Numerologists, your moment is about to arrive. Mathematicians and lottery players, you may want to pay attention, too. At three minutes and four seconds after 2 AM on Sunday, the 6th of May, time will align itself in a perfect pattern, 02:03:04 05/06/07.
For those who slept though last year’s 01:02:03 04/05/06 moment at 1:02 a.m. and three seconds on April, 5, 2006, this is your second chance. The moment won’t come again for another century, in 2107. Of course, the times and dates will align sequentially once every year until 9:10 and 11 seconds on Dec. 13, 2014, or 09:10:11 12/13/14. After that, time will revert to its usual untidy mix of hours, minutes and seconds passing through the days of our lives.
For most of us, these sequences are little more than, well, coincidental sequences of numbers. Still, the phenomenon is giving some Internet chatrooms fodder for idle conversation. At digg.com, the impending moment sparked a lively exchange, including one nostalgic post by “uglyredhonda” that said, “Still nowhere near as cool as 12:34:56 on 7/8/90.” Oh yeah. That was way cooler.
Serious party mathematicians, though, won’t go to sleep. There’ll be a shots of tequila and a few high fives and then they’ll move on. That is, until we count from 1 to 6 at 01:02:03 on April, 5, 2106. Now that will be worth staying up for.