This warm water creates humid air, which then gets thrust upwards by tropical winds to create storm clouds. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f*ck? 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.". Should the person survive, what would be the number of bouncy balls needed to kill them? Liquid nitrogen? Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". It seemed like a safe bet to test cloud seeding on the dying storm. If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom? Did WWII last longer than the total length of movies about WWII? The This is neither aerodynamic nor a good idea. bounces back, expanding outward again. After this less orderly period there came a period of 10 weeks in a row with 10 releases starting on January 1, 2015. Most of the tests, however, involved either small bombs or shallow For example, in the first article, he discusses what would happen if a baseball were pitched at 90% of the speed of light. No one would get a perfect score. Luckily for the coast, later research paints a less dire picture. "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting," the source told Axios. If one randomly chosen extra person were to die each second somewhere on Earth, what impact would it have on the world population? Not with regular lasers, but with more power, you could destroy the world. The second longest break up til summer 2016, the only one to have been announced. The most obvious concern when it comes to nuking a hurricane, of course, is nuclear fallout. What took more energy, the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Apollo Mission? Partway down the side of that skyscraper there's a flagpole sticking out, sans flag! Unlike other sites which answer readers' questions, what if? After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f*ck? The 'reality' and consequences of using multiple cars (that are not your own) to construct a trans-Atlantic highway. Two month between releases, and relased two weeks after the previous comic promoting the new book. (including inside apartments). 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? 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? }}, 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. that size, nor depths anywhere near that deep. In the UK edition of the book, Randall included a preface about his thoughts on the units used in the UK. What would happen if the Earth's rotation were sped up until a day only lasted one second? Recumbent bicycles in aerodynamic shells can go almost 40m/s, and to reach 200m/s in one would require you to use 25 times the power output. Liquid helium? Maybe a bigger nuke could stop a hurricane? The release date in the archive is the wrong year, saying 2013 instead of 2012. The rising We kept the chairs for five years but despite laborious attempts it couldn't be reproduced. 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. In fact, weve actually tried it a bunch of times. What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? Uranium: 76 000 000 What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world? Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood? But beware of messing with the Texans. The debris takes In the first Superman movie, Superman flies around Earth so fast that it begins turning in the opposite direction. "He made it up. 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. I figured this would be long enough to warm me up but not long enough to harm me. How much volume would they take up and what would they look like? 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. This page was last edited on 11 January 2023, at 02:47. water above bulges up, though only slightly, over a large area. When they reached 2 book, in. Obviously, my boyfriend had to go without pizza until he landed at JFK. Copy paste the above text and correct the number and the title to get this result: The two first articles were released on the same day, Tuesday July 10, 2012, probably to get the blog going, and let users of xkcd see that there was going to be more. goes with citing temperature records and other trivia actually naming a Jeopardy master. A blast this size in the Mariana Trench creates kilometer-high waves This work is licensed under a You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. The tree and splash would be great. 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. From here on standard release day was Tuesday. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have? Gasoline: 46 2 book. 65-million-year-old Chicxulub impact sitethis 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. Aim carefully. Even the mightiest hurricane begins life as a much smaller storm. As far back as 1984, Trump has talked about the threat and promise of nuclear. Any time I attempt to heat left over Chinese food in a microwave, it fails to heat completely through somewhere. (In other words, how long could we chuck nukes at hurricanes until our nuclear arsenal ran out?). This new release is probably due to the upcoming release of the What If? 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. ", "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting," the source told Axios. What about 1 foot? In the memo, one of the eight ideas Freeman discusses is the use of These turned out to be the remains of North American forests What a great axe that would be! has not stopped but the first comic in 2017 (#153, January 30, 2017) came almost 15 weeks after the last in 2016, more than three months between releases. Randall Munroe left NASA in 2005 to start up his hugely popular site XKCD 'a web comic of romance, sarcasm, math and language' which offers a witty take on the world of science and geeks. What is the longest possible sunset you can experience while driving, assuming we are obeying the speed limit and driving on paved roads? While we might not have experimented with nukes, the government has tried other ways to stop hurricanes, and even those resulted in some terrible and unforeseeable problems. But come on. But as the '50s turned to the '60s, more and more people began to realize the weapons contained inherent dangers and harms. At the moment it seems impossible to guess when a new post is released so: Below is a list of the articles released in the what if? If they looked at our star right now, what would they see? For that matter, which war has the highest movie time:war time ratio? ", "I never said that," Trump retorted. Jack W. Reed began his military career as an Air Force meteorologist during the closing days of World War II. What if there was a lake on the Moon? Then from August 2014 there came several two week breaks, one in August, one in September and two in November, the last lasting three weeks into December, and on top of that the normal two weeks Christmas break. What is the furthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? The article is about the slope needed to be able to coast on a bike, without using the pedals, across mainland USA. If we ever got desperate enough to try to nuke a hurricane and crossed our fingers that something unexpected would happen, we might be rather disappointed when that unexpected thing was a disaster we could never have predicted. So, you're falling from a height above the tallest building in your town, and you don't have a parachute. How big would the teams have to be? How long would the Sun last if a giant water hose were focused upon it? Probably not. 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. But is this something humanity might actually try one day? Why can't we do that?" What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop? From the very edge of the atmosphere and even then it might not be fully cooked. "Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". 8000+ feet)? How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters? firestorms. What a great tree that would be! The release date in the archive is the wrong year 2014. On average, not just in spring or fall. 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? Would I be able to boil a cup of water by stirring? pressure from that six miles of water overhead causes it to collapse. However, Riechelderfer understood the gravity of the idea, saying they'd wait to start nuking storms "until we know what we're doing." completely. 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. If you had a printed version of the whole of (say, the English) Wikipedia, how many printers would you need in order to keep up with the changes made to the live version? The result would be some kind of nuclear explosion. The report, published in 1996, But that doesn't mean serious scientists haven't thought about the possibility. "Look how much we're paying now to deal with the hurricanes," Biden said. The world just has too many people. 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. A hurricane can release the amount of energy in a 10-megaton nuke every 20 minutes, the NOAA article says. If not, then we all die. A decade or a century, depending if Facebook would still be popular. How dangerous is it to be in a pool during a thunderstorm? Are they really equivalent? Her 13-year-old friend would then drive the Ferrari around, while she sits in the chair enjoying uninterrupted views of the countryside. Surely NOAA would tell people to dream big? If a meteor made out of diamond and 100 feet in diameter was traveling at the speed of light and hit the earth, what would happen to it? What if I tried to re-enter the atmosphere in my car? How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness of the Sun? 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). 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. Until then, perhaps the best solution is just learn to co-exist with them.". What would it be like to navigate a rowboat through a lake of mercury? '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 . It's certainly the farthest from Earth we know about. In 2022 the follow up book What If? A CEO on the other hand, would be in trouble. Instead,according to Popular Mechanics, he said he could "imagine the possibility someday of exploding a nuclear bomb on a hurricane far at sea." X27 ; re free to copy and share these comics ( but not to sell them.. Deal with the hurricanes, '' the source told Axios to coast on a bike without! Published in 1996, but that does n't mean serious scientists have n't thought about the needed! Despite laborious attempts it could n't be reproduced obvious concern when it comes to nuking a hurricane, course. But despite laborious attempts it could n't be reproduced through somewhere but not enough. Edge of the Sun we chuck nukes at hurricanes until our nuclear arsenal ran?... 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