universe, and everything was the result of the age-old battle between good and evil, that is 7 times 6. Good fighting evil, 7 x 6 = 42. Now that he was fully hooked, I began reeling him in. It was a pure joy to ramble on and on about senseless numerical stories to make the number 42 seem somehow important. It was all a joke as Adams said it was when he chose the number for his book -- and so is numerology.

More recently, based on the fact that I learned a few new things about the periodic table of elements because of a scientific discovery I made about atomic structure, I know that the 43rd element, technetium, is the smallest unstable element on the periodic table. That means there are 42 stable elements that occur before you get to one that's unstable. Somehow that fits the narrative, right? 42 elements built-up from neutrons, protons and electrons that are all stable until you add a 43rd proton or electron? That fits, right? So, the stable element molybdenum is 42? It completes the full set of 42 stable elements, followed by unstable technetium at 43, then stable ruthenium at 44 (Jesus, eh?), followed by a bunch of stable elements until you get to promethium at 61. That's followed by some more stable elements until you get to 84 polonium (some older books will state that 83, bismuth, is unstable, but it was recently discovered to have a stable form

For those who would like to catch up on the number 42 and its role in science fiction, here's a link you'll enjoy from a few years ago:

For Math Fans: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Number 42