Brian Cox, the physicist, was on Ronja World wearing a t-shirt with a yellow circle and the number 253 within it. What is the significance of this logo or the number 253 to a physicist?
Google failed me.
Link doesn’t work, try this
And here’s a better image
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640x360/p01jynyq.jpg/
What does it mean? Not sure, but googling found this image of a type of medicine for bipolar disorder. Is it connected? I don’t know.
Is he from Tacoma, WA (telephone area code)?:
Similar font to this:
So he’s a bipolar toker from Tacoma?
I’ve heard of 4/20 but what’s the link to 253 and cannabis?
253 Farmacy is a recreational marijuana dispensary, although I think the font is slightly different. I doubt Brian Cox is a stoner anyway, despite once being in a pop band. Probably a red herring.
It’s the atomic number of einsteinium, so maybe that’s it.
On the other hand, if you google “253 t-shirt”, you find a lot of shirts relating to the area code, some of them quite similar to the one he’s wearing in the clip.
Nope; he’s from England.
Edit: he’s married to an American, though she’s apparently from Minnesota.
Atomic number 99, most common isotope atomic weight 253
Brian
Brian Cox, is that you?
Unfortunately no….
Not famous Brian
I did a search and found a tweet from Brian from way back in 2017:
But that doesn’t say 253 is big letters.
It is a spectrograph … a graph…
Maybe he went to the Seattle/Tacoma area for a conference or general tourism and found a shirt he liked?
Not every t-shirt has to be a message
Possible, but I scoured google images and couldn’t find one just like that. It seems if it was mass produced for sale it would come up under search.
It could be a reference to the Sculptor Galaxy, NGC 253.
This article from 2011 says in its first line that the discovery of a black hole in NGC 253 would make Brian Cox “excited”, although it fails to mention him in the rest of the article.
And there’s more…
The Sculptor Galaxy, NGC 253, was first observed by Caroline Herschel in 1783. Brian Cox’s cat, a calico, is apparently named… Herschel, after Caroline Herschel.
We need a Brian Cox t shirt explainer site …
It could very well be a custom T-Shirt. He’s had them made before
or worn other obscure references. (well, a double obscure reference, one astronomical and one musically Mancunian)
That’s some pretty good sleuthing, and you make a good case. Of course, now I want one of those shirts! Given all of of his special t-shirts, this doesn’t seem like something he grabbed at the gift shop.
He has a Deborah Harry poster!
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