Sagan numbers
History and Overview
2012-09-12 v1
Abstract
We define a new class of numbers based on the first occurrence of certain patterns of zeros and ones in the expansion of irracional numbers in a given basis and call them Sagan numbers, since they were first mentioned, in a special case, by the North-american astronomer Carl E. Sagan in his science-fiction novel "Contact." Sagan numbers hold connections with a wealth of mathematical ideas. We describe some properties of the newly defined numbers and indicate directions for further amusement.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1209.2348,
title = {Sagan numbers},
author = {J. Ricardo G. Mendonça},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.2348},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
LaTeX2e, 17 pages, 2 figures, 26 references. English version of an article originally published in Portuguese. Keywords: Recreational mathematics, science fiction, normal numbers, BBP-type formulae