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One of the takeaways from this week's disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner is this reality: it's not a small world after all.

Rob Cockerham  at the website Science Club has calculated how hard it is to find something the size of a jetliner in the expanse of the Indian Ocean.

  He writes today that he thought it would be like finding a needle at Disneyland. What he found is it's a 

"Finding a jet in the Indian Ocean is equivalent to finding a two-foot toy plane in Texas," he writes.

But that actually sounds doable. So he did more calculations.

"Imagine trying to find a sesame seed in Yosemite," he says.

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

Finding the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the Indian ocean is mathematically equivalent to finding a human hair in Manhattan.

Collins, Bob

VIETNAM-MALAYSIA-MALAYSIAAIRLINES-CHINA-TRANSPORT-ACCIDENT

Why finding a plane in a big ocean is almost impossible

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