About
The Answer to lớn Life, the Universe and Everything is a memorable phrase found in Douglas Adams" comic science fiction novel series The Hitchhiker"s Guide to the Galaxy, in which the number 42 is revealed as the metanarrative that holds the key to the meaning of life. Due to its strong affiliation with online science fiction fan communities, the concept has been parodied and referenced online since the days of Usenet.
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Origin
In the original radio series of The Hitchhiker"s Guide to The Galaxy, which aired on đài truyền hình bbc Radio 4 in 1978, the supercomputer Deep Thought is tasked with coming up with the the "answer lớn the ultimate question of life, the universe và everything." After 7.5 million years of painstaking calculations, the computer reveals that answer to be the number 42, however, it fails lớn explain the meaning because it does not know "the ultimate question." As a result, the Earth is built as a second supercomputer to provide the ultimate question.
On November 3rd, 1993, the tác giả of the book Douglas Adams explained the reasoning behind choosing the number 42 as the answer to the ultimate questions in a Usenet discussion thread in alt.fan.douglas-adams<2>:
"The answer khổng lồ this is very simple. It was a joke. It had lớn be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, và I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden & thought "42 will do" I typed it out. Over of story."
Spread
On August 23rd, 2003, the Google News blog Blogoscoped<7> published a post titled "Google Calculator Knows Answer to lớn Life, the Universer, and Everything", revealing an easter egg implemented in Google tìm kiếm that returns "42" after searching "answer to lớn life, the universe, và everything."
Other search or knowledge engines such as IntelliBuddy, Cleverbot and Wolfram Alpha<11> provides the same result for similar queries. On February 14th, 2004, the first Urban Dictionary<6> definition for "The Life, The Universe, and Everything" was submitted by user Foobear, which cited The Hitchhikers Guide khổng lồ the Galaxy as the origin.
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On August 11th, 2008, a comic was uploaded lớn the website comic blog Short Minds in a post titled "Explaining Greatness" (shown below), featuring a man adding the numerical equivalents of the characters "XKCD" on a white board khổng lồ equal "42." The following day, xkcd forums user Battery137 posted a thread titled "xkcd=42?", which linked to the Short Minds comic.
On January 2nd, 2009, a Yahoo Answers<9> question "Why is the answer to everything 42?" was posted by user blue storm, which received an answer by user mmmcounts explaining its origin in the popular science fiction novel. In the virtual world Second Life, a section of the world dedicated khổng lồ the Hitchhiker"s Guide to lớn the Universe is called "42nd Life." As of May 25th, 2012, a Facebook<5> page for "42 The Answer to Life, the Universe, & Everything" has accumulated over 1,300 likes.