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

If it wasn't, it would be written in a specific language. But I don't think the ultimate question can be a question in a special language or asking for an answer in a special language. On the other hand, most species who travel through space probably know some kind of numbers/maths. So DNA's answer might be true.
But personally, I thought the answer more likely to be either zero, one, minus one, infinite or minus infinite, or maybe pi, as these are some of the most remarkable numbers. After all, I cannot tell, so I will stay a believer in the great 42.

It would be written in a specific language only if you wrote it. It could be a sort of non linguistic idea (if it bothered to exist, which I find doubtfull) that would afterwards have to be translated in order to express it in one's own particular language.

Anyway I don't think it could be numerical, since a number doesn't *tell* anything in itself. I see it only as the simplest possible concept to be manîpulated by the mind. Wasn'it part of the idea of Douglas Adams that if he chose a number it would be very absurd and funny?

Alternatively the answer could be spatially based as oppsed to being entirely numerical. I've just written up an article on the relationship of 42 to cubes, which is a partly numerical relationship.