Cheers were heard from International Space Station (ISS) mission control at the Johnson Space Center this evening after the announcement by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly of a record breaking discovery in the fields of mathematics and wangology, unprecedented since the 1940's. The culmination of two years worth of research onboard the orbiting laboratory, Kelly announced the discovery of minus seven new numberwangs, bringing the total number of discovered numberwangs to approximately zero.

"It's an exciting day for us up here, and I bet even more exciting for the scientists on the ground who have been working on this their entire careers." said Kelly, speaking from the ISS to a media teleconference held at Johnson. "It's a wonderful feeling to be a part of this discovery." The teleconference also saw the awarding of the numberwang medal to the scientists involved in the project, and a commemorative medal was awarded to Kelly to be presented formally at the numberwang institute gala after his return to earth after spending a year onboard the space station.

The field of wangology, developed by Sir Bertrand Russell in his celebrated 1400 page treatise "It Is Numberwang", studies whether a number is, or is not, numberwang. While often controversial and widely misunderstood, wangology has led to a number of discoveries in other fields and spinoff technologies, and NASA has had a long interest in using technology to advance the field. ISS program manager Michael T. Suffredini, speaking at the teleconference, stated "We went to the moon to search for more numberwangs, and with this recent discovery NASA has reaffirmed our commitment to wangology, and as long as we have the space station we'll continue to do this kind of research."

Numberwangs are exceedingly difficult things to discover, and it is even rarer for them to be discovered in groups as they were recently. For the past four decades, numberwangs tended to be the result of coordinated research effort and were discovered at a painstakingly slow rate. Russell himself claims he only discovered three, but recent studies of his manuscript found an additional six which he wrote in the margin of an unpublished page, claiming to have a "truly marvellous proof" of them. NASA's Apollo program did discover another 44 numberwangs between the 7 landings by American astronauts, dubbed "moonwangs" by the wangology community, and proving Russell's theory that they existed before his death in 1970. In fact, this new discovery comes on the 46th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's famous (and oft misquoted) line: "It's one small step for wang, one giant leap for wangkind". Since then, however, only an additional ¾ numberwangs have been discovered, so this new discovery of -7 new numberwangs is a behemoth contribution to the field. The newly dubbed "spacewangs" will be rigorously checked by experts, in the hope that they might lead to the discovery of new numberwangs in the near future.

The future of wangology is looking bright in a time when the field was considered to be a dying one. Fans around the world wait with bated breath for the announcement of the next numberwang discovery, and with numerous teams worldwide vying for the glory of being awarded the medal and shouting "That's numberwang!", it's everybody's guess as to who it will be.

Eel-even

Since 1978, the Numberwang Council has protected our right to declare the square root of cabbage as Numberwang whenever The Manchester United Wins the Ashes. However, a recent appeal has been made to limit the number of times this number can be declared as Numberwang to 'Pi and a Bit'. A true wangologist would NEVER use the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal on a Tuesday! Say 'No' to discrimination and injustice! Vote 'No' on September the 35th!

All available info collected here:

1. Each game is always concluded with the "Wangernumb" round, which is preceded by the rotating of the board the contestants are seated on, briefly revealing a non sequitur scene on the other side, then rotating back to the playing contestants in a full revolution.

2. One contestant (nearly always Simon) is declared Wangernumb as the day's champion, while the losing contestant suffers varying consequences such as being stuffed into a cardboard box or arrested by the police.

3. The following numbers ARE Numberwang: 1, 22, 7, 9, 1002, 2.3, 15, 109876567, 31 etc.

4. And these numbers are NOT Numberwang: 1, 11, 7, 9, 5667, 0.0009, 69, 5 etc.

Title says it all. I wrote a script that produces a valid Numberwang sequence starting at any positive pseudointeger. It works great, but it crashes on this particular number. Any idea why?