How the European Space Agency Celebrated April Fool's Day (esa.int) 41
The European Space Agency has a Planetary Defence Office, which includes its Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre. "It has come to our attention," they wrote in the April edition of their monthly newsletter, "that a recent trend among journalists has been to come up with creative comparisons to convey the size of an asteroid to the public."
So then, as explained by RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) "they propose a number of standardised units of comparison for journalists describing 'death from the skies'".
An excerpt from that April 1 newsletter: In the absence of a handy skyscraper, animals commonly used have included giraffes, corgis and an entire colony of penguins. But how do these comparisons stack up? Let's look at some of our favourite unusual suspects:
- Corgi: At around 30 cm tall, a space rock the size of a corgi wouldn't pose much of a threat.
- Half a giraffe: An adult giraffe can reach up to 5.5 metres in height, so half a giraffe would be about 2.75 metres. While not as impressive as a full skyscraper, an asteroid that size could certainly destroy a building or two...
- Elephants: An adult African elephant can reach 7 metres at the shoulder. Ninety elephants stacked on top of each other would form a staggering pile over 630 metres high, creating a devastating but probably not planet-ending event.
As this menagerie of animals can cause a lot of confusion, we at the NEOCC recommend the use of a Standardised Giraffe Unit (SGU, 1 SGU = 5 penguins) for ease of comparison.
RockDoctor shares this additional thought in his original submission about the newly proposed standardized unit.
"The world may be turtles all the way down, but it's giraffes all the way up."
So then, as explained by RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) "they propose a number of standardised units of comparison for journalists describing 'death from the skies'".
An excerpt from that April 1 newsletter: In the absence of a handy skyscraper, animals commonly used have included giraffes, corgis and an entire colony of penguins. But how do these comparisons stack up? Let's look at some of our favourite unusual suspects:
- Corgi: At around 30 cm tall, a space rock the size of a corgi wouldn't pose much of a threat.
- Half a giraffe: An adult giraffe can reach up to 5.5 metres in height, so half a giraffe would be about 2.75 metres. While not as impressive as a full skyscraper, an asteroid that size could certainly destroy a building or two...
- Elephants: An adult African elephant can reach 7 metres at the shoulder. Ninety elephants stacked on top of each other would form a staggering pile over 630 metres high, creating a devastating but probably not planet-ending event.
As this menagerie of animals can cause a lot of confusion, we at the NEOCC recommend the use of a Standardised Giraffe Unit (SGU, 1 SGU = 5 penguins) for ease of comparison.
RockDoctor shares this additional thought in his original submission about the newly proposed standardized unit.
"The world may be turtles all the way down, but it's giraffes all the way up."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Just bright enough to smear shit as AC, not bright enough to realize you're just smearing shit.
Re: In other news... (Score:2)
Blue whale (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It was a sperm whale. Variety : very confused.
I maintain (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously the SI basic unit would be the 'giraffe', not the 'half-giraffe'. Obviously a decigiraffe is too small and a giraffe is too large for this use, and I would suggest in common parlance it would be referred to as a 'haraffe', a portmanteau of 'half' and 'giraffee'.
Their elephant unit is shockingly inaccurate. I don't know where they got the idea that African elephants are 23' tall at the shoulder, but such a beast would buckle under its own mass on land. Maybe there's a secret aquatic African elephant of which I am unaware. In reality, an elephant is approximately one haraffe tall.
Re: (Score:2)
but such a beast would buckle under its own mass on land.
There's a brachiosaurus that would like to have a word with you.
Re: (Score:3)
Brachiosaurus wasn't a scaled-up elephant...
Re:I maintain (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Elephants are strictly metric. (Score:2)
>> Females are generally over 7 foot, but males 10 to 13 foot, at the shoulder.
Absolutely impossible.
Elephants are not natives of imperial unit countries, so any elephant gets educated by his parents (and the rest of the horde) to use metric.
-> There are only metric elephants.
In this context, the size of an elephant cannot be 7,10 nor 13 foot, but only the metric equivalent...
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: I maintain (Score:1)
Oh don't feel so bad, your ESA can still fly it's Euronauts on American or Russian rockets like it always has. Though your next door neighbor Tsar Putin charges a lot more for no benefit.
Re: (Score:2)
Look, the half-giraffe is a beloved and much useful unit of astronomical measurement—but I am willing to compromise.
Averaging the two, I propose, the three-quarter-giraffe.
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Banana (Score:2)
Bananas get used a lot in some contexts to show scale - especially by Americans (we refuse to use metric!!). So I saw a picture recently of an old tunnel borer, and the modern caption next to it said "A man without a banana is shown for scale."
Re: (Score:2)
"A man without a banana is shown for scale."
Is that like a large boulder the size of a small boulder?
Re: (Score:2)
One of the better comparisons that I've seen was an asteroid that passed nearby in the '90s called, "The size of a two-story home." Unfortunately in these days of McMansions that's less valid now.
I might suggest Olympic swimming pools, Libraries of Congress, or 747 jetliners, all measures that SlashDot users seem comfortable with. For a car analogy though we'd have to standardize on an asteroid being X-many Teslas in size/mass.
Re: Banana (Score:2)
I don't know where you guys get the idea that this is to avoid metric. The whole point of that is to compare to objects that you're more likely to encounter in day to day life rather than just tossing big numbers at you.
Similar things are even done in science, even when it isn't exactly precise. Take the astronomical unit for example.
Emerging from the rubble, one survivor said (Score:2)
F*** giraffes, and f*** elephants. It's got to be something more standard, like football fields, or New Jersey. If it's small pick any of the townships there, like Camden.
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Please don't tell this to the Americans (Score:3)
They use anything but metric, and we really really don't need another non-metric unit of measurement that's nobody else understands...!
Re: (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure this was actually in response to the series of which these are only a few examples: ...")
https://www.jpost.com/science/... [jpost.com] ("Corgi-sized meteor as heavy as 4 baby elephants hit Texas")
https://www.jpost.com/science/... [jpost.com] ("Asteroid the size of 45 aardvarks to fly past Earth Wednesday")
https://www.jpost.com/science/... [jpost.com] ("Asteroid the size of 18 platypus to fly closer to Earth than Moon
Note that while the headlines attribute the size description to NASA, they are created by JPost; for example, th
Let me be the first to say... (Score:2)
Don't quit your day job.
Re: (Score:2)
I remember selling my Escort for scrap in 1993 - did you get the rust holes in your floor pan welded up? I didn't figure it was worth the effort.
Let Me Guess (Score:4, Funny)
You need a Masters Degree and six interviews to work there?
Re: (Score:2)
Standards (Score:2)
1 SHU equal approximately 39.29 linguine. I propose we adjust the length of the SGU to be 5.6M, or exactly 40 linguine for ease of conversion and consistency with existing standards.
Yeah, I heard. (Score:2)
Aschbacher posted an announcement that ESA tenders will now be won by the best, and not apportioned according to member governments' earmarks.
EADS, Thales and Thyssen laughed out loudly.
Everyone else cried a little.
Then it was April 2nd, business as usual.
How about libraries of Congress? (Score:2)
Does anyone know if they include a convenient easy to convert?
To make a car analogy, like his many libraries of Congress of cars out books do we need to get to the moon or alpha centaury ?
How the European Space Agency Celebrated April Foo (Score:2)
Simple arithmatic? (Score:3)
It's long ago I was at school but for us it would have been 7x9=63 metres...
Re: (Score:2)
ESA reads xkcd (Score:2)
Methinks ESA likes xkcd, which has prior art on the usage of giraffes as a non-metric measurement unit. In this case, for how high a human may throw an object using muscle power alone. The giraffes are required to do some acrobatics for the better throws ...
https://what-if.xkcd.com/44/ [xkcd.com]