• Question: is the answer to the universe 42?

    Asked by to Kate, Kieren, Nicola, Rowena, Roy on 11 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Kate Nicholson

      Kate Nicholson answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Only according to the characters in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books, and that is the answer given to life the universe and everything.

      The answer to the universe? who knows? It’s still hanging in the balance as to whether this universe is expected to expand forever or collapse into a big crunch, so I think the answer to that aspect of the universe is a more intersting one to find 🙂

    • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

      Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Of course. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is THE authority on the universe – certainly for a chemist like me!

      I recently did a performance for Science Showoff in Birmingham with the help of a vogon sock puppet where I put forward the case for using Mossbauer spectroscopy of meteorites to try to discover whether vogons were actually going round blowing up planets. If the answer were not 42, how could I link vogons to my research so easily?

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