this is going to be very nerdy...

I was cleaning out my gmail account... a totally unnecessary and futile exercise, but good to do while trying to recover from "spring forward" fatigue, and came across a series of emails that made me laugh.

Two of my favourite sci fi shows evidently prompted a rare fit of mathematics leading to a discovery of gargantuanly geeky proportions.

So here was the stream of consciousness:

The Doctor, in the episode 42, gives us a lesson on happy numbers:



So, if you didn't get that, a happy number is a number when you take the sums of the squares of its digits and iterate that process until it gets to 1 is a happy number, if it goes in an endless loop it's not a happy number.

Alright, next, we have Rodney McKay's password from an episode of Stargate Atlantis:



Which of course lead me to naturally ask, is 666 a happy or unhappy number? What does that have to do with 42 you may ask? Well, that's the freaky part:

666 = 6^2 + 6^2 + 6^2 = 36 + 36 + 36
= 108 = 1 + 64
= 65 = 36 + 25
= 61 = 36 + 1
= 37 = 9 + 49
= 58 = 25 + 64
= 89 = 64 + 81
= 145 = 1 + 16 + 25
= **42** = 16 + 4
= 20 = 4 + 0
= 4
= 16 = 1 + 36
= 37 = 9 + 49
= 58 = 25 + 64
= 89 = 64 + 81
= 145 = 1 + 16 + 25
= **42**

666, that number that holds all that weight as being the mark of the beast and the sign of the End of Days, is indeed an unhappy number.

Add to that, it also loops forever in that sequence to 42... the answer to the ultimate question of life the universe and everything.

Freaky no?

Okay... no.

But it was nerdy.