In the movie Finding Nemo, Nemo is taken to “P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney”.
X-Files
In The X-Files, Mulder’s apartment number is 42.
Apple and 42?
The weight of an iPod nano in grams.
Deck of Cards
The number of eyes in a deck of 52 cards.
Greek myth
There were originally 42 columns and 42 figures from Greek myth in the Parthenon.
London Underground
42 is the percentage of the London Underground that is actually underground
Earth
The number of Landlocked countries on Earth.
Major League Baseball
The jersey number of Jackie Robinson, which is retired by all Major League Baseball teams.
The Cable Guy
Matthew Broderick’s character, Steven Kovacs, in the movie The Cable Guy has this apartment number.
WhereRU 42
The post you are reading now is the 42nd posting to the blog WhereRU42. It is both a Circular and recursive reference. This post also has exactly forty two words in it and was posted at forty two minutes past the hour.
Skyscraper
Tower 42 is a skyscraper in the City of London, formerly known as the NatWest Tower.
TIFFs
In the TIFF image file format, the second 16-bit word of every file is 42, which is used together with the first word to indicate byte order. In the reiser4 file system, 42 is the inode number of the root directory.
Games that chirp
42 is the number of laws of cricket.
Infinity and Beyond
42 is the number name of Buzz Lightyear’s space ship from Pixar’s animated science fiction series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
Star Trek
In the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation the starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) has 42 decks.
The X-Files
In the television series and movie The X-Files, lead character Fox Mulder lives in apartment number 42
Doctor Who
42 is an episode of Doctor Who, set in real time lasting approximately 42 minutes.
Rudyard Kipling
In Rudyard Kiplings “The Travels of Captain Ryalls”, 42 is the age at which Michael Ryalls first enters the jungle from his comfortable home in London. He travels with a 42 inch tall bull named Regis.
James Bond
In The Property of a Lady from Octopussy (the earlier editions of the three-part short story book included this story), James Bond (a character created by Ian Fleming) attended an auction to identify a top KGB spy. This spy was to raise the value of a Fabergé egg so that his female double agent working in MI5 (The British Secret Service) would get more money (as a way to monetarily pay her back for many years of service) from the sale of her (previously sent from Russia) Fabergé egg. The lot number of the Fabergé egg was 42.
Asteroid Douglasadams
In January 2005, Asteroid 2001 DA42 was given the name Asteroid Douglasadams, named for the author Douglas Adams who popularized the number 42 and died in 2001. With even his initials in the provisional designation, Brian G. Marsden, the director of the Minor Planet Center and the secretary for the naming committee, said, “This was sort of made for him, wasn’t it?”
Breathing
The Efficiency of human respiration is 42.
42 is the result given by the web search engines Google, Wolfram Alpha and Bing when the query “the answer to life the universe and everything”
is entered as a search. Give it a go!
Pi Day
The eight digits of Π beginning from 242,422 places after the decimal point are 42424242.
Rabbit hole
Rule 42 in Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland is “All persons more than a mile high to leave the court”, which is probably a good rule all things considered.
Propane
Propane boils at -42ºC
Baseball
42 is the only shirt number retired by Major League Baseball. It was retired in honour of Jackie Robinson.
Class M
The first star found outside our solar system and which has a planet circling it is 42 light years away.
42 days
10! (i.e. 10 factorial) seconds is exactly 42 days.
Conveyor belt
The widest conveyor belt ever made was 42 feet wide.
That’s odd
Here’s an odd calculation: ((1 * 2 * 3) – 4 + 5) * 6 = 42
Protons
The integer part of the square root of proton mass divided by electron mass equals 42.
Human Temp
A human will succumb to disease if their temperature reaches 42ºC.
Harvested wheat
The number of chromosomes in harvested wheat is 42.
Roll out the 42s
A barrel contains 42 gallons.
The eyes have it
There are 42 eyes in a deck of cards.
Kangaroo Jump
The greatest recorded leap ever made by a kangaroo is 42 feet.
Dice
The number of dots on a pair of dice is 42.
Pyramids
The chamber in the Cheops pyramid is 42 meters over the ground.
LOST
Here are a few references from the ABC television show LOST.
- The last number in the sequence of numbers that Hurly played on the winning lottery sequence.
- The last number on the Hatch.
- The minutes on the clock (8:42) when the woman Sawyer is with says he’s late. (Ep: 6×8, Recon)
- Desmond’s order number at Mr. Cluck’s. (Ep: 6×12, Everybody Loves Hugo)
- The number of Kwon’s assignment on the cave wall. (Ep: 6×4, The Substitute)
- The hours Jack says Sayid was out after getting hit with tranquilizer darts. (Ep: 5×4, The Little Prince)
- Kate’s address was 42 Panorama Crest. (Ep: 5×4, The Little Prince)
- The next ticket in line plus 300 at the butcher shop. Ben took ticket number 342 to wait in line for Jill the butcher. (Ep: 5×2, The Lie)
- One of the kids’ jersey’s at Hurley’s birthday party. (Ep: 4×12, There’s No Place Like Home Part 1)
- Desmond needed $42,000 to buy a boat for the boat race. (Ep: 2×23, Live Together, Die Alone)
- The crossword question that Locke looked at. (Ep: 2×8, Collision)
- The number 42 is on the wall inside the hatch. (Ep: 2×1, Man of Science, Man of Faith)
- The number of nozzle openings on Desmond’s shower head. (Ep: 2×1, Man of Science, Man of Faith)
- The number on the spin dial lock rested on 42. (Ep: 2×1, Man of Science, Man of Faith)
- Part of the id on Jack’s badge. (Ep: 2×1, Man of Science, Man of Faith)
- Minutes past 10 a.m. that Flight 815 was scheduled to land in L.A. (Ep: 1×24, Exodus Part 2)
- The number of people in the line that Hurley tried to get in front of at the airport. (Episode 1×24, Exodus Part 2)
- The hotel room that Hurley stayed in (2342). (Ep: 1×24, Exodus Part 2)
- Anna-Lucia’s airplane seat. (Ep: 1×23, Exodus Part 1)
- The number of spaces on a game of Connect 4. Lenny played Connect 4 when Hurley went to visit him. (Ep: 1×18, Numbers)
- Numbers on Rousseau’s map. (Ep: 1×23, Exodus Part 1)
- The number of days late (6 weeks) Claire was when she found out she was pregnant. (Ep: 1×10, Raised by Another)
- What the pool ball numbers added up to on the table in this episode. (Ep: 1×8, Confidence Man)
The LOST numbers were 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 & 42
The Planck length & Earth
The planet Earth is 42 orders of magnitude larger than the Planck Length. The Planck length being the shortest distance man has been able to measure, time and space merge below this length. The Planck Length is 1 x 10^-35m.
Bach
42 was one of J.S. Bach’s (the composer) favourite numbers. He worked this out by adding up the numbers of position of the letter BACH in the alphabet and then multiplying the answer by three (from the holy trinity). E.G.:
B + A + C + H
2 + 1 + 3 + 8 = 14 * 3 = 42
Journey to the center of the earth, and beyond
In 1965, mathematician Paul Cooper theorized that the fastest, most efficient way to travel across continents would be to bore a straight hollow tube directly through the Earth, connecting a set of antipodes, evacuate it (remove the air), and then just fall through. The first half of the journey consists of free-fall acceleration, while the second half consists of an exactly equal deceleration. The time for such a journey works out to be 42 minutes. Remarkably, even if the tube does not pass through the exact center of the Earth, the time for a journey powered entirely by gravity always works out to be 42 minutes, as long as the tube remains friction-free, as while gravity’s force would be lessened, so would the distance traveled at an equal rate. The same idea was proposed by Lewis Carroll in Sylvie and Bruno, volume 2, chapter 7, without calculation.
Where Are U 42? 