The meaning of Life?

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[Fred the Cat]

How strange that three sets of cubes can be found to represent numbers and matter. Perhaps there is a twist to the solution of 42?

In the Rubik's hypercube!

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Click to play embedded YouTube video.

How strange that three sets of cubes can be found to represent numbers and matter. Perhaps there is a twist to the solution of 42?

In the Rubik's hypercube!

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Two bears savaging the 42 youths at Elisha's command (1453 French manuscript).

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2 Kings 2:23-24: And [Elisha] went vp from thence vnto Bethel: and as hee was going vp by the way, there came foorth little children out of the citie, and mocked him, and said vnto him, Goe vp thou bald head, Goe vp thou bald head. And hee turned backe, and looked on them, and cursed them in the Name of the Lord: and there came foorth two shee Beares out of the wood, and tare fortie and two children of them.

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[Ann]

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Hey, Art, you know I'm not going to watch any videos that you introduce that way, but...

Why don't you bring up Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch while you're at it?

Ann

[bystander]

42

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Why don't you bring up Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch while you're at it?

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[Chris Peterson]

Adams Douglas picked up 42 at random, without any hidden meaning and now all people are considering this number as an important and analyzing its meaning, providing hilarious theories. I guess because life would be boring without making much ado about nothing (c)

By picking that number, he gave it meaning!

[Ann]

Adams Douglas picked up 42 at random, without any hidden meaning and now all people are considering this number as an important and analyzing its meaning, providing hilarious theories. I guess because life would be boring without making much ado about nothing (c)

M42: Inside the Orion Nebula. Image Credit & Copyright: Reinhold Wittich.

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Hey, I love it. The meaning of life is 42.

Even if there is a "M" in front of it, and the whole thing is in mapped color!

Ann

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Adams Douglas picked up 42 at random, without any hidden meaning and now all people are considering this number as an important and analyzing its meaning, providing hilarious theories. I guess because life would be boring without making much ado about nothing (c)

By picking that number, he gave it meaning!

Was Douglas Adams influenced by Lewis Carroll, with his '42' answer and others things?

<<In this QA, https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/311/3804, which says that Adams got his number from good old-fashioned garden-gazing.

But while I was looking for the sum completed by the apes in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I came across something peculiar, Lewis Carroll seems to make more references to 42 than Adams:

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has 42 illustrations.
  
  Alice's attempts at multiplication (chapter two of Adventures in Wonderland) work if one uses base 18 to write the first answer, and increases the base by threes to 21, 24, etc. (the answers working up to 4 × 12 = "19" in base 39), but "breaks" precisely when one attempts the answer to 4 × 13 in base 42, leading Alice to declare "oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!"
  
  Rule Forty-two in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ("All persons more than a mile high to leave the court").
  
  Rule 42 of the Code in the preface to The Hunting of the Snark ("No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm").
  
  In "fit the first" of The Hunting of the Snark the Baker had "forty-two boxes, all carefully packed, With his name painted clearly on each."
  
  The White Queen announces her age as "one hundred and one, five months and a day", which—if the best possible date is assumed for the action of Through the Looking-Glass—gives a total of 37,044 days. If the Red Queen, as part of the same chess set, is regarded as the same age, their combined age is 74,088 days, or 42 × 42 × 42.

What's the relationship between the two authors?>>

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42º : The angle rounded to whole degrees for which a rainbow appears (the critical angle).

As determined by the Babylonians, in 79 years Mars orbits the Sun almost exactly 42 times.

In 1966, mathematician Paul Cooper theorized that the fastest, most efficient way to travel across continents would be to bore a straight hollow tube directly through the Earth, connecting a set of antipodes, remove the air from the tube and fall through. The first half of the journey consists of free-fall acceleration, while the second half consists of an exactly equal deceleration. The time for such a journey works out to be 42 minutes. Even if the tube does not pass through the exact center of the Earth, the time for a journey powered entirely by gravity (known as a gravity train) always works out to be 42 minutes, so long as the tube remains friction-free, as while the force of gravity would be lessened, the distance traveled is reduced at an equal rate. (The same idea was proposed, without calculation by Lewis Carroll in 1893 in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.) [Now we know that is not true, and it only would take about 38 minutes.]

• Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end! `I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ she said aloud. `I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think–‘ (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) `–yes, that’s about the right distance–but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?’ (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)
  
  Presently she began again. `I wonder if I shall fall right THROUGH the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think–‘ (she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this time, as it didn’t sound at all the right word) `–but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?’ (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke–fancy CURTSEYING as you’re falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) `And what an ignorant little girl she’ll think me for asking! No, it’ll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.’

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The ASCII code 42 is for the asterisk symbol * , being a wildcard for everything.

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<<Molybdenum is a chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42. Molybdenum is the 42nd most abundant element in the Universe. The Russian Luna 24 mission discovered a molybdenum-bearing grain in a pyroxene fragment taken from Mare Crisium on the Moon.>>

Ancient Egypt: Over most of pharonic Egyptian history, the empire was divided into 42 nomes. Ancient Egyptian religion and mythological structure frequently model this terrestrial structure.

• 42 body parts of Osiris: In some traditions of the Osiris myth, Seth slays Osiris and distributes his 42 body parts all over Egypt. (In others, the number is fourteen and sixteen).
  
  42 books in the core library: Clement of Alexandria states that the Egyptian temple library is divided into 42 "absolutely necessary" books that formed the stock of a core library.
  
  42 negative confessions: In Egyptian mythology, there are 42 questions asked of persons making their journey through Death. Ma'at, a female personification, considered to be both maternal and a delivering force, is an Ancient Egyptian personification of physical and moral law, order, and truth. In the judgment scene described in the Egyptian and the Book of Pass (the Book of the Dead, which evolved from the Coffin Texts and the Pyramid Texts), there are 42 questions personifying the analysis of Ma'at. If the departed reasonably can give answers to the 42 questions, they have the potential to either be reincarnate, or if completely successful, reach the ultimate goal of becoming a Star, whereon, they can continue to give Light, and fuel Universal growth. These 42 questions correspond to the "42 Negative Confessions" from funerary texts such as the Papyrus of Ani.
  
  There are 42 Stations of the Exodus which are the locations visited by the Israelites following their exodus from Egypt, recorded in Numbers 33, with variations also recorded in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy.
  
  42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabbalistic tradition. In Kabbalah, the most significant name is that of the En Sof (also known as "Ein Sof", "Infinite" or "Endless"), who is above the Sefirot (sometimes spelled "Sephirot"). The Forty-Two-Lettered Name contains four combined names which are spelled in Hebrew letters (spelled in letters = 42 letters), which is the name of Azilut (or "Atziluth" "Emanation"). While there are obvious links between the Forty-Two Lettered Name of the Babylonian Talmud and the Kabbalah's Forty-Two Lettered Name, they are probably not identical because of the Kabbalah's emphasis on numbers. The Kabbalah also contains a Forty-Five Lettered Name and a Seventy-Two Lettered Name.
  
  The number 42 appears in various contexts in Christianity. There are 42 generations (names) in the Gospel of Matthew's version of the Genealogy of Jesus; it is prophesied that for 42 months the Beast will hold dominion over the Earth (Revelation 13:5); 42 men of Beth-azmaveth were counted in the census of men of Israel upon return from exile (Ezra 2:24); God sent bears to maul 42 of the teenage boys who mocked Elisha for his baldness (2 Kings 2:23), etc.
  
  The Gutenberg Bible is also known as the "42-line Bible", as the book contained 42 lines per page.
  
  The Forty-Two Articles (1552), largely the work of Thomas Cranmer, were intended to summarize Anglican doctrine, as it now existed under the reign of Edward VI.