I have (as I look) three half-written articles waiting to be finished… it’s been a busy week, and I just haven’t been able to finish anything. And so…
Wish I could have gone to Penny Arcade’s PAX this past weekend… sounds like a blast to just be around gamers and… play games and stuff. Trade Pokemon, shred Guitar Hero and try Rock Band. I was struck by a note from the ars technica review of PAX 2007:
It seems like no one had more fun than Gabe and Tycho themselves, and it proved to me that this was just an excuse to throw a big party for geeks. You and I probably do it all the time: invite some friends over to our house, and play some games.
Yeah… that IS fun… my sister Hillary visited Tuesday, and probably within fifteen minutes of her entering the apartment, I had her strapped into a toy guitar, furiously working through the lead on The Go-Go’s “We Got The Beat” from Guitar Hero’s “Encore: Rocks the 80s” expansion. I backed her up on bass.
And Jenn has promised to do vocals and Andrew is going to do drums, so I think we have our Rock Band set…. and it’ll beat YOURS to the ground. To… the ground. Step up for the Holloway Beatdown. Rawr.
During my morning commute, I usually try to work out puzzles and stuff, or make anagrams from billboards, things like that to make the half hour wade through traffic less tedious.
Today was a good one (imnsho). It went like this.
It’s midnight and you have your telescope pointed straight up, and you see something coming at you and you can tell by the blue shift that it’s traveling at 99% of the speed of light directly at you, and that it appears to be (amazingly you can tell this) precisely one light year away.
The question is: How long do you have to put your affairs in order and give the Department of Homeland Security long enough to schedule President Bush’s photo opportunity before it (whatever “it” is) hits?
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The light that you’re seeing now left the object a year ago — 365.25 days. The object itself is following close behind, and will (at .99c) intersect the orbit of the Earth 3.625 days later. Luckily, due to the revolving of the Earth, if you’re in Connecticut (like me), then the object will hit in the Caspian Sea, bringing more trouble to a troubled region by destroying the Middle East, mainland Europe, and North Africa. President Bush will have to take Air Force One to Libya and hike the rest of the way there for his photo-op.
Now wait, you might say. The Earth is also moving around the Sun at a huge speed! Maybe it misses entirely!
You’re absolutely right. If the object was aimed for where the Earth was when we first saw it, it would miss us by 9.42×10^9 meters, well past the Moon, and we wouldn’t have to worry about it at all, well, at least until it hits the Sun a few minutes later. Then again, it might miss. Connecticut is nowhere near the Tropic of Cancer and even then the Sun is precessing southward toward its meeting with the Equator at the Autumnal Equinox in September, so the object is intersecting the ecliptic at a pretty steep angle. Now, if I lived in Guatemala… the Sun would get one heck of a poke in the eye.
We would have seen the object move in the sky from night to night if it would miss. If it doesn’t move in the sky from night to night, it’s aimed at where we’re gonna be. If we’re totally lucky, maybe the Moon will be in the way, and we’ll get a really pretty set of rings to light up the night sky.