This page is part of the website
Mathematics Goes to the Movies
by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross
57:00
A little device is installed on the spaceship discovery to be able to shut down
Hal the computer in case of a malfunction. The device would be triggered via
a customized little red calculator: type nine nines take the square root and
press the integer.
58:00
The dimensions of the monolith are 1:4:9 = 1:2^2:3^2
It’s the proportions: 1 by 4 by 9 they are perfect even when carried for
six decimal places The small one on the moon, we encountered exactly the same
proportions. 1:4:9 the squares of 1, 2, 3. We spent years trying to attach some
cosmic significance to that, it came up with nothing.