From 54d77234f3041b43005ffcfe3203cda4d738f2a7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Benjamin Hackl Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2024 20:38:45 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] feat: added section on 42 --- readme.md | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 32 insertions(+) diff --git a/readme.md b/readme.md index 647e18f..040b91a 100644 --- a/readme.md +++ b/readme.md @@ -4,6 +4,38 @@ This is a plain markdown file containing a few lines of text. It is part of a project guiding you through your first few steps with the version control system Git. +## The number 42 + +In "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", a group of +hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to +the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the +supercomputer Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose. It takes +Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which +turns out to be 42. Deep Thought points out that the answer seems +meaningless because the beings who instructed it never actually knew +what the Question was. + +When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, Deep Thought says that it +cannot; however, it can help to design an even more powerful computer +that can. This new computer will incorporate living beings into the +"computational matrix" and will run for ten million years. It is +revealed as being the planet Earth, with its pan-dimensional creators +assuming the form of white lab mice to observe its running. The +process is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected +arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans and is then ruined completely, +five minutes prior to completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the +Vogons to make way for a new Hyperspace Bypass. In "The Restaurant at +the End of the Universe", this is revealed to have been a ruse: the +Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of +psychiatrists, led by Gag Halfrunt, who feared for the loss of their +careers when the ultimate question became known. + +Lacking a real question, the mice decide not to go through the whole +thing again and settle for the out-of-thin-air suggestion "How many +roads must a man walk down?" from Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the +Wind". + + ## References - https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/version-control/