Test Research Article of The Life, The Universe, and Everything
- Michael Angelo
- Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino
- Lev Landau
- Anton
- Patrick
- Pavel
The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, 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.
Introduction[edit | edit source]
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comic science fiction series created by Douglas Adams that has become popular among fans of the genre and members of the scientific community. Phrases from it are widely recognized and often used in reference to, but outside the context of, the source material. Many writers on popular science, such as Fred Alan Wolf, Paul Davies, and Michio Kaku, have used quotations in their books to illustrate facts about cosmology or philosophy.
Methods[edit | edit source]
Mathematicians found a question whose answer is 42: what is the largest (rational) number n such that there are positive integers p, q, r such that .
Details[edit | edit source]
- in the puzzle the question is unknown;
- but the answer is already known to be 42;
Results and Discussion[edit | edit source]
The Allen Telescope Array, a radio telescope used by SETI, has 42 dishes in homage to the Answer.
In the American TV show Lost, 42 is the last of the mysterious numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. In an interview with Lostpedia, producer David Fury confirmed this was a reference to Hitchhiker's.
The British TV show The Kumars at No. 42 is so named because show creator Sanjeev Bhaskar is a Hitchhiker's fan.
The band Coldplay's 2008 album Viva la Vida includes a song called "42". When asked by Q if the song's title was Hitchhiker's-related, Chris Martin said, "It is and it isn't."
The band Level 42 chose its name in reference to the book.
The 2007 episode "42" of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who was named in reference to the Answer. Writer Chris Chibnall acknowledged that "it's a playful title".
Ken Jennings, defeated along with Brad Rutter in a Jeopardy! match against IBM's Watson, writes that Watson's avatar which appeared on-screen for those games showed 42 "threads of thought," shown as colorful lines spinning around Watson's logo, and that the number was chosen in reference to this meme.
The Hitchhiker knitting pattern, designed by Martina Behm, is a scarf with 42 teeth.
In The X-Files, Fox Mulder lives in apartment 42. This has been acknowledged by the show's creator, Chris Carter, as a reference to Hitchhikers:
<math>x=\frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}</math>
Conclusion[edit | edit source]
The dolphins had long known of the impending demolition of Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger...[1] The last ever dolphins message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault through a hoop whilst whistling "The Star-Spangled Banner," but in fact the message was this: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish."[2]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ A towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
- ↑ The phrase was also spoofed for the All Time Low track "So Long, and Thanks for All the Booze", from the appropriately-titled album Don't Panic.
