How many perfect scores would there be? 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. With today's technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I? (Assuming the average composition of rock were maintained.). Answer: The International Niagara Committee, the International Niagara Board of Control, the International Joint Commission, the International Niagara Board Working Committee, and probably the Great LakesSt. Obviously, my boyfriend had to go without pizza until he landed at JFK. Since 2014, there's also a book of the blog. The release day was fixed to once a week on a given weekday, except for a few articles that were delayed a day (or two) in one week, but then next week's article would again be released on the normal day. The Mariner 1 has traveled much farther than Voyager 1. This was so far the second longest break. We were both (luckily) amazed and surprised and I have often wondered what the odds are for something like that happening. A normal person would not get buried. 195 years. If, on the other hand, you're being attacked by a coyote, it's higher top speed means you'll have only one chance to hit it. Red successfully cuts off Blue and then dies shortly thereafter. My son (5y) asked me today: If there were a kind of a fireman's pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth? How dangerous is it to be in a pool during a thunderstorm? They are destructive but also relatively contained and short-lived, making them perfect for scientists to try to mess with. What if you built a siphon from the oceans on Europa to Earth? swept out to sea by a massive tsunami. 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). 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. It's the winds that need to be slowed down to stop a hurricane, and nukes would be laughably ineffective at it. 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. He liked these questions so much that he started up What If. In 1962, physicist Freeman Dyson wrote a memo discussing eight possible less than enough energy to microwave a burrito. 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? Aim carefully. And mess they did. Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have? What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? At 53 megatons, the Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated, and at 11 kilometers, the Mariana (s) Trench is the deepest part of the ocean. How much Force power can Yoda output?). If Michael Phelps could hold his breath indefinitely, how long would it take for him to reach the lowest point in the ocean and back if he swam straight down and then straight back up? This site is not under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License like xkcd is. In the first Superman movie, Superman flies around Earth so fast that it begins turning in the opposite direction. I was absentmindedly stirring a cup of hot tea, when I got to thinking, "aren't I actually adding kinetic energy into this cup?" His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. Then the As a writer, I'm wondering what would be the cumulative energy of the hundreds of thousands of keystrokes required to write a novel. I'm curious, though, what would happen if one person had all of the world's money? What do we do with this?'". 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. A decade or a century, depending if Facebook would still be popular. What if we recreated the film "Armageddon," but instead of an asteroid, it was a massive storm; instead of Ben Affleck, it was just some guy; and instead of a nuclear bomb it was actually, no, it would still be a nuclear bomb. Let's say the racer has to survive. ocean waves created by nuclear explosions. Hurricane cos(x) forms a graph of cos(x) along the bottom edge of the map.]] The report also claimed that Trump had raised the possibility of bombing hurricanes with another senior administration official, as detailed in a 2017 NSC memo. If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce? When a stack fits, write the number of iterations on a card. NOAA. All that changes when this cat enters the equation: Lets say that when Im typing the above equation, the cat hops onto my What a great man that would be! Partway down the side of that skyscraper there's a flagpole sticking out, sans flag! Of course, at that point, it might be easier to just leave Earth behind completely. Getting it back is another story. The eight two weeks break, 14th break in total. If cows could photosynthesize, how much less food would they need? Maybe a bigger nuke could stop a hurricane? My question is, what would a bowling ball look like if it were blown up to the size of the Earth? If our Twitter timelines (tweets by the people we follow) actually extended off the screen in both directions, how tall would they be? Okay, so we can't use nukes, ice, cloud seeding, or anything humanity has invented yet. 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. Just more FAKE NEWS!". If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? First after 17 more weeks releases began again with article 141 on Tuesday January 16, 2016. 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? This work is licensed under a At 53 megatons, the Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever ", The site wrote that during a hurricane briefing, which occurred early into the first year of Trump's presidency, Trump allegedly said, "[Hurricanes] 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. As long as you don't touch strange things and you don't swim too close to the fuel rods, it would be just like a regular pool. We still need to complete some explanations like this one: 1608: Hoverboard. 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. Thanks for looking at my book. Stopping rain from falling on something with an umbrella or a tent is boring. How fast would I have to bike for my skin to warm up the way a spacecraft heats up during reentry? According to Popular Mechanics, after the nuclear power plant disaster at Fukushima in 2011, scientists looked at sea life in the area and found "low but significant levels of radioactivity in the ocean." If they looked at our star right now, what would they see? If you cheat, a bag a little smaller than the Moon. What about bromine? What a great splish-splash that would be! If you have a good arm, you could probably throw this book about 45 feet. Uranium: 76 000 000 However, Riechelderfer understood the gravity of the idea, saying they'd wait to start nuking storms "until we know what we're doing." Possibly the Apollo Astronauts but they definitely weren't lonely. off the North American coast: Quantitative study of the destructive It's just a matter of time. 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? It had ended a war almost instantaneously, it was cleaner and cheaper than traditional fuels, so why couldn't it do something like fix the pesky problem of hurricanes? Almost nobody would find their soul mate. Ever since J. Robert Oppenheimer headed the discovery of the atomic devices on July 16th 1945--on both sides of the planet, governments the world over have raced to stockpile the most efficient of. It's baffling and has made me automatically adjust heating times to over 2 minutes. What place on Earth would allow you to freefall the longest by jumping off it? water. shooter is at sea level and catcher is up a mountain at the extreme range of the gun. Let's assume there's life on the the nearest habitable exoplanet and that they have technology comparable to ours. As a mole is such a high number this would be tricky. Surely NOAA would tell people to dream big? What if you exploded a nuclear bomb (say, the Tsar Bomba) at the bottom of the Marianas Trench? August 26, 2019. Probably not. "Look how much we're paying now to deal with the hurricanes," Biden said. What do we do with this?'" Within a dozen or so seconds, the bubble shrinks to a minimum size, then The column of deep, hot water from our nuke could conceivably No, at least not without starving to death quickly and leaving our pets, belongings and everything else behind. More details.. 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. The heat release is equivalent. Interesting to see if they will begin appearing regularly again during the spring of 2017, as seems possible with three articles in less than a month and #156 was again released with less than two weeks between it and #155. When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen. Evin isnt the first person to think of setting off nuclear weapons The ninth break in total. typically takes the question beyond the original scope likely intended by the reader and takes it to some extreme for humorous effect. If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom? That turbulent warm water is actually quite substantial. ", In August 2019, the news website Axios wrote that sources who heard the president's private remarks in recorded comments in a National Security Council (NSC) memorandum claimed to have heard Trump asking top national security officials to "consider using nuclear bombs to weaken or destroy hurricanes. In the UK edition of the book, Randall included a preface about his thoughts on the units used in the UK. tsunamis. Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, More Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Water Waves Generated By Underwater Explosions, Evaluation of By Luke Darby. Hurricane Illinois-Has-It-Too-Easy comes from somewhere to the northwest, goes through Illinois, and then back to the northwest. the continental shelf. And if the great man took the great axe, rim. (I don't know why six feetbut that's what he asked.). Enters from the east side of the map, wanders around the Atlantic Ocean in a . If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. 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. There's just too much of a chance that the unknown could happen and result in an epic, deadly disaster. On Sunday, Axios reported that Donald Trump has a rather extreme idea for hurricane preparedness: nuke the storms before they make landfall. (The Metric System). When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British empire? How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness of the Sun? 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? (We have an idea for selling bottled Europa water.). I know that stirring does help to cool down the tea, but what if I were to stir it faster? This was announced on xkcd on January 31st when the comic 2575: What If? The bubble grows to about a kilometer across in a couple of seconds. Never use the Math markup language at the transcript. turbulent warm water and explosion debris. 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