The local council in your case.

The answer is encrypted in Vogon poetry

First, what does your question mean?

What do you mean by "meaning"?

Every meaning of "meaning" that I can think of depends on the perspective of any item to which anything has meaning; the meaning of the universe would be different for every thing in the universe, so to speak of "the" meaning would make less than a trillion trillion trillion trillionth trillion trillion trillion trillionth trillion trillion trillion trillionth as much sense as asking what the opinion of a football crowd or a truckload of sand grains or a field of flies might be.  Most of them wouldn't even know what their own opinions are. Even of you could ask them nd get all their opions, what would that ell you of the opinion of the mass?  Read the book "Goedel, Escher, Bach", by Douglas Hofstadter, and work out what the opinion of Aunt Hillary meant. Before you can do that, you need not even THINK of trying to work what the universe means.

You need to establish a lot of principles before you can ask that question meaningfully. For example, Semiotics, existentialism, information, utility, cosmology, logic, why 51 would have been a better answer than 42, and the valid semantics of the word "why". Try reading "Introduction to Logic" by Copi & Cohen (Enjoyable book!)

Hamba kahle, (whatever that means)

Jon

I do not wish to sound cynical or gloomy but there is no answer to lifer the universe and everything. Religion and philosopy is nothing more than a way of shielding ourselves from this fact. The truth is, if there was nothing rather than something, it wouldn't make a bit of difference to anyone. There is no grand plan or purpose for life, no reason for us to exist at all except for chance. On the other side of the same coin, the fact remains that we DO exist and there is nothing we can do about it. This is the only life that we have, pointless or not, the only thing we can do is make this the best place it can be. Science can tell us about our environment and how it all works but in the end, whatever happens to the universe when it ceases to exist, all of grand accomplishments will be forgotten.

That being said. Once could say that in the absence of a purpose or answer to life it is up to you to give it one. Although, ultimately, none of this will matter and life in a future univers will never have any idea that we were ever here, we can give ourselves purpose and meaning. It is up to you to decide what kind of existance you want to have. Make this the best place it can possibly be. Since you are here for the rest of your life, always strive to make it better. Don't waste your time with petty "us-against-them" arguments. Make your existance (and by extension those around you) the best it can be. Eventually you wont exitst and it will no longer be a problem.

I hope this has been enlightening for you.