The number 42 is especially significant to fans of science fiction novelist Douglas Adams’ “ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, ” because that number is the answer given by a supercomputer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.”

Toward the end of the book, the supercomputer Deep Thought reveals that the answer to the “Great Question” of “Life, the Universe and Everything” is “forty-two.” Deep Thought takes 7.5 million years to calculate the answer to the ultimate question.

When Douglas Adams wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he added a central joke which has become more famous over the years than the novel itself: "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42."

Although we still don't know the question, we know that the answer to life, the Universe, and everything is 42. Here are 5 possibilities. The answer to the ultimate question about life, the Universe, and everything has been asserted to be 42 by the infamous Douglas Adams.