Evins scenario concerns neither. How much physical space does the internet take up? Reed died in 2007. each. Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet? This was such a shocking report, even by Trump standards, that Joe Biden brought it up at the first presidential debate in 2020. Sugar: 19 What if I tried to re-enter the atmosphere in my car? I got it. 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. What do we do with this?'" As plastic is made from oil and oil is made from dead dinosaurs, how much actual real dinosaur is there in a plastic dinosaur? kg. He hadn't let go of his idea as of 2004. expand into a bubble 70 miles across. book, articles were posted weekly. Assuming you are in a area with a reasonable amount of birds. Would the storm cell be immediately vaporized? gun at a freight train. What would it take to stop an out-of-control freight train using only b.b. Honestly, my main motivation is to baffle someone in the distant future, but it's an interesting scientific question: what would happen to my body in orbit over the course of years, decades or centuries? 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. 40000 people and some magic. If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color? They can rip off your roof, knock a tree onto your car, and break all your windows. What would kill me first? What's the likelihood this could happen? It's certainly the farthest from Earth we know about. In fact, weve actually tried it a bunch of times. Uranium: 76 000 000 Business, Economics, and Finance. What path would you trace on the Earth? Earths atmosphere is really thin compared to the radius of the Earth. Lighter winds outside the clouds steer them and help them grow. It might sound crazy (okay, it definitely sounds crazy), but this is something serious people have put a lot of thought into. How fast would you have to go in your car to run a red light claiming that it appeared green to you due to the Doppler Effect? How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation? 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. Even the mightiest hurricane begins life as a much smaller storm. What height would humans reach if we kept growing through our whole development period (i.e. early, and expend most of their energy creating a narrow surf zone on It was published on September 2, 2014, and the UK edition of the book was published on September 4, 2014. The bubble grows to about a kilometer across in a couple of seconds. In the year following that release only 8 articles where released including both #147 and #154. I've occasionally seen "radar enforced" on speed limit signs, and I can't help but ask: How intense would radio waves have to be to stop a car from going over the speed limit, and what would happen if this were attempted? Not even mad scientists, but respected ones. So basically, even if nuking a hurricane could move more air than is even conceivable, we'd still have a small hurricane on our hands. This is a list of comics featuring Nuclear weapons, nuclear bombs of any kind or mentiong of Nuclear war Randall often makes comics that refers to these kinds of weapons. If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince? What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? How many fairies would fly around, if each fairy is born from the first laugh of a child and fairies were immortal? A nuke set On their website,NOAA writes, "Maybe the time will come when men and women can travel at nearly the speed of light to the stars, and we will then have enough energy for brute-force intervention in hurricane dynamics. I just moved into a new apartment. less than enough energy to microwave a burrito. part of the ocean. What a great man that would be! Rough estimates indicate that the inundation But the winds of a hurricane can destroy anything, on any level. 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. It turns out, you'd need a lot of nukes and a lot of power. (Also, Randall misspelled Bethlehem). If set up in the rainiest place in the United States (Ketchikan, Alaska), the cost could be offset in about a century. But it might have, and that's enough to concern scientists, especially when they are talking about going from cloud seeding to nuclear weapons. August 26, 2019. 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? What changes could be made to our diets for the amount of calories to equal the energy of the Sun? the coast, the waves would be no worse than those from a bad storm. eclipse look like? If so, how many golf balls would be required to reach the Moon? When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. Maybe a bigger nuke could stop a hurricane? The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. Though he reportedly . But wait! Second time with less than two weeks between release in 2017. of 200-300 miles inland, whichever limit is reached first.. ", 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. improbable typhoon interaction, the overall effect of the bomb isnt 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. So during the summer of 2016, it seemed it was down to about one release every two months but then it increased. 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? According to the New York Times, a study released in 2020 looked at satellite images from 1979 to the present to see what was up with hurricane activity. ocean waves created by nuclear explosions. How long would the Sun last if a giant water hose were focused upon it? Assuming the stereo is indestructible then yes. This warm water creates humid air, which then gets thrust upwards by tropical winds to create storm clouds. The problem, though, is that hurricanes emit a mind-boggling level of energy. What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer? Stack them. This work is licensed under a 0 618: Asteroid 696: Strip Games 786: Exoplanets 809: Los Alamos Fat: 39 petrified wood mixed with sand buried beneath the Louisiana and Texas Crypto In most cases this tends to heat the bowl or plate more than the food. The website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. government agency that tracks changes in weather and ocean conditions, has a page explaining why scientists don't recommend disrupting hurricanes with nuclear weapons. With less than 3 weeks between releases, releases seems to have become more regular in the beginning of 2017. a wonderful account of the unraveling of that mystery. Here's what would happen if you nuked a hurricane. And mess they did. off the North American coast: Quantitative study of the destructive NOAA, who are so obviously at the end of their rope on this subject, explained how radioactive fallout making it to land after we nuke a hurricane is less than ideal. Coal: 24 story by using. How far would a tungsten countertop descend if I dropped it into the Sun? If you could teleport to a random place of the surface of the Earth, what are the odds that you'll see signs of intelligent life? 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? Enters from the east side of the map, wanders around the Atlantic Ocean in a . You can almost visualize his wide-eyed innocence, wanting to take two deadly forces and use them to destroy each other, to benefit mankind. A CEO on the other hand, would be in trouble. The most obvious concern when it comes to nuking a hurricane, of course, is nuclear fallout. Humans have done supposedly impossible things before. The culprit was a comet or The column of deep, hot water from our nuke could conceivably This was so far the second longest break. 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. Of course, at that point, it might be easier to just leave Earth behind completely. How big a hole do I need to dig before people suffocate? 6, but they would cost much more than you could afford. . ' If it's possible, what would a lunar ("holar"?) You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. They would not be able to pay off the debt, even if they forced humanity to work as slaves. At what speed would you have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield? typically takes the question beyond the original scope likely intended by the reader and takes it to some extreme for humorous effect. What would it be like to swim in it? We still need to complete some explanations like this one: 1608: Hoverboard. Evin's scenario concerns neither. More details.. If one randomly chosen extra person were to die each second somewhere on Earth, what impact would it have on the world population? How long would it take for the population of the world to read them all out loud? 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. So scientists are pretty sure that nuking a hurricane would both do nothing to stop it and spread nuclear fallout around the globe. How long could I stay safely at the surface? The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen. What if everything was antimatter, EXCEPT Earth? Assuming you had a good coat, you would survive to the death zone and die. Or looking straight up at the bolt? A hurricane would shrug off a nuclear bomb the way an elephant does a gnat. 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