I Think I've Firgured out 42!

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#1

Well, I know there are some Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fans around the boards here (DElf4242, if I

remember correctly…) so I thought I’d share with you my thoughts on 42.

42 is the product when you

multiply 6 and 7. The reason I say this is because 6 is a number that symbolizes evil or incompletion, for it is

one short of the perfect number, 7. So if you have an incomplete number of completeion, or a complete number of

incompletions, things I guess would become balanced. Of course, this doesn’t really solve the problem of the

question, unless you want t osay that it is “What is 6 times 7?”.

Any other thoughts or

theories?

#2

I don’t have many theories on

it, but maybe Andrew Stanton was a fan of the book…

42 Wallaby

Way.

XD

#3

That’s

some pretty cool stuff you thought up there, AJ! :smiley: Of course, in actuality dear Mr. Adams just chose a random

number that seemed like it would be funny, but I’d still say your theory is certainly equal to any of the other

theories on any possible significance of the number. I’ll certainly be storing this away in my memory; quite

impressive!

Not to

mention Dr. Sherman taking 4.2 minutes in the bathroom with Reader’s Digest. :wink:

#4

I always think of the Buzz

Lightyear Of Star Command series- their starship was called ‘42’. :laughing:

As for the answer to the

question…Noooo idea…I guess the only peson who ever knew was Douglas Adams.

#5

Buzz Lightyear, Finding Nemo, AND Hitchhiker’s Guide

to the Galaxy?? Sounds like a inside joke to me!

#6

Not to mention “Lost” though they have a whole

series of numbers, the last one is 42.

#7

Your theory is a very interesting one, AJD08. Perhaps you are correct

concerning your very carefully calculated calculations. It certainly gives one something to think about.

However, after many suns and moons, watching Finding Nemo over and over

again, I finally concluded that the chosen number 42 just

might mean this:

Glen McQueen was forty-two

years old when he passed away.
The number on the mask that Dory and Marlin found was

forty-two.

Of course, I may be wrong – it’s just a thought. :wink:

#8

Wasn’t the actual question 6

times 9 or something? In other words, a completely illogical question. Thus making the deeper meaning of 42 as

the answer to life, the universe and everything being that nothing really makes sense.

#9

Actually, we’re discussing 42 in the context of the five-book trilogy (yes :stuck_out_tongue:)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which it appears that you haven’t read and

which I most highly recommend, but you can read all about that in the Favorite Books thread, so

anyways… :unamused:

I’m thinking Andrew Stanton probably is a fan of the

books, as the 42 Wallaby Way plays a very important role and is repeated numerous times, and "4.2

minutes" is highly likely to be a 42 reference just because it would be so much simpler to say "4

minutes 8 seconds" (yes, I rounded), but instead it was consciously chosen to not do it that

way.

Chances are Andrew might even be a Monty Python fan as well, as Bruce could be a reference to their

Australian Philosophers sketch. :smiley:

6 times 9

was one of the questions the [species name omitted to prevent spoilers] discussed when trying to find one that

worked, but it’s not the actual question; the actual question itself is never known. I’ve never really known

what to make of that, really, and have simply come to the conclusion that the [species name omitted] just spoke

before they thought. Because I’m not capable of coming up with anything much deeper than that.

#10

Actually, 6 x 9 makes perfect

sense… in base 13.

“Base 13?” you scoff. “What is that even supposed to mean?”

Well, we count in base 10, most likely because we were provided with 10 fingers and 10 toes, thus making

it a very sensible thing to start a new cycle of numbers every 10th time. But you can count in lots of different

bases, and three are in common useage elsewhere: Binary (base 2, or 0010 and the like), Octal (base :sunglasses:, and

Hexidecimal (base 16, aka “I can count to F!” [0-9, a-f]).

Let’s convert 42 from base 13 to

base 10:

4 * 13^1 = 52
2 * 13^0 = 2

52 + 2 = 54.

In base 10:
6*9 = 54.

And how

do I know it’s the actual meaning? Because Douglas Adams said so. He had control over all the script

adaptations and such, and here’s an excerpt from an old BBC radio drama:

(“Cave man” lays out

following sentence in Scrabble stones: “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”)
Arthur: Six

by nine? Forty-two? You know, I’ve always felt that there was something fundamentally wrong with the

Universe.
(Faint and distant voice:) Base thirteen!

Yaaaaay for random math geekiness.

#11

There’s also the fact that 6 times 9 doesn’t actually make 42. :laughing:

I

think the whole point was that the actual question was never meant to be found out. The fact that the answer had

been discovered before the question was a massive slip-up, and it was true what Deep Thought said- 'You’re not

going to like it’. I think the message is, basically, don’t think too deeply about this kind of thing, because

we’ll just end up going round and round in circles.

#12

Thanks for explaining the base 13 thing to me, DWH! :laughing: I know I shouldn’t be able to call

myself a Hitchhiker’s Guide fanatic because of this, but even though I’d seen references to the "base

13" thing on Wikipedia and the like, I never actually bothered to figure out

exactly what was meant by it. :blush: And they actually had that on the radio series?

I never knew that; now it all makes sense! :smiley:

Personally, I like the quote at the beginning of

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

"There is a theory which

states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly

disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another which states

that this has already happened."

So, as I think is explained somewhere else in the trilogy (although

I don’t remember exactly where), it is inherently impossible to know both the answer and the question, only one

of the two.

#13

Base 13 is an interesting thought but makes no

Physical sense (thus the reason it was likely used). In order to have a base 13 you’d need 13 fingers or digits

for counting as a base which makes no sense because of physical symetry. Beause cratures are physically symetric

we have the same number of digits on each appendige. Thus there’s no way to have a base 13 even if we had 3, 5,

or even 7 appendiges. And even if we had a third arm in the middle with 3 perfectly formed fingers it would

likely not have been used simply for the fact it would still be asymetric with the other two primary

appendiges.

For those of you still having trouble understanding what base 13 is let me offer it like this.

In a base thirteen system this is how you would count to ten (offering made up numbers based on a Base 10 system

for filler).

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Dec, Undec, Dodec, Ten.

or using

characters letting ! = Dec, @ = Undec, and # = Dodec…

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,!,@,#,10

Continuing would

be…

11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,1!,1@,1#,20

All the way up through the

Dodecs…

21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,2!,2@,2#,30
31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,3!,3@,3#,40
41,42,43,44,

45,46,47,48,49,4!,4@,4#,50
51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,5!,5@,5#,60
61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,6!,6@,6#,70

n71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,7!,7@,7#,80
81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,8!,8@,8#,90
91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,9

!,9@,9#,!0
!1,!2,!3,!4,!5,!6,!7,!8,!9,!!,!@,!#,@0
@1,@2,@3,@4,@5,@6,@7,@8,@9,@!,@@,@#,#0
#1,#2,#3,#4,#5,

#6,#7,#8,#9,#!,#@,##,100

Using that system you can count characters in base 10 to find the correct number

in Base 13.

Thus 6*9=54 in Base 10 and the 54th (Base 10) character in Base 13 is 42.

Meanwhile

6*7=42 in base 10 and the 42nd (Base 10) character in Base 13 is 33.

Notice there are 169 (Base 10)

characters between 1-100 in Base 13 yet 10*10 is still equal to 100. This is because 10 in Base 13 is 13 in Base

10 and 13*13 in Base 10 equals 169 - the same distance to 100 in Base 13. This is how the math works out and

stays constant in the new system. =)

#14

I know this

isn’t exactly what the main focus of the post was, but who says that symmetry is a rule of life? We have a

tendency to anthropomorphize any ideas we have of extraterrestrial life, or at the very least envision it as

somewhat similar to something we know of here on Earth, but what’s to say that it is? I mean, in the end

what’s to say that extraterrestrial life would even have DNA? Life on Earth evolved to have DNA, and because

terrestrial life is all we know of, we automatically assume that all life, terrestrial

or extraterrestrial, has DNA. That’s an extreme example, but entirely plausible,

so after that example to say that not all life has to be symmetrical shouldn’t be much of a stretch at all.

Even on Earth, plenty of multicellular forms of life are asymmetrical: the sponge, for example. It’s not

intelligent, but it’s life. Life just happened to evolve symmetry in parallel with intelligence on Earth. For

all we know, Douglas Adams’ universe could be a living thing itself that exists throughout many, many dimensions

and that is suited to thought in base 13.

Okay, I’m done now. :smiley: