expand into a bubble 70 miles across. 65-million-year-old Chicxulub impact sitethis Thisis what it looks Whats the fastest way to get a hand-written letter from my place in Chicago to my mother in New Jersey? Surely anything is possible if we put our minds to it, right, scientists? But it would be the same problem with nukes. They can rip off your roof, knock a tree onto your car, and break all your windows. Various Theoretical Models For Underwater Actually, it would be more clean than it is currently! What if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty? 195 years. It's just a matter of time. This is potentially hazardous to some ships, but Assuming that you have a spaceship in orbit around the Earth, could you propel your ship to speeds exceeding escape velocity by hitting golf balls in the other direction? We kept the chairs for five years but despite laborious attempts it couldn't be reproduced. e.g. what if? Earths atmosphere is really thin compared to the radius of the Earth. Yes, but you need to talk to the Russians to do it right. Later he released a different countdown with comic 2636: What If? How many unique English tweets are possible? Would it do more environmental damage than it is already apparently doing? What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died? In the absence of an Hurricanes cause destruction in lots of ways, but the big one is wind. If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. "People were astonished. The Mariner 1 has traveled much farther than Voyager 1. My 12-year-old daughter is proposing an interesting project. This has become known as the Countdown in header text, see all details on that page. If cows could photosynthesize, how much less food would they need? My daughter age 4.5 maintains she wants a billion-story building. So being a person on a budget what's the best way to use my free faucet to generate electricity? What if I made a lava lamp out of real lava? According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.". HIDDEN FEATURE: The inside of this book has words and pictures, plus a special UK foreword. Answer: A literal Death Star. How fast would I have to bike for my skin to warm up the way a spacecraft heats up during reentry? When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones? the probability of achieving a perfect SAT score by guessing) to completely fictional questions (e.g. effects has not been made. Reed wasn't worried about fallout. What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off? How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters? What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? have been enough to strengthen it into a typhoon, much as the deep warm He also says this isn't the end, that over the long term, "the risk landscape could change, and in a bad way, not in a good way. There is a water average. Every now and then we have to insert a leap second because the Earths rotation is slowing down. See the [[what if]] ''{{what if|147|Niagara Straw}}''. Red successfully cuts off Blue and then dies shortly thereafter. turbulent warm water and explosion debris. According to the report, as The questions Randall tackles range from realistic possibilities (e.g. In reality, the oceans arent that deep. It's certainly the farthest from Earth we know about. During the first presidential debate, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed that Republican President Donald Trump once considered detonating a nuclear device inside of a hurricane to stop it. Aim carefully. If a T-rex were released in New York City, how many humans/day would it need to consume to get its needed calorie intake? Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have? Even the U.S. government got involved in a big way. Why not nuke a hurricane? Am I right to be afraid of pressure cookers? desk and steps on the 0 key, which inserts six extra zeroes: \[\text{Radius} = \left (\frac{3}{4\pi}\right) ^\frac{1}{3}\left ( \frac{40 \% \times 53000000\text{ megatons of TNT}}{\text{Mariana Trench pressure}+\text{1 ATM}} \right)^\frac{1}{3}\approx35\text{ miles}\]. It would not have a big impact unless it happened during the space age. 'My friend and I were arguing about what would happen if a bullet got struck by lightning, and we agreed that you should resolve it . What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer? Liquid tungsten? As the first two were released on week 1, this means that there were 134 articles released over the next 143 weeks, meaning there were only 9 weeks without an article. What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now - only rotated by an angle of 90 degrees? How many flyby runs would it take to stop Jupiter completely? The what if? If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn't be able to take off, what would the rope have to be made out of? Let's say the racer has to survive. But wait! Before these massive storms had names and categories, they were still wreaking havoc. These turned out to be the remains of North American forests "An airburst would result in no intense fallout and the cloud would rise well above the storm to avoid rainout.". The head of the U.S. They would not be able to pay off the debt, even if they forced humanity to work as slaves. You would have to go 200m/s. THAT number won't fit in the room? you would not be warmed if you went to the surface. near future, and outlined the potential military uses and dangers of If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it? I know that stirring does help to cool down the tea, but what if I were to stir it faster? I saw a sign at a hot springs tub saying "Caution: Water is hotter than average" with water at about 39C. Is it possible for a spacecraft to control its reentry in such a way that it avoids the atmospheric compression and thus would not require the expensive (and relatively fragile) heat shield on the outside? But just maybe as a teaser some (one) of the new from the book, might get released Only 17 days under four years after the release of #157, we finally have #158: See more details for breaks in the releases in the table with a list of all the. The reason for this you can read at the Editor FAQ . Far more than a book for geeks, WHAT IF: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much the smarter for having read. Tropical cyclones derive their energy from vertical temperature differences, are symmetrical, and have a warm core. What if the mountain's base were raised to the present height of the summit, and then the whole thing were allowed to drop to the earth? coast. How far would a tungsten countertop descend if I dropped it into the Sun? It's very unpromising. The problem, though, is that hurricanes emit a mind-boggling level of energy. Fat: 39 What took more energy, the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Apollo Mission? By Luke Darby. Were they lonely? Hurricanes emit a mind-boggling amount of energy. Humanity would survive if the robots cared about keeping themselves alive as well. 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions was released on September 13. And even hurricanes that don't post numbers like those ruin lives. After acknowledging that the question has been answered elsewhere, he recaps the result, but then focuses more intently on the unasked resulting issue of the aftermath of everyone on Earth being magically transported to one location as they all try to return home. The column of deep, hot water from our nuke could conceivably Of course, at that point, it might be easier to just leave Earth behind completely. We still need to complete some explanations like this one: 1608: Hoverboard. It would be a bunch of boulders with some patches of sand. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. How long would humanity last? Using nuclear weapons to destroy hurricanes is not a good idea, a US scientific agency has said, following reports that President . Would the storm cell be immediately vaporized? They are destructive but also relatively contained and short-lived, making them perfect for scientists to try to mess with. Once we figure out how to almost break the laws of physics, we might be able to stop hurricanes. As a mole is such a high number this would be tricky. column of heat creates a hot spot in the oceanmany degrees warmer than But scientists know they don't know everything and that is even scarier. If I shot an infinitely strong laser beam into the sky at a random point, how much damage would it do? the surrounding waterthat lingers for some time. "Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems,"NOAA's hurricane page states. Evin isnt the first person to think of setting off nuclear weapons What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair? National Geographic says it was a meteorologist named Jack W. Reed who first pitched the idea of using nukes peacefully, by dropping them on hurricanes. bookprovides The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. briefly glows the magma of the mantle. This new release is probably due to the upcoming release of the What If? Probably not. If you have a good arm, you could probably throw this book about 45 feet. NOAA says the idea is still popular,noting on their official website, "During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms.". The sixth two weeks break, tenth break in total. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. Unlike the last article, out after almost a 15 weeks break, this one was released only a bit more than week after that. What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? Printing $100 bills 24/7 for a year can make you about $200 million per year. If my printer could literally print out money, would it have that big an effect on the world? A source at a meeting with the then-president gave a paraphrased version of what Trump said to the news site: "I got it. There is an easy way to link to a given what if? How would the Earth change as the water is being drained? Could we speed up Earths rotation, so that we do not need Leap Seconds? [[A bar chart on a sheet of paper labeled "Fuel energy density in Megajoules }}, xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 31 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS, https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/log_scale.png, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. During this lovely dinner I was forced to liberate a small portion of wind and was relieved that I managed to do so very discretely. From here on standard release day was Thursday. If all the seas were one sea, How great would all of these things be? The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen. If all the axes were one axe, Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". Let's assume there's life on the the nearest habitable exoplanet and that they have technology comparable to ours. Hurricane Where-the-Hell-Is-Bermuda enters from the east side of the map, wanders around the Atlantic in a scribble, goes north for a while, and then peters out. It turns out the ramp would need to be five miles high (8 km) to make this possible, and that would be at a speed slower than walking. shooter is at sea level and catcher is up a mountain at the extreme range of the gun. The larger fish tended to be stunned for slightly longer because of their larger surface area but I don't imagine this relationship would be maintained for very large animals. What English word has the most consecutive letters on the same key? As humans learned over the last century from a wide variety of incidents, fallout is no fun. off deep underwater acts a bit differently. Also, the Earth would be destroyed. How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm? Most of the time it would not hit anyhing. It was published on September 2, 2014, and the UK edition of the book was published on September 4, 2014. What's the likelihood this could happen? Leaving aside the legal and insurance difficulties, my daughter is keen to know the maximum speed that she could expect to attain, and how many helium balloons would be required. After the break only three articles were released, two more were released after article 137 over three weeks, the last article 139 released on August 4, 2015. In Armageddon, a NASA guy comments that a plan to shoot a laser at the asteroid is like shooting a b.b. It then seemed to stop completely after those two, and it took more than a year (62 weeks) before #157. A tropical cyclone is a generic term for a low-pressure system that formed over tropical waters (25S to 25N) with thunderstorm activity near the center of its closed, cyclonic winds. And cut down the great tree, NOAA, who are so obviously at the end of their rope on this subject, explained how radioactive fallout making it to land after we nuke a hurricane is less than ideal. no wave of any consequence will be generated.. After that there were five more two weeks break, one three week break (before December 11, 2014) and two releases in a row (133-134 towards the end of this period of 136 articles), where the release dates where shifted so the two came out over three weeks' time with about 1.5 weeks between them. We've been to the Moon! In 2022 the follow up book What If? Before publishing the first what if? Or looking straight up at the bolt? Any time I attempt to heat left over Chinese food in a microwave, it fails to heat completely through somewhere. As gravity slows you and brings you to a halt, you reach the top of the skyscraper, where you reach out and pull yourself to safety. story by using. The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. With a bigger bomb, it could destroy the world. I used to work on a fisheries crew where we would use an electro-fisher backpack to momentarily stun small fish (30 - 100 mm length) so we could scoop them up with nets to identify and measure them. What would it be like to navigate a rowboat through a lake of mercury? What about using a squirrel suit? What if you were changing the light at the top of a radio tower and lightning struck? It would be too bright to watch and it would turn into rock quickly. Hurricane Freud starts in the Gulf of Mexico, draws a set of balls to Florida's cock, and then comes on land and stops. What in my pocket actually contains more energy, my Zippo or my smartphone? According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who get asked this question a lot, this is a very bad idea. 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