Such a simple number.. but you may be surprised to find out that it might be the Answer to The Ultimate Question Of Life, the Universe, and Everything according to a fictional solution in Douglas Adams's science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is sought using the hypercomputer Deep Thought, however the computer was insufficiently powerful to provide the Ultimate Question when asked after it had produced the Answer (after a very long computation time — 7.5 million years). The answer given by Deep Thought prompted the protagonists to embark on a quest to discover the Question to which this is the Answer.
The author of the HGTG simply says: The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story.
For me, i enjoyed the movie and now i'm enjoy the book... and still working on the answer to life, universe and everything! hehe! 42... mmm... what a simple number!
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