At first I thought this was some kind of joke, perhaps something The Onion would come up with. But it seems to be genuine:
Of course, we all know what the answer is (42), but what was the question?
At first I thought this was some kind of joke, perhaps something The Onion would come up with. But it seems to be genuine:
Of course, we all know what the answer is (42), but what was the question?
It’s just The Riddler with another of his wacky schemes.
If you zoom in on it, you can quite clearly see that it’s just a bunch
of pixels.
The Universe too is mystified by the continuing popularity of certain Earth politicians. And is signaling its perplexity across the vasty deep.
Next you’ll have me believe that this isn’t Galactus the World-Devourer enroute to our delicious planet.
I’m sure the Space CTers will have the “Big ?” tied up with that and with the donut on Mars, and who know what else. If they don’t already.
It’s clearly one of those “texture not found” placeholders like you see in video games when you get to a part of the map that you weren’t supposed to get to.
I believe the current theory is that it’s actually two galaxies colliding / merging.
This is only fascinating for the recent generations who have never lain on their backs watching the clouds. These are the same people who think any full moon is somehow newsworthy.
Also known.
“What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9”
I’ll take “Folks who’re bad at math” for $200, Alex. For especially large values of $200.
Not sure, but we can be reasonably certain the question wasn’t written in Spanish.
Works in base 13.
But that’s the question. The answer remains 42
I meant to say that the answer to the queston was “We don’t know.” But it doesn’t quite work, does it.
25 or Six to Four?
Douglas Adams did many things well, and 42 is still the perfect answer to the black box self assurance of algorithmic intelligence.
That cosmic question mark simply proves that not even God Himself (or Herself) has any idea what’s going on.
Just to get it over with, I’ll note that the plain explanation would be some sort of lensing effect (probably around a black hole) that is causing a star’s image to get splayed out into a half donut shape. Below that is a star.
They just happen to line up nicely to appear like a question mark.
We don’t need to send spaceships to investigate the “space signal” to our species.
No, it’s almost certainly a galaxy distorted by a close encounter with another galaxy. We’ve seen a number of other similar galactic shapes before. All that really distinguishes this one is that it happens to be in the shape of a specific symbol that has meaning to us, but it’s no harder to explain than any of the other tidally-disrupted galaxies we know of (most of which are much closer and hence easier to study in detail, if one has an interest in such things).
Certainly the point isn’t a star, as it’s an extended object.