The answer is 42...

[JRKO]

Originally Posted by M Gregg

Yes Ive seen it..

Post 3 is Mars one..I like the robot..

Yeah I think it may be the 1 out of ten who doesn't prefer whiskers!! uber tall alien lady(?) is pretty cool but I can wait until we get the 3D map thingy she shows them - might cause a car crash or two if it was a sat nav tho!!

[fas42]

You called ...??

Frank

[M Gregg]

Originally Posted by fas42

You called ...??

Frank

I think you have access to

Infinite Improbability Drive

You can apply it to speakers

The mice have the answer....

Regards
M. Gregg

[JRKO]

You've met Frank before I see

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

absolutely classic AND still on topic!!!!!

[fas42]

The reverb in this place is quite something ...

Frank

[JRKO]

Back to the vast topic of 42 etc etc

Here's some nice info about 42. 42 is......

a) The atomic number of molybdenum.
b) In 1966, mathematician Paul Cooper theorized that the fastest, most efficient way to travel across continents would be to bore a straight hollow tube directly through the Earth, connecting a set of antipodes, evacuate it (remove the air), and then just fall through. The first half of the journey consists of free-fall acceleration, while the second half consists of an exactly equal deceleration. The time for such a journey works out to be 42 minutes. Remarkably, even if the tube does not pass through the exact center of the Earth, the time for a journey powered entirely by gravity (also known as Gravity train) always works out to be 42 minutes, as long as the tube remains friction-free, as while gravity's force would be lessened, so would the distance traveled at an equal rate.
c) In the TIFF image file format, the second 16-bit word of every file is 42, which is used together with the first word to indicate byte order.
d) The type 42 vacuum tube was one of the most popular audio output amplifiers of the 1930s.
e) Rule Forty-two in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ("All persons more than a mile high to leave the court")
f) The jersey number of Jackie Robinson, which is the only number retired by all Major League Baseball teams.
g) The number of laws of cricket
h) The number of spots on a pair of standard six-sided dice.

And my personal favourite

i) The angle in degrees for which a rainbow appears or the critical angle.

I think rainbows may have the question for the answer. No no no - thats skittles!!!

[M Gregg]

Originally Posted by fas42

The reverb in this place is quite something ...

Frank

The problem is..

It took so long to get the answer we had forgotten the question..

Sounds a lot like the meaning of life..The meaning of audio reproduction..and why are we here....thank's for all the fish..

The reverb is due to the amount of vast space in here...Deep Thought..

Regards
M. Gregg

[logician]

Both philosophical and scientific-

Science first, for the mathematically able and computer literate [what was Deep Thought?] amongst us; 1 '32,' 0 '16', 1 '8', 0 '4', 1 '2', 0 '1'. Having once established a numerical series to six places, in this case in binary, it is likely infinitely recurring i.e. 10101010101010101010 etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Philosophically it's all about the inherent duality of the human condition or the normal ups and downs of our mundane existence i.e. one day the bear eats you, one day you et the bear, yin yang etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Having been more than a little unreasonably pleased with myself when I worked this out during lunchtime on the day after the first UK radio broadcast while wandering around a plumbers merchant to buy two new taps [faucets] for the kitchen sink, I was even more delighted some several years later when in a UK broadcast of an interview with Douglas Adams, some bright spark offered him an even more arcane and improbable sounding analysis of 'the great 42 question' to which Mr Adams immediate response was "I don't do jokes in the number base 13"

Sorry, what was the question?

Cheers, Ian

[JRKO]

good answer with binary whole numbers, binary sequences, and eating a bear

The answer is 42 in its simplest & most potent distillation. As the question is unknown can we flesh the answer out further? In the same vein as 'Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?' (Hakuin Ekaku), may I present.......

Can an unknown question be known by meditating on its answer?

[logician]

It sure helps a lot if the answer you are working back from is somewhere within the numerical series: 170, 682, 2730, 10922, 43690, 174762 ad infinitum.

Douglas Adams later said he simply made up 42 as the answer without any real thought having been given to it but apparently that same number does crop up quite a few times elsewhere in his work, so he must have had some liking for it.

Does it matter what the question is so long as you get the answer right?