Solved the riddle of number 42

For nearly 65 years, mathematicians around the world have been trying to solve the mystery of the number 42. They want to find three numbers, the sum of which in the cube would be 42. It seems that they managed to do it.

The task was as follows, can a number from 1 to 100 be expressed as the sum of three cubes? According to the 1954 formula, x3 + y3 + z3 = K is obtained, where K is any number from 1 to 100. Accordingly, it is necessary to determine the unknown variables for each number K in this interval.

A solution for primes was found in the following decades. In 2000, mathematician Noam Elkis of Harvard University published an algorithm for more complex ones. As of 2019, 2 numbers remained unresolved: 33 and 42.

Like many modern solutions, this has come via the Internet. Mathematician Andrew Booker has published an algorithm for solving the problem for the number 33 on his Youtube channel. To cope with it, he needed a powerful supercomputer at the University of Advanced Computing Research Center and 3 weeks of work.

The most difficult thing for the scientist is to find the number - 42. Andrew Booker used the help of MIT mathematician Andrew Sutherland, an expert in the field of mass parallel computing. They resorted to Charity Engine, an initiative that spans the globe using the residual computing power of more than 500,000 home PCs, resulting in a kind of “planetary supercomputer”.

In total, the calculations took over a million hours, but the answer was still found:

X = -80538738812075974

Y = 80435758145817515

Z = 12602123297335631

“I feel relieved,” Booker said on his blog.

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