Line #65 WMG/TheUltimateQuestionOfLifeTheUniverseAndEverything


1	[[WMG: The Ultimate Answer is-!!!!.......]]
2	* Cause, you realize we have to wait through that, do you?
3
4	[[WMG: What do you get if you multiply 6 * 7?]]
5	Not the answer to life, the universe and everything.
6
7	[[WMG: 42 is some kind of probability.]]
8	Makes sense considering probability/improbability is such a big feature of all the books. Maybe there's a 1:42 chance of discovering the question. Or maybe it's a 1:42 chance that the universe actually HAS meaning and isn't just inherently random. Something like that.
9	* I thought about this some more and it really does make perfect sense. Surely the most important question you could ask about life, the universe and everything is whether there even IS an answer to life, the universe and everything? The answer is 42 meaning either that (if you're a cynic) there's a 1:42 chance there's an answer, or (if you're an optimist) there's a 42% chance that the universe has an answer.
10
11	[[WMG: How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they're forever banned?]]
12	* The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is 42.
13	** The ants are my friends too!
14	** Jossed by reality. Cannonballs flew much more than 42 times before they were banned (due to evolution in weapon technology).
15	*** And it's not like you can't still use them, but just that there are better options available.
16
17	[[WMG: How many roads must a man walk down?]]
18	42 for all the above.
19	* Of course, the correct question is: "How many years can some people exist, before they're allowed to be free?" (42 years: from the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in February 1948, to the Velvet Revolution of November 1989.)
20	** No, people are never free. But how many Celsius degrees are necessary to start protein degradation?
21	* [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons "Do]] ''[[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons I]]'' [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons know what 'rhetorical' means?!"]]
22	** Yes.
23
24
25	[[WMG: How many times have this question and its answer both been known?]]
26	42! No, wait... 43! No, wait... 44!
27	* In basic?
28
29	[[WMG: Pick a number, any number.]]
30	Canon evidence: In ''The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'', Marvin reveals that he knows the question, which he read from Arthur's brain. (He also has a brain the size of a planet, which presumably is necessary for calculating it in the first place.) Later, in ''Life, the Universe, and Everything'', he says to Zem the mattress:
31	--> '''Marvin:''' Pick a number, any number.\
32	'''Zem:''' Er, five.\
33	'''Marvin:''' Wrong. You see?
34	* Technically that's not a question.
35	** No wonder no one else has been able to figure it out.
36	* reword to "What number am I thinking of that is between -∞ and ∞ to actually make a question.
37	** Technically, it would be 'what number are you thinking of?'
38	** I figure it's "Pick a number, any number" in the form of a question. Because nobody has figured out what that would be, the universe has not been destroyed.
39	** If you know the answer, you're most likely to pick it as a number. Which means the question is something like, "What percentage of people, when asked to pick a number, will choose the Ultimate Answer if they have been told about it beforehand?"
40
41
42	[[WMG: How many people actually care what the ultimate question is if the answer is something as inane as 42?]]
43	Exactly one and a half.
44	* So, does that make me the one or the half?
45	** [[MathematiciansAnswer Yes]].
46	* You'd care if it was a password (like, maybe you say it to Saint Peter and you get to enter heaven, or you say it to the mirror and God answers all your questions about life).
47	* Ironically enough, it turns out it's 42.
48
49	[[WMG: What do you get when you multiply six by nine?]]
50	The true answer would, of course, be "54"; since we all know the answer is "42", this shows that the universe is inherently off-kilter.
51	* This question was acquired in the third book via a random draw from a bag full of Scrabble tiles - however, this would be impossible with a regulation Scrabble set (too many Ys, for one thing), meaning the result was not only influenced by the Golgafrinchams, but by a faulty set of tiles. Either that, or Arthur had made some spare tiles, due to the cavemen tossing the letter Q into privet bushes (oh wait, that one was Ford), and this troper thinks too much.
52	* This troper has calculated that there is, in fact, a time in which 6 x 9 does, in fact, equal 42... when you're working in Base 13.
53	** See above about base 13.
54	** To quote Mr. Adams himself "I don't write my jokes in base 13!"
55	* How 6 x 9 = 42. Conventional math says 6 x 9 = 54, 5 + 4 = 9, but 5 - 4 = 1, 9 - 1 = 8, 8 = 4 x 2 or (4)2 or 42.
56
57	[[WMG: It's sex.]]
58	Well, Arthur Dent figured it out after all!!
59	* This troper is reminded of a fanfiction she read once which combined the actual Scrabble tile-drawn question of "six by nine", stated above, with this. Some people...
60	* 42..Kneeling on the ground and nuzzling your partner while giving him anal sex while he is stroking himself?
61	** Aha! So that means the answer is actually gay sex! IT'S TRUE! HOMOSEXUALITY WILL BRING ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!
62	*** It could be interpreted as the male kneeling while the female strokes him from between her knees and receives cunnilingus from behind. So if you multiply ("x", or cross around) 6 by 9... It sort of works.
63
64	[[WMG: Alternatively,it's how many times you will have sex.]]
65	Yes,my friends.The Ulitmate Question to Life,The,Universe and Everything is how many times you will have sex in your lifespan.Exactly 42 times.Even if it seems like you've had sex [[ReallyGetsAround more or less]] than 42 times,this is a lie.All implanted by The Silence from Doctor Who,working to ensure that the universe doesn't blow up.The cracks were what happened the last time someone answered.
66
67	[[WMG: What is the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?]]
68	That's what the mice asked, and where told that it isn't the real question
69	* No, the mice didn't ask anything. They just told Deep Thought to tell them the answer.
70
71	[[WMG: What is the air-speed velocity of a fully-laden swallow?]]
72	* African or European?
73	** Arcturan Mega-.
74	* They migrate!
75	* Blue. No, Yellow!
76	* Depends on whether it's laden with a coconut or a holy hand grenade.
77	* Un-laden, it's approximately 20 mph.
78	* 42 mph.
79
80	[[WMG: The answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is '''''NOT'''''' 42.]]
81	Ask any magician; they'll tell you that it is, in fact, 37. At least, that's what everyone thinks when they're asked to select a two-digit number between 1 and 50, with both digits being odd, but not the same number...
82	* 37?! (Really hoping somebody gets the reference...)
83	* In a row?!
84
85
86	[[WMG: The "distortion of the right one" theory was right, but the part that's right isn't what we thought.]]
87	The real question has nothing to do with "what do you get if you multiply ___ by ___," but does indeed include the numbers six and nine.
88
89	* So it's sex.
90
91	[[WMG: In how many seconds from now will Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya discover her omnipotence?]]
92	Well, it fits with the whole "if both are known, the universe will be destroyed and replaced by something much more confusing" assertion.
93
94	[[WMG: How many inane questions will be on this page before whoever's in charge finally gets sick of it?]]
95	42!!!
96	* {{Jossed}} as there are more than 42 guesses on here.
97
98	[[WMG: The answer ''isn't'' 42.]]
99	The mice decided to play it safe and not let humans know the answer, in case knowing both might cancel out the universe.
100	* Alternately, Deep Thought never told the mice the correct answer. Maybe it couldn't even figure out the answer, and a) just wanted to see if the mice would build Earth, b) wanted to live for a few billion more years, or c) just wanted to show up the Great Hyperbolic Omnicognate Neutron Wrangler.
101	** The answer ''might'' be... Boobies. Size 42... It's B-cups, BTW.
102
103	[[WMG: You can't know both the question AND the answer at the same time.]]
104	You can't handle the truth!
105	* Alternatively: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle-like entity. You can't know one if you know the other.
106	** Babies know the answer, they don't know about the question yet, and thus know the answer without knowing it...
107
108	[[WMG: The Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is: "What is ''not'' the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?"]]
109	LogicBomb!
110	* So the answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is everything that is NOT The answer Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything, which basically IS The Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything PLUS Life, The Universe, and Everything... And since The Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is... Recursion at its best, people.
111
112	[[WMG: How many fingers am I holding up?]]
113	* 6 x 9 fingers.
114	** 6+9 is fifteen... fifteen divided by five is three, Zaphod Beeblebrox has three arms, and we don't know that he doesn't have one six-fingered hand and one hand mising a finger... So he's holding up six fingers on one side by nine on the other... [[ContemplatingYourHands Woah...]] [[GargleBlaster Woah.]]
115
116	[[WMG:Consider the following C code]]
117
118	-->[=#=]define SIX 1+5
119	-->[=#=]define NINE 8+1
120
121	-->int main()
122	-->{
123	---> printf("How much do you get if you mulitiply SIX by NINE? %i!",SIX*NINE");
124	-->}
125
126	Of course, the program will output 42, [[spoiler:because SIXNINE will be interpreted as 1+58+1=1+40+1=42, not as (1+5)(8+1)=69=56]].
127	* Presumably meaning that the universe is written in C.
128	** There are worse ways to code the universe. [[spoiler: It's probably actually written in some kind of brainfuck-malbolge hybrid language, which would make some progress towards explaining Murphy's Law.]]
129	*** Incidentally, C is derived from that language.
130	*** See [[http://xkcd.com/224/ this]] xkcd.
131
132	[[WMG:[[http://morganwick.freehostia.com/webcomic/index.php?stripnum=42 What do you get when you add together Life, The Universe, and Everything?]]]]
133
134	[[WMG: How many different universes are there?]]
135	We ''believe'' that there are an infinite number of universes, and everything that happens in the Hitchhiker universe after Arthur and Ford are picked up by the Heart of Gold is dependent on this fact, so if it is discovered that there are only 42, then the "universe" (that is, our perception of it) will be destroyed and be replaced by something infinitely weirder (by being ''not'' infinite).
136
137	[[WMG: Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?]]
138	Some guy who wrote the book of love.
139
140	[[WMG: Why should you NOT use math to figure out the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?]]
141	[[LogicBomb 42.]]
142
143	[[WMG: 42 is also the question.]]
144	The reflexive property at work. It states that every number equals itself. So, 42 = 42.
145	* This implies an Objectivist universe, which is truly terrifying.
146	* Didn't the ACTUAL answer get revealed as some other number in one of the later books anyway?
147	** The above troper is probably thinking of [[spoiler:Stavromula Beta being revealed as Stavro Mueller's Beta Club]] in Mostly Harmless, [[FanonDiscontinuity which doesn't count anyway]].
148	*** Or God's final message to His creation: [[spoiler:We apologize for the inconvenience. It made Marvin happy.]]
149	* And perhaps the penultimate answer is also 42. I have often heard the following exchange:
150	-->Person 1: 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
151	-->Person 2: What's the question?
152	-->Person 1: That is the question.
153	** So it stands to reason that the final exchange is as follows: (keeping in mind that ultimate means "final")
154	-->Penultimate question: What's the question?
155	-->Penultimate answer: 42.
156	-->Ultimate question: 42?
157	-->Ultimate answer: 42.
158	** Or perhaps 42 is the penultimate question, and the ultimate question is "what is the penultimate question?"
159
160	[[WMG: Can 42 be adjusted for inflation?]]
161	47
162
163	[[WMG: How many days can you detain a terrorism suspect in the UK without charge?]]
164	* canned laughter*
165	** 41.98765432123456789 (squared... to the 10th power... cubed)
166
167	[[WMG: The Question is "Where does Arthur Dent die?"]]
168	One, we know that Arthur is very important from the man who had too much Truth Serum.
169	Secondly, we know that our perception of time is not necessarily the right direction. Take both the New Guide's comment on "You think Time runs that way?", along with the decreasing Zaphod Beeblebroxes ("The Nothingth!")
170	Lastly, correlate the facts that "Knowing the Answer and the Question will recreate the Universe into something much more weird", "Some people believe that this has already happened", how (after Arthur's death) "Television was less interesting", and the way time actually goes opposite to what we know.
171
172	[[WMG: The Question is "How Many Presidents will the United States Have Had When The World Ends?"]]
173	Since Grover Cleveland is counted as two people, this means that the universe will end on January 19, 2009, at precisely 11:59:59:99.
174	* But...but.... I was gonna vote for [[TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}} Dunkelzahn]]! And [[VideoGame/MetalWolfChaos Michael Wilson]]! More to the point, wouldn't Cleveland counting as two people be the inverse of your point, meaning the world technically ended after the Clinton admin-[[Main/TakeThat Oh, wait...]]
175	** No, you're confusing "counted" and "counting." Cleveland does not count as two people in the literal sense, but people will still count him as two presidents when he was actually the ''same'' president with two ''terms.'' In other words:
176	--> A square never has three sides, but a square and something with three sides is a triangle.
177	*** He wasn't the only president that served two terms. I think most of them did. Certainly you wouldn't count him twice because his terms weren't consecutive. While we're at it, what about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rice_Atchison David Rice Atchison]] who may or may not have been president for a day depending on your interpretation? How about the 16 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_Continental_Congress#List_of_presidents Presidents of Continental Congress]]? Or the presidents of the Confederacy or the Republic of Texas? Washington was just the first after the Constitution was adopted. It seems Taft was the 42nd President of the United States. Also, this doesn't say when the universe will end, just when the United States will. If there's a revolution during the 42 President's term resulting in either there being no United States or the United States not having a President, there will only have been 42 Presidents when the world ends.
178	* [[TakeThat Maybe this one wasn't so off after all. Well done.]]
179	* Well Bill Clinton was the 42nd President, and it flipped out when Bush came to power in 2001.... Oh, everyone said the world will end in 2000, with the MillenniumBug, the [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion Second Impact]], etc., so did the world end during Clinton's era, and are we all in [[EverybodyIsJesusInPurgatory Purgatory]]?
180	* Oh oh!!! your talkin' 'bout Bush right?!
181
182	[[WMG: The number of Death Notes that can function in the human realm.]]
183	So the book says six, but then again, we've only seen about 4 at one time, what's to say that was a valid rule?
184	** Actually its six excluding ones owned by shinigami clearly 42 is how many can function in the human realm including ones owned by shinigami.
185	*** Shinigami? Shi-ni-gami? 4-2-gami? This might actually be plausible.
186	*** Nicely caught. marks down to bring up to friends
187
188	[[WMG: {2b ∨ ¬2b} = ?]]
189	That is the question.
190
191	[[WMG: What is at the center of the galaxy?]]
192	Here's a cookie if you get the reference.
193	* William Shatner?
194	** [[spoiler: Or alternately- how many shots does the Staff of Life have?]]
195	** I've got it! [[spoiler: How many [[BoldlyComing shots]] does William Shatner's Staff of Life have?]]
196
197	[[WMG: One equals 42.]]
198	* Think about it. If 1 times 0 equals 0, and 42 times 0 equals 0, then 42 times 0 equals 1 times 0. [[InsaneTrollLogic Cancel the zeroes and you get 42 = 1.]]
199	** You divided by zero! Way to doom mankind, man.
200	*** So the theory about the universe restarting was right. Clearly the first person who said that out loud said it on the eleventh of May, 2001, thus killing Douglas Adams and ending the universe of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy permanently and without reprieve. It all makes sense now!
201
202	[[WMG: It's actually eleven.]]
203	Wait, no, that's ridiculous. That's not even funny.
204
205	[[WMG: How many entries will there be on this page before the Question is known?]]
206	HA HA HA.
207
208	[[WMG: Why did the fish explode oil paintings?]]
209	42.
210
211	[[WMG: How many years will it take to make everyone happy?]]
212	It appears nobody has remembered Fenchurch. You know, the one who knew the question and how to make everyone happy? Yeah, her. I think what happened goes something like this;
213	-->''[Fenchurch takes a sip of coffee]''
214	-->'''Fenchurch:''' Hmm... Why is everyone so sad? If only we could... Hmm...
215	-->''[Fenchurch takes another sip]''
216	-->'''Fenchurch:''' Maybe if we... THAT'S IT! ...But, how many years would it take? Hmm... Probably about... Forty-tw-
217	-->''[Vogons destroy the Earth]''
218
219	[[WMG: How many times older than the universe is Marvin?]]
220	See the [=H2G2=] entry [[Main/TheSlowPath here]] (the Literature one, not the Live-Action TV one).
221
222	[[WMG: How many times have we answered the Ultimate Question of Life The Universe And Everything?]]
223	Well, according to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, if this question were ever answered, then the universe would disappear and be replaced by something much more complex. This go around, we finally ask how many times this has happened before.
224
225	[[WMG: How many times will we answer the Ultimate Question of Life The Universe And Everything?]]
226	As above, but this time, we want to know how many more times we'll answer it before the Universe becomes too complex to answer.
227
228	[[WMG: Which was the best episode of Doctor Who?]]
229	Apparently the Universe didn't like the original series, or the Doctor-lite ''Blink''.
230
231	[[WMG: The question isn't 'what is the meaning of life?', it's 'why does life have meaning?']]
232	The answer is that life has meaning because everything will eventually die. The computer just said it in a really weird way (possibly because it knew that no one would like that answer). 42=shini=die.
233	** Since this is the 42nd WMG, it must be the correct one. (See the WMG 7 levels up)
234
235	[[WMG: This question is the ultimate question of Life and the Universe and Everything]]
236	Or it would have been, if not for the question eating itself than spitting it back out, due to the sheer audacity of the issue, being both the question and the answer of the question's nature.
237
238	[[WMG: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?]]
239	42. Well, the question's been debated for a long time, and the answer would be numerical, so...
240	* [[ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}} I don't care what you say, the answer is six.]]
241	* [[Literature/GoodOmens One]]. (As long as it's the gavotte.)
242	** Oddly, this is the 42nd theory on this page. [[EpilepticTrees Which should mean it's the most likely to be true...]]
243	* Ten Thousand times Ten Thousand and Thousands of Thousands...
244	[[WMG: [[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail What is your favorite color]]?]]
245	42. The universe has just gotten slightly stranger for each person who read that. And may have been catapulted into a bottomless ravine.
246	* 42 as in... 000042? Or while we are at it, '''#'''000042?
247	** Hmm... Ooh, dark blue. Nice. Not my favorite color, but... Nice. Hmm... And #420000 is a dark shade of red... Possibly the placement of 42 within the hexadecimal color code is relative?
248	*** And there IS a sentient shade of dark blue...
249
250	[[WMG: What's God's favorite number?]]
251	Well... Perhaps it's ''not'' 42, but 6, or 8.
252
253	** Oh, oh, FridgeBrilliance alert! Of course 42 is God's favorite number...or rather, the [[CreatorProvincialism favorite number]] of Douglas Adams!
254
255	[[WMG: What is God's telephone number?]]
256
257	When Deep Thought was set to work calculating the Answer, there was a heated argument nearby involving a pair of philosophers, who complained that there was no need for them to wonder whether or not God exists if a machine can give you his phone number. Soon after, Deep Thought announces its circuits are irrevocably committed to calculating the Answer.
258	* Then what's the country code?
259
260	[[WMG: The Answer is 42, but only in a Universe of numbers.]]
261
262	The Answer would make sense only if the Universe didn't contain any of this troublesome "life" that keeps doing things on its own and mucking up complex calculations by crash-landing on computer-planets and such. If there was no life, the Answer 42 would make sense, but there would be no one around to make sense of it. As it happens, life does exist, so the Answer doesn't make sense.
263	* One could go on to say that if you did manage to make sense of the fundamentally nonsensical Answer, then anything that made sense before would suddenly not make sense, since you've changed your mind so entirely by understanding the Answer that it cannot comprehend anything else. Thus the Universe, for you, at least, has been replaced by something infinitely more bizarre (since this is an infinite Universe and all). It's all a matter of perspective (which I'm sure is a concept mentioned in the Trilogy somewhere - the Total Perspective Vortex, for one).
264	* Or, possibly, it's the answer to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet Daniel Tammet]]. Somebody, get him to model what he sees 42 as!
265	* Wait, wait, wait; does this mean that The Auditors of Reality not only know, but understand the answer AND the question at once, and are therefore working towards a universe that can freely express them both without collapsing in on itself & being replaced? OH SHI--
266
267	[[WMG: Figuring out the question is quite difficult, but it's person-dependent.]]
268	Well, take someone really, really important that was born on 12/30, and ask what's the result of the sum of their birthmonth and birthday (not birthyear, of course). Or maybe it's something else, but I can't recall...
269
270	[[WMG: The Answer is no longer 42.]]
271	Someone(possibly Fenchurch) figured out the Question-Answer pair ("What is six times seven?" "42." or some variant), and the universe changed into something much stranger. When the Universe was altered, the Answer had to change as well, because it is the Answer to the Great Question of Life, '''the Universe''', and Everything.
272
273	[[WMG: The new answer is "fish". ]]
274	* 2+2=The answer?
275
276	[[WMG:[[Theatre/{{Hamlet}} To Be Or Not To Be?]]]]
277	For you see, the answer, forty two, is actually a letter of the alphabet. Because there are only twenty-six letters, you need to loop it. The result is 'P', essentially 'B' but slightly different. So, quite simply, Life, The Universe, and Everything is simply because it is. It exists because it should. It took the 'be' option. It is. We are. This could also be interpreted as there being no true answer. Or, if you flip the numbers around and find the twenty-fourth, you get X- a letter commonly used for variables. So one should [[Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann go beyond the impossible and kick reason to the curb]], because absolutely anything could happen or be.
278
279	[[WMG: [[Creator/SpikeSpencer Uhh... Am I Real?]]]]
280
281	[[WMG: The Question is "How many [[Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya Haruhi]] remakes/continuations/spinoffs will be there?"]]
282	Did I just make the Universe a bit weirder?
283
284	[[WMG: What is the author's favorite number?]]
285	Deep Thought was so powerful that it broke the FourthWall.
286
287	[[WMG: Every question is the real question, so every entry on this page is re-making the Universe]]
288	Add to that everyone who's trying to think about what the question is outside of here...that's a lot of extra weirdness.
289
290	[[WMG: [[WesternAnimation/AGoofyMovie How many cups of sugar does it take to get to the moon]]?]]
291	Biofuel is the key to efficient FTL travel.
292
293	[[WMG: How many milliliters of LSD would it take to affect Creator Diety?]]
294	It's got a very low chemical tolerance for an omnipotent being.
295
296	[[WMG: How many dimensions are there?]]
297	When you reach 42, the universe flips in-squide-uot.
298
299	[[WMG: What does God's final message say to a seemingly non-sentient being?]]
300	This is a continuation of a WMG posted in WMG/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy. It states that God's final message to his creation is seen differently by every person. What would it say to something apparently with no sentience? 42.
301
302	[[WMG: What happened to the baker when he met with the [[Literature/TheHuntingOfTheSnark Snark]], and how old was he at the time?]]
303	[[spoiler:42]].
304
305	[[WMG: The Ultimate Question is...]]
306	[[spoiler:What is the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything?]]
307
308	[[WMG: The real Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question is not 42, but...]]
309	[[spoiler: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism Ourselves.]]]]
310
311	[[WMG: "What colour does the number 'A' feel like?"]]
312	42, off course.
313
314	[[WMG: "What is the best shoe size?"]]
315	42, of course. The only problem is thanks to Dolmansaxlil Shoe Shop, you can't find a fitting pair from Earth.
316
317	[[WMG: What sound does the smell of yellow taste like?]]
318	The phonetic pronunciation of 42
319
320	[[WMG: Where does it all end?]]
321	This one comes from a readthrough of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The question "Where does it all end?" comes at the bottom of page 42, and with the spacing that the publication used, it looks like the editor was responding to the question as it was posed
322
323	[[WMG: [[WMG/TimeLord How many Time Lords make up the entire population of the universe?]]]]
324
325	[[WMG: The universe ending effect requires also having the wisdom to realize the full ramifications.]]
326	The "Oh sh-" realization crashes the universe.
327
328	[[WMG: Why are we here?]]
329
330	All humanity , all sentient life , are just neurons and fuses. All thinking , all existing to act as the background running power of a greatest meta physical Artificial intelligence in creation. We are nerves and synapses created to house its incredible processing power. Literally incalculable. Nothing we do matters, how many children we have. What we do to one another or leave behind. Just static waste, we exist to provide running time to this Meta Physical AI that encompasses all reality and time. Who built it? Unknown. What is it's purpose? To answer one question , and only one question.
331	The Question? Must never be said or it could cause a system corruption leading to a reboot vis a via a new big bang. What happens what this AI finds the Answer?
332
333	We will never know, because we will never have existed. We will be replaced by a new reality , a new faster set of neurons and fuses . Ready to spend billions of years on the next question...
334
335	[[WMG: How many gallons of oil does one barrel of crude oil make?]]
336	42. No joke.
337
338	[[WMG: The meaning of life is whatever you want it to be.]]
339
340	[[WMG: How many more books will Douglas Adams add to his Hitchhiker's Trilogy in the afterlife?]]
341
342	Because four, five, or six volumes aren't ''nearly'' enough for a trilogy.
343
344	[[WMG: The Question is not "What is the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe, and Everything", but "What is Douglas Adams' Ultimate Answer to his own Life, the Universe, and Everything?"]]
345
346	[[WMG: The statement “The answer to life, the universe and everything is 42” is a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompleteness_theorem Gödel statement]].]]
347	Think about it. It takes a while to sink in...
348
349	[[WMG: How many ways does it take to kill [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]]?]]
350	42. This is actually fact.
351	* That means World War Two was actually caused by the pan-dimensional beings attempting to find out the Ultimate Question? creepy.
352
353	[[WMG: Life has no meaning]]
354	6*9=/=42. But this was the only answer we got. Therefore everythign is pointless. OF course, this can still be blmaed on the Golgafrinchams, but that would mean they ''made'' life pointless.
355	* Would that mean that maybe heaven and hell were overcrowded which is why the universe was made and this is just an endless cycle?
356
357	[[WMG: How many times the Universe has Run is the Ultimate question]]
358
359	Big Boom - Expansion - Life- Evolution - Existence - Burn out - Compression - Silence - Darkness - Spark - Big boom again.
360
361	What has come before will come again. 41 times has all time and space ended and 42 times has it begun. It will never stop , existence never stops. Stars burn out, time stops all fades until in time unmeasurable it begins again. 41 different Universe, 41 different different laws of reality and physics. 41 worlds of Earth, with 41 different names. Previously the we evolved from Jellyfish, a bird like being with three arms. Life NEVER ENDS. The reason for it all is existence itself. 42 times it ends and begins.. 42 times and counting.
362
363	[[WMG: God/The Great Green Arkleseizure/Bob/Thor/Whoever put a safeguard into the minds of every sentient being in the Universe.]]
364
365	It's a safeguard that means that as soon as you know what the ANSWER is, your forget what the QUESTION is, and vice-versa.
366	* Ahh, then that still leaves room for non-sentient beings to figure it out.
367
368	[[WMG: The Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe, and Everything really is [[Franchise/TouhouProject (9)]].]]
369
370	42's got nothing on the [[MemeticMutation strongest number in existance.]]
371	* Might be plausible. I'm sure something THAT significant won't leave a lot of room in that fairy head. Which would also explain why she's considered an idiot, she jsut can't think of much due to The Answer! Maybe that also explains Icicle Fall easy, she's subconsciously letting her opponent in to talk to about The Answer. And of course she hasn't met Koishi yet...
372	[[WMG: [[Music/TheBeatles How many holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall?]]]]
373
374	[[WMG: The answer is: to make life fair...]]
375
376	[[WMG: Clash of Meanings]]
377	I believe than when they say the discovery of the meaning will lead to a stranger reality; I think the meaning is left to each individual and the Universe and life and everything would become odd because each individual is going about to and fro tring to accomplish their purpose.
378	[[WMG: The answer is the result of an overflow error inside Deep Thought.]]
379	** HEY WAIT!!! We already have the answers! We should be looking for the questions... we got derailed somehow...
380
381	[[WMG: Guess what Patrick Star said as an answer in a recent episode of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants''!]]
382	[[spoiler:42.]]
383
384	[[WMG: What is the most inane answer to a funamental question of the cosmos?]]
385	It's forty-two.(universe collapses)
386
387	[[WMG: A Cow is the meaning of life.]]
388	Add up the the word's letter's place in the alphabet: A:1, C:3, O:15, W:23.
389	1+3+15+23= Guess...
390
391	[[WMG: What will be the year that the ultimate question will be answered?]]
392	42,of course. Luckily,the answer wasn't specific enough to tell us what the dating system is,or what number system is being used.
393
394	[[WMG: How many answers are there for life,the universe and everything?]]
395	That's why the universe will be destroyed and recreated into something weirder-because of the major MindScrew and LogicBomb revolving around it. The question will generate a paradox, and then reality will divide by zero.
396
397	[[WMG: What do you get if you multiply six by nine in a restaurant?]]
398	42, which lets you deduce bistromathics; problems that seem impossible on paper can be solved when numbers dance on a waiter's bill pad -- reality and unreality collide such that each becomes the other and anything is possible -- a phenomenon which you must have encountered, and which can at any moment impress a young girl sitting on her own (so long as she's, y'know, in a small cafe in Rickmansworth).
399
400	And if not for running out of Scrabble pieces, Arthur Dent would've finished spelling it out.
401
402
403	[[WMG: Why is a raven like a writing desk?]]
404	The Earth is the hardware, and Wonderland is the software. Lewis Caroll had an obsession with 42, and both Wonderland and the universe make the amount of sense this does.
405
406	[[WMG: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?]]
407	It's either that, or it's "How many boards would the mongols hoard if the mongol hordes got bored?"
408
409
410	[[WMG: The Meaning of Life is itself, but not in the way you would think]]
411	Presented here[[http://draconilian-dktech.blogspot.com/2011/10/meaning-of-forty-two.html]]
412	note there is a few paragraphs of exposition before This Troper gets to the point, its rather long.
413
414	[[WMG: The Ultimate Question is: "How many Vogons does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"]]
415	42. One to hold the lightbulb, the rest to argue about whether the form to fill out is a 2259A-gamma, "Operation of Illuminating Devices", or a 5462B-phi, "Replacement of Malfunctioning Electronics".
416
417	[[WMG: The Ultimate Question is related to the identity of Ash's father.]]
418	The identity of Ash's father is the greatest unknown, and the Ultimate Question is the greatest mystery. And what is the question? It's probably one of these:
419	* "What was the number of the episode that Ash Ketchum's father appeared in?"
420	* "How old is Ash's father?"
421	* "How many times has Ash's father appeared?"
422	* "What is the minimum/maximum amount of times Ash's father appeared?"
423
424	[[WMG: How many generations from [[Literature/TheBible Abraham to Jesus?]]]]
425	From Abraham to David, 14 generations. From David to the exile in Babylon, 14 generations. From the exile in Babylon to Jesus, 14 generations.
426
427	[[WMG: How many Literature/{{Discworld}} novels will there be?]]
428	The Very Strong Anthropic Principle states that the entire Purpose of the Universe is to make possible a being who will live in England, an island off the coast of France, and spend his time writing Discworld novels. Of which there will, of course, be 42.
429
430	[[WMG: How many butt shots in ''Film/{{The Avengers\|2012}}''?]]
431	[[http://occasionallyinteresting.tumblr.com/post/22885951446/i-went-and-saw-the-avengers-again-today Apparently, 42.]]
432
433	[[WMG: Doctor who?]]
434	42.
435
436	It doesn't make any sense, but it rhymes, so we go along with it. Which sort of fits the Universe, really.
437
438	[[WMG: It doesn't exist.]]
439	Deep Thought was just trolling it's creators big time.
440	* Possibly Deep Thought knew the question and answer couldn't exist at least with what it was given- it pretty much stated so after it gave the answer. It simply ran its problem and created the earth simply to pretend to its creators it wasn't a waste of time, and give the philosophers plenty to do.
441
442	[[WMG: Tv Tropes itself exists to locate the Question/decipher the Answer.]]
443	No other website or group seems to focus this much time on explaining things [[WildMassGuessing with crazy answers]]. We've spent years making countless theories on seemingly menial things like [[Series/DoctorWho the main species of a time-travelling science-fiction]], [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion a mecha deconstruction series]], [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} a missing father of a boy who collects super-powered animals]] and [[Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya a reality-warping fangirl.]] And this website has only been around about 9 years. Imagine what it might find in, say, [[TabletopGame/Warhammer40000 the next 37,987?]]
444	** This makes sense when you factor in that we are all programmed to help find the Ultimate Question, according to the mice. The Earth is so complex of a computer that it evolved beings over billions of years simply so that the end results would deduce the answer on their own.
445
446	[[WMG: The Question doesn't exist.]]
447	Yet the answer does, [[RealityBreakingParadox and that is what destroys the universe.]] Allow me to demonstrate:
448	* The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything is 42.
449	* In this scenario, the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything does not exist. It is nothing
450	* Zero is a mathematical term for nothing. Thus the Ultimate Question of Life, The Univers and Everything is 0
451	* Thus 42 is the answer to 0. Meaning 0=42
452	* 0 times anything equals 0, and 0 divided by anything equals 0. Anything is represented by n
453	* 0n=42n. 0/n=42/n. From what we established, this means 0=42n and 0=42/n
454	* Any number could be represented as 42n or 42/n. Thus 0=any number, 0=n
455	* If 0=n, then everything is equal to 0.
456	* Thus there is zero mass, energy, time or space in the universe. The universe cannot exist, so it vanishes in a PuffOfLogic
457	* If n=0, 0/n=0/0.
458	* 0 times anything is 0. As we established, n is anything. Thus, n has value again
459	* As anything now has value, the universe=/=zero
460	* Thus the universe is recreated from a LogicBomb. Making it exist again, stranger due to the LogicBomb making it exist
461	* I was sober when I made this WMG.
462
463	[[WMG: "Fortytwo" is the name of the son of the Fourth Doctor and the Ward Romana]]
464	and thus nephew of Irving Braxatiel and Frank'n'Furter, half-brother of the First Doctor's daughter, and uncle of Arkytior (also known as Susan Foreman). He's also the answer to life, the universe, and the everything. Because if the universe is everchanging through time, and everyone has a different purpose in life, who better to be the Answer than a Gallifreyan, perhaps one partly raised in a TARDIS (and partly in an human-ishEarthcentric way?)
465
466	Somewhere between City of Death and Full Circle, Romana and the Doctor married, and had a son named Fortytwo James Alistair Heartshaven (Gallifreyans are matriarchal) who then turned 8 and entered the Prydonian Academy. Fortytwo graduated the Academy and fulfilled his purpose to become the Answer to Life, the Universe, and the Everything. Perhaps that was even his Renegade Timelord name. It's also likely that Fortytwo died in the Time War, or maybe he's somewhere renegading aroundsettled in another planet (maybe he's the Curator?) or maybe he's still alive in a timelocked Gallifrey.
467
468	[[WMG: The answer to the universe is 420]]
469	Because Cinder from RWBY touched [[WesternAnimation/GravityFalls Bill Cipher]] in the ass
470
471	[[WMG: It's a rhetorical answer]]

Context WMG / TheUltimateQuestionOfLifeTheUniverseAndEverything