Better to just carry a sign. kg. In addition to the heat energy from the water, Using only pronounceable letter combinations, how long would names have to be to give each star in the universe a unique one word name? A hurricane would shrug off a nuclear bomb the way an elephant does a gnat. It seemed like a safe bet to test cloud seeding on the dying storm. After article 136 was released on April 12, 2015, Randal took a, At the time Randall wrote a note stating "What If updates are temporarily on hold, and will resume on July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:59 AM EDT.". There is no way to tell in advance which ones will develop." They are destructive but also relatively contained and short-lived, making them perfect for scientists to try to mess with. NOAA. As a writer, I'm wondering what would be the cumulative energy of the hundreds of thousands of keystrokes required to write a novel. The result of the above is that over the first 144 weeks 136 articles where released with never more than 3 weeks between releases. to rapidly intensify. 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. We've been to the Moon! In the absence of an completely. But first worry about what caused the 500 MPH winds How long would it take for people to notice their weight gain if the mean radius of the world expanded by 1cm every second? If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? People sometimes say "If I had all the money in the world " in order to discuss what they would do if they had no financial constraints. If all the seas were one sea, You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. At what point in human history were there too many (English) books to be able to read them all in one lifetime? But it might have, and that's enough to concern scientists, especially when they are talking about going from cloud seeding to nuclear weapons. 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. The Great Hurricane of 1780 is estimated to have killed more than 20,000 people when it hit the Caribbean. GameStop Moderna Pfizer Johnson & Johnson AstraZeneca Walgreens Best Buy Novavax SpaceX Tesla. Evin's scenario concerns neither. like. What would happen if you opened a portal between Boston (sea level) and Mexico City (elev. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). Probably not. What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? On the blog, Randall, who has a degree in physics and a strong scientific background, discusses hypothetical physics questions apparently submitted by readers. The bubble grows to about a kilometer across in a couple of seconds. If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce? It was published on September 2, 2014, and the UK edition of the book was published on September 4, 2014. More details.. If you carry a penny in your coin tray, how long would it take for that penny to cost you more than a cent in extra gas? And we could make it not deadly, somehow? like with most of the other scenarios, everyone dies. If your cells suddenly lost the power to divide, how long would you survive? 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? 2 came out. What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died? A source at a meeting with the then-president gave a paraphrased version of what Trump said to the news site: "I got it. At 53 megatons, the Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever Answer: NO!!!!! Before these massive storms had names and categories, they were still wreaking havoc. Business, Economics, and Finance. The column of deep, hot water from our nuke could conceivably Liquid nitrogen? The seventh two weeks break, 13th break in total. early, and expend most of their energy creating a narrow surf zone on Would the storm cell be immediately vaporized? approach Iwo Jima as a radioactive whirlwind. In that year (assuming no more comics before February 26 2017), only 8 articles where released including both 147 and this one. What would happen if all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared? "People were astonished. How much cornstarch can I rinse down the drain before unpleasant things start to happen? This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). No underwater test has involved bombs anywhere near How close could I stand to watch it? What would it be like to navigate a rowboat through a lake of mercury? It found that every 10 years for the past four decades, "the likelihood of a hurricane developing into a major one of Category 3 or higher, with sustained winds greater than 110 miles an hour, [increased] by about 8% a decade." Thanks for looking at my book. Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? Am I right to be afraid of pressure cookers? 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 head of the U.S. What is the longest possible sunset you can experience while driving, assuming we are obeying the speed limit and driving on paved roads? If winds reached 500 mph, would it pick up a human? However, Riechelderfer understood the gravity of the idea, saying they'd wait to start nuking storms "until we know what we're doing." What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? This work is licensed under a 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. Getting it back is another story. When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. If it's possible, what would a lunar ("holar"?) Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center wrote (via Live Science), "About 80 of these disturbances form every year in the Atlantic basin, but only about 5 become hurricanes in a typical year. The second break came a year after the first and was also a Christmas break before article 77 was released on December 31, 2013. If you have a good arm, you could probably throw this book about 45 feet. As plastic is made from oil and oil is made from dead dinosaurs, how much actual real dinosaur is there in a plastic dinosaur? I use one of those old phones where you type with numbersfor example, to type "Y", you press 9 three times. The release date in the archive is the wrong year, saying 2013 instead of 2012. But scientists know they don't know everything and that is even scarier. When they do, you have to pause between letters, making those words annoying to type. Also, the Earth would be destroyed. What's the likelihood this could happen? underwater. It includes this rather Could you electrofish for a blue whale? improbable typhoon interaction, the overall effect of the bomb isnt Most of the tests, however, involved either small bombs or shallow blog. How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation? The very first what if? August 26, 2019. No, not even if we change the requirements to just the passengers staying alive. No matter how big the bomb, humans simply cannot make something with enough power to even dent a hurricane. Second two months break of at least two in a row, the 16th break in total. The nuclear explosion at the Marshall Islands-which irradiated . dinosaurs. If you made a beach using grains the proportionate size of the stars in the Milky Way, what would that beach look like? 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. If the explosion If you make the words pronounceable by always alternating vowels and consonants, the names would be about 24 letters long. }}, 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/upcoming_hurricanes.png, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. And since I am already feeling like Bilbo in this one, is there anything else in my pocket that would have unexpected amounts of stored energy? How much Force power can Yoda output?). First two months break of at least two in a row, the 15th break in total. What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer? Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood? What percentage of the Sun's heat (per day) does the population of Earth eat in calories per year? Well, sort of. Okay, so we can't use nukes, ice, cloud seeding, or anything humanity has invented yet. Hurricanes are definitely worse than they used to be. Almost nobody would find their soul mate. book on 12 March 2014 in the blag. 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? 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. From here on standard release day was Tuesday. {{Title text: I'd like to see more damage assessments for hurricanes hitting New York and flooding Manhattan -- something like the 1938 Long Island Express, but aimed a bit more to the west. Dotted lines indicating hurricane paths cover the map, all red except where noted. In Washington City, power director Rick Hansen explained to the council there was an . As with a lot of these answers, just don't. book, articles were posted weekly. What do we do with this?'" Why can't we do that? 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? He said, 'Maybe we should drop a nuclear weapon on them.'" Trench. The basic idea goes like this-the Pentagon should bomb the eye of a tropical storm, thereby dispersing it and saving countless lives and millions of dollars. Most of the what if? effects has not been made. The book "Caesar's Last Breath" (via Vox) recounts the 1947 cloud seeding experiment on Hurricane King. What would happen if you exploded a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane? What could I use as a clear medium? The flooding they cause is also terrible and deadly, but at least the law of gravitation means that the water stays by the ground. In the UK edition of the book, Randall included a preface about his thoughts on the units used in the UK. Australia owns most of the galaxy at certain points in time. What about 1 foot? 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. 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). She is planning to attach a number of helium balloons to a chair, which in turn would be tethered by means of a rope to a Ferrari. Her kitchen had something called Bauhaus chairs, which are full of holes, approx 5-6 millimeters in diameter in both back and seat. ocean waves created by nuclear explosions. ", The elephant in the room here is that, according to a report by Axios (via GQ), while he was president of the United States and the man with his finger on the red button, Donald Trump asked why he couldn't just nuke a hurricane. After that articles began coming out regularly with a total of 9 releases out before the end of March 2016, mainly on Tuesdays to begin with, then one on a Friday before the last two came on Saturdays with two weeks breaks before each, the last being article 149 on March 26, 2016. From here on standard release day was again Tuesday. All that changes when this cat enters the equation: Lets say that when Im typing the above equation, the cat hops onto my If not, then we all die. typically takes the question beyond the original scope likely intended by the reader and takes it to some extreme for humorous effect. Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, "When you see things going up all over the globe like that, the ducks are kind of in order." 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. After that they were released weekly for almost three years, with just a few times with two (and once three) weeks between releases, up until article 136 was released on April 12, 2015 (2 years and 40 weeks). 8000+ feet)? Astrophysicists are always saying things like "This mission to this comet is equivalent to throwing a baseball from New York and hitting a particular window in San Francisco." no wave of any consequence will be generated.. More details. 70% of the time you would end up in the ocean. When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones? This is clear from his response to the question of what would happen if everybody on Earth stood together and jumped at the same time. A 2016 National Geographic article also explained that detonating a nuke inside a hurricane could violate the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. To figure out how big Were they lonely? The seminal work in the field of nuclear ocean waves is Water Waves Generated By Underwater Explosions, a What a great sea that would be! What changes could be made to our diets for the amount of calories to equal the energy of the Sun? Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? Even the U.S. government got involved in a big way. 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. , humans simply can not make something with enough power to divide, how exactly you. 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