After World War II, they started trying in a big way. Coal: 24 Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? If you cheat, a bag a little smaller than the Moon. More details.. Granted, the Sun is much bigger, but it is also much further away, and as I learned in high school physics, the gravitational force is proportional to the square of the distance. Later he released a different countdown with comic 2636: What If? In the absence of an If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. What percentage of the Sun's heat (per day) does the population of Earth eat in calories per year? But it would be the same problem with nukes. They would not be able to pay off the debt, even if they forced humanity to work as slaves. And cut down the great tree, Hey! There's a lot of numbers involved, so let's have the experts at NOAA explain it: "A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 201013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. Regardless of the context, Randall tends to take the questions extremely literally and responds seriously to them, even if they are whimsical (such as the Yoda question). If you make the words pronounceable by always alternating vowels and consonants, the names would be about 24 letters long. Instead, it blows a hole in the Liquid helium? What could I use as a clear medium? You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. Slackers. 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. Regarding the question it could be done, but why did the guy asking the question whish to do such a horrible thing Randall ends up asking back. Since then only three more articles were released in 2016, the first two with about 8 weeks between them and then more than 12 weeks. What would happen if the Moon were replaced with an equivalently-massed black hole? 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? Since then there was no new posts for almost four years. But come on. Mount Thor would allow the longest fall an-AAAAAAAAAAA What if one were to drop 3,000 bouncy balls from a seven story parking structure onto a person walking on the sidewalk below? What is the longest possible sunset you can experience while driving, assuming we are obeying the speed limit and driving on paved roads? Or what if you were doing a backflip? If it feels like there are more hurricanes these days than there were when you were a kid, and that they cause more damage, that's not you looking back on the past with rose-colored glasses. My 4 year old son and I were wondering about soccer ball sized hail today. At least two comics coming out right after this was referencing this article. Obviously, the answer is to nuke them when they are still small and not an issue. The bar representing Uranium is so large that it extends onto a stack of paper taller than a human]] THAT number won't fit in the room? When a stack fits, write the number of iterations on a card. My boyfriend recently took a flight on a plane with wifi, and while he was up there, wistfully asked if I could send him a pizza. This is neither aerodynamic nor a good idea. To figure out how big before disintegrating into, in the words of the 1996 report, a mass of When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. Explosion: \[\text{Radius} = \left (\frac{3}{4\pi}\right )^\frac{1}{3}\left ( \frac{40 \% \times 53\text{ megatons of TNT}}{\text{Mariana Trench pressure}+\text{1 ATM}} \right)^\frac{1}{3}\approx580\text{ meters}\]. The As plastic is made from oil and oil is made from dead dinosaurs, how much actual real dinosaur is there in a plastic dinosaur? We could possibly spend a ton of money and resources to get a probe to Voyager. By Luke Darby. 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions was released on September 13. Red successfully cuts off Blue and then dies shortly thereafter. Any time I attempt to heat left over Chinese food in a microwave, it fails to heat completely through somewhere. It turns out not only is that hard to help her appreciate this size, I am not at all able to explain all of the other difficulties you'd have to overcome. We've had examples of it before. What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant? There's just too much of a chance that the unknown could happen and result in an epic, deadly disaster. 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). As with a lot of these answers, just don't. Which has a greater gravitational pull on me: the Sun, or spiders? What if all of the sun's output of visible light were bundled up into a laser-like beam that had a diameter of around 1m once it reaches Earth? At what speed would you have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield? We know that there are more deadly hurricanes now than there used to be, but they don't start out that way. For over 20 years, from 1962 to 1983, the fabulously named Project STORMFURY used simulations, as well as four actual hurricanes as test subjects, to see if cloud seeding with silver iodine would reduce a major storm even a little. The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen. like with most of the other scenarios, everyone dies. Even the U.S. government got involved in a big way. Does it converge to a fixed cycle? What would happen if one tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw? What if everything was antimatter, EXCEPT Earth? But wait! till late teens/early twenties) at the same pace as we do during our first month? near future, and outlined the potential military uses and dangers of How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm? This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). If there was enough water, and if the model held up, thisblast would It is almost a year ago that two comics have been released with less than two full weeks between them (that was #147 released February 26, 2016). The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. (Also, Randall misspelled Bethlehem). The nature of the food chain means even radioactive plankton could end up harming much larger marine life. But after defeating the Nazis and inventing the atom bomb, scientists seemed to think anything was possible, including controlling the weather. More details.. In addition to the heat energy from the water, Every now and then we have to insert a leap second because the Earths rotation is slowing down. What better weather to try to alter than hurricanes? This memo has been declassified, but was never published. Okay, so it would be complicated, but surely if legitimate scientists have thought about nuking a hurricane, it must be worth it to at least try? It was almost a year ago that two comics had been released with less than two full weeks between them (that was #147 released February 26, 2016). If cows could photosynthesize, how much less food would they need? Could we speed up Earths rotation, so that we do not need Leap Seconds? It's annoying biking in the wintertime, because it's so cold. Earths crust dozens of miles across, leaving a hole through which Here's What Would Happen If You Nuked A Hurricane, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports. The result would be some kind of nuclear explosion. What is the furthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? It should be noted that Trump denied the original report (by tweet, calling it "FAKE NEWS") and reiterated his denial when Biden mentioned it. Every now and then, Munroe would get emails asking him to arbitrate a science debate. Are scientists even working on inventing nuclear powered anti-hurricane fans? 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. Sugar: 19 Maybe a bigger nuke could stop a hurricane? 2 book. At 53 megatons, the Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever The problem, though, is that hurricanes emit a mind-boggling level of energy. Hurricanes cause destruction in lots of ways, but the big one is wind. During a segment on climate change in the first presidential debate, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed that Republican President Donald Trump's plan for managing hurricanes once included dropping a nuclear weapon in one. What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer? The tree and splash would be great. (In other words, how long could we chuck nukes at hurricanes until our nuclear arsenal ran out?). No underwater test has involved bombs anywhere near that size, nor depths anywhere near that deep. A decade or a century, depending if Facebook would still be popular. 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. How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters? Could this be an effective weapon, or would it be as stupid as it sounds? It would be a bunch of boulders with some patches of sand. How great would all of these things be? A nuke set This has become known as the Countdown in header text, see all details on that page. In the year following that release only 8 articles where released including both #147 and #154. Randall announced his what if? Uranium: 76 000 000 Here's what would happen if you nuked a hurricane. . What if you were changing the light at the top of a radio tower and lightning struck? Humanity would survive if the robots cared about keeping themselves alive as well. Fortunately for the coast, these waves are fundamentally different from 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? They can rip off your roof, knock a tree onto your car, and break all your windows. I figured this would be long enough to warm me up but not long enough to harm me. What would happen if you exploded a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane? If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce? It is the 2nd book published by Randall. What if we were to dump all the tea in the world into the Great Lakes? What If We Nuked A Hurricane? The Sun. No, at least not without starving to death quickly and leaving our pets, belongings and everything else behind. 65-million-year-old Chicxulub impact sitethis 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? And if so, what kind of bird would it take? Did WWII last longer than the total length of movies about WWII? At what point in human history were there too many (English) books to be able to read them all in one lifetime? The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? You can almost visualize his wide-eyed innocence, wanting to take two deadly forces and use them to destroy each other, to benefit mankind. What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? 95 minutes at the right place at the right time. Stopping rain from falling on something with an umbrella or a tent is boring. My 12-year-old daughter is proposing an interesting project. It hasn't set and it won't for thousands of years. I understand that the New Horizons craft used gravity assist from Jupiter to increase its speed on the way to Pluto. How fast would I have to bike for my skin to warm up the way a spacecraft heats up during reentry? This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). The Mariner 1 has traveled much farther than Voyager 1. Then, while falling, I release the helium and fill the balloon. The others not so much. completely. But those are waves from an explosion close to the surface. How far would a tungsten countertop descend if I dropped it into the Sun? If the Hubble telescope were aimed at the Earth, how detailed would the images be? After two 8 weeks breaks this one waited almost three months. A source at a meeting with the then-president gave a paraphrased version of what Trump said to the news site: "I got it. If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom? Huge volumes of rock and water are blasted into space. . 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. Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood? How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation? Category:Hurricanes - explain xkcd. On average, not just in spring or fall. book on 12 March 2014 in the blag. What if you exploded a nuclear bomb (say, the Tsar Bomba) at the bottom of the Marianas Trench? improbable typhoon interaction, the overall effect of the bomb isnt It turns out, you'd need a lot of nukes and a lot of power. memo from his father, and was kind enough to show it to me. Assuming you had a good coat, you would survive to the death zone and die. Bernard Le Mehaute and Shen Wang. happens near the surface, it can create some pretty big wavesunder some It goes through three or four cycles of this collapse and expansion But this raised the question: could a bird deliver a standard 20" New York-style cheese pizza in a box? This came out after a three week countdown revealing the image from the cover of the new book over 136 frames released with about 4 hours between each frame. The questions Randall tackles range from realistic possibilities (e.g. off deep underwater acts a bit differently. Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? Hurricane Freud starts in the Gulf of Mexico, draws a set of balls to Florida's cock, and then comes on land and stops. First of all, it would not stand under its own weight. In the memo, one of the eight ideas Freeman discusses is the use of 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. What would happen if I dug straight down, at a speed of 1 foot per second? gigaton nuclear weapons as wave generators. Gasoline: 46 In reality, the oceans arent that deep. If everybody in the US drove west, could we temporarily halt continental drift? If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? But the next one (#154) was indeed released only a bit more than week after the one with 15 weeks break, and then less than 3 weeks after followed yet an article on February 28 2017. The countdown in header text, see all details on that page many ( English books... 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