The answer to life, the universe and everything is forty-two.

The line originates in Douglas Adams’s science-fiction comedy “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” In the story, a supercomputer named Deep Thought is asked to compute the ultimate answer to the “Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything,” and after an extremely long wait it outputs the number 42.

The joke is that a supposedly profound, all-explaining computation yields a plain, arbitrary-seeming number. It satirizes the desire for a single definitive solution to existential questions and highlights that an “answer” is meaningless without knowing the exact question being asked.

“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

The Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything … is … Forty-two.

The answer to life, the universe and everything is forty-two.