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Great discussion at Slate on gay-marriage games
This is cool: An online calculator where you can figure out just how badly you’d die if a meteor hit the earth near you. You plug in how far away it would hit, what type of meteor — “ice”, “porous rock”, “dense rock” or “iron” — as well as the speed it’s travelling and the angle of impact. Then click the button and, presto: The details of your own private eschaton.
I set it up for a half-kilometer-sized ball of ice, hitting the earth at a 35-degree angle and travelling 10 kilometers per second. The result? It would release 3.27 x 1018 Joules of energy, roughly equivalent to 7.82 x 102 MegaTons TNT, leaving a 5.2-km-wide crater. It would create a 6.5-Richter shock wave, and the “ejecta” — stuff thrown in the air — would hit 45 seconds later, with the chunks each being 12 feet in diameter.
The worst part? The “thermal radiation” cast by an object superheated as it ploughed through the atmosphere at such an awesome pace. The fireball would be 67.3 times larger than the sun, and would cause the following damage:
Much of the body suffers third degree burns
Newspaper ignites
Deciduous trees ignite
Grass ignites
Nice. Thank god this sort of impact apparently only happens every 19,000 years.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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