please explain the meaning of 42?

Question

42 was the answer to what is the meaning of life, i would like a detailed explanation of what this means. thankyou.

Answer 1

i didn't read the book, but i did watch the movie 'the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy'.
in the movie, an advanced alien race wanting to find the meaning of life, go to a remote planet and build a massive supercomputer to find the answer to the ultimate question. the computer tells them to come back in a long time, and when they come back the computer gives the answer to life, the universe and everything as '42'. the alien race is stumped and asks what the heck the question was, and the computer is bored after all the calculations so to find the ultimate question they build a second super processor, a live computer, and this computer is the planet earth.
unfortunately a less advanced alien race destroys earth to build a hyperspace highway, which is when the movie really starts. at the end of the movie they rebuild earth, or earth2 to continue figuring out the question, and they think the question is buried in the head of one of the survivors from earth1, but the alien scientists come as midgets who get squashed, so now no one will know the ultimate question about everything but know the answer to the greatest question is '42'.
now its a joke on the part of anyone who watched the movie or read the book replying 42 to anyone asking what the meaning of life is.

Answer 2

Its just a joke from the Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. They build a supercomputer and it spents thousands of years computing the meaning of life, and finally announces the answer is 42.

The key is of course, it would take much longer to work out the question.

Answer 3

Actually, 42 is the answer to "life, the universe, and everything." It is far more encompassing than just the meaning of life. The specific explanation is still being developed.

Answer 4

Its just a joke referring to a famous novel. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. In the book, the meaning of life is 42.

The joke is usually used to make fun of those that ask it because no one really knows the meaning of life.

Answer 5

It's the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, as computed by the universe's most powerful supercomputer several years ago.

42 is the answer, now we must find the question...

Answer 6

What is 6 times 7?

Read the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy if you want to know the whole story, but that is the correct question to the correct answer to life the universe and everthing.

Answer 7

The Earth was destroyed before the question was determined. We only know the answer, 42.

Answer 8

excerpt:
"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

Your question is exactly the point to the answer. If you knew what the meaning of life was, there would be no point living it.

Answer 9

The idea in the book is that it is impossible to know the meaning of life. You could know the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything, or you could know the question, but not both.

Answer 10

In Terry Pratchett's The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the answer to the ultimate question, of life, the universe and everything was computed by a machine called Deep Thought. After many millenia calulating the answer the machine responded with '42'.