In the wake of Symantec's and Gartner's warnings that the Macs are
susceptible to possible future viruses and spyware, and that users
should be prepared for such an eventuality in the future, we here at
the Lite Side have decided that you should be aware of all the other
ways in which your Mac is at risk and do whatever it takes to protect
it. That's why we've prepared this Lite Side Group™ analysis
entitled
Risk of Meteorite Impact Assessment for Your
Macintosh Computer
According to his article,
Is it possible that a meteorite could strike a commercial airliner and
cause it to explode?, David Morrison, a famous astronomer says of
the probability of a meteor striking an airplane while in flight:
"It is certainly possible for a meteorite to strike a commercial
airliner, although the probability is low. We can make a very rough
estimate by comparing the area of airliners with the area of cars in
the U.S. A typical car has an area on the order of 10 square meters,
and there are roughly 100 million cars in the U.S., for a total
cross-sectional area of about 1,000 square kilometers. The typical
airliner has a cross-sectional area of several hundred square meters,
but the number of planes is much smaller than the number of cars,
perhaps a few thousand. The total cross-sectional area of airliners is
therefore no more than 10 square kilometers, or a factor of at least
100 less than that of cars. Three cars are known to have been struck by
meteorites in the U.S. during the past century, so it would appear that
the odds are against any airplanes having been hit, but it is not
impossible that one might have been."
Now, there are perhaps 50 million functional Macs in the world (a
number which I admittedly just pulled out of my . . . hat),
and let's say that you could put 25 Macs on top of a single car in a
single layer. (Readers are invited to Photoshop this and send in their
entries for a prize.)
Using Morrison's logic, we can conclude that the odds of any Mac
getting struck by as meteorite are roughly equivalent to the risk of 2
million cars getting struck by a meteor. The total surface area of the
Macs (making the generous assumption that 1 Mac is 0.25 square meters
in size) is on the order of 0.5 million square meters, or 0.5 square
kilometers. Comparing this to the area Morrison estimated for cars, we
see that it is roughly 2000 times more likely for a car to be struck
than a Mac.
In the last century there are three documented cases of cars being
struck by meteorites (read the rest of the linked article for more
information), although it isn't stated in the articles if the cars were
merely dented or destroyed by the meteorites.
Therefore, if Macs had existed for the entire last century,
3/(2000*100 million) of them might have been hit by a meteorite, a
statistic which is further reduced by the fact Macs were only
introduced in 1984; so call it 3/(8000*100 million). This makes the
probability approximately 0.000000000015 that one of the Macs currently
in existence has already been struck by a meteorite - and no one has
reported it.
We are, of course, ignoring the fact that most Macs are not stored
outdoors. Morrison's analysis does not address the use of garages
either, and one of the documented cases of cars being struck by a
meteorite occurred when it was sitting in a garage, so being indoors
(at least in a single story home) does not necessarily induce any kind
of risk reduction.
This probability, while low, is still not zero, so the Lite Side
Group™ hereby suggests that you keep your Mac indoors at all
time, preferably in tall multistory buildings.
You can also purchase one of our MacMeteorShields™ at the Low
End Mac online store. (These are labeled "It ain't obsolete until I say
it is" mouse-pads, in case you couldn't find them; you'll need about
four of them depending on your Mac model.) A new version, labeled
"Macintosh meteor impact shield: Because 0.00000000015 is still too big
a risk to ignore" is in development.
We are also investigating rates for MacMeteorInsurance™ and
should be able to announce the product Real Soon Now.
The Lite Side Group™ is an independent risk-assessment
think-tank which has no vested interest in the purchases made through
the Low End Mac online store. The capacity of the tank is about 13.5
gallons, and as soon as it drains we'll move the contents over to our
dryer.
