Letter to Astronomy Magazine

I recently sent a letter to Astronomy magazine about one of the articles in the April 2013 issue. The article was titled Astro April Fools and was written by the columnist Bob Berman. I didn't like how lightly Bob treated Y2K, so I wrote the following letter:

I have been a subscriber to Astronomy magazine for about 3 or 4 years, since I was about 12. Probably my favorite part of Astronomy magazine is Bob Berman's Strange Universe. However, in the April 2013 issue, Bob seems to treat Y2K a little too lightly. Although not as bad as advertised, there really were dangers; computers really did fail, and bad things did happen.

A French sign displaying an inaccurate date because of the Y2K bug.
Image taken from Wikipedia.

Think about a normal computer problem, like the one that happened a few weeks ago: an airline's computers were down for only a couple of hours, but it cost them thousands of dollars. When something like this happens, the computer can be reset; once the bad data is gone, everything goes back to normal. Reseting a computer wouldn't work in the Y2K scenario. The date is the bad data, and restarting the computer doesn't help with that. Instead of computers being down for a couple of hours, they could be down for a couple of days.

Why did so little happen during Y2K, then? The bug was more widely advertised than any other in the history of computing. Software companies received worried phone calls from airliners and many other companies asking about the problem; so realizing the danger, they hired whole teams of programmers to ensure nothing happened when we time-warped.

However, not everybody took action, so some bad things did happen as direct results of Y2K bugs. Down's syndrome test results were inaccurate, resulting in 2 abortions after false positives. Radiation-monitoring equipment in Japan failed. An alarm sounded in a nuclear power plant. Not so bad; but that was after preparation. What would have happened had we ignored it?

Comments

Should Tau Replace Pi?

The digits of π, organized in a very new way Happy π-day! And happy π-month! Today's month and day - that is, March 14 or 3.14 - includes the first 3 digits of π. And today's month and year - March 2014 or 3.14 - also includes the first 3 digits of π. We won't have another double-day for π for the next 100 years, so enjoy this one! For the special occasion, I'm posting two π-related posts - one for π-month, and the other for π-day. In both posts, I'm setting the font size to approximately π * π + π + π. This is the first post, for π-month; to see the second, go to http://greatmst.blogspot.com/2014/03/pi-month-pi-day-post-2-5-common-pi-myths.html . In this post, I am including an essay I wrote about whether π or τ is the more superior constant. This was written for people who know very little about math, so the basic idea should be easy to understand even for people who are not mathematically inclined. Should Tau Replace Pi? A constant is any number or value that ne...

The Geminids

The Geminid meteor shower is coming up! At 2:00 AM, on December 14 (that's Thursday night, or Friday morning), you can see anywhere from 100 to 150 meteors per hour - depending on the sky and weather conditions. That's more than 1 meteor per minute! This particular meteor shower comes from a 5.1 km wide asteroid called 3200 Phaethon. Flecks of debris fall off this asteroid in a trail around the sun. These bits are called meteoroids . Every year, in December, Earth passes through this stream of meteoroids; when one of them enters Earth's atmosphere, it burns up and we see a meteor. If the meteor is brighter than Venus, it's called a fireball. Fireballs are much less common than meteors. This year, viewing conditions will be especially good; the peak occurs only 1 day past new moon. If you live in an area with lots of light pollution, you will definitely want to drive into the country. If you think the weather will be bad, go out a day or two before or after the peak. Kee...

Which Hurts More?

212° F Let's play a little game. I'll list a bunch of possible actions. Each action will have 2 variations, (a) and (b). You choose either (a) or (b), depending on which would be safer (or less painful). Each of the questions will involve an oven hot enough to bake a cake (350° F), and a pot of boiling water (assume we're at sea level). So... would you rather: 1. (a) Stick your hand in the oven (b) Stick your hand in the boiling water ... for a period of 10 seconds 2. (a) Leave a fork in the oven (b) Leave a fork in boiling water ... for a period of 15 minutes. Then hold the fork tight with your bare hand. 3. Fill a jar to the top with cool tap water. Then: (a) Place the jar in the oven (b) Place the jar in the boiling water ... for a specific, but unknown, period of time. Then remove the jar and put your hand in it. First see if you can figure these out yourself. They shouldn't be too...

Cosmos Computed

Search This Blog