----- Original Message ----- From: "Sara Schechner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 12:15 PM Subject: Re: Numb3rs
> I had to laugh when I watched the show last night, too. To a 100th of a > degree? As if the basketball hoop's pole is not tilted at all or bent >(not to mention the litany of other sources of observational error)?! >If the camera's time stamp were precise for that time zone (a big if), we >could determine how far east or west we were of the center of the zone and >so compute longitude. Points well taken, but given the premise of the show, we should (in theory) be able to get the time exactly. The camera must have been found, so if not damaged in the attack or tampered with, it will still have an ongoing timekeeping function. Even if not correct, the error would be stable for the time period in question (less than one day) so the correct time and any differential in the camera time could be factored in. Also the search area is pretty finite, limited to the distance the photographer could have reasonably traveled between the time of the photos and his time of death in a radius centered on the crime scene. I would assume the Hollywood hills or thereabouts is the scene of the action so say 34N = around 57miles per degree so a target of slightly over 1 mile diameter would result, at 1 order of magnitude less precision, a 10 mile target. A previously determined suspect living in that area would be worth a visit in a murder investigation. More or less believable, if you are in a TV show or movie (excluding "Naked Gun" of course)! Dave G. http://atensundials.com --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
