Posts Tagged ‘distance’
“There is a limit to thinking about even a small piece of something monumental”*…
Still, we can try…
Via Jason Kottke, who is reminded…
of Ben Terrett’s calculation of how many helveticas from here to the Moon and my subsequent calculations about the point size of the Earth and the Moon (50.2 billion and 13.7 billion, respectively).
* Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation
As we size up scale, we might recall that it was on this date (the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene) in 1342, that Central Europe’s worst flood ever occurred. Following the passage of a Genoa low, the rivers Rhine, Moselle, Main, Danube, Weser, Werra, Unstrut, Elbe, Vltava, and their tributaries inundated large areas. Many towns such as Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt am Main, Würzburg, Regensburg, Passau, and Vienna were seriously damaged, with water levels exceeding those of the 2002 European floods. Even the river Eider north of Hamburg flooded the surrounding land; indeed, the affected area extended to Carinthia and northern Italy.
“Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away”*…
The temperature was hovering in the mid teens outside when we all made our way down to the continental breakfast that occupies the lobby of every roadside motel in America. There was a couple hovering over watered down coffee and self-made waffles when my dad proffered information about our morning: “We’re on our way to the McFarthest Spot!”, as if fully expecting them to smile and say back “Oh, what fun!” Instead, we were met with blank stares and an uncaffeinated “what?”
The McFarthest spot, of course, is the point in the contiguous United States that is furthest away from any McDonald’s restaurant. A brilliant (if eccentric) man named Stephen Von Worley determined it to be in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota some years back. A twist of fate, unsurprising to any resident of Tonopah, led to their McDonald’s closing and moving the coordinates some. Recalculating the location of the Spot with the newly closed restaurant absent from the dataset pushed our beacon of hope west.
The Spot now lies on some BLM land in the middle of Nevada, just northwest of Groom Lake – better known as Area 51. It’s just over 120 miles as the crow flies to the nearest Big Mac, even more if you account for driving miles. It seems to me oddly far, but also strikingly close given the magnitude of the 3.1 million square miles we in the US have between Canada and Mexico…
Tag along on “A Visit to the McFarthest Spot.”
* Ian Frazier
###
As we dally at a distance, we might note that to day is April Fool’s Day. A popular occasion for gags and hoaxes since the 19th century, it is considered by some to date from the calendar change of 1750-52— though references to high jinx on the 1st of April date back to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1392).
April Fools’ Day is not a public holiday in any country… though perhaps it should be.
The McFarthest entry above is not a gag. Nor is your correspondent’s suggestion for an April Fools smile: this ad (via the Minnesota Historical Society) for a Bobcat loader: Bobcat A Go-Go.
“No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first”*…
In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it’s unfortunately very slow…
An illustration of what one would see, traveling at the speed of light from the sun toward the edge of our solar system. The filmmaker decided to end the video after Jupiter (at 45 minutes) to keep it “short,” since it could have gone on another half hour just to get to Saturn, let alone Uranus, Neptune, the former-planet Pluto (#neverforget), or the Kuiper Belt.
Take the tour at: “Ever wonder what it ‘looks’ like to travel at the speed of light? Here you go.”
* Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
###
As we examine enormity, we might send sharply-focused birthday greetings to Theodore Harold “Ted” Maiman; he was born on this date in 1927. A physicist and inventor, Maiman is credited with the invention of the first working laser, a synthetic ruby crystal laser, which was announced to the world in a July 7 press conference hosted by his employer, Hughes Aircraft. Maiman’s work, for which he was granted a patent, led to the development of a variety of other types of lasers, and laid the foundation for the myriad uses in storage, scanning, communications, and other applications that have emerged since.
“The only lasting truth is Change”*…
A running tally of world population, plus telling (and similarly constantly-updated) statistics on government and economics, society and media, the environment, food, water, energy, and health, all derived from sources including the United Nations Population Division, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank: Worldometers.
* Octavia E. Butler
###
As we watch the world tick by, we might recall that it was on this date in 1923 that the Zero Milestone was dedicated just south of the White House at the north edge of the Ellipse, within President’s Park. Intended as the initial milestone from which all road distances in the United States should be reckoned, at present only roads in the Washington, D.C. area have distances measured from it.
You must be logged in to post a comment.