Deep Thought' - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy dream computer - to be realised by British scientists

British scientists have taken the first steps towards building a real-life version of Deep Thought, the supercomputer programmed to solve the "ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

The team has come up with the first practical blueprint for constructing a giant quantum computer, a thinking device capable of rapidly providing answers to problems that would take an ordinary computer billions of years to solve.

A proof-of-concept early prototype is planned within two years at the University of Sussex.

For many years, people said that it was completely impossible to construct an actual quantum computerProfessor Winfried Hensinger, University of Sussex

But the ground-breaking modular design could theoretically pave the way to a machine as large as a football field with undreamed of levels of computing power.

While Deep Thought's solution to the meaning of life was "42", the Sussex scientists hope their creation will prove a lot more useful than the supercomputer in Douglas Adams's comic space opera.-read more