One of the most amusing stories in all of science fiction can be found within Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where a supercomputer is tasked with uncovering “the answer.” Allegedly designed to give the answer to the ultimate question about life, the Universe, and everything, the computer spends 7.5 million years calculating what the answer would be, and finally spits it out: 42. Only, when the answer is finally revealed, no one can remember what “the ultimate question” actually was. It’s another example of being so obsessed with getting to the destination that, upon reaching it, it no longer matters if you lost sight of the whole point of the journey to begin with.Fortunately for us, there are a number of possible candidate questions — in hindsight — that we can exploit for their potential to truly be the ultimate question, given the fact that we know the solution is truly 42. Could any of these possibilities have truly been what the supercomputer was asked about when it came to uncovering the answer to the ultimate question about life, the Universe, and everything? Although no one can be sure, even in Douglas Adams’ fictional world, here are five possible questions that rank among the most fascinating. The answer to each of them truly is 42, and perhaps you might find one of them to be truly compelling.
