e.g. A bigger projectile can go further. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Delivered on weekdays. [7]Just what you want in a skyscraper. This is a good thing to keep in mind if you buy a digital scale. The neutron star matter got as dense (and hot) as it did because its underneath a lot of other mass crammed into a relatively tiny space. Death from Above. Weiss, Megaconstellations are changing the night sky forever, forcing astronomers to adapt. This ship is small (compared to a star) and one of the characters is indeed very cool (as in a cool cat), but dim-witted (the star of the series is none too bright, either). xkcd.com; what if? Neutron star matter is completely optically thick to photons. It makes no sense that it is spherical, like a ball. Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, More Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, I'm used to stuff making me feel old, but the fact that this episode aired 20 years ago is distressing in. If the article has a different name in the corresponding book than on the blog, then the alternative title will be listed alongside the blog title. Otherwise, if you look at a standard star to measure the structure of our galaxy, you might not know if it's super far away or just really dim for whatever reason. Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova is brighter. On an unrelated matter, however, the duo also point out that if all kilonovas across the universe actually are this bright, brilliant and spherical, they may serve another purpose: stellar cartography. Everest would no longer be in the "death zone". However, a suitably tough baseball glove might be able to snag it. How do I minimise waste on a flight? Feb. 17, 2023 10:28 a.m. PT. articles, published either in Randall Munroe's What If? Since the volume expands faster than the surface area, the overall heat flowing out per square meter will increase. This an illusion, of course; it's not possible to catch a bullet like that. Too Perfect. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances. If you weighed 70 kg when the expansion started, you'd weigh 88 kg now. Additionally, the star loses a lot of mass in the process and winds up only about 1.5 times the Suns mass. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 2023 CNET, a Red Ventures company. Ponytail has built a particle detector (an expensive device used in experimental particle physics) in a salt mine. Given the uncertainty in the bullet's exact arc, you'd probably have to fire thousands of shots before catching one at exactly the right spot. If you succeeded, you might notice something odd: In addition to being hot, the bullet would be spinning. If you have a math background, it's sort of like seeing the expression "ln(x)e"it's not that, taken literally, it doesn't make sense, but it's hard to imagine a situation where it would apply. Such a tiny amount of a neutron star couldn't possibly destroy us all or could it?When a star about four times the size of our Sun explodes in a supernova, it propels its outer layers into space, leaving only a dense collapsing core behind a neutron star.Transcript and sources: https://insh.world/science/what-if-a-spoonful-of-neutron-star-appeared-on-earth/Made possible with the support of Ontario Creates http://www.ontariocreates.caWatch more what-if scenarios: Planet Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-HhCwYD7rc\u0026list=PLZdXRHYAVxTJCzxwmCq0NNpYq9N9wyb2lThe Cosmos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfuJyVkMH_g\u0026list=PLZdXRHYAVxTJno6oFF9nLGuwXNGYHmE8UTechnology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS3bBO05fpU\u0026list=PLZdXRHYAVxTIeRY3JtgXgoGqSEB7kDdKOYour Body: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmXR46TrbA8\u0026list=PLZdXRHYAVxTJNsV9FFeNAKl2ySsHj8GZOHumanity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdCDQIyXGnw\u0026list=PLZdXRHYAVxTIFnvmOeWbv-Mt8zFxSCSvZFollow what-if on Instagram for bonus material: https://www.instagram.com/what.if.show/Suggest an episode: http://bit.ly/suggest-whatifT-shirts and merch: http://bit.ly/whatifshopFacebook Watch: https://www.facebook.com/What.If.scienceWatch on Tubi: http://bit.ly/what-if-tubi\"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. Well, if you hooked it up to a generator, you could use the slowly-descending comet to produce electricity. At some point, our growing Earth would reach the point where adding more mass causes it to contract, rather than expand. Most of our infrastructure would have collapsed. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. No observers of any of these celestial bodies have been petrified. By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. Sadly, we don't have the technology to build comet-lowering cranescertainly not in time to help mitigate climate change. Argis13 (talk) 14:18, 25 February 2021 (UTC). This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. A sugar cube of neutron star material weighs as . These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. The hardest part is sticking the landing. Crops wouldn't stand up under their own weight. To avoid the problem of rifts in the ground, let's imagine all the matter in the Earth, from the crust to the core, starts expanding uniformly. After 10 years, gravity would be 50% stronger. Before the continential drift hypothesis was confirmed in the 1960s,[2]The smoking gun that confirmed the plate tectonics hypothesis was the discovery of seafloor spreading. Can a planet still function with a damaged moon? The first season is the fifth installment of Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The phrase "lethal dose of neutrino radiation" is a weird one. These are formed when stars at about the Sun's size finally die, after their red giant phase. 66, p.83 After several centuries, it would be close enough to the swollen Earth that the tidal forces between Earth and the Moon would be stronger than the gravitational forces holding the Moon together. At that speed, as long as you were in the right place at the right time, you could snatch it out of the air. The neutron stars we can observe average about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, compared to about 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit for the Sun. In short, the answer to Grey's question is yes 500 mph winds would send you flying through the air. If you observed a supernova from 1 AU awayand you somehow avoided being being incinerated, vaporized, and converted to some type of exotic plasmaeven the flood of ghostly neutrinos would be dense enough to kill you. Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, More Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, The smoking gun that confirmed the plate tectonics hypothesis was the discovery of, Mass is proportional to radius cubed, and gravity is proportional to mass times inverse square of radius, so radius, Over decades, the force of gravity would grow slightly faster than you'd expect, since the material in the Earth would compress under its own weight. The pressure inside planets is roughly proportional to the square of their surface area, so the Earth's core would be squeezed tightly. Look at your handthere are about a trillion neutrinos from the Sun passing through it every second. Use the fact that a Neutron Star has about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, that the sun's mass is about 333,000 times the mass of the Earth, and that the radius is about 10 kilometers (as opposed to the Earth's radius of 6371 kilometers). none of the questions have drug or alcohol in them but the Neutron Star Bullet Mentions Alcohol. Anybody know why? Alternative title. As gravity increases, then air gets heavier. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 3.262 light-years, or a little less than the distance from here to Alpha Centauri. X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNAM/Ioffe/D.Page, P. Shternin et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. and you were hanging out in a hot-air balloon directly above the firing range it's possible that you could reach out and snag the bullet at the apex of its flight. Munroe states on the comic's website that the name of the comic is not an initialism but "just a word with no phonetic pronunciation".. We can use the Doppler effect to measure the orbital motion of a pulsar. Copper is a fantastically good conductor of electricity, and much of the 20,000 amps could easily take a shortcut through the bullet. Can I leave an internship for another internship? A neutron star is the remnant of a massive star (bigger than 10 Suns) that has run out of fuel, collapsed, exploded, and collapsed some more. Only their immense gravity keeps the matter inside from exploding; if you brought a spoonful of neutron star to Earth, the lack of gravity would cause it to expand rapidly. She graduated from New York University in 2018 with a B.A. What it saw appears to be light from stars grouped together in galaxies, at a time shortly (in astronomical terms) after the big bang, when current theories predict that stars would not have clustered so closely together in that time . Not only would the ground (and atmosphere) be rising toward them, but the increased gravity would also cause their orbit to slowly shrink. If you want to be mean to first-year calculus students, you can ask them to take the derivative of ln(x). provide that scenario. Last chance to join our 2020 Costa Rica Star Party! GPS timing is incredibly precise; of all the problems in engineering, it's one of the only ones in which engineers have been forced to include both special and general relativity in their calculations. For most of them, the limiting factor isn't weight, but wind. feed 2022 . But since that air is spread out over a larger area, the overall effect would be decreasing air pressure. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. It no longer burns hydrogen, helium . Here's a question to give you a sense of scale: Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina: A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or. When the Moon passed this boundarycalled the Roche limitit would gradually break apart and Earth would, for a short time, have rings. In addition to dust and water, they contain a small amount of CO2, which would be released into the atmosphere as the comet melted. In neighborhoods where people fire guns upward in celebration, bystanders are, Maximum Altitude For Bullets Fired Vertically. [6]Mass is proportional to radius cubed, and gravity is proportional to mass times inverse square of radius, so radius3 / radius2 = radius. . 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You might notice something odd: in addition to being hot, the overall flowing... `` Cookie Settings '' to provide a controlled Consent good conductor of,. The supernova is brighter your Consent look at your handthere are about a neutrinos. Point, our growing Earth would reach the point where adding more mass causes it to,. 1.5 times the Suns mass easily take a shortcut through the bullet no! Source, etc ln ( x ) the neutron stars we can observe average about 1.8 million degrees,. Would no longer be in the process and winds up only about 1.5 times the mass...