42 *IS* The answer to Life, the Universe and Zeta

Venusian Treen writes "In their search for patterns, mathematicians have uncovered unlikely connections between prime numbers and quantum physics. The gist is that energy levels in the nucleus of heavy atoms can tell us about the distribution of zeros in Riemann's zeta function - and hence where to find prime numbers. This article discusses this connection, and introduces two physisicts who tell us 'why the answer to life, the universe and the third moment of the Riemann zeta function should be 42.'"

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[themusicgod1]

"As soon as you discard scientific rigor, you're no longer a mathematician, you're a numerologist."

Watch New Age people pick up on this...

[dildo]

One thing I dislike about modern physics is how they phrase things in an inappropriately magical way. And then what happens is that New Age people start hideosly misinterpreting the results, fuse one piece of magic to another, and before you know it, people saying things like "physics is just confirming what the Taoists knew thousands of years ago..." -- in short, garbage.

It is very likely that it is just a coincidence that the Riemann Zeta function describes some properties of quantum physics. If you study mathematics you will find all sorts of coincidences like these. It doesn't mean anything; more often than not it is just a consequence of the rules of arithmetic.

But I imagine that New Age people are going to interpret this as that civilizations inside of each atom are trying to signal us "Contact" style by sending out zeros of the Riemann Zeta Function.... sigh.

How unexpected is it really?

[LesPaul75]

They make it sound like it's a huge surprise that the most basic levels of physics are strongly connected to the most basic mysteries of mathematics (primes, for example). I would expect that just about every mathematician and physicist, even down to the hobbiest level, has suspected this in some form or another. Some modern scientists like Wolfram and Fredkin have based their careers on this idea, and have built loyal followings. It makes sense that there's a strong connection between the two. And it's what we secretly want to believe, as logical beings -- that there's a simple pattern to be found at the most basic level of existence.

Re:Oops. So much for encryption

[Coryoth]

If the article is true, and prime numbers can be gleaned from quantum stuff, and quantum computers are just around the corner

Well all of that is only tenuously related, but okay...

will that obsolete all our public key encryption tools?

Quantum computers will, yes. Not because information about the distribution of prime numbers is intertwined within quantum energy levels, but because there exist polynomial time algorithms for factoring and discrete logarithms given a quantum computer. Since all our current public key encryption schemes are based on the difficulty of one of those two problems quantum computers will render current public key schemes rather ineffective.

How does this affect quantum encryption?

It doesn't. Quantum cryptography isn't really encryption in the same sense, and doesn't have anything to do with quantum computers. The general principle is that using suitably encoded data the quantum theory effects of observation changing the object can be used to ensure that you can always know if someone has intercepted/observed your encoded message during transmission.

Will we have to wait for our household Mr. Fusion reactors to power these systems to maintain encryption?

Probably not.

Will all this happen within the next 5 years?

No. Currently the most powerful quantum computers in the world can factor numbers as large as 15. While progress is being made it is very slow and it is ridiculously improbable that any quantum computer capable of factoring numbers commonly used in encryption existing within the next 5 years, let alone anything that might actually have any sort of mainstream availability.

Jedidiah.