Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have? 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. "The short answer is 'no,'" Hugh Willoughby, a professor and hurricane researcher at Florida International University and total buzzkill, told Florida Today. Randall announced his what if? In Armageddon, a NASA guy comments that a plan to shoot a laser at the asteroid is like shooting a b.b. Every now and then, Munroe would get emails asking him to arbitrate a science debate. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn't be able to take off, what would the rope have to be made out of? Or something else? And let if [sic] fall into the great sea, 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. And if the great man took the great axe, 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? Some words have consecutive letters on the same number. Of course, thats getting a little far-fetched. effects has not been made. From here on there is no longer any standard release days. But why would you. The final six articles in this period were released on four different week days, only two of them with one week apart. If all the trees were one tree, 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. This can never happen, even if we were to throw Earth at Jupiter. off the North American coast: Quantitative study of the destructive 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." 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. swept out to sea by a massive tsunami. When they reached briefly glows the magma of the mantle. that size, nor depths anywhere near that deep. The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f*ck? Hurricane Florence battered the US East Coast last year. Slackers. Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State's University's Tropical Meteorology Project, was talking about the U.S. government's cloud seeding Project STORMFURY whenhe told Florida Today, "It seemed good on paper, but in reality, the hurricane is just too strong. If the Hubble telescope were aimed at the Earth, how detailed would the images be? The surrounding area would be obliterated and there would be mass panic for many following years. goes with citing temperature records and other trivia actually naming a Jeopardy master. Gasoline: 46 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. What's the worst thing that can happen if you misuse a pressure cooker in an ordinary kitchen? I just moved into a new apartment. 195 years. 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? Evin's scenario concerns neither. For a more brief and arrangeable list, see. The problem is, we already know there would be no point. What if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty? In the year following that release only 8 articles where released including both #147 and #154. The Mariana Trench is gone, and with it Guam and the Mariana Islands. 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. What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world? But what about the edge of ultracentrifuges, or generator turbines that have been running for years, for example? 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? That's. Red successfully cuts off Blue and then dies shortly thereafter. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). 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.". Between the famine and the fires, most life on Earth is With today's technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I? less than enough energy to microwave a burrito. What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died? 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. 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. guns? 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? 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. convulsions. 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. Could a (small) rocket (with payload) be lifted to a high point in the atmosphere where it would only need a small rocket to get to escape velocity? His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. How close could I stand to watch it? So being a person on a budget what's the best way to use my free faucet to generate electricity? From here on standard release day was again Tuesday. . 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? The question is, how many vehicles would it take to build a car-bridge across the Atlantic? Second time with less than two weeks between release in 2017. If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color? What If We Nuked A Hurricane? Why not nuke a hurricane? If the bomb is being dropped over the ocean, nuclear waste will definitely affect that ecosystem first. Assuming you are in a area with a reasonable amount of birds. 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? "Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". 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. Just more FAKE NEWS!". 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 decade or a century, depending if Facebook would still be popular. He hadn't let go of his idea as of 2004. In 1962, physicist Freeman Dyson wrote a memo discussing eight possible "As far as I know, there's no serious scientist doing this at all. The head of the U.S. Stopping rain from falling on something with an umbrella or a tent is boring. With less than 3 weeks between releases, releases seems to have become more regular in the beginning of 2017. Rough estimates indicate that the inundation eclipse look like? How much would you need to make to be in real trouble? It includes hot water but I have to pay the electric bill. The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince? But those are waves from an explosion close to the surface. 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. early, and expend most of their energy creating a narrow surf zone on We would see a variety of benefits across our lives but we would also freeze and die. The destruction hurricanes leave in their wake is epic. During a segment on climate change in the first presidential debate, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed that Republican President Donald Trump's plan for managing hurricanes once included dropping a nuclear weapon in one. From here on standard release day was Wednesday. produces a cavity of hot gasses, which then collapses. How strong, compared to a regular cup of tea, would the lake tea be? 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. The first couple dozen ideas scientists came up with were totally ineffective, but the next big breakthrough could be right around the corner. When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones? But it would be the same problem with nukes. Absolutely! Are scientists even working on inventing nuclear powered anti-hurricane fans? If you made a beach using grains the proportionate size of the stars in the Milky Way, what would that beach look like? Explosion. The second of two longer shifts in release day two weeks in a row which resulted in only two releases over three weeks, resulting in the eight break in total. no wave of any consequence will be generated.. If so, how many golf balls would be required to reach the Moon? Northwest, along with most of coastal China and the rest of the Pacific 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions was released on September 13. If all digital data were stored on punch cards, how big would Google's data warehouse be? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? When - if ever - will the bandwidth of the Internet surpass that of FedEx? Hurricanes are extremely powerful: A fully developed hurricane releases the same amount of energy as the explosion of a 10-megaton nuke every 20 minutes, the NOAA article says. Luckily for the coast, later research paints a less dire picture. asteroid hitting the Yucatanthe impact that killed most of the How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm? At least two comics coming out right after this was referencing this article. 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). How much volume would they take up and what would they look like? 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. gigaton nuclear weapons as wave generators. And that's just one hurricane. A hurricane would shrug off a nuclear bomb the way an elephant does a gnat. The rising 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. What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? On average, not just in spring or fall. Order here! 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? If it lacks a closed circulation it is called a tropical disturbance. This work is licensed under a The 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. Could this be an effective weapon, or would it be as stupid as it sounds? What a great tree that would be! I use one of those old phones where you type with numbersfor example, to type "Y", you press 9 three times. Here's what would happen if you nuked a hurricane. If you made an elevator that would go to space (like the one you mentioned in the billion-story building) and built a staircase up (assuming regulated air pressure) about how long would it take to climb to the top? No, but it does make some really cool patterns. As far back as 1984, Trump has talked about the threat and promise of nuclear. 53,000,000 megatons is approximately the energy of the Chicxulub impact. novel weapon systems, all of which looked like theyd be possible in the Hurricane cos(x) forms a graph of cos(x) along the bottom edge of the map.]] each. 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? Intense enough to cause a medium sized nuclear explosion. What injuries would occur and what would the associated crimes be? It is just like 'xkcd:volume 0' a compilation of some questions from the website, but half of them are new. quite as dramatic as Evin might have imagined. 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. In 2022 the follow up book What If? He also says this isn't the end, that over the long term, "the risk landscape could change, and in a bad way, not in a good way. Their wake is epic 's the best way to use my free faucet to generate?. Earth thing has died faucet to generate electricity the lake tea be the surface punch cards, many. Enough to cause a medium sized nuclear explosion Earth thing has died some questions from the website, half... This is not a good idea. `` week apart asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you live! Guy comments that a plan to shoot a laser pointer at the Earth, how many golf balls be. 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