"If you could teleport to a random place of the surface of the Earth, what are the odds that..."

[krispos42]

If you could teleport to a random place of the surface of the Earth, what are the odds that you'll see signs of intelligent life?

Borislav Stanimirov

Interesting question posed to XKCD's "What if?" weekly column, located here:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/

The answer was interesting, but I'm curious as to what DUers think before they read the article.

[tridim]

1. Chances are I'd see lots of water and some fish... Then I'd die from the pressure.

[DanTex]

2. I think it all comes down to whether you land on a farm or not.

Things like cities and power lines might be visible from a small distance, but they don't cover much surface area. Google says that 40% of the earth's land is being cultivated, and combined with 30% of the earth's surface being land, means a 12% chance of landing on farmland.

Now I cheat and look at the answer. Spoiler alert.











Interestingly, out of 50 random land points, they hit farmland 6 times, and 4 times they hit a non-farm sign of civilization, including one town and two roads. 6 out of 50 is a lower percentage than google said about farmland. On the other hand, 4 out of 50 non-farm signs of intelligence seems very high. I find it a little hard to believe that 4% of the earth's land surface has a road on it or nearby, given that roads are one-dimensional. I also find it hard to believe that 2% of the earth's land surface is in a town, because towns are essentially zero-dimensional.

Interesting experiment.

[krispos42]

3. Well, there are an awful lot of roads out there

Most of them would, obviously, be dirt roads.

The farm thing might be because of the high visibility of cultivated farmland. even if you're far away from farmland, you can still see it from a much greater distance than, say, a dirt road.

[BlueJazz]

4. If you landed anywhere in the southern USA, the odds would be about 1/23,426,583.

In Sweden about 1/2

[krispos42]

5. *snort*