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The Binary Code In Canada's Gov-Gen Coat of Arms

Posted by samzenpus on from the always-drink-your-ovaltine dept.

Lev13than writes "Dr. David Johnston, formerly the president of the University of Waterloo, was installed as Canada's new Governor-General on Friday. As de facto head of state and the Queen's representative in Canada he is required to design a personal coat of arms. One modern detail has attracted particular attention - a 33-digit palindromic binary stream at the base. Efforts to decode the meaning of the number using ASCII, Morse, grouping by 3/11 and other theories has so far come up empty (right now it's a toss up between random, the phone number 683-077-0643 and Morse code for 'send help - trapped in a coat of arms factory.') Is 110010111001001010100100111010011 the combination to his luggage, or just a random stream of digits?"

4 of 486 comments (clear)

  1. The number is a Palindromic Prime in base 2. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This number is a prime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindromic_prime in base 2.
    In decimal it is: 6830770643

  2. Re:Can't we just ask? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    He already told us the answer:

    The wavy band inscribed with zeros and ones represents a flow of information, digital communication and modern media.

  3. Re:The numbers are wrong (wild guess) by Gobelet · · Score: 5, Informative

    NATO aircrafts have OTAN printed on it because the two official languages used in NATO are English and French. OTAN means Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord.

  4. Re:Can get even worse by Phydaux · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/
    A blog that collects and translates (if possible) the tattoos of mostly Chinese/Japanese/Gibberish characters on people who aren't sure what they really mean.

    Some of them aren't that bad, but others make you want to cringe.