Problem: That would take five times as much blood as you have in your body.
It looks like you’re not going to make it.
Let’s rewind.
How to touch a neutron bullet: salt, water, and vodka
You can touch the bullet and survive . . . but you need to surround it with water.
DO try this at home, and send me videos.
If you want to be really clever, you can dangle the end of the hose in the water and let the bullet’s gravity do the siphoning for you.
To touch the bullet, pour water onto the pedestal until it’s a meter or 2 deep on the side of the bullet. It will form a shape like one of these:
If those boats sink, you’re not salvaging them.
Now, dip your head and arm in.
Thanks to the water, you’re able to wave your hand around the bullet without any difficulty! The bullet is pulling you toward it, but it’s pulling the water just as hard. Water (like meat) is virtually incompressible, even at these pressures, so nothing critical gets crushed.5
However, you may not quite be able to touch the bullet. When your fingers get a few millimeters away, the powerful gravity means that buoyancy plays a gigantic role. If your hand is slightly less dense than the water, it won’t be able to penetrate that last millimeter. If it’s slightly more dense, it will be sucked down.
This is where the vodka and salt come in. If you find the bullet tugging on your fingertips as you reach in, it means your fingers aren’t buoyant enough. Mix in some salt to make the water denser. If you find your fingertips sliding on an invisible surface at the edge of the bullet, make the water less dense by adding vodka.
If you got the balance just right, you could touch the bullet and live to tell about it.
Maybe.
Alternative plan
Sound too risky to you? No problem. This whole plan—the bullet, the water, the salt, the vodka—doubles as instructions for making the most difficult mixed drink in the history of beverages: the Neutron Star.
So grab a straw and take a drink.
. . . and remember: If someone drops a cherry into your Neutron Star, and it sinks to the bottom, don’t try to fish it out. It’s gone.
1The Pauli exclusion principle keeps electrons from getting too close to each other. This effect is one of the main reasons that your laptop doesn’t fall through your lap.
2It’s possible there’s a category of objects heavier than neutron stars — but not quite heavy enough to become black holes — called “strange stars.”
3A magical, unbreakable gun that you could hold without your arm being torn off. Don’t worry, that part comes later!
4. . . unless Kyp Durron uses the Force to drag it back up.
5When you pull your arm out, watch for symptoms of decompression sickness due to nitrogen bubbles in the blood vessels in your hand.
weird (and worrying) questions from the what if? INBOX, #12
Q. What if I swallow a tick that has Lyme disease? Will my stomach acid kill the tick and the borreliosis, or would I get Lyme disease from the inside out?
—Christopher Vogel
Q. Assuming a relatively uniform resonant frequency in a passenger jet, how many cats, meowing at what resonant frequency of said jet, would be required to “bring it down”?
—Brittany
Richter 15
Q. What if a Richter magnitude 15 earthquake were to hit America at, let’s say, New York City? What about a Richter 20? 25?
—Alec Farid
A. The Richter scale, which has technically been replaced by the “moment magnitude”1 scale, measures the energy released by an earthquake. It’s an open-ended scale, but since we usually hear about earthquakes with ratings from 3 to 9, a lot of people probably think of 10 as the top and 1 as the bottom.
In fact, 10 isn’t the top of the scale, but it might as well be. A magnitude 9 earthquake already measurably alters the rotation of the Earth; the two magnitude 9+ earthquakes this century both altered the length of the day by a tiny fraction of a second.
A magnitude 15 earthquake would involve the release of almost 1032 joules of energy, which is roughly the gravitational binding energy of the Earth. To put it another way, the Death Star caused a magnitude 15 earthquake on Alderaan.
You could in theory have a more powerful earthquake on Earth, but in practice all it would mean is that the expanding cloud of debris would be hotter.
The Sun, with its higher gravitational binding energy, could have a magnitude 20 quake (although it would certainly trigger some kind of a catastrophic nova). The most powerful quakes in the known universe, which occur in the material in a superheavy neutron star, are about this magnitude. This is about the energy release you would get if you packed the entire volume of the Earth with hydrogen bombs and detonated them all at once.
We spend a lot of time talking about things that are large and violent. But what about the bottom end of the scale? Is there such a thing as a magnitude 0 earthquake?
Yes! In fact, the scale goes all the way down past zero. Let’s take a look at some low-magnitude “earthquakes,” with a description of what they would be like if they hit your house.
Magnitude 0
The Dallas Cowboys running at full tilt into the side of your neighbor’s garage
Magnitude -1
A single football player running into a tree in your yard
Magnitude -2
A cat falling off a dresser
Magnitude -3
A cat knocking your cell phone off your nightstand
Magnitude -4
A penny falling off a dog
Magnitude -5
A key press on an IBM model M keyboard
Magnitude -6
A key press on a lightweight keyboard
Magnitude -7
A single feather fluttering to the ground
Magnitude -8
A grain of fine sand falling onto the pile at the bottom of a tiny hourglass
. . . and let’s jump all the way down to
Magnitude -15
A drifting mote of dust coming to rest on a table
Sometimes it’s nice not to destroy the world for a change.
1Similarly, the F-scale (Fujita scale) has been replaced by the EF-scale (“Enhanced Fujita”). Sometimes, a unit of measure is made obsolete because it is terrible — for example, “kips” (1000 pounds-force), “kcfs” (thousands of cubic feet per second), and “degrees Rankine” (degrees Fahrenheit above absolute zero). (I have had to read technical papers written in each of those units.) Other times, you get the sense that scientists just want something to correct people about.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A bunch of people helped me make this book you’re looking at.
Thank you to my editor, Courtney Young, for being an xkcd reader from the beginning and seeing this book through to the end. Thank you to the various terrific people at HMH who made everything work. Thank you to Seth Fishman and the Gernert folks for being patient and tireless.
Thank you to Christina Gleason for making this book look like a book, even when it meant deciphering my scribbled notes about asteroids at three in the morning. Thank you to the various experts who helped me answer questions, including Reuven Lazarus and Ellen McManis (radiation), Alice Kaanta (genes), Derek Lowe (chemicals), Nicole Gugliucci (telescopes), Ian Mackay (viruses), and Sarah Gillespie (bullets). Thank you to davean, who made this all happen but hates attention and will probably complain about being mentioned here.
Thank you to the IRC crowd for their comments and corrections, and to Fin
n, Ellen, Ada, and Ricky for sifting through the flood of submitted questions and filtering out the ones about Goku. Thank you to Goku for apparently being an animé character with infinite strength, and thus provoking hundreds of What If questions, even though I refused to watch Dragon Ball Z in order to answer them.
Thank you to my family for teaching me to answer absurd questions by spending so many years patiently answering mine. Thank you to my father for teaching me about measurement and my mother for teaching me about patterns. And thank you to my wife, for teaching me how to be tough, teaching me how to be brave, and teaching me about birds.
References
Global Windstorm
Merlis, Timothy M., and Tapio Schneider, “Atmospheric dynamics of Earth-like tidally locked aquaplanets,” Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 2 (December 2010); DOI:10.3894/JAMES.2010.2.13.
“What Happens Underwater During a Hurricane?” http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/blog/2012/10/22/what-happens-underwater-during-a-hurricane
Spent Fuel Pool
“Behavior of spent nuclear fuel in water pool storage,” http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/7284014-xaMii9/7284014.pdf
“Unplanned Exposure During Diving in the Spent Fuel Pool,” http://www.isoe-network.net/index.php/publications-mainmenu-88/isoe-news/doc_download/1756-ritter2011ppt.html
Laser Pointer
GOOD, “Mapping the World’s Population by Latitude, Longitude,” http://www.good.is/posts/mapping-the-world-s-population-by-latitude-longitude
http://www.wickedlasers.com/arctic
Periodic Wall of the Elements
Table on page 9 (publication page 15, pdf page 15) in http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/aegl/pubs/arsenictrioxide_p01_tsddelete.pdf
Everybody Jump
Dot Physics, “What if everyone jumped?” http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/2010/08/26/what-if-everyone-jumped/
Straight Dope, “If everyone in China jumped off chairs at once, would the earth be thrown out of its orbit?” http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/142/if-all-chinese-jumped-at-once-would-cataclysm-result
A Mole of Moles
Disover, “How many habitable planets are there in the galaxy?” http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/10/29/how-many-habitable-planets-are-there-in-the-galaxy
Hair Dryer
“Determination of Skin Burn Temperature Limits for Insulative Coatings Used for Personnel Protection,” http://www.mascoat.com/assets/files/Insulative_Coating_Evaluation_NACE.pdf
“The Nuclear Potato Cannon Part 2,” http://nfttu.blogspot.com/2006/01/nuclear-potato-cannon-part-2.html
The Last Human Light
“Wind Turbine Lubrication and Maintenance: Protecting Investments in Renewable Energy,” http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/05/wind-turbine-lubrication-and-maintenance-protecting-investments-in-renewable-energy
McComas, D.J., J.P. Carrico, B. Hautamaki, M. Intelisano, R. Lebois, M. Loucks, L. Policastri, M. Reno, J. Scherrer, N.A. Schwadron, M. Tapley, and R. Tyler, “A new class of long–term stable lunar resonance orbits: Space weather applications and the Interstellar Boundary Explorer,” Space Weather, 9, S11002, doi: 10.1029/2011SW000704, 2011.
Swift, G.M., et al. “In-flight annealing of displacement damage in GaAs LEDs: A Galileo story,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Vol. 50, Issue 6 (2003).
“Geothermal Binary Plant Operation and Maintenance Systems with Svartsengi Power Plant as a Case Study,” http://www.os.is/gogn/unu-gtp-report/UNU-GTP-2002-15.pdf
Machine-Gun Jetpack
“Lecture L14-Variable Mass Systems: The Rocket Equation” http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-07-dynamics-fall-2009/lecture-notes/MIT16_07F09_Lec14.pdf
“[2.4] Attack Flogger in Service,” http://www.airvectors.net/avmig23_2.html#m4
Rising Steadily
Otis: “About Elevators,” http://www.otisworldwide.com/pdf/AboutElevators.pdf
National Weather Service: “Wind Chill Temperature Index,” http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/windchill/images/wind-chill-brochure.pdf
“Prediction of Survival Time in Cold Air”—see page 24 for the relevant tables, http://cradpdf.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/PDFS/zba6/p144967.pdf
Linda D. Pendleton, “When Humans Fly High: What Pilots Should Know About High-Altitude Physiology, Hypoxia, and Rapid Decompression.” http://www.avweb.com/news/aeromed/181893-1.html
Short-Answer Section
“Currency in Circulation: Volume,” http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/coin_currcircvolume.htm
NOAA, “Subject: C5c, Why don’t we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them?” http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html
NASA, “Stagnation Temperature,” http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/BGH/stagtmp.html
Lightning
“Lightning Captured @ 7,207 Fps,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQt8ivUGWQ
NOVA, “Lightning: Expert Q&A,” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/dwyer-lightning.html
JGR, “Computation of the diameter of a lightning return stroke” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JB073i006p01889/abstract
Human Computer
“Moore’s Law at 40,” http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~strukov/ece15bSpring2011/others/MooresLawat40.pdf
Little Planet
For another take on The Little Prince, scroll down to the last section of this wonderful piece by Mallory Ortberg, http://the-toast.net/2013/08/02/texts-from-peter-pan-et-al/
Rugescu, Radu D., and Daniele Mortari, “Ultra Long Orbital Tethers Behave Highly Non-Keplerian and Unstable,” WSEAS Transactions on Mathematics, Vol. 7, No. 3, March 2008, pp. 87-94, http://www.academia.edu/3453325/Ultra_Long_Orbital_Tethers_Behave_Highly_Non-Keplerian_and_Unstable
Steak Drop
“Falling Faster than the Speed of Sound,” http://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/24/falling-faster-than-the-speed-of-sound
“Stagnation Temperature: Real Gas Effects,” http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/BGH/stagtmp.html
“Predictions of Aerodynamic Heating on Tactical Missile Domes,” http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA073217
“Calculation of Reentry-Vehicle Temperature History,” http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a231552.pdf
“Back in the Saddle,” http://www.ejectionsite.com/insaddle/insaddle.htm
“How to Cook Pittsburgh-Style Steaks,” http://www.livestrong.com/article/436635-how-to-cook-pittsburgh-style-steaks
Hockey Puck
“KHL’s Alexander Ryazantsev sets new ‘world record’ for hardest shot at 114 mph,” http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/khl-alexander-ryazantsev-sets-world-record-hardest-shot-174131642.html
“Superconducting Magnets for Maglifter Launch Assist Sleds,” http://www.psfc.mit.edu/~radovinsky/papers/32.pdf
“Two-Stage Light Gas Guns,” http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wstf/laboratories/hypervelocity/gasguns.html
“Hockey Video: Goalies, Hits, Goals, and Fights,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWj6--Cf9QA
Common Cold
P. Stride, “The St. Kilda boat cough under the microscope,” The Journal—Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2008; 38:272–9.
L. Kaiser, J. D. Aubert, et al., “Chronic Rhinoviral Infection in Lung Transplant Recipients,” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Vol. 174; pp. 1392–1399, 2006, 10.1164/rccm.200604-489OC
Oliver, B. G. G., S. Lim, P. Wark, V. Laza-Stanca, N. King, J. L. Black, J. K. Burgess, M. Roth, and S. L. Johnston, “Rhinovirus Exposure Impairs Immune Responses To Bacterial Products In Human Alveolar Macrophages,” Thorax 63, no. 6 (2008): 519–525.
Glass Half Empty
“Shatter beer bottles: Bare-handed bottle smash,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77gWkl0ZUC8
Alien Astronomers
The Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy, http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11.The_Hitchhiker_s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
“A Failure of Serendipity: The Square Kilometre Array will struggle to eavesdrop on Human-like ETI,” http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1007/1007.0850v1.pdf
“Eavesdropping on Radio Broadcasts from Galactic Civilizations with Upcoming Observatories for Redshifted 21cm Radiation,” http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0610377v2.pdf
“The Earth as a Distant Planet a Rosetta Stone for the Search of Earth-Like Worlds,” http://www.worldcat.org/title/earth-as-a-distant-planet-a-rosetta-stone-for-the-search-of-earth-like-worlds/oclc/643269627
“SETI on the SKA,” http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/4847/seti-on-the-ska
Gemini Planet Imager, http://planetimager.org/
No More DNA
Enjalbert, Françoise, Sylvie Rapior, Janine Nouguier-Soulé, Sophie Guillon, Noël Amouroux, and Claudine Cabot, “Treatment of Amatoxin Poisoning: 20-Year Retrospective Analysis.” Clinical Toxicology 40, no. 6 (2002): 715–757. http://toxicology.ws/LLSAArticles/Treatment%20of%20Amatoxin%20Poisoning-20%20year%20retrospective%20analysis%20(J%20Toxicol%20Clin%20Toxicol%202002).pdf
Richard Eshelman, “I nearly died after eating wild mushrooms,” The Guardian (2010), http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/nov/13/nearly-died-eating-wild-mushrooms
“Amatoxin: A review,” http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/2165-7548/2165-7548-2-110.php?aid=5258
Interplanetary Cessna
“The Martian Chronicles,” http://www.x-plane.com/adventures/mars.html
“Aerial Regional-Scale Environmental Survey of Mars,” http://marsairplane.larc.nasa.gov/
“Panoramic Views and Landscape Mosaics of Titan Stitched from Huygens Raw Images,” http://www.beugungsbild.de/huygens/huygens.html
What If? Page 21