"It's a hundred and two," say confident scientists.
In the northwest suburbs of Geneva, a team led by Rolf Prévessin has discovered the highest number of all. After spending the last eight years viewing output from the Large Hadron Collider, they were able to confirm that it is a hundred and two.
"It's a lot lower than expected," admitted Prévessin. "We're going to have to rethink a lot of stuff. For instance, last year, a team at Caltech gave pi to eleven billion decimal places. They're going to have to check their numbers, because we now know that eleven billion is way too many. The maximum is a hundred and two."
Prévessin is the first to acknowledge that his breakthrough has a bittersweet flavour. He's widely regarded as a shoe-in for a Nobel prize, but in recognition of his team's achievement, the committee will be giving out no more than $102 in prize money this year.
The CERN administration, too, has mixed feelings about the discovery.
"Obviously, we're delighted to have hosted and funded the team," said Director General Rolf Dieter-Heuer. "But there's definitely a downside. In previous years, member states gave nearly seven hundred million euros per annum to CERN. Now that Prévessin's team has made its announcement, we can't really ask for more than a hundred and two without looking like hypocrites."
And worse still, Prévessin's success is not certain to last. In 2014, the Large Hadron Collider will be running at full power again. US physicist Frank Vassel is already planning an experiment that will (he hopes) discover an even higher number.
"We think we can show a hundred and eight," he told us last night. "It looks good on paper, but we won't know for sure until 2014. Until then, we've just got to plan it as well as we can and get our ducks lined up in a row."
Only time will tell. Suffice to say, Prévessin isn't too worried.
"I'm not sure there'll even be a year 2014," he said on his blog. "It seems extraordinary that we've got as far as 2011, when there isn't such a number as 2011. The highest number is 102."
