fortytwo

What does Octo­ber 10^th, 2010 (42day) has to do with for­tytwo? It’s sim­ple: When I look back on my com­pu­ter sci­ence degree, I remem­ber how to con­vert num­bers from deci­mal to the binary sys­tem. This is alre­ady the solution!

While the deci­mal sys­tem con­sists of 10 digits (0−9), the binary sys­tem uses just the num­bers 0 and 1. During the con­ver­sion you have to mul­ti­ply the last digit with 1, the second digit with 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, …

The results from the power cal­cu­la­ti­ons, in which means the last digit 2 to the power 0 (0 * 2), the penul­ti­mate 2 to the power 1 (1 * 2), then 2 to the power 2 (2 * 2), 2 to the power 3 (2 * 2 * 2), 2 to the power 4 (2 * 2 * 2 * 2), etc. brings us to these values:

In our example, it is the­re­fore, accor­ding to the Addition:

And the ans­wer is, as (almost) always: fortytwo.

These days takes place exactly every 1000 years in our calen­dar. Well that must be cele­bra­ted! Maybe with a new t-shirt?