The authors report being able to detect populations of many microbes that they genetically engineered to produce lots of detectable molecules and they sprayed in patches on top of the soil.
So this could be a valuable thing. But the damn article shows an aerial image inlaid with a microscope image with individual organisms resolved, which is very very far from what is reported here.
It’s science reporting. Science is cool already. There’s no need to give misleading hyperbolic impressions. Bah.
1 micrometer (1E-6) to 50,700 km (1E6)
90 meters (1E2) to 2.8 billion km (1E12)
Edit: Oh yeah but size/distance does not decay linearly ...
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Uranus subtends a much greater angle than a microbe at 90 meters. Let me work this out: Microbe from 90 meters:
A typical bacterium is about 1-5 micrometers (let's say 2 μm = 0.000002 meters) Angular size = (size / distance) in radians = 0.000002 / 90 ≈ 2.2 × 10⁻⁸ radians Converting to arcseconds: ≈ 0.0000046 arcseconds
Uranus from Earth:
Uranus is about 2.6-3.2 billion km from Earth (depending on orbital positions) Its diameter is about 51,000 km At closest approach, Uranus subtends approximately 3.7 arcseconds Even at its farthest, it's still around 3.3 arcseconds
So Uranus appears about 800,000 times larger in angular size than a bacterium at 90 meters away! This is why we can see Uranus through telescopes (and technically with the naked eye under perfect conditions, though just barely), but we absolutely cannot see individual bacteria without a microscope—the angle they subtend is far, far too small for our eyes to resolve.
[1] https://frinklang.org/fsp/frink.fsp?fromVal=2.2*10%5E-8+radi...
So what would be the difference on magnitude between the bacteria and Uranus, then?
Edit: nvm, I just read your other comment.
That was the latest greatest Sonnet 4.5 ... not quite great enough evidentially.
I just asked it to "check the radians to arcsec conversions", and it realized the error.
advisedwang•4mo ago
igleria•4mo ago
Or a less dumb application: lab leak monitoring
dylan604•4mo ago
m3047•4mo ago
(I have no commercial connection with them.)