The Hitchhikers Solution – Sum Of Three Cubes for 42 Is Now Solved

Mathematicians used a virtual computer the size of an entire planet and using massively paralleled computations to solve the legendary sum of three cubes for the very last of the solution – the number 42. The answer is three completely improbable numbers. Douglas Adams would be happy.

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If there is anything that can truly bring a lot of people to their knees, its math. This completely incredible world where pure fiction meets the reality made from numbers and equations. Or is there any other place in the universe where you could find a planet-sized computer solving the age-old mystery? That either math or science fiction. This mystery was the sum of three cubes for THE Answer. 42. The only thing that makes me sad is that the computers name wasn't Deep Though nor Earth. Instead, the computer was called the Charity Engine. So grab your towel and let's learn more.

The mystery is a famous mathematical riddle known as the Sum Of Three Cubes. This riddle was created 65 years ago at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. The goal is to find a solution of a diofantical equation (which is an indefinite polynominal equation that allows its variables to be only integers). More precisely it has to be x3+y3+z3=k where k is between 1 and 100.

This may seem simple, and some of the solutions are quite simple. But time has shown that finding the solution for many of the numbers is a very complicated task. But mathematicians are not ones to shy away from a challenge and over the years (and with the help of very powerful computers) they were capable of finding more and more solutions or proving that there is no solution for that particular number.

In the end, we were left with only two possible solutions to find. One for the number 33 and the number 42. This year, Andrew Booker from the University of Bristol spent a few weeks with a supercomputer and found the Sum for the number 33. That left us with the number 42. 42 proved to be a much harder nut to crack. We had to open the hell gates of mathematics.

Andrew Booker connected with another mathematician Andrew Sutherland from MIT. Sutherland is the master of massively paralleled computations. It was he who got them the services of the planet-sized distributed computer known as Charity Engine. Charity Engine uses the unused capacity of more than five hundred thousand computers all over the world. And all of them searched for the answer to The Answer. And it the end, they succeed. The solution is x = -80538738812075974, y = 80435758145817515, and z = 12602123297335631.

I'm sure that Douglas Adams would be very happy that it was the number 42 that was the last one to be found. All that is left now, is to find The Question to the ultimate answer of life, universe, and everything which we know is 42.

Sources:

• https://phys.org/news/2019-09-sum-cubes-solvedusing-real-life.html

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