h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Think about it, the question is now 42=x (x being the answear to the universe). If we have been told the answear, 42, then we should re-ask the computer what 42 equals. Therefore 42=x which is .....

42.

As you can see this goes around in circles, the question cannot be answerd with another question. Which is what we are asking, the answear is therefore impossible to solve. Just the same as the Universe is impossible to exist.

Existance is relative.

Resistance is futile

1+1=1 answers all ur questions

The answer is simply the answer. To understand this you must not think of 42 as a number but rather a mistake.
First they asked what the answer was to life, the universe, and everything, and after many years deep thought gave them one. First it simplified the question to what is life? The answer: life is the stage before death, therefore life needs an end, and to have life it needs a beginning. This usually takes the form of birth, hatching etc. So a simplified answer that any being should be able to comprehend is that life has a beginning and an end. Deep Thought then used the same reasoning with the other two abstract ideas, the universe and everything, and reached the same conclusion. But after simplifying the questions and answers down this much it also simplified its output. The beginning and the End became the letters A and Z. Now how does this become 42 you may ask? Well it's really quite simple, sort of, not really. If you recall that I previously stated that 42 is not a number I will now elaborate on this. A and Z were put into Leet(L337), a kind of computer language(after all computers are just big calculators, and every one knows they work best with numbers).
So now you have a question for 42, and an answer to the Ultimate Question of Life the Universe and Everything.

It helps to remember two things:
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream ...
No matter where you go, there you are ...

There can be no real answer to the question as the question is subjective. The meaning of life exists within all of us. We are the answer. That we ask the question at all has meaning.