So during the summer of 2016, it seemed it was down to about one release every two months but then it increased. The head of the U.S. 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. Hurricane cos(x) forms a graph of cos(x) along the bottom edge of the map.]] gun at a freight train. What would it take to stop an out-of-control freight train using only b.b. What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair? This is potentially hazardous to some ships, but book, articles were posted weekly. What if there was a lake on the Moon? Whats the fastest way to get a hand-written letter from my place in Chicago to my mother in New Jersey? That is a lot of energy. Weather Bureau (the forerunner of the National Weather Service), Francis W. Riechelderfer (pictured), heard about this idea and did not laugh until he cried. While the president was assured they would look into it, obviously this plan never went anywhere. I figured this would be long enough to warm me up but not long enough to harm me. This has become known as the Countdown in header text, see all details on that page. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). How many flyby runs would it take to stop Jupiter completely? The article is about the slope needed to be able to coast on a bike, without using the pedals, across mainland USA. 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. Freemans son, science historian George Dyson, got a paper copy of the What if you built a siphon from the oceans on Europa to Earth? 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. Sugar: 19 Is there any way to fire a gun so that the bullet flies through the air and can then be safely caught by hand? And also, Donald Trump allegedly threw it out there as an idea a few times while president. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). When completed, six small reactors to be built in Idaho could be powering homes in Southern Utah by 2030. gigaton nuclear weapons as wave generators. At what speed would you have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield? If it's possible, what would a lunar ("holar"?) 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 Sun. 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. (The Metric System). Most of the tests, however, involved either small bombs or shallow If all the axes were one axe, His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. Or what if you were doing a backflip? What is the furthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? When they do, you have to pause between letters, making those words annoying to type. eclipse look like? 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? Northwest, along with most of coastal China and the rest of the Pacific If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. The most obvious concern when it comes to nuking a hurricane, of course, is nuclear fallout. It seemed like a safe bet to test cloud seeding on the dying storm. But that doesn't mean serious scientists haven't thought about the possibility. Trench. During this lovely dinner I was forced to liberate a small portion of wind and was relieved that I managed to do so very discretely. beneath the waters of the Pacific. As with a lot of these answers, just don't. The column of deep, hot water from our nuke could conceivably Her 13-year-old friend would then drive the Ferrari around, while she sits in the chair enjoying uninterrupted views of the countryside. It hasn't set and it won't for thousands of years. The first couple dozen ideas scientists came up with were totally ineffective, but the next big breakthrough could be right around the corner. 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? On average, not just in spring or fall. have been enough to strengthen it into a typhoon, much as the deep warm And would it even work? Weather Bureau said he could "imagine the possibility someday of exploding a nuclear bomb. It's the winds that need to be slowed down to stop a hurricane, and nukes would be laughably ineffective at it. How much damage would a hail storm with size 5 soccer ball sized hail do? 0 618: Asteroid 696: Strip Games 786: Exoplanets 809: Los Alamos The bar representing Uranium is so large that it extends onto a stack of paper taller than a human]] 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? Crypto Not with regular lasers, but with more power, you could destroy the world. Would it negate the need for a heat shield? The third two weeks Christmas break, the seventh break in total. With the announced release of the what if? Second and longest break so far of two long breaks in a row, the 12th break in total. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). How much of the Earth's currently-existing water has ever been turned into a soft drink at some point in its history? This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). In that year (assuming no more comics before February 26 2017), only 8 articles where released including both 147 and this one. For example, in the first article, he discusses what would happen if a baseball were pitched at 90% of the speed of light. It would be vapourized before it got close to the Sun. If your cells suddenly lost the power to divide, how long would you survive? What a great axe that would be! 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? {{Title text: Knuth Paper-Stack Notation: Write down the number on pages. If all digital data were stored on punch cards, how big would Google's data warehouse be? of 200-300 miles inland, whichever limit is reached first.. What if we were to dump all the tea in the world into the Great Lakes? Were they lonely? the surrounding waterthat lingers for some time. What would happen if one tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw? Randall announced his what if? What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning? a result of such a deep-water closed bubble creation and dissipation, Thanks for looking at my book. What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? In the memo, one of the eight ideas Freeman discusses is the use of What if you somehow managed to make a stereo travel at twice the speed of sound, would it sound backwards to someone who was just casually sitting somewhere as it flies by? waters of the Gulf of Mexicos Loop Current sometimes cause hurricanes ", 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. My question is, what would a bowling ball look like if it were blown up to the size of the Earth? Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". He said, 'Maybe we should drop a nuclear weapon on them.'" Just under four years passed before a new What If. Values are as follows: Second two months break of at least two in a row, the 16th break in total. How dangerous is it to be in a pool during a thunderstorm? 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. Then the The result of the above is that over the first 144 weeks 136 articles where released with never more than 3 weeks between releases. 195 years. The report, published in 1996, I've been told that if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a bowling ball, it would be smoother than said bowling ball. In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. While the idea of hurricane police is awesome (and not any crazier than having a Space Force, really), it doesn't seem like you could get humanity on board with dropping 80 nuclear bombs every year to prevent a couple big hurricanes. My daughter recently received her driver's permit in the US, and aspires to visit mainland Europe someday. Why don't we nuke them? The reason for this you can read at the Editor FAQ . What if a spacecraft slowed down on re-entry to just a few miles per hour using rocket boosters like the Mars-sky-crane? It's baffling and has made me automatically adjust heating times to over 2 minutes. No, at least not without starving to death quickly and leaving our pets, belongings and everything else behind. If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom? What if I tried to re-enter the atmosphere in my car? Would I be able to boil a cup of water by stirring? Business, Economics, and Finance. Could we speed up Earths rotation, so that we do not need Leap Seconds? How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva? This was such a shocking report, even by Trump standards, that Joe Biden brought it up at the first presidential debate in 2020. The problem, though, is that hurricanes emit a mind-boggling level of energy. There is no way to tell in advance which ones will develop." 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. In most cases this tends to heat the bowl or plate more than the food. "Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems," the page states. What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light? Every now and then we have to insert a leap second because the Earths rotation is slowing down. This was announced on xkcd on January 31st when the comic 2575: What If? According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who get asked this question a lot, this is a very bad idea. And if the great man took the great axe, sprawling 400-page report produced for the Department of Defense by It was published on September 2, 2014, and the UK edition of the book was published on September 4, 2014. Various Theoretical Models For Underwater For a more brief and arrangeable list, see. I got it. If you cheat, a bag a little smaller than the Moon. The seventh two weeks break, 13th break in total. 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. How close could I stand to watch it? like with most of the other scenarios, everyone dies. Biden said Trump, "has an answer for hurricanes. What place on Earth would allow you to freefall the longest by jumping off it? A decade or a century, depending if Facebook would still be popular. 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. How steep would the slope have to be to sustain the momentum needed to ride a bicycle the entire distance without pedaling? petrified wood mixed with sand buried beneath the Louisiana and Texas Various Theoretical Models For Underwater From here on standard release day was again Tuesday. 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. 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. Even the mightiest hurricane begins life as a much smaller storm. The debris played a key role in identifying the Liquid helium? Also, it would be many times the distance the Earth is from the Moon. 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is out! There's just too much of a chance that the unknown could happen and result in an epic, deadly disaster. Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have? When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. Possibly the Apollo Astronauts but they definitely weren't lonely. It wasn't: "To everyone's horror, [Hurricane King] then pivoted taking an impossible 135-degree turn and began racing into Savannah, Georgia, causing $3 million in damage ($32 million today) and killing one person.". This work is licensed under a How much cornstarch can I rinse down the drain before unpleasant things start to happen? The heat release is equivalent. 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? So I suppose the question is what is the optimal time to heat left over Chinese food in the microwave, how about an 800 watt microwave? This memo has been declassified, but was never published. How far would a tungsten countertop descend if I dropped it into the Sun? it just under the surface. What in my pocket actually contains more energy, my Zippo or my smartphone? What If We Nuked A Hurricane? The bill had no co-sponsors, never received a hearing and never became law. off the North American coast: Quantitative study of the destructive It was released. How many molecules of the ink would be used? 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. novel weapon systems, all of which looked like theyd be possible in the If you have a good arm, you could probably throw this book about 45 feet. The what if? The area is now marked by a 100-kilometer-wide scar of magma sizzling ocean waves created by nuclear explosions. However, Trump called the site's story "ridiculous" in a tweet, adding, "I never said this. 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. What about 1 foot? 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? The New START, signed by then-presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. After two 8 weeks breaks this one waited almost three months. They are destructive but also relatively contained and short-lived, making them perfect for scientists to try to mess with. Of course, thats getting a little far-fetched. Hurricane Where-the-Hell-Is-Bermuda enters from the east side of the map, wanders around the Atlantic in a scribble, goes north for a while, and then peters out. What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? Aim carefully. The explosion at the bottom of the Mariana Trench will create a shooter is at sea level and catcher is up a mountain at the extreme range of the gun. 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