268435456

268435456 is a big number. I ran across it while researching some google maps stuff, and the author of an article said it was half the earth’s diameter, in pixels, when google maps is zoomed to level 21. OK…

For some reason, I wondered if that was kindof a common knowledge thing or not, so i googled that number. I found the referenced article, but then also found a bunch of references to some default memory size limitation set in PHP. Strange.

That is one really big number to have occurred in two distinct places like this. Which makes me wonder if it has any other significance. Actually, i bet it’s a power of 2.

Sure enough, it is 28 bits of data, or rather 2 ^ 28 = 268435456

Welp, not such a huge mystery now I guess.