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Emperor Penguins Counted From Space
HairyNevus writes "An international team of scientists used satellite technology to conduct a census of emperor penguin populations from outer space. Honing in on their colonies by looking for the brown patches of penguin guano that stand out in the snowy antarctic, high resolution images were taken and used to count the total number of emperor penguin species on the continent. The result was a census of 595,000 penguins, almost double the previous estimates of 270,000-350,000 emperors. This includes seven new colonies which had not been previously identified. Although this is uplifting data, computer modeling still shows that loss of ice flows in the northern reaches could result in problems for the penguins."
Man, with the NSA's latest spy satellites, they could have totally counted the fleas and lice infesting the fur of those emepror penguins! Probably give them all prostate exams at the same time!
Rant off...I just hate how everyone out there assumes that since it's the NSA paying for the satellites, they must somehow have sensors so good as to evade basic equations for the resolving power of a lens. Not to mentioned the fundamental problem that the more the satellite can zoom in on an area and resolve details, the smaller the area that it can be scanning simultaneously. So, even if the satellite could see the fleas on a penguin, it would only be able to view a few penguins at a time at that resolution and it would take it years to count a million of them.
This is why there are probably not satellites watching you right now, personally, even if the government had the technological ability to track you this way.