Expensive Phonenumber and Disappearing Countries

Some people just have too much money, and some just want more. The most expensive telephone number has just been bought for equivalent of 1.1 million dollars. Okay, so the number sounds like the word rich repeated, but surely he would have been richer if he hadn't bought the number in the first place.

Did you know that the US could wipe out another country on a whim? But I bet you didn't know that they had done just that. Namely, Libya has been wiped out (well, it's internet presence anyway) by some unknown reason. So mysterious is it, that nobody has been found that could shed light to the situation.

Spurred on by an article at TheRegister using an online asteriod guide to see what would a normal person off the street would notice if an asteroid hit a town nearby, I thought I'd do the same thing for this city from where I am writing this post, Mainz, to be exact. Purely in the name of research, of course. The results will follow shortly.

Now back to Mexico where an entire state police force has been sacked and put in jail on corruption charges. That's over 500 policemen. Of course, the probability of them being kept locked up will obviously be affected by the fact that these prisons were controlled by said police force, and therefore any escape routes will be known to all the inmates.

Ok, now for that asteroid impact data:

Assuming the asteroid hit the river Rhine, and we were at Uni (about 2km away), that it has a diamter of 50m, and was made of dense rock, landed at 90 degrees to the surface, and hit water, these are the effects that we would feel:

Energy: 9.38 MegaTons TNT
Crater size: 2.61 km
Visible fireball radius: 0.7 km
Effects of Thermal Radiation: Much of the body suffers second degree burns; Deciduous trees ignite
Richter Scale Magnitude: 5.2
Max wind velocity: 440.1 m/s = 984.5 mph
Sound Intensity: 113 dB (May cause ear pain)
Damage Description:
Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.
Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse.
Multistory steel-framed office-type buildings will suffer extreme frame distortion, incipient collapse.
Highway truss bridges will collapse.
Highway girder bridges will collapse.
Glass windows will shatter.
Cars and trucks will be largely displaced and grossly distorted and will require rebuilding before use.
Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and leaves.

So, now you know. To make your own calculations, please visit the site here.

Avoid large craters...