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X-Ray Satellite Coming Down Tonight

Posted by michael on from the falling-down-on-new-jersey dept.

An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports that the 1400-kilogram BeppoSAX satellite is coming down to earth tonight (29th April), showering the area below with chunks of metal."

5 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. ahoy! by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 3, Funny

    I for one, am going to catch it on my tongue for sure!

    *runs off*

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  2. Re:probability by Muad'Dave · · Score: 3, Funny
    Doing the math, I get 1.68 million km2 of area. Approx 25.8% of that is land, making the land strike area something like 433440 km2. If the odds are 1 in 2000 of 'being hit', either each person is 216.72 km2 in area, or they expect to hit 216.72 people at once.

    :-) obligatory smiley :-)

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    Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
  3. Re:probability by barakn · · Score: 3, Informative

    An implicit assumption in your argument is that the incoming satellite will fall as one piece (and you ignored the cross section of that piece, but that was ok as it's a lot smaller than your 217 km^2 human). Also, only the total square area of humans needs to be 217 km^2, not an individual human's size.

    A 1 m^2 human has a 1:1.68E12 chance of being hit by one piece. In 100 million people, the chance of one person being struck is 1:1.68E4. Then 1.68E4/2000 = 8 is the number of expected pieces. I picked 100 million people as a wild guess of the number of of people in the strike zone, but since Indonesia has the greatest population in the zone, I'm probably not too far off.

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  4. +1 Insightful by cperciva · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From the article:
    After the satellite was switched off it became impossible to communicate with the spacecraft.

    Is this supposed to come as a surprise to anyone?

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  5. Hello Ebay! by Stubtify · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sweet I always wanted to buy parts off an x-ray telescope!