42 (number) - Science

Science

  • The atomic number of molybdenum.
  • The angle rounded to whole degrees for which a rainbow appears (the critical angle).
  • In 1966, 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 (also known as Gravity train) 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, without calculation by Lewis Carroll in 1893 in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.)

Read more about this topic:  42 (number)

Famous quotes containing the word science:

    Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.
    —J.B.S. (John Burdon Sanderson)

    Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.
    Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970)