A photograph of Stephen Hawking appeared on a group of billboards in Times Square yesterday alongside a cryptic numerical code, and now the Internet is left to decipher what this all means.
The image of the theoretical physicist was displayed on the billboards in New York along with the numbers 48, 16 and 11, before being posted to Imgur and Reddit accompanied by the caption: “No one seemed to take note that Stephen Hawkings face and a mysterious numerical code took over a group of billboards in Times Square this morning. I took a picture. What does it mean?”
It was suggested by one user that it’s a countdown to the leap day taking place on February 29th, with the suggestion that the numbers represented 48 days, 16 hours and 11 minutes, though the individual who uploaded the photo said that they were passing the billboard around 9am, meaning that this theory doesn’t add up.
So far no one has been able to offer a credible theory in regards to what this could mean, and no more images of the billboard have been uploaded to highlight whether or not the images on them have now changed. Stephen Hawking did publish a new paper yesterday that offered a new solution to the black hole information paradox, though there doesn’t appear to be any connection with these numbers, and it seems unlikely that anyone would have spent thousands of dollars to feature an advertisement on a Times Square billboard for a scientific paper.
With this being the Internet, we’re confident that someone will eventually crack then code in the near future, but until then we’ll just have to wait with bated breath to find out what Hawking has up his sleeve for us.
