The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy meaning of life

When Douglas Adams wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he added a central joke which has become more famous over the years than the novel itself: "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is Now, in an attempt to cash in on their obsession, a new book published this week, Douglas Adams' Amazingly Accurate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, looks at real-life occurrences of the number

Here is how a perfectly ordinary number captured the interest of sci-fi enthusiasts, geeks and mathematicians. By Jean-Paul Delahaye. Christina Hemsley Getty Images. Everyone loves unsolved mysteries. Moreover our interest holds even if the mystery is based on a joke.

The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy meaning of life

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comic science fiction series created by Douglas Adams that has become popular among fans of the genre and members of the scientific community. Phrases from it are widely recognised and often used in reference to, but outside the context of, the source material. Many writers on popular science , such as Fred Alan Wolf , Paul Davies , and Michio Kaku , have used quotations in their books to illustrate facts about cosmology or philosophy. In the radio series and the first novel, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer Deep Thought , specially built for this purpose. Deep Thought points out that the answer seems meaningless because the beings who instructed it never knew what the question was. When asked to produce the Ultimate Question, Deep Thought says that it cannot; however, it can help to design an even more powerful computer that can. This new computer will incorporate living beings into the " computational matrix " and will run for ten million years. The computer is revealed as being the planet Earth , with its pan-dimensional creators assuming the form of white lab mice to observe its running. The process is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans , and is then ruined completely, five minutes prior to completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons to supposedly make way for a new hyperspace bypass. In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe , this reason is revealed to have been a ruse: the Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of psychiatrists , led by Gag Halfrunt , who feared for the loss of their careers when the Ultimate Question became known. Lacking a real question, the mice pan-dimensional beings decide not to go through the whole process again and instead settle for the out-of-thin-air suggestion "How many roads must a man walk down? At the end of the radio series, the television series and the novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe , Arthur Dent , having escaped the Earth's destruction, potentially has some of the computational matrix in his brain. He attempts to discover The Ultimate Question by extracting it from his brainwave patterns, as abusively [6] suggested by Ford Prefect , when a Scrabble -playing caveman spells out "forty two".

Computer scientists and mathematicians recognize the appeal of the number 42 but have always thought that it was a simple game that could be played just as well with another number. The answer to this is very simple.

After calculating for 7. Deep Thought does know, though, that another supercomputer, known as Earth, was to be designed by Deep Thought himself to come up with the question in million years. In Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy we learn that the answer to everything is It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base 13, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. End of story.

When Douglas Adams wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he added a central joke which has become more famous over the years than the novel itself: "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is Now, in an attempt to cash in on their obsession, a new book published this week, Douglas Adams' Amazingly Accurate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, looks at real-life occurrences of the number The book is timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Adams's death this spring. Scores of adolescents have posited theories about significance of the number. The actor Stephen Fry claimed to know the true answer, but won't tell, saying he'll take it to his grave. The author himself rather undermined the myriad analyses when he dismissed them all with the simple answer that the choice of the number was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base 13, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense.

The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy meaning of life

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comic science fiction series created by Douglas Adams that has become popular among fans of the genre and members of the scientific community. Phrases from it are widely recognised and often used in reference to, but outside the context of, the source material. Many writers on popular science , such as Fred Alan Wolf , Paul Davies , and Michio Kaku , have used quotations in their books to illustrate facts about cosmology or philosophy. In the radio series and the first novel, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer Deep Thought , specially built for this purpose. Deep Thought points out that the answer seems meaningless because the beings who instructed it never knew what the question was.

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The computation on each PC runs in the background so the owner can still use their PC for other tasks. Many chatbots , when asked about the meaning of life, will answer "42". In other words, no algorithm, however clever, may be able to process all possible cases. The Hitchhiker knitting pattern, designed by Martina Behm, is a scarf with 42 teeth. All this is amusing, but it would be wrong to say that 42 is really anything special mathematically. While 42 was a number with no hidden meaning, Adams explained in more detail in an interview with Iain Johnstone of BBC Radio 4 recorded in though never broadcast [12] to celebrate the first radio broadcast's 20th anniversary. The band Level 42 chose their name in recognition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and not — as is often repeated — after the world's tallest car park. Forgotten your password? For some reason, if a strag strag: nonhitchhiker discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc. Narrator: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

Suggestions or feedback? Previous image Next image. A team led by Andrew Sutherland of MIT and Andrew Booker of Bristol University has solved the final piece of a famous year old math puzzle with an answer for the most elusive number of all:

Memory Alpha. This work leads us back to the famous and intriguing number Retrieved 9 June Archived from the original on 23 May Retrieved 4 April Booker and Sutherland discussed the algorithmic strategy to be used in the search for a solution to Retrieved 23 September Of course, nobody paid it any attention. The first practical numbers are 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 18, 20, 24, 28, 30, 32, 36, 40, 42, 48, 54, 56, 60, 64, 66 and 72 sequence A in OEIS. Previous item Next item. Retrieved 6 December In Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy we learn that the answer to everything is