Pay Off The National Debt, Sure, But The Phillies?

Peter Hornby • July 21, 2013

Why does it seem to be something overwhelmingly geeky which kicks the blog back into life?

Almost exactly four years ago, I was amused by a story of a guy who was charged 23 quadrillion dollars for a packet of cigarettes.  Challenged by the assertion in one of the stories that no-one had explained to the unlucky gentleman how this could have happened, I played around with the numbers and came up with a plausible explanation.

And, shortly thereafter, the blog returned to a comfortable hibernation, from which it has not roused.  Until now.

So, here we are again.  Last week, Paypal credited a lucky customer with just over 92 quadrillion dollars.  Imagine his surprise at having the power to pay off the national debt and still have change to buy the Phillies.

It struck me that 92 quadrillion was close to four times 23 quadrillion, and that maybe a similar root cause was involved.  The investigation turned out to be quite interesting,

As before, I wondered whether some bit pattern could, when converted to decimal, explain the vast number involved.  In the 2009 case, the bit pattern was eight ASCII spaces - "2020202020202020".  What happens when you convert 92,233,720,368,547,800 to hexadecimal?  The answer is "147AE147AE147D8".  That's a surprising pattern.  OK, it's not ASCII spaces, but it's certainly not random.  Let's assume an even more regular bit pattern - "147AE147AE147AE".  What you get when you convert that value back to decimal is 92,233,720,368,547,758 - just 42 different (and no comments about Hitchhikers Guide, please). 

So, does the bit pattern "147AE147AE147AE" have any significance?.  Let's ask Google.  Well, how about that (it’s not quite a Googlewhack, but I’ll take it)? There's one single, solitary answer,.