Answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and everything

[Losethem (imported)]

So another thread here got me to thinking about something I saw the other day. It was why Douglass Adams decided that 42 would be Deep Thought's "Answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything..."

Anyone care to take a crack at what the most interesting, and possibly plausible answer I've heard to date, is?

It actually can make perfect sense to a geek.

[Dave (imported)]

What is 6 times 7

[madnomadtoo (imported)]

So another thread here got me to thinking about something I saw the other day. It was why Douglass Adams decided that 42 would be Deep Thought's "Answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything..."

Anyone care to take a crack at what the most interesting, and possibly plausible answer I've heard to date, is?

It actually can make perfect sense to a geek.

Fortuitously, Douglas Adam's choice of a humorous number foresaw an interesting development.

From https://www.independent.co.uk/news/yes- ... 51201.html

Cambridge astronomers have found that 42 is the value of an essential scientific constant - one which determines the age of the universe.

In his novel The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) Mr Adams describes how an alien race programs a computer called Deep Thought to provide the ultimate answer to "Life, the Universe and Everything". After seven and a half million years' calculation, back came the answer - 42.

In slightly less time - two years- a team at the Cavendish Laboratory has managed the same feat, using a new technique to estimate the value of the "Hubble Constant". This measures how quickly objects in the universe are receding from each other - a natural outcome of the Big Bang that created the universe. Dr Richard Saunders, who led the research, sounded a trifle abashed by the result. "We have taken two measurements for the constant, and the average of them is, well, it's 42," he said. But he insisted this is "entirely fortuitous" - though thousands of fans of the Hitch Hiker novels might disagree.

Mr Adams said yesterday that when he wrote the novel 20 years ago he chose the number especially for its bathetic nature: "I wanted a nice, ordinary number, one that you wouldn't mind taking home and introducing to your parents."

But later he realised that the choice was no accident: when he was working for John Cleese's film company, Video Arts, as a "prop borrower", he and the other writers picked 42 for its amusing qualities as a punchline.

[Eunuchorn (imported)]

the reason I had heard of why 42, was that 42 when looked up on the ascii table, returned an astrix. this was important, because an astrix, especially in boolean strings, meant Anything you wanted. so, What is the meaning of Life the Universe and Everything? Anything you want.

[Dave (imported)]

How many roads must a man travel down before he becomes a man?

[madnomadtoo (imported)]

How many roads must a man travel down before he becomes a man?

But the minute we take that 43rd road, we regress to frat boys. I've been doin' some hard travelin', Dave, I thought you knowed ...

[madnomadtoo (imported)]

the reason I had heard of why 42, was that 42 when looked up on the ascii table, returned an astrix. this was important, because an astrix, especially in boolean strings, meant Anything you wanted. so, What is the meaning of Life the Universe and Everything? Anything you want.

I knew those boolean strings would come in handy. Make my astrix pizza. Thin crust.

[Dave (imported)]

But the minute we take that 43rd road, we regress to frat boys. I've been doin' some hard travelin', Dave, I thought you knowed ...

I wasn't a frat boy when I was a frat boy.

[Losethem (imported)]

the reason I had heard of why 42, was that 42 when looked up on the ascii table, returned an astrix. this was important, because an astrix, especially in boolean strings, meant Anything you wanted. so, What is the meaning of Life the Universe and Everything? Anything you want.

This is the answer I was looking for. And it makes the most sense of anything, but at that may not be right. Adams was a big 'ole geek, so it would have made sense in the context of the time at which he wrote the Hitchhikers Guide in the late 1970's. First, Deep Thought is above all else, a computer. A computer will look at everything literally. Since the asterisk is a substitute for whatever you want and everything all at once, it would be a logical answer for a computer. Though I doubt it would have taken the 7.5 million years it did in the story.

[TopManFL (imported)]

... a big 'ole geek,

There are 10 kinds of people. Those that understand binary math and those that don't.