The seemingly simple problem is: what are three numbers s, y, z, such that cubed and summed give n = 42?
Above problem is an example of the family of mathematical puzzles called Diophantine equation.
Until recently 42 was the only number lower than 100 for which answer was not known. Andrew Booker, of the University of Bristol in England, and Andrew Sutherland of Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up and using Charity Engine computer grid found, that:
Researchers developed a custom algorithm to accelerate computations. I have asked Prof. Andrew Booker about Charity Engine role in the project. A custom BOINC server run by the company was feeding work orders to thousands of computers within the grid. Thus work orders were only available through the Charity Engine app.
The previous puzzle, solution for number 33 was found using supercomputer resources. It shows that some scientific problems may be solved using the power of distributed computing network run by volunteer researchers using spare power of their gaming pcs or laptops at a fraction of cost or no cost at all.
If you would like to get your teeth on the problem, don't be disappointed! The next 42 is:
Good luck!
Links:
Sums of three cubes
42
