But they neglect to say what the mighty wind is. If the wind were perfectly level, you'd tumble along the surface, bouncing against the ground. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 284, no. If the upward pull from the helium is stronger than the backward pull from the wind, the balloon will float at a high angle. Winds would be lower near the poles, but no human cities are far enough from the equator to escape devastation. xkcd, sometimes styled XKCD, is a webcomic created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe. The good news is that 500 mph winds are rare. Oceans are cold. troper@tvtropes:/$ describe xkcd here What? It may take a bit longer to get the bread properly browned, but unless the wind is extremely strong, it should be able to manage it fine. There would be other lucky survivors. Weather 57, no. This might have created the conditions for hypercanes to form, and one paper suggests that these storms could have lifted a large amount of dust and debris into the upper atmosphere—thus contributing to a global winter and extinction of the dinosaurs. After all, a mighty wind like a hurricane or even a solar storm, is just a big blow hard, when ya gits right down to it. 1-9. Any animal that needs to breathe — such as whales and dolphins — would be hard-pressed to survive in the turbulent sea-air interface. However, a lot of people below the surface of the ground would survive just fine. Mantle Deformation Beneath The Chicxulub Impact Crater, Hypercanes: A Possible Link In Global Extinction Scenarios. XKCD's Randall Munroe is publishing a book of science explainers! Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. If the wind were perfectly level, you'd tumble along the surface, bouncing against the ground. But high wind can definitely pick up a person. In some ways, this Earth would resemble one of the tidally locked exoplanets commonly found in a red dwarf star's habitable zone, but a better comparison might be a very early Venus. He wouldn't be able to stand up in those winds! The strongest hurricanes have wind speeds around 200 mph with gusts up to 250. When an asteroid or comet—coincidentally, one about the size of the recently-named 4942 Munroe—hit Mexico 65 million years ago, it punched a hole in the crust and left behind a sea of lava. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). An Excerpt from XKCD's What If? This comics represents the April fools' comic of 2016, and it is Randall's celebration of April Fools' Day Friday, April 1, 2016. The dozens of scientists and staff at the Amundsen–Scott research station at the South Pole would be safe from the winds. "Hypercanes: A Possible Link In Global Extinction Scenarios." Australian Meterological and Oceanographic Journal, 62 (1). and Earth would start turning again. [4]It's difficult to get accurate measurements of surface winds since those tornadoes destroy most measuring equipment! You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io, This Is How Much Trump Has Twisted Kevin McCarthy, Drive & Listen Is the Escape We All Need Right Now, Democrats Feast on Dark Money, Also Vow to Fix It, 'I Consider Myself a Corporate Political Prisoner', Nebraska's Governor Is Going Full Reefer Madness, Nothing Wrong With Some Whiskey and Good News, Republicans Turn Tax Cuts Into a Fetish Object. If you walled off a column of air, from the ground up to the top of the atmosphere, and then cooled the column of air down, the moisture it contained would condense out as rain. 11 (2002): 410-413. Convection on the day side would lead to massive storms in the area directly beneath the Sun. Cueballcomments about this while hanging from a balloon, which brings to mind the expanded perspective over the landscape attained by early experimenters in overland flight. D7 (1995): 13755-13765. In general, very few people above the surface would survive; the flying debris would pulverize anything that wasn't nuclear-hardened. But the moment I got the sail up, the wind fell quiet. The wind would be highest at the equator, but everyone and everything living between 42 degrees north and 42 degrees south — which includes about 85 percent of the world's population — would suddenly experience supersonic winds. A blinding cloud of sea spray would sweep inland, and behind it, a turbulent, roiling wall of water would advance like a tsunami. Normally, the kinetic energy of rushing wind is small enough to be negligible, but this would not be normal wind. While its high latitude — above 60°N — wouldn't be enough to keep it from being scoured clean by the winds, the bedrock below Helsinki contains a sophisticated network of tunnels, along with a subterranean shopping mall, hockey rink, swimming complex, and more. More details.. However, its thick atmosphere circulates quite quickly, which results in the day and the night side having about the same temperature. At the same time, wind sweeping over the oceans would churn up and atomize the surface layer of the water. When Mount St. Helens exploded in 1980, the column of ash was blasted outward at 700 mph, which is close to the speed of sound. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. You wouldn't necessarily be thrown very high. At the same time, it would lead to huge die-offs of fish, crabs, sea turtles, and animals unable to cope with the influx of low-oxygen water from the depths. But the moment I got the sail up, the wind fell quiet.Later, I learned that people die from doing that. More details. The highest winds would last for only a few minutes near the surface; friction with the ground would slow them down. However, if there were any updrafts, you could easily be lifted up and carried away. Longyearbyen, on the island of Svalbard in Norway — the highest-latitude city on the planet — would be devastated by winds equal to those in the planet's strongest tropical cyclones. A serious scientific answer to an absurd hypothetical, and the first chapter of Randall Munroe's upcoming book. [3] No matter how much we warm the planet, we're not going to get the temperature that high any time soon. The good news is that 500 mph winds are rare. 1-2 (2009): 249-257. Courtney, J.; Buchan, S.; Cerveny, R.S. It represents the third time in a row that user input changes the April Fool's comic. The influx of cold spray into superheated air would create a type of weather never before seen on Earth — a roiling mix of wind, spray, fog, and rapid temperature changes. … Journal of Geophysical Research 100, no. At the equator, the Earth's surface is moving at about 470 meters per second — a little over a thousand miles per hour — relative to its axis. then quickly go head over heels and start to tumble. Christeson, Gail L., Gareth S. Collins, Joanna V. Morgan, Sean P.S. (That test was conducted at NASA Langley Research Center, where I worked before I started drawing internet comics for a living.). The previous fools comic was not from the year before as there was no such comic released in 2017. "Mantle Deformation Beneath The Chicxulub Impact Crater." This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). No, we're not doing another Describe Topic Here joke.. troper@tvtropes:/$ sudo describe xkcd here. The vacuum of space doesn't make your skin explode. ". Sweating works best in dry air. This is why, for example, the airplane/treadmill problem is a banned topic on the xkcd forums (along with argument about whether 0.999… = 1). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. [8]Emanuel, Kerry A., Kevin Speer, Richard Rotunno, Ramesh Srivastava, and Mario Molina. If there’s a lot of moisture in the air, then evaporation slows to a crawl, because water condenses onto your skin almost as fast as the moisture evaporates off it. That's good, and you'd be fine . ; Rubiera Torres, J.M. [7]Christeson, Gail L., Gareth S. Collins, Joanna V. Morgan, Sean P.S. Say you're in a massive bunker made out of some material that can withstand thousand-mile-per-hour winds. . ; Bessemoulin, P.; Peterson, T.C. If you're using a 5-meter balloon, even if you drive only 10 … Loading the same page in IE 9 gave me that Times New Roman-esque font instead (Chrome, Firefox, and Opera use the special font, although it's rendered a little fuzzy in Firefox). This comic was released on April 1 even though that was a Sunday (only the fourth comic to be released on a Sunday). The waves would sweep around the globe, east to west, and every east-facing shore would encounter the largest storm surge in world history. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). The Everyday Effects Of Wind Drag On People. . However, those few minutes would be long enough to reduce virtually all human structures to ruins. The difference between what humans consider "cold" and "warm" is negligible in a lot of high-temperature processes. r/xkcd: /r/xkcd is the subreddit for the popular webcomic xkcd by Randall Munroe. In some places, the waves would reach many miles inland. When Hurricane Isabel hit Virginia in 2003, I had the bright idea of standing on a skateboard with a poncho held up like a sail, so the wind would blow me down the street. . Kieffer, S. W., 1981, Fluid dynamics of the May 18 blast at Mount St. Helens, in Lipman, P.W., and Mullineux, D.R., eds., The 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1250, p. 379-400. Only to find that the chair I sat on converted the successful silence into a perfect, and loud, flute note. if you were the only one with a bunker. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. The comic's tagline describes it as "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". Below the thin surface layer, they're a fairly uniform 4°C. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). Gulick, Penny J. Barton, and Michael R. Warner. [3]Courtney, J.; Buchan, S.; Cerveny, R.S. At one point, they wind up near the North Pole in October. [15] For aerodynamic reasons, this gear should probably make it look like you're wearing a very fast airplane. The human race wouldn't go extinct. That's when Spielberg caught wind of it. Air holds water. . I really think the paper should have stopped there; no matter what their results were, they can't possibly improve on the achievement they opened with. [5]Kieffer, S. W., 1981, Fluid dynamics of the May 18 blast at Mount St. Helens, in Lipman, P.W., and Mullineux, D.R., eds., The 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1250, p. 379-400. But don't worry about that. The following is the first chapter of What If? If your pole happens to go through it, it could add another 50-100 m/s to the wind speed. Their biggest mistake was bringing Rachael Ray and Emeril to tour the lab and sign off on the project. "I sometimes cover science in xkcd, so people would write to me saying 'My friend and I are having an argument about how you could dodge a bullet moving at the speed of light'," says Munroe, 29. ...And here are the front and back covers of the book on the inside. 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".. Randall Munroe, author of the webcomic xkcd, has found another outlet for his inquisitive nature. Unfortunately, you probably have neighbors, and if the neighbor upwind of you has a less-well-anchored bunker, your bunker will have to withstand a thousand mile-per-hour impact by their bunker. There, the Sun and Venus spend months near the horizon, rising and setting, nudging the Magi into a month-long spiral around the pole, a chaotic strange Magi attractor around the North Pole which some argue provides the theological foundation for the story of Santa Claus [citation needed]. The wind blast would translate to a heat blast. More details.. Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. On the day side, the surface would bake under the constant sunlight, while on the night side the temperature would plummet. Hypercanes can't exist on Earth right now. ; Beven, J.; King, J.; Trerwin, B.; Rancourt, K.. 2012 "Documentation and verification of the world extreme wind gust record: 113.3 m s–1 on Barrow Island, Australia, during passage of tropical cyclone Olivia." However, if there were any updrafts, you could easily be lifted up and carried away. What If? xkcd 사이트 아래쪽에 깨알같은 글씨로 권장 사항이 적혀 있다. ; Beven, J.; King, J.; Trerwin, B.; Rancourt, K.. 2012 ", It's difficult to get accurate measurements of surface winds since those tornadoes. The strongest hurricanes have wind speeds around 200 mph with gusts up to 250. The tempest would churn up cold water from the depths. The next was 2131: Emojidomereleased on Monday April 1st 2019. They hear the tinkling of wind chimes as gentle breeze picks up. What If? Okay. Velociraptors, and in particular, the irrational fear of being attacked by them in the modern world, appear several times in xkcd. This comic is a take on how vast and rich the world is, and on the thrill of exploring it. Quietly, gently, the Moon's gravity would tug on our planet . ; Bessemoulin, P.; Peterson, T.C. ... xkcd: What If? [1]For one, someone at NASA would probably yell at us. The Moon hasn't stopped rotating around the Earth. You can [link href='http://www.amazon.com/What-If-Scientific-Hypothetical-Questions/dp/0544272994' link_updater_label='external' target='_blank']preorder a copy here. Another way to experience 500 mph winds is to trigger a hypercane. Some things don't work like they do in the movies. Although in the last two 1350: Lorenz and 1506: xkcloud it wa… More details. [6]Limits on Hurricane Intensity A hypercane is an exotic type of hurricane with 500 mph winds spinning in a very tight vortex just a few miles across. Odds are, that's what's going to kill you. Under Games > D&D, you can filter for a spell. The Sun wouldn't completely stop moving across the sky, but instead of rising and setting once a day, it would rise and set once a year. Anyway, back to gravity. One is to stand on top of a volcano when it erupts. The strongest hurricanes have wind speeds around 200 mph with gusts up to 250. Gulick, Penny J. Barton, and Michael R. Warner. by Randall Munroe to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on September 2nd, 2014. When water flowed back in to fill the hole, it would have been heated by contact with the molten rock. #18 - … The font is supposed to be "xkcd-Regular", which I assume is a font that gets downloaded from XKCD's server. If the Earth stopped spinning, the normal cycle of day and night would end. Right now, the Earth spins faster than the Moon, and our tides slow down the Earth's rotation while pushing the Moon away from us. Have you ever been curious what happens to a person's face in 457 mph winds? . . This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. 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. I just … is a blog by Randall Munroe, the creator of the Stick-Figure Comic xkcd.Updated erratically, he answers off-the-wall reader questions using math, science, and xkcd-style cartoons.Randall has a Twitter feed, @whatifnumbers, of numbers he comes up with while writing the blog.He's also published a book, What If? Only to find that the chair I sat on converted the successful silence into a perfect, and loud, flute note. However, without the Earth's rotation feeding it tidal energy, the Moon would stop drifting away from the Earth (as it is doing currently) and would start to slowly drift back toward us. If the backward pull is stronger than the upward pull, the balloon will float at a low angle. More details.. “I think adults try to make the question really … As it tumbled to a turbulent stop, the air would heat up. When wind speed rises above about 120 mph, it's no longer possible to stay upright no matter how far you lean; you'll start to slide backward across the ground,[2]When Hurricane Isabel hit Virginia in 2003, I had the bright idea of standing on a skateboard with a poncho held up like a sail, so the wind would blow me down the street. For them, the first sign of trouble would be that the outside world had suddenly gone silent. Excerpt from WHAT IF? The windstorms would inject huge amounts of dust and debris into the atmosphere. If the Earth stopped and the air didn't, the result would be a sudden thousand-mile-per-hour wind. Pitch a baseball at 90% of the speed of light: Q: What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball … xkcd is a Stick-Figure Comic by Randall Munroe.It is a gag-a-day comic and generally does not have a continuing plot line or continuity (though there are occasional short story arcs). Well, you can watch a video of one of those wind tunnel tests here. The next did not come out in 2017, but first in 2018 when 1975: Right Clickwas released on Sunday April 1st 2018. Come to discuss the comics and other work by Randall with other … For a while, the ocean would cease to have a surface at all; it would be impossible to tell where the spray ended and the sea began. ", Emanuel, Kerry A., Kevin Speer, Richard Rotunno, Ramesh Srivastava, and Mario Molina. Getting shot doesn't really make someone fly backward. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. You wouldn't necessarily be thrown very high. After all, to a toaster, all weather is cold.