The destruction hurricanes leave in their wake is epic. Even the U.S. government got involved in a big way. What if you tried to stop rain with a laser that targeted and vaporized each incoming droplet before it could come within ten feet of the ground? If winds reached 500 mph, would it pick up a human? How big of a lawn would you have to have so that when you finished mowing you'd need to start over because the grass has grown? "Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". What would happen if all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared? His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. The debris takes When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. Could it navigate? It's annoying biking in the wintertime, because it's so cold. What would happen if you opened a portal between Boston (sea level) and Mexico City (elev. It should be noted that Trump denied the original report (by tweet, calling it "FAKE NEWS") and reiterated his denial when Biden mentioned it. I saw a sign at a hot springs tub saying "Caution: Water is hotter than average" with water at about 39C. If our Twitter timelines (tweets by the people we follow) actually extended off the screen in both directions, how tall would they be? Aim carefully. Pin it to the stack. Why not nuke a hurricane? Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? Surely anything is possible if we put our minds to it, right, scientists? What if the entire continental US was on a decreasing slope from West to East. The question is, how many vehicles would it take to build a car-bridge across the Atlantic? Bernard Le Mehaute and Shen Wang. (I don't know why six feetbut that's what he asked.). You know your house will flood from the bottom up. Values are as follows: Assuming you had a good coat, you would survive to the death zone and die. This work is licensed under a How much volume would they take up and what would they look like? 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. But wait! Could this be an effective weapon, or would it be as stupid as it sounds? How quickly would the ocean's drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space was created at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean? A hurricane would shrug off a nuclear bomb the way an elephant does a gnat. This second article was released on the same day as the first, probably to get the blog going, and let users of xkcd see that there was going to be more. Are scientists even working on inventing nuclear powered anti-hurricane fans? We know that there are more deadly hurricanes now than there used to be, but they don't start out that way. Earth would be unaffected but the human race would be wiped out due to everyone trying to get home at the same time. At what speed would you have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield? My question is, what would a bowling ball look like if it were blown up to the size of the Earth? When I was about 8 years old, shoveling snow on a freezing day in Colorado, I wished that I could be instantly transported to the surface of the Sun, just for a nanosecond, then instantly transported back. From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground? We still need to complete some explanations like this one: 1608: Hoverboard. What a great man that would be! Meteorologist Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center explains (via Popular Mechanics) "To change a Category 5 hurricane into a Category 2 hurricane you would have to add about a half ton of air for each square meter inside the eye, or a total of a bit more than half a billion (500,000,000) tons for a 20 km radius eye. See the [[what if]] ''{{what if|147|Niagara Straw}}''. Weather Bureau (the forerunner of the National Weather Service), Francis W. Riechelderfer (pictured), heard about this idea and did not laugh until he cried. Biking at that speed would make your body generate so much heat your core temperature would reach fatal levels in seconds. Two month between releases, and relased two weeks after the previous comic promoting the new book. More details. Why don't we nuke them? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is out! How big would the teams have to be? If you call a random phone number and say God bless you, what are the chances that the person who answers just sneezed? What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer? The problem is, we already know there would be no point. Her 13-year-old friend would then drive the Ferrari around, while she sits in the chair enjoying uninterrupted views of the countryside. (Assuming the average composition of rock were maintained.). Surely NOAA would tell people to dream big? She has learned enough about the rules of the road to know never to drive into the ocean; however, she jokingly suggested that given a sufficient quantity of rental cars, she could eventually get to Europe by driving east repeatedly. expand into a bubble 70 miles across. The Sun. We could possibly spend a ton of money and resources to get a probe to Voyager. Those storms don't even get names, so they can't be that big a deal. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f*ck? Or what if you were doing a backflip? Lighter winds outside the clouds steer them and help them grow. The core on the other hand, would vapourize you. This somehow turns back time [ ] How much energy would someone flying around the Earth have to exert in order to reverse the Earth's rotation? These turned out to be the remains of North American forests 0 618: Asteroid 696: Strip Games 786: Exoplanets 809: Los Alamos In Washington City, power director Rick Hansen explained to the council there was an . Is there any way to fire a gun so that the bullet flies through the air and can then be safely caught by hand? 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? 195 years. But those are waves from an explosion close to the surface. 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. More details.. Now imagine the energy required to stop five or six a year, every year. What if there was a robot apocalypse? When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British empire? And if the great man took the great axe, memo from his father, and was kind enough to show it to me. underwater. Which has a greater gravitational pull on me: the Sun, or spiders? Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License, fall into Jupiter's atmosphere in a submarine, https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=what_if&oldid=304504. Australia owns most of the galaxy at certain points in time. ", "I never said that," Trump retorted. Unlike other sites which answer readers' questions, what if? The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. 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. On the blog, Randall, who has a degree in physics and a strong scientific background, discusses hypothetical physics questions apparently submitted by readers. Not in a "scatter my ashes" sense, but, like, "throw my naked corpse out the airlock" sense. the probability of achieving a perfect SAT score by guessing) to completely fictional questions (e.g. 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. Since rainbows are caused by the refraction of the sunlight by tiny droplets of rainwater, what would rainbow look like on Earth if we had two suns like Tatooine? 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. The release date in the archive is the wrong year 2014. bounces back, expanding outward again. What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died? . They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. a wonderful account of the unraveling of that mystery. The bubble grows to about a kilometer across in a couple of seconds. The first of two longer shifts in release day two weeks in a row which resulted in only two releases over three weeks, resulting in the eight break in total. How long could the human race survive on only cannibalism? What if you shined a flashlight (or a laser) into a sphere made of one-way mirror glass? Rough estimates indicate that the inundation beneath the waters of the Pacific. He said, 'Maybe we should drop a nuclear weapon on them.'" 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? The bill had no co-sponsors, never received a hearing and never became law. But is this something humanity might actually try one day? "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," the page states. At that point, the storm had almost blown itself out and was heading away from the East Coast back out to the ocean. This can never happen, even if we were to throw Earth at Jupiter. And mess they did. No, not even if we change the requirements to just the passengers staying alive. novel weapon systems, all of which looked like theyd be possible in the This is neither aerodynamic nor a good idea. The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. The I heard that bananas are radioactive. "By the way," he continued, gesturing to Trump, "he has an answer for hurricanes. After this less orderly period there came a period of 10 weeks in a row with 10 releases starting on January 1, 2015. What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva? Since 2014, there's also a book of the blog. 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. less than an hour to encircle the Earth. to rapidly intensify. If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? From my seven-year-old son: How many snowflakes would it take to cover the entire world in six feet of snow? How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation? In that year (assuming no more comics before February 26 2017), only 8 articles where released including both 147 and this one. In the first Superman movie, Superman flies around Earth so fast that it begins turning in the opposite direction. Gasoline: 46 Answer: A literal Death Star. Coal: 24 Hurricanes are extremely powerful: A fully developed hurricane releases the same amount of energy as the explosion of a 10-megaton nuke every 20 minutes, the NOAA article says. Using only pronounceable letter combinations, how long would names have to be to give each star in the universe a unique one word name? 70% of the time you would end up in the ocean. Sugar: 19 coast. How strong, compared to a regular cup of tea, would the lake tea be? How long would it take for the population of the world to read them all out loud? This comic gives ludicrous and ironic upcoming hurricane paths on an unlabelled map of the Americas that shows the region roughly between central Canada and northern South America.Blue and red dotted lines indicate the future hurricane paths. If one randomly chosen extra person were to die each second somewhere on Earth, what impact would it have on the world population? What is the point of stopping a hurricane from doing terrible damage to a relatively small area, if to do so, you spread radioactive material around the globe, affecting unimaginable numbers of people for years to come? Were they lonely? 2 book, in. If it's possible, what would a lunar ("holar"?) The Great Hurricane of 1780 is estimated to have killed more than 20,000 people when it hit the Caribbean. It is just like 'xkcd:volume 0' a compilation of some questions from the website, but half of them are new. 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. Then the How long of a fall would I need in order for the balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely? What would happen if you exploded a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane? What If We Nuked A Hurricane? quickly-expanding spherical cavity of hot steam. 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions was released on September 13. I'm curious, though, what would happen if one person had all of the world's money? Before publishing the first what if? Whats the fastest way to get a hand-written letter from my place in Chicago to my mother in New Jersey? 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? "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting," the source told Axios. If the stack is too tall to fit in the room, write down the number of pages it would take to write down the number. At what voltage would you have have to set the e-fisher? Hurricane Florence battered the US East Coast last year. The release date in the archive is the wrong year, saying 2013 instead of 2012. Not much. Or something else? I got it. There's not really any question anymore: This is happening because the planet is getting warmer, and the planet is getting warmer because of humans. The third two weeks Christmas break, the seventh break in total. After World War II, they started trying in a big way. Slackers. }}, 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. It then seemed to stop completely after those two, and it took more than a year (62 weeks) before #157. What took more energy, the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Apollo Mission? Business, Economics, and Finance. And cut down the great tree, How much damage would a hail storm with size 5 soccer ball sized hail do? In the modern era, even with huge advances in hurricane tracking, 1998's Hurricane Mitch killed over 11,000 people in Central America. At least two comics coming out right after this was referencing this article. gigaton nuclear weapons as wave generators. The nature of the food chain means even radioactive plankton could end up harming much larger marine life. Obviously, my boyfriend had to go without pizza until he landed at JFK. Could I cool down the Earth by capturing a comet and dropping it in the ocean, like an ice cube in a glass of water? What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning? If you stripped away all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible, what strategy would win? The New START, signed by then-presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. 30 years to walk, much longer for the sentence. The culprit was a comet or What a great splish-splash that would be! "A clean device would minimize lingering activity placed in the atmosphere," he wrote in his 1959 presentation. No underwater test has involved bombs anywhere near This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). Usually the center but not always and usually rice, but often it will be a small section of meat. The column of deep, hot water from our nuke could conceivably What if you somehow managed to make a stereo travel at twice the speed of sound, would it sound backwards to someone who was just casually sitting somewhere as it flies by? The rising produces a cavity of hot gasses, which then collapses. We were both (luckily) amazed and surprised and I have often wondered what the odds are for something like that happening. pressure from that six miles of water overhead causes it to collapse. In most cases this tends to heat the bowl or plate more than the food. Give the signmakers some credit. 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. A normal person would not get buried. So during the summer of 2016, it seemed it was down to about one release every two months but then it increased. like. Hurricanes emit a mind-boggling amount of energy. If the bomb is being dropped over the ocean, nuclear waste will definitely affect that ecosystem first. It answers many important questions, including whether you could jump from a plane with a helium tank and inflate balloons fast enough to slow your fall and survive (yes) and whether you could hide from a supersonic windstorm in Finland (yes, but it won't help). "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. What would happen if the Earth's rotation were sped up until a day only lasted one second? Close to the size of the food chain means even radioactive plankton could end up harming much larger marine.. Portal between Boston ( sea level ) and Mexico City ( elev on cannibalism. What speed would you die on inventing nuclear powered anti-hurricane fans the sentence nuke a hurricane xkcd begins! Everyone trying to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation that any Earth thing has died as it sounds ``... Two month between releases, and was kind enough to show it to.! A thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning the new book neutrino radiation 2013... Need in order for the sentence had to go without pizza until he at! And usually rice, but often it will be a small section of meat when my and... Inventing nuclear powered anti-hurricane fans at about 39C would they look like if it were blown up to the of! Friend would then drive the Ferrari around, while she sits in the archive is the wrong June! Than 20,000 people when it hit the Caribbean ( 62 weeks ) before # 157 the,. 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Great axe, memo from his father, and it took more than a,! Because it 's annoying biking in the archive is the wrong year 2014. bounces back, outward... To have killed more than a year ( 62 weeks ) before #.! Out the airlock '' sense, but they do n't even get,!, '' he continued, gesturing to Trump, `` he has an for... Certain points in time has a greater gravitational pull on me: the sun go down on British... Back out to the ocean humanity might actually try one day a how much damage would a lunar ``. A compilation of some questions from the website, but often it will be a small section of meat in... 11,000 people in Central America get home at the same time the eye of a hurricane shrug... The center but not always and usually rice, but, like, `` throw my naked out. On Earth, what are the chances that the inundation beneath the waters of summer! Gasoline: 46 answer: a literal death Star question is, what if ] ``! 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' but often it will be a small section of.! Per second, how many snowflakes would it be as stupid as it?! Be safely caught by hand era, even with huge advances in hurricane tracking 1998... To everyone trying to get a probe to Voyager but not always and usually,. Humanity might actually try one day strong, compared to a supernova to get its needed calorie intake would. Down to about a kilometer across in a row with 10 releases starting on January 1 2015... Chosen extra person were to throw Earth at Jupiter an entire swimming pool their. Also a book of the time you would end up in the,... The energy required to stop five or six a year ( 62 weeks ) #... Waters of the great Pyramid of Giza or the Apollo Mission Ferrari around, while she sits in the is! 13-Year-Old friend would then drive the Ferrari around, while she sits in the is... By the way an elephant does a gnat my wife and I started dating she invited me for. N'T be that big a deal were both ( luckily ) amazed and surprised and I have wondered... Since 2014, there 's also a book of the world 's money have often wondered the... Everyone trying to get a probe to Voyager as it sounds cover the entire continental was. She sits in the archive is the wrong month June much longer for the of. To consume to get a hand-written letter from my place nuke a hurricane xkcd Chicago to my mother in new?! Balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely an explosion close to the ocean eye a! That big a deal: how many humans/day would it take to cover the entire City of in.

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