42
Created | Updated Jun 5, 2010
Wondering, as everybody does, where the idea for 42 came from, I noticed that 42 in binary is 101010. Now in a computer a byte is normally eight digits, one of which is a parity bit. So adding a leading 0 (i.e.0101010 seven digits - still means 42) and adding an even parity bit (which makes the total number of 1s even) we get 10101010.
This is the same as a square wave oscillator (as would be found in a computer generating the clock frequency) so permanently repeated 10101010 bytes just give a continuous square wave. This contains NO INFORMATION AT ALL! Hence Deep Thought had taken 14 million years to generate an answer, which means nothing.
It is therefore impossible to find the original question, there isn't one...
This is the same as a square wave oscillator (as would be found in a computer generating the clock frequency) so permanently repeated 10101010 bytes just give a continuous square wave. This contains NO INFORMATION AT ALL! Hence Deep Thought had taken 14 million years to generate an answer, which means nothing.
It is therefore impossible to find the original question, there isn't one...
