Tuesday, November 29, 2016

The coming Atlantis

Evidently, the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1 satellites have accurate enough instrumentation that they can actually detect the movement of the Millenium Tower: Satellites confirm sinking of San Francisco tower

To probe these subtle shifts, scientists combined multiple radar scans from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 twin satellites of the same area to detect subtle surface changes – down to millimetres. The technique works well with buildings because they better reflect the radar beam.

Over the weekend, my wife and I were walking along the shore of the bay, approximately 7 miles from downtown, with a very clear view on the day after a big storm, and my wife wondered if it was possible to tell which tower was the Millenium Tower from our perspective.

I suspect not.

But if we had a satellite...

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