The Answer Really is 42!

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. — Marcus du Sautoy, seedmagazine.com, March 27, 2006