posted 02-20-2002 10:51 AM            

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Turn back time tonight ...

by Geraint Smith Science Correspondent
It won't come around for 111 years, and after that it will never happen again. At 8.02pm, the world will witness a time that is truly, triply palindromic. It will be 20:02/20.02/2002.

Read the time, the day, the month and the year forwards or backwards, in numeric form, and the result is the same, discarding punctuation. Moreover, every individual component - time, date and year - is identical, and every one is itself a palindrome.

That has happened only three times before - at 10.01 on 10 January 1001, at 11.11 on 11 November 1111, and at 12.21 on 12 December 1221. "And when they happened, nobody had digital watches to notice it," says Professor Peter Cameron, professor of mathematics at Queen Mary College of the University of London.

It can only ever happen once more, says Professor Cameron - at 21.12 on 21 December 2112. "It is impossible after that because there are only 12 months in the year."

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