42 (answer) facts for kids
In the famous science fiction book series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is presented as the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything." This incredible answer was calculated by a supercomputer named Deep Thought. Deep Thought was considered the second most powerful computer ever built.
After millions of years of work, the people who created Deep Thought were surprised by the answer. They didn't understand what to do with a simple number like 42. They also didn't know what to tell everyone who had waited 7.5 million years for this important answer!
What is the Ultimate Question?
When Deep Thought was asked to reveal the Ultimate Question that went with the answer "42", it admitted it couldn't figure that out. However, Deep Thought offered to help design an even more powerful computer. This new computer would be able to find the question.
Earth: A Giant Computer
This new, super-powerful computer would be very special. It would use living beings as part of its "computational matrix" – meaning living things would help it process information. This massive computer was designed to run for ten million years. It turns out, this computer was the planet Earth itself!
The Number 42 in Other Ways
The number 42 has some interesting connections beyond the books. For example, in ASCII (which stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange), the number 42 represents an asterisk symbol (*). ASCII is a way that computers store text characters as numbers.
