The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has the famous line that “Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything” is 42. I recently had an inquisitive child ask me what that means. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have cracked the code.

Ancient Greek utilized letters to represent numbers. With the first letter of the alphabet, alpha representing the number one. So if we were to write four two (not quite the same as forty two) then it would be represented by Delta Beta or DB. In English DB is shorthand for database. Databases store information. Thus the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything must be none other than the accumulation of knowledge.