Yes. 1. We have the answer, which is 42, but we don't know what's on the left-hand side of the equation or where to find it. 2. When all else fails, X=5. What is this "life" thing anyways? Before you can ask for an answer in the form of an equation, you need to know what the question means. Since we do not know what constitutes "life", any attempt to find an answer is meaningless. The reference to Adam's work is quite apropos. In Adam's world, the simple, easy to understand answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything was found to be 42. It was a completely meaningless answer to a completely meaningless question. "We want you to tell us... The Answer!" "The Answer? The Answer to what?" "Life! ... The Universe! ... Everything!" The question "Could life have an equation?" has only three possible answers, the first two of which are 'yes' and 'no'. Can either of these be proved? No. Can either be demonstrated in any meaningful way? No. Do we know what factors should be included in such an "equation"? No. Do we know what factors should be excluded? Uhhh, no. What form could such an equation take? Ummm. A third answer may exist: faith. There is no equation in faith, except Faith=Belief. QED. It's Life! You know... Life! Right? ------------------------------------------------------------ Other mumblings... ------------------------------------------------------------ Re: "huh?", "what the hell are you talking about!?" A common reaction to item 1, above. For a more detailed answer, I refer you to Douglas Adam's trilogy in five parts: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", Life, the Universe, and Everything", "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish", and "Mostly Harmless". Item 2, above, is merely common algebra, which is easier than the less common trigonometry, less annoying than calculus, less confusing than partial differential equations, and comprehensible to the average layperson, unlike thermodynamics and, especially, computational fluid dynamics. ------------------------------------------------------------ Re: "According to Chapter 33 of the second book of the series..." Yes, but that answer had been cocked up by arrival of the Golgafrinchams. Perhaps it can be found in God's last message to his creation, which "is written in thirty-foot-high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the sun Zarss in Galactic Sector QQ7 ActiveJ Gamma". Marvin would be thrilled.

Yes... probably many... but if we chip away all the flotsam -- we find that there are only two certainties in life: 1) twinkle factor (TF) -- we wouldn't be here, if it wasn't for a possibly random twinkle in our parents eyes... and, 2) death (D)... so: (TF > 0) * D == life John Cox: is it times D, or minus D... I used "times D", because the twinkle factor is a boolean -- everything is zero if there's no twinkle factor to start things off. If you use - D, then the result could be less than zero -- which, I think, is wrong. Life is definitely a positive number (see other answers). The other reason I don't think D is a negative is because some people "live on" in terms of the legacy they leave behind. Of course, this stretches the meaning of life well beyond breathing/not breathing -- but we weren't given much guidance on the definition of life in this question -- so I think I'm sticking with multiplication here. If a lot of people read your obituary, then you have a pretty big D, and your legacy will probably continue long after your life physically ended.

The Answer to The Ultimate Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything is a concept taken from Douglas Adams' science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is sought using the supercomputer Deep Thought. The answer given by Deep Thought leads the protagonists on a quest to discover the question which provides this answer. The Ultimate Answer According to the Hitchhiker's Guide, researchers from a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent race of beings, construct Deep Thought, the second greatest computer of all time and space, to calculate the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. After seven and a half million years of pondering the question, Deep Thought provides the answer: "forty-two." "Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?" "I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is." At the end of Mostly Harmless, which is the last of the series of novels, there is a final reference to the number 42. As Arthur and Ford are dropped off at club Beta (owned by Stavro Müller), Ford shouts at the cabby to stop "just there, number forty-two … Right here!" The entire Earth (in all dimensions, not just those in which it was demolished by the Vogons), is destroyed immediately after this final reference. At the end of the first radio series, the television series, and the book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the second of the five-book 'trilogy,' Arthur Dent — as the last human to have left the Earth before its destruction, therefore the portion of the computer matrix most likely to hold the question — attempts to discover the Question by extracting it from his unconscious mind, through pulling Scrabble letters at random out of a sack. The result is the sentence "WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY NINE." The generation of this "question" is actually impossible with a single, standard set of Scrabble letters (which, interestingly, has 42 vowels). Such a set only has two Ys; but the set shown in the TV series has clearly been handmade from memory, so the question buried within Arthur's brainwaves may have influenced him in creating it. In the original radio version of the story, however, it is made clear that Arthur has been travelling all along with a pocket Scrabble set from Earth. "Six by nine. Forty-two." "That's it. That's all there is." Of course, 6 × 9 is 54, not 42. There are several possible interpretations of this. One would be that Arthur indeed discovered the Ultimate Question, which doesn't match the Answer simply because the universe is bizarre and irrational. Arthur Dent accepts this as being the reason in the radio series, when he remarks, "I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe." However, this explanation is contradicted by the book, particularly by the fact that the Earth's computation of the Question had not finished when it was destroyed. Another explanation is that the program (Earth) would have run correctly if not for the interference of events such as the crash landing of the Golgafrinchans. These important modifications introduced error into the program and caused it to discover the wrong question. This accounts for the irrational nature of the question in Arthur's mind, as he himself is a descendant of the Golgafrinchans. It could in fact be that the question in Arthur's mind is a warped version of the true question. It is also possible, given Adams' often bleak view of technology (in the late 1970s), that the 6 × 9 = 42 answer is meant to indicate that the Earth project was a flawed design to begin with, one that was always going to produce the wrong question even if the program had been run successfully. Yet another possibility is that the letters were truly random, and by some extremely improbable coincidence [that would have had a probability factor of twenty-six to the power of thirty-four to one against(or approximately 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000077787)] happened to spell out an intelligible English question. It was later pointed out by readers that 6 × 9 = 42 if the calculations are performed in base 13, not base 10. Douglas Adams has averred that he was not aware of this at the time, and repeatedly dismissed this as an irrelevant concoction, saying that "nobody writes jokes in base 13 [...] I may be a pretty sad person, but I don't make jokes in base 13." There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. Douglas Adams was asked many times during his career why he chose the number forty-two. Many theories were proposed, but he rejected them all. On November 2, 1993, he gave an answer on alt.fan.douglas-adams: The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Eve rything There is a joke amongst computer programmers that Deep Thought may have had some order of operations issues. The following code in the C programming language defines the macros SIX as "1 + 5" and NINE as "8 + 1", and then performs the computation "SIX * NINE". It returns the answer "42", because "SIX * NINE" is expanded by the computer to "", and the multiplication takes precedence over the additions. This occurs because the macro expansion is textual, not logical — knowledgeable C programmers always surround the content of every macro and each instance of a macro argument with parentheses to avoid problems such as this one. Assuming that the Answer is indeed correct, that means that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything would be 42. Cryptographers' Joke In Cryptography, to allow a computer to encrypt text rapidly, it is converted to numbers eg in a simple one a=1 b=2 c=3 (though a=0 is a more usual starting point) D. Adams = 4 + 1 + 4 + 1 + 13 + 19 = well you can guess the rest. Or even work it out for yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything#Computer_programmers.27_joke

No human will ever have that answer unless he is cloned enough times to see the entire universe piece by piece. One half of the cloans would have to be Albert Einstein to help the more perceptually week. The other set of cloans would have to be able to make certain machinery for Einstein to use in his observations. But only God has the greatest answer. He's the Alpha and the Omega.(He's a particle and a measurement)lol. Entropy is a good start for a theory.

3 Indian women were to bring forth life by giving birth: 1 gave birth to a son on an elephant hide. 1 gave birth to a son on a rhinoceros hide. 1 gave birth to twin boys, but on a hippopotamus hide. The equation then is The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus hide is = to the sons of the squaws of the other 2 hides. '

Yes.

its easy/easier to find the answer to life than know the question. whatever be the question. i guess the purpose of life is to find the answer. ultimatly we're all a part of the big machine called earth right? (keeping with the hitch hikers trend) ...... 42 sounds nice though :) ...... maybe the question is.. 'how many roads must a man walk down?'

"...of making books there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the WHOLE matter. Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the WHOLE man" (Ecclesiastes 12:12-13, emphasis mine).

You're all making thisWAY to complicated. The answer to life is 4 (Isn't this in "the guide" as well?) Everything in life including life itself breaks down to 4 and no further. You do this by counting the number of letters in any word. take life itself for example: L-I-F-E contains "four" letters. "four" contains four and you go no further. Try "supercalafragalisticexpialodocious" (I know, it may be spelled incorrectly, but for this point it does not matter.) it contains "thirtyfour" letters. "thirtyfour" contains "ten" letters. "ten" contains "three" letters "three" contains "five" letters "five contains "four" letters, and we're again back to 4! .Now, wasn't that a complete waste of 2 minutes of your life, no matter what the agreed upon answer?! ;-)

Life = C8H10N4O2 (Thats Caffeine for the less chemistry oriented among us.) Just think how much different life at night would be. No late nites on answerbag filling answers to questions to this.

Life = what you make it

C + H + O + N + S + P... lol... (simple plain elements)...