Today Is the final word Answer to the final word Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything [42]

Today is October 10, 2010. 10/10/10. In binary, that’s 42. And 42 is The Answer to the final word Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. Or at the least, that’s what Douglas Adams says.

Many people wonder what Adams exactly meant by 42, the answer given by the supercomputer Deep Thought inside the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Why did Adams pick that number? Is there a connection to something the realm doesn’t find out about? Is the CIA and the MI6 fascinated about all this? Real aliens, perhaps?

On November 3, 1993, he gave an answer on alt.fan.douglas-adams:

The answer to it truly is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a range of, a normal, 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.

Later, chatting with BBC Radio 4 Iain Johnstone, he explained that the number was chosen by none apart from John Cleese as the punch line for one of his skits. The famed Python thought it was a funny number, and Adams borrowed it for his book, turning it into a recurring integer through all his work.

But that comment wasn’t the tip of the mystery. Stephen Fry -a pal of Adams-also jumped into the controversy, claiming that the latter explained to him why it was 42. Fry should not reveal the secret, but he says it’s ” fascinating, extraordinary and, once you think hard about it, completely obvious.”

Whatever that is, it sure has had a deep impact in geeklore. One example: The Allen Telescope Array-the radio telescopes system erected by Microsoft’s Paul Allen for the SETI program-has 42 dishes in honor of Adams. And in Lost, 42 is the last number within the sequence that needs to be entered on The Swan’s computer, that is also the sequence picked by Hurley for his winning lottery ticket, and Kwon’s number inside the cave. In a Lostpedia interview, one of the vital show’s producers confirmed that this was indeed a homage to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Personally, I don’t have a clue about what the hell it means. But I know that I include it each time I play Superball myself. Just in case. [Thanks Paul Cohen!]

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This post is tagged: allen telescope array, binary representations, complete nonsense, guide to the galaxy, question of life