When I was surfing the web earlier today, there was an article on MSNBC claiming that satellite-based imagery had revealed a new pyramid in Peru, and that the pyramid was 9,000 square miles in area. The photo accompanying the story depicted a farmer's field surrounded by creeks and trees, with the pyramid outlines marked by arrows.
Apparently no one writing or proofreading the article stopped to consider the illogic of a structure that would have been 94 miles long on each side of its base (and presumably many times higher than Mount Everest). But how did such an error get created in the first place?
I found the answer at the Reddit discussion. MSNBC was quoting a primary source where the dimensions of the base were 91.44 X 99.97 meters, or 9,141 square meters. Apparently somewhere in the processing of the article the square meters was abbreviated "sq. m." and the latter was misinterpreted by the (presumably American) writer as "square miles."
I believe there was a spacecraft that went astray because of a similar unfamiliarity with the metric system.
The story (and the headline) at the MSNBC link has been corrected. Fortunately I took a screencap this morning and have embedded it above to document the error.
your comment would be better if you could do the math yourself. A 300 mile base for the pyramid would make it 300 * 300 = 90,000 sq miles, not 9000. the base length for a 9000 sq mile base would be around 94 miles.
ReplyDeletejust sayin'
Thanks, anon. My mistake had gone three years without being detected until you spotted it.
ReplyDeleteError fixed. Appreciate it.
stan