Don't Panic

Today is 10.10.10, an auspicious day.

101010 = 42. If you're a fan of Douglas Adamsthat number should be familiar.

42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

If you haven't read Douglas Adams' works, then search for 42 in Wikipedia and you'll see it's quite special in--

Mathematics

• The eight digits of pi beginning from 242,422 places after the decimal point are 42424242.
  
• 42 is the expected number of throws of a (single) fair die until two sixes show up successively (for the first time).

Science

• The angle in degrees for which a rainbow appears.
  
• 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 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.

Technology

• 42 is the result given by the web search engines Wolfram Alpha, Google and Microsoft's Bing when the query "the answer to life the universe and everything" is entered as a search.
  
• AMD's One off Overlocking CPU was named Phenom 42, with the number being partially from the book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Popular Culture

• Level 42 is an English pop/rock band.
  
• "42" is one of the tracks on Coldplay's 2008 album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.
  
• Fox Mulder lived in Apartment 42 at 2630 Hegal Place, Alexandria, Virginia.
  
• 42 is an episode of Doctor Who, set in real time lasting approximately 42 minutes.
  
• 42 is the name of Buzz Lightyear's space ship from Pixar's animated science fiction series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
  
• In Monty Python's film And Now for Something Completely Different, the famous "How Not to be Seen" sketch is presented as "H.M. Government Public Service film No. 42".
  
• In A Clockwork Orange Alex browses through records in a record store and we see a record of the band fictional band at that time, Level 42.
  
• In "Finding Nemo" the address of the dentist's office is recited many times by Dory is P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney.

Those are just a few of the entries for 42 in Wikipedia.

42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Celebrate accordingly... and for extra credit, celebrate at 10:10:10 in the morning.