BOOM – Binary

Last week at our Tuesday Morning Group we came across an intriguing question.

In our study of Saint Peter we had come to the point in the Gospel of John where Jesus appears to Peter and several other disciples after the resurrection.

The disciples had been out fishing during the night and caught nothing. When Jesus appeared to them at dawn he asks them to cast their nets again and low and behold this time they catch a whole load of fish.

The question we encountered was why did John record the exact number of fish that were caught, specifically 153.

Had I read this alone I doubt I’d have given it a second thought but because we talked about it as a group it took on a whole new significance.

The number bugged me. Was there anything special about it? After a little playing around I found it could be divided by 3, 9, and 17. As 9 is a the square of 3 and both 3 and 17 are prime numbers it already took on a different aura.

A google search showed even more  intriguing things most of which I don’t understand. Two stand out though it is the 17th triangular number and also surprise surprise The Measure of the FISH!

This called for an email to my mathematical genius friend Michael to see if he agreed that this was a special number.

Happily he did and better than that he revealed the most interesting thing of all.

If 153 is turned into a binary number it becomes 10011001 that reads the same in both directions,  a Palindrome and a reminder that God is everlasting and unchanging.

Blessing # 344 – Puzzle Solving