>>>I'm certainly not an expert, but I don't know how they know what something that far aways is in the first place. All the pics of Pluto I ever saw is just a around white spot.
>>>
>>>I saw a documentry of our solar system once and they said that the distance between the sun and Pluto would be like someone holding a regular 100 watts light bulb and another person holding a B-B pellet some 10 miles away.
>>>It blew my mind....:-)
>>
>>The distance Sun-Pluto is around 40 AU (40 Astronomical Units, i.e., 40 times the distance Sun-Earth). That means that for any hypothetical inhabitant or visitor of Pluto, the Sun would seem 1/1600 as bright as for an inhabitant on Earth. For a start, that means it's really cold over there, apart from being dark. Also, spacecraft can most likely no longer use solar energy, and must instead use nuclear reactors.
>
>Thus the sun would seem ~40Xs smaller from Pluto. That would be like us looking at a quarter from 100 meters away.

Here is something that was forwarded to me yesterday, more or less on topic. It is from an article about "out of the box" interview questions companies including Microsoft like to ask.

Question No. 1: What's the height of the Empire State Building as measured by a stack of quarters?

Question No. 2: Now, what is the dollar value of those quarters?

Question No. 3: If you are on a boat and you throw your suitcase overboard, will the water level rise or fall?

Question No. 4: How many piano tuners are there in the world?

Question No. 5: Why are beer cans tapered at the top and bottom?

Question No. 6: Why do mirrors reverse right and left instead of up and down?

Don't be shocked if you're asked any of these questions--or something equally as bizarre--in your next job interview, reports Wired News.

Taking a cue from Microsoft, more companies are asking their job candidates the oddest questions--questions that have nothing to do with their ability to do the work but everything to do with their ability to think fast, analyze information, and solve problems creatively.

And it's catching job seekers off guard, notes Wired News. They go into an interview expecting to be asked about their previous job experience or educational background, and instead they are asked to do some brain teaser that feels like a jump back to ninth-grade math. Employers are using the technique to narrow the field. It wasn't too long ago that they took just about anyone who had pulse--and gave that person a huge signing bonus. Now there are multiple candidates for every position, and riddles and puzzles are one way to narrow the field.

"In this economy, companies can afford to be choosy," William Poundstone explained to Wired News. "The brain-teaser interview is a trend that has reached a broad cross-section of the Fortune 500." Poundstone knows of what he speaks. He wrote the book "How Would You Move Mount Fuji?" to explain how Microsoft uses puzzles and riddles to find and then hire the most creative thinkers.

But do these questions and answers really tell much about the candidate? Poundstone seems to think they do. "By asking candidates to solve a puzzle, interviewers hope to gain some insight into how well the candidates think on their feet," he told Wired News. Employers use this logic: Microsoft does it. Microsoft is successful. Microsoft's success is due to its employees and their ability to solve problems. So the technique must work.

Interviewers who use the puzzle questions say they do so not to see if the candidate gets the right answer, but rather to follow his or her thought process and to see if they have the determination to stick with it and come up with an answer.

Others don't agree the riddles work--but not for the reason you might think. A study about the job interview process conducted by researchers from Harvard University showed that most employers make up their mind about a candidate within two seconds--yes! two SECONDS--of meeting the person. So a riddle or puzzle won't mean much if your fate is already decided.

Still, even Poundstone, who thinks the puzzles are a great way to identify problem-solvers, cautions employers. "You have to be careful not to let it turn into a hazing stunt. In businesses where there's a fraternity culture, it sometimes becomes a matter of putting everyone through the same gauntlet of puzzles and high pressure," he told Wired News. "You don't want potential employees going away feeling harassed."