TITLE: an infinite product identity
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: I encountered the following post on a website (www.quora.com) I quote the post verbatim-these are not my comments.
"Why is the number "42" so significant to mathematicians?
It is for the very simple reason that:
$$42^{\frac{382835430481}{625000000000}}=6{\prod}_{p\ {\rm{Prime}}}{\frac{1}{1-{\frac{1}{p^2}}}}.$$
This is a very deep result, whose impact we do not yet fully understand."
I do not believe that this identity is true. Here is my reasoning. The right hand side is $6{\zeta}(2)={\pi}^2$. The left hand side on the other hand is of the form $42^{\frac{m}{n}}$ where $m$ and $n$ are both positive integers. If such an identity were true than we would be forced to conclude (raising both sides to the $n$-th power) that $$42^{m}={\pi}^{2n}.$$This would imply that $\pi$ is an algebraic integer, being a root of the polynomial $f(x)= {x^{2n}}-42^{m}\in{{\bf Z}[x]}.$ But this contradicts the fact that $\pi$ is a transcendental number. Am I missing something here? The reason I ask is that the author of the post seems to think that I am mistaken, but refuses to furnish a reason! Appreciate your thoughts!

REPLY [4 votes]: Just to continue the joke, whatever could be the rhs (say $k$) you always can write
$$42^x=k \implies x=\frac{\log (k)}{\log (42)}$$ and find the closest rational number you want for a given accuracy.
For $k=\pi^2$ as in your example, take
$$x=\frac{113324902276818252177817587796556698968660872730811}{185009166560153907338903
   184470209689295067534049020}$$ and you will have $100$ correct significant figures.
For $k=e$, use
$$x=\frac{14286931922365270336190072861145109626110493519818}{5339983138470746932953829
   5633396756354619740280665}$$
For $k=\zeta (3)$, use
$$x=\frac{4984293073556644693450328273976834743385651648058}{10122924587252622722204541
   3352905624410070072168739}$$