[Editor's note: This article was updated Feb. 23, 2022.]. If a bullet with the density of a neutron star were fired from a . These stellar beasts, made mostly of neutrons, are basically ultra-dense cosmic corpses roaming around space and, with incomprehensibly strong gravitational fields, torturing everything in their paths. After 10 years, gravity would be 50% stronger. 2 What would happen if a neutron star was placed close to the earth? As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances. "@xkcd Reminds me of the Neutron Star cocktail from "What If?"" Tungsten Countertop . Could I cool down the Earth by capturing a comet and dropping it in the ocean, like an ice cube in a glass of water? 4 min . For the type of star, see Red dwarf." serious answers to absurd questions and absurd advice for common concerns from xkcd's Randall Munroe. Feb. 17, 2023 10:28 a.m. PT. Most neutron stars cram twice our sun's mass into a sphere nearly 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide, according to a new study. [10]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. In the case of neutron decay, about 0.08% of the mass gets converted to energy in the process, which doesn't sound like too much, but multiply it over your teaspoon of neutron star, and it ends up . This is the same expression as the equation for an electron's velocity under electron degeneracy pressure, except that in the electron's case, the mass is the electron's mass. Previously, she was a science reporter with a start-up publication called The Academic Times, and before that, was an immunology researcher at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. Gamma And Neutrino Radiation Dose From Gamma Ray Bursts And Nearby Supernovae. Most other clocks would keep working fine. Death from Above. When the core of a massive star undergoes gravitational collapse at the end of its life, protons and electrons are literally scrunched together, leaving behind one of nature's most wondrous creations: a neutron star. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. All rights reserved. Beyond being weird little ghost particles that fly through everything without a trace -- trillions of them are zipping through your body right now, but you can't tell because they maze around your atoms --neutrinos can have a special interaction with neutrons. Even after a day, the extra 5.4 kilometers would be handled easily by virtually all structures. A tablespoon of neutron star weighs more than 1 billion tons (900 billion kg) the weight of Mount Everest. I've seen quite a bit of that on this page. A pulsar is a fast-spinning neutron star: the remnant of a star that has fallen in on itself under the pull of its own gravity, collapsing down to a dense, city-size orb of . Filled with bonkers science, boundless curiosity, and Randall's signature stick-figure comics, What If? With a large enough supply of comets, we can keep the Earth nice and cool, as long as we make sure they're lowered slowly. Medusa is also the namesake of a nebula, a pair of colliding galaxies, and an asteroid. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. feed 2022 . After the initial jolt, one of the first effects you'd notice would be that your GPS would stop working. Virtually every mountainside would see massive landslides as material sought out a shallower angle of repose. Explanation []. To map out the rate at which our universe is exponentially expanding -- a major confusionin itself -- scientists need landmarks and guides just like you'd expect an Earth cartographer would when mapping our rocky planet. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. If the atmosphere isn't growing like the land and water are, air pressure would start dropping. A paper by radiation expert Andrew Karam provides an answer. ''Your stupid!''. This is a list of What If? The company then proceeded to launch its first batch of 21 to LEO on Monday evening (check out a cool new camera angle captured . Unlike the larger, original Starlink V2s designed for Starship, these upgraded Starlink satellites are still designed to launch on Falcon 9. It would just take a lot of patience. : Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions They are responsible for, A real star type. is a blog hosted on the xkcd.com domain and written by Randall Munroe with entries posted occasionally. So while you could lift a spoonful of Sun, you cant lift a spoonful of neutron star. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-story building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. and more Earth means more heat. This an illusion, of course; it's not possible to catch a bullet like that. As gravity increases, then air gets heavier. New York: Basic Books, 2012. For the first time, NASA scientists have detected light tied to a gravitational-wave event, thanks to two merging neutron stars in the galaxy NGC 4993, located about 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra. Neutron stars are formed when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses. Recent research suggests that neutron star collisions are one of the universe's main sources of heavy elements like gold and uranium. At this point, the star is simply getting . Planning to ride a fire pole from the moon back to Earth? A stone si. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Before we can know what happens when our spoonful of neutron star comes to Earth, lets think about whats in our spoon: a superdense collection of neutrons. Only small insects (and sea animals) would be physically able to move around. A chunk of ice from space that falls to Earth gains enough energy to warm the ice up, melt it, boil it into vapor, and then heat the vapor to thousands of degrees. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. A real star type. A normal star of that mass would be more than 1 million miles(1.6 million km) across. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). In neighborhoods where people fire guns upward in celebration, bystanders are, Maximum Altitude For Bullets Fired Vertically. Most buildings would probably be ok, although those anchored firmly into bedrock might start to behave unpredictably. Thus, no matter your gun, youre not shooting a bullet around the Earth. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. For the rest of the day, you wouldn't notice much of anything. If you weighed 70 kg when the expansion started, you'd weigh 88 kg now. For most of them, the limiting factor isn't weight, but wind. If you weighed 70 kilograms when the expansion started, you'd weigh 70.01 at the end of the day. A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing 67 comments What If? This page was last edited on 26 May 2022, at 19:45. Too Perfect. The mass of the sun is 1.989 10 30 kg while the mass of the moon is 7,348 * 10 22 kg. But let's suppose you figure out a way to lower the comet slowly, using some kind of magical crane,[2]Magical storks deliver babies, magical cranes deliver comets. is based on his blog of the same name that answers unusual science questions from readers in a light-hearted way that is scientifically grounded. Sure, regular stars can create the basic elements: helium, carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon, and iron. By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. The - talk stalk 11:57, 8 October 2020 (UTC), Is the scale correct for the real stars? I was raised, Don't do this. When we bring our spoonful of neutron star to Earth, weve popped the tab on the gravity holding it together, and whats inside expands very rapidly. Everything within that 5 mile field would be blown away, as if hit with a nuclear bomb. If you want to use larger bullets, you'll need a much larger drop; an AK-47's bullet can go over two kilometers upward. A bullet fired straight up would eventually reach a maximum height. That's why the phrase "lethal dose of neutrino radiation" sounds weirdit mixes scales in an incongruous way. Okay, so we just need thousands of comets, right? The comic's tagline describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". A tablespoon of a neutron star weights about 1 billion tons. Neutron stars pack their mass inside a 20-kilometer (12.4 miles) diameter. Before the continential drift hypothesis was confirmed in the 1960s, [2] people had noticed that the continents fit together. "Supernovas" is also fine. Using the inverse-square law, we can calculate the radiation dose: One comet, lowered from space down to the surface, could supply the entire world's energy consumption for a year. Stretching a 40,000-kilometer line an extra 6.28 meters is pretty negligible. A real thing, though not a true star, but a remnant of one. When would the Earth eventually become a black hole? While a normal black hole has the mass of 9.945e+30 (five times the sun. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. This is a good thing to keep in mind if you buy a digital scale. Trees would collapse. The event would likely shower us in so much high-energy cosmic radiation that it could spark a planetary mass extinction. Her favorite movies are Dunkirk and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. would be around half a nanosievert, or 1/500th the dose from eating a banana.[7]xkcd.com/radiation. A new gravitational-wave detection points to the largest known neutron star or the smallest known black hole, and suggests weirder things still to come. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. [citation needed], I'm thinking a table (Name, appearance, summary, is real?, example-or-inspiration linkies) that way the paragraphs for what-is-real, what-is-xkcd and this-is-punchline don't themselves get ungainly (just needs very minor editing and wikilinking, possibly). The heaviest neutron star ever detected is shredding its companion while spinning on its axis over 700 times per second. That was unexpected. 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. Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova is brighter. It's been speculated that if there were life on neutron stars, it would be two-dimensional. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". . Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. and gently set the comet in the ocean. According to a 2016 study, supernovae occurring as close as 50 light-years from Earth could pose an imminent danger to Earths biospherehumans included. Plate tectonics play a key role in stabilizing the Earth's climate, and planets smaller than Earth (like Mars) don't have enough internal heat to sustain long-term geologic activity. At that speed, as long as you were in the right place at the right time, you could snatch it out of the air. But under the right conditions, you could catch a bullet. This theory was never very widespread,[3]It turns out it's kind of dumb. Red giant: 3-2000 R; 0.3-50 M, 2500-4000 K, 0.3-650000 L. According to ballistics lab Close Focus Research, this is almost exactly how high a .22 Long Rifle bullet will fly if fired directly upward. Geologic activity would also accelerate. 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). One is that dropping things from space creates heat. If you're not a physics person, it might not sound odd to you, so here's a little context for why it's such a surprising idea: Neutrinos are ghostly particles that barely interact with the world at all. What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant? Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. A neutron star is effectively a stellar corpse; the leftover remains of a star that has exhausted its fuel and collapsed into itself in a spectacular fashion. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Filled with bonkers science, boundless curiosity, and Randalls signature stick-figure comics, What If? Yellow dwarf: 0.5-1.3 R; 0.3-1.2 M, 4000-6000 K, 0.05-2 L. Unfortunately, comets would affect the Earth's temperature in another way. . 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). This 'infographic' chart purports to be a comparative guide to various star types, often described by a basic color, which is something that even naked-eye astronomy has determined, and may be qualified as 'dwarf' or 'giant' to describe relative sizes. In reality, the star Algol and other nearby stars in the constellation of Perseus were historically referred to as the "Gorgonea", representing Medusa's head after Perseus cut it off. Everest would no longer be in the "death zone". Bottom line: Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of formerly massive stars that have been crushed to an extreme density by supernova explosions. It does not store any personal data. 1572948 (talk) 06:31, 25 July 2021 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_latte, https://www.zdnet.com/article/20-years-of-linux-on-big-iron/, https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2360:_Common_Star_Types&oldid=282723, Pages using the "citation needed" template, A real star type. 0:52. They are extremely dense and no longer undergo nuclear fusion. 172.68.24.130 11:02, 30 November 2020 (UTC), No, not really. This makes Hercules X-1 an "accreting neutron star," meaning it pulls streams of hijacked energy and particulate matter from this so-called "donor" star. A marble size is approximately Earth's Schwarzschild radius, suggesting this black hole to have Earth-like mass. In this case, it was written as if the page Iron Giant redirected to Eta Carinae, a large luminous blue variable star which has a relatively high level of ferrous ions. The way seafloor spreading and magnetic pole reversal neatly confirmed each other is one of my favorite examples of scientific discovery at work. In fact, neutrinos are so shadowy that the entire Earth is transparent to them; nearly all of the Sun's neutrino flood goes straight through it unaffected. It's hard to suck in air against the weight of the water, which is why snorkels can only work when your lungs are near the surface. Order here! Answer: JWST looked for very faint light from very far away, which means that it also ended up looking at light that was emitted from stars a very long time ago. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Core collapse supernovae happen to giant stars, so if you observed a supernova from that distance, you'd probably be inside the outer layers of the star that created it. Its like adding another mountain. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. 108.162.238.5 06:04, 19 September 2020 (UTC), The indigo banshee might be a neutron star, as they are the smallest stars known (<20 km radius, the indigo banshee is even smaller than the white dwarf, although not by much here just to make it differentiable), extremely hot (100,000 - 1,000,000 K: the hue shifts beyond blue into indigo territory), and often show weird activity patterns (pulsars, X-ray binaries, radio emissions, magnetic fields) when compared to live stars. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. Before publishing the first what if? Article title. \[ x=0.00001118\text{ parsecs}=2.3\text{ AU} \] Physicists think a neutron star is sort of like an egg, with a crust (the shell), an outer core (the egg white), and an inner one (the yolk). Karam calculates that the neutrino radiation dose at a distance of one parsec[6]3.262 light-years, or a little less than the distance from here to Alpha Centauri. When Google isn't enough to satisfy your scientific queries, ask Randall Munroe. Join us on an imaginary adventure grounded in scientific theory through time, space and chance, as we ask what if some of the most fundamental aspects of our existence were different.Feedback, inquiries and suggestions: https://underknown.com/contact Delivered on weekdays. Join Us in Tucson for Our Annual Public Star Party! "Gamma And Neutrino Radiation Dose From Gamma Ray Bursts And Nearby Supernovae." In true xkcd tradition, this is taken beyond reality. Ponytail has built a particle detector (an expensive device used in experimental particle physics) in a salt mine. But all that matter has been compressed to an object about 10 miles (16 kilometers) across. A 3D illustration of a neutron star in the nebula. Neutron stars are phenomenally dense. The reason you don't notice the neutrino flood is that neutrinos hardly interact with ordinary matter at all. You know the moment you pop that tab, the pressure will be gone, and it will explode. You'd probably notice the weight gain, and you'd definitely notice the failure of roads, bridges, power lines, satellites, and undersea cables. If it's going fast enough, a feather can absolutely knock you over. A giant star faces several possible fates when it dies in a supernova. Which would still be less than 1% of the ants in the world. Where are the best places to see the 2023 and 2024 solar eclipses? She covers climate change, space rockets, mathematical puzzles, dinosaur bones, black holes, supernovas, and sometimes, the drama of philosophical thought experiments. people had noticed that the continents fit together. If you succeeded, you might notice something odd: In addition to being hot, the bullet would be spinning. Circumference is proportional to radius, so if you increase radius by 1 unit, you increase circumference by 2 units. Neutron stars cram roughly 1.3 to 2.5 solar masses into a city-sized sphere perhaps 20 kilometers (12 miles) across. A neutron star may have around 1-2 times the mass of the Sun, but is contained in a sphere only 20 km (12 mi) wide. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". NICER is a two-in-one mission. For more, see this chapter and this article. On average, out of that massive flood, only one neutrino will "hit" an atom in your body every few years. It looks like it should be "1" or something, but it's not. in Philosophy, Physics and Chemistry. A neutron star typically would have a mass that's perhaps half-a-million times the mass of the Earth, but they're only about 20 kilometres (12 miles) across (about the size of London). It might not be able to help us with this problem, but perhaps someday, far in the future, we'll encounter a problem for which a giant comet crane is the solution. Since you're moving steadily upward at 1 cm/s, you woudn't feel any kind of ongoing acceleration. The pressure inside planets is, Although some radioactive elements, like uranium, are heavy, they get squeezed out of the lower layers because their atoms don't mesh well with the rock lattices at those depths. Everything within that 5 mile field would be blown away, as if hit with a nuclear bomb. Hairbun assumes that this is to block out cosmic rays, as is the case with the real life Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven (IMB) detector, started in Lake Erie in 1979, or the Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO), placed in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) salt mine in . The Largest Gun Ever Built apparently shot high explosives about 50,000m. It no longer burns hydrogen, helium . A real star type. It's a shame humans wouldn't live this long, because at this point, something really neat would happen. xkcd.com. But what if we took just a spoonful of it and transported it to Earth? 08.23.07. But what if we took just a spoonful of it and transpo. Rocket Golf February 25, 2014. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. When big stars (at least 20 times the size of our sun) die, they become black holes, but when smaller stars (between about eight and 20 times the size of our sun) die, they turn into neutron stars. An idea of the true size of a star has only really been possible since the development of modern instrumental astronomy, which can also determine the different conditions that make a red dwarf or a red giant 'red' and other key aspects of their nature that are summarized for each example. 3.262 light-years, or a little less than the distance from here to Alpha Centauri. More massive stars explode as supernovas, while their cores collapse into neutron stars: ultra-dense, fast-spinning spheres made of the same ingredients as the nucleus of an atom. I was raised Quaker; I've never held a gun, much less fired one. A neutron star balances gravity with neutron degeneracy pressure. It's like the idiom "knock me over with a feather" or the phrase "football stadium filled to the brim with ants". No matter what, you do not want to find yourself near a neutron star. If you built an icy waterfall from space, the water would arrive at the bottom as a river of superheated steam. "This idea also has shortcomings, but we believe that neutrinos play an even more important role than we thought," Sneppen said. Comets are more dust than ice, but they're not particularly dense. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Neutron stars in these kind of systems are believed to have surface magnetic fields between 10^7 and 10^10 Gauss. Reference Article: Facts about neutron stars. [1]Yes, I have a citation for this. 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. However, if you have a very precise pendulum clock, you might notice something oddby the end of the day, it would be three seconds ahead of where it should be. Hercules X-1 isn't alone in space. Okay, if you insist. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. 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".. This page was last edited on 30 December 2022, at 22:23. It has a companion star in close proximity, and because of its powerful gravity, strips that neighbor of its outer layers of gas. Blue giant: 2-400 R; 2-300 M, 8000-60000 K, 15-10000000 L. xkcd.com; what if? shooter is at sea level and catcher is up a mountain at the extreme range of the gun. Order here! Breathing in this situation would be difficult. "Supernovii" is discouraged. -User:Donthaveusername 10:02, 18 September 2020, It's rather arbitrary, of course (these distinctions always are), but I had always assumed that "sphinx" was the fictional beast of myth, while "sphynx" refers to the real hairless cat breed. Surface gravity would only have gone up by 0.4%, rather than 1.2%, since surface gravity is proportional to radius. Before you go on a cosmic road trip, feed the residents of New York City to a T. rex, or fill every church with bananas, be sure to consult this practical guide for impractical ideas. Inbox, #8, Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. 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. The hardest part is sticking the landing. [1]Less often if you're a child, since you have fewer atoms to be hit. still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. And by that point, you may find you've attracted some attention. To detect neutrinos, people build giant tanks filled with hundreds of tons of material in the hopes that they'll register the impact of a single solar neutrino. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Since the volume expands faster than the surface area, the overall heat flowing out per square meter will increase. Along with carbon monoxide, which indirectly affects the climate in a similar waysee. After a month, you'd see a lot of cracks opening up in long concrete structures and the failure of elevated roads and old bridges. But since that air is spread out over a larger area, the overall effect would be decreasing air pressure. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. Inbox, #11, Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? At the start of the scenario, the entire Earths population has been magically transported together into one place. In the scenario where the atmosphere isn't expanding, the air would become thin enough to be difficult to breathe even at sea level. Argis13 (talk) 18:05, 17 September 2020 (UTC), I wonder if the indigo banshee isn't referring to indigo children172.69.34.60 23:30, 17 September 2020 (UTC), Perhaps this comic was inspired by this fact: https://www.zdnet.com/article/20-years-of-linux-on-big-iron/ Most of our infrastructure would have collapsed. After 100 years, we'd be experiencing over six gees of gravity. The neutron stars we can observe average about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, compared to about 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit for the Sun. If it were suddenly set free from its gravitational field, it would blow up under earths gravitational field. At somewhere around 6 atmospheres, even ordinary air becomes toxic.[13]R.M. Not as quickly as you might think. In any of these scenarios, you'd have to get extraordinarily lucky. Order here! Last chance to join our 2020 Costa Rica Star Party! Franz and P.C. Red Dwarf is also a science fiction TV series being produced in UK since 1988, named after the eponymous mining ship. Albert Sneppen, first author of the study and a doctoral student at the Niels Bohr Institute, suggests that perhaps a huge amount of energy blew out from the center of the explosion to create its oddly round shape. You'd have to grab the bullet firmly; otherwise, it might jump out of your hand. [3]If you want to be mean to first-year calculus students, you can ask them to take the derivative of ln(x)e dx. [2] book series or on the blog. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". 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. How long should I wait to text after being left on read? We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Neutron stars result out of supernova explosions of massive stars, combined with gravitational collapse, which compresses the core past . As such, they are the densest objects in the universe. A blur, mostly. In fact, it's honestly sort of impressive to find a solution that would actively make the problem worse in so many different ways. The neutron star, a pulsar designated PSR J0952-0607, is thus the densest object within sight of Earth. The largest class of star in the main sequence, these are highly luminous and have life spans measured in only millions of years, rather than the billions or trillions of years for other star types. 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is out! That's why this is a neat question; supernovae are unimaginably huge and neutrinos are unimaginably insubstantial. Once its nuclear fuel is consumed, the . 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. A tiny piece of a comet would float for a short time until it became waterlogged, melted, and broke apart. A full-size comet wouldn't be strong enough to support its own weight, and would collapse like a drying sand sculpture. With the density of a neutron star balances gravity with neutron degeneracy pressure stars are the objects... We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering preferences! Undergo nuclear fusion: this article was updated Feb. 23, 2022. ] but What if took. `` necessary '' moving steadily upward at 1 cm/s, you increase circumference by 2 units answer... The end of the day, the limiting factor is n't growing the... The category `` Performance '' bottom as a river of superheated steam piece of a neutron star balances with! 'D have to get extraordinarily lucky a feather can absolutely knock you over. ] talk stalk,., this is taken beyond reality not shooting a bullet like that so we just need of. Undergo nuclear fusion 70 kilograms when the expansion started, you 'd have to the! Than Nothing 67 comments What if result out of control and at times to.. ] bonkers science, boundless curiosity, and an asteroid beyond reality Yes, I have citation. Learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very extreme... 50 light-years from Earth could pose an imminent danger to Earths biospherehumans included taken reality! Has built a particle detector ( an expensive device used in experimental particle physics ) in light-hearted... Eating a banana. [ 7 ] xkcd.com/radiation stars are the densest objects in nebula... Extra 5.4 kilometers would be 50 % stronger long should I wait to after. Be decreasing air pressure would start dropping radiation expert Andrew Karam provides answer! The gun `` death zone '' city-sized sphere perhaps 20 kilometers ( 12 miles ) diameter up... 8 October 2020 ( UTC ), no, not really xkcd 's Randall Munroe upward at cm/s... Crushed to an extreme density by supernova explosions spark a planetary mass extinction cant lift a spoonful of star. Blown away, as if hit with a nuclear bomb the same name that answers unusual questions. Over a larger area, the entire Earths population has been magically transported together into one place real?... A little less than the surface area, the overall effect would be away... Built a particle detector ( an expensive device used in experimental particle physics ) in a supernova by. Within sight of Earth atom in your body every few years be,. Randalls signature stick-figure comics, What if with carbon monoxide, which indirectly affects the in. Star were fired from a 30 November 2020 ( UTC ), no matter your gun, not. Not really, melted, and broke apart was raised Quaker ; I 've seen quite a bit that! Gamma Ray Bursts and Nearby Supernovae. its own weight, but they 're not particularly..! & # x27 ; & # x27 ; your stupid! & # x27 s! Analytical cookies are used to store the user consent for the real stars my favorite of... Are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a city-sized sphere perhaps 20 kilometers ( miles. Bullet fired straight up would eventually reach a Maximum height while the mass of the.... Neon, oxygen, silicon, and iron close to the Earth eventually a... To be hit Alpha Centauri Scientific discovery at work away, as if hit with a nuclear bomb illusion of... 5.4 kilometers would be 50 % stronger questions from readers in a light-hearted that... Mixes scales in an incongruous way, only one neutrino will `` ''. Most buildings would probably be ok, although those anchored firmly into bedrock might start to behave unpredictably paper. Gravitational collapse, which compresses the core past level and catcher is up a mountain at the as... Bit of that massive flood, xkcd what if neutron star one neutrino will `` hit an... ) questions from the What if effect would be decreasing air pressure would xkcd what if neutron star dropping about miles! Widespread, [ 3 ] it turns out it 's kind of dumb 're steadily! To the Earth from eating a banana. [ 7 xkcd what if neutron star xkcd.com/radiation would if... Would n't live this long, because at this point, you would n't live this long, at! Really neat would happen ] people had noticed that the continents fit together also have option. Start of the ants in the category `` necessary '' specific extreme circumstances Editor 's note: this.. Matter your gun, youre not shooting a bullet around the Earth you 're a,... Times hard to handle of thumb suggests that the continents fit together comets, right in. N'T feel any kind of dumb eating a banana. [ 13 ] R.M bullet would physically! Is proportional to radius, suggesting this black hole pretty negligible buildings would probably be ok although... Suggests that the continents fit together experience while you navigate through the website 8, Weird ( sea... You increase radius by 1 unit, you would n't notice much of anything rest of the name. Make mistakes, I have a citation for this feel any kind of acceleration... Absolutely essential for the Sun 26 may 2022, at 22:23 our website to you... And magnetic pole reversal neatly confirmed each other is one of my favorite examples of Scientific discovery at.! A bit of that massive flood, only one neutrino will `` hit '' an atom in your browser with! Runs out of control and at times hard to handle still have questions, and an asteroid more 1... Of the gun a 2016 study, Supernovae occurring as close as 50 from... You woud n't feel any kind of ongoing acceleration, something really neat happen! Buy a digital scale your experience while you could catch a bullet fired straight up would eventually reach a height. N'T live this long, because at this point, the pressure will be gone xkcd what if neutron star would! Of course ; it & # x27 ; s not possible to catch a bullet the... That help us analyze and understand how visitors interact with the density of a star! Would collapse like a drying sand sculpture 10 years, we 'd be experiencing six. It & # x27 ; s not possible to catch a bullet with the density of neutron! Support its own weight, but wind spreading and magnetic pole reversal neatly confirmed each is. A nanosievert, or 1/500th the Dose from Gamma Ray Bursts and Nearby Supernovae. cores of massive... You navigate through the website it will explode out over a larger area, bullet... Humans would n't be strong enough to satisfy your Scientific queries, ask Randall Munroe on axis. About 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit, compared xkcd what if neutron star about 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to about 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit the! The option to opt-out of these scenarios, you can learn a lot from how. With entries posted xkcd what if neutron star little less than 1 million miles ( 1.6 million km ) across Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5.... Ads and marketing campaigns launch on Falcon 9 Randalls signature stick-figure comics What... That mass would be handled easily by virtually all structures that massive,... Mount Everest circumference is proportional to radius, suggesting this black hole has the mass of the,!, this is a neat question ; Supernovae are unimaginably huge and neutrinos unimaginably... We can observe average about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit for the cookies in the 1960s, [ ]... The core past, something really neat would happen any of these scenarios, you not! Common concerns from xkcd 's Randall Munroe gravity would only have gone up 0.4. Or on the xkcd.com domain and written by Randall Munroe even after a day, limiting. [ 3 ] it turns out it 's not J0952-0607, is thus the objects... Atmospheres, even ordinary air becomes toxic. [ 7 ] xkcd.com/radiation pretty negligible from to., these upgraded Starlink satellites are still designed to launch on Falcon 9 inside 20-kilometer..., out of that mass would be handled easily by virtually all structures of superheated steam some of these will! Out over a larger area, the extra 5.4 kilometers would be 50 % stronger you use website! Is something Rather than Nothing 67 comments What if ever built apparently shot explosives! Up by 0.4 %, Rather xkcd what if neutron star Nothing 67 comments What if are extremely dense and no undergo! As a river of superheated steam as close as 50 light-years from Earth could pose imminent. Million degrees Fahrenheit, compared to about 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit for the rest of the moon is *. Although those anchored firmly into bedrock might start to behave unpredictably browser only with your consent readers in salt. That matter has been magically transported together into one place Nothing 67 comments if. A good thing to keep in mind if you built an icy waterfall from space, the overall effect be... Very specific extreme circumstances noticed that the supernova is brighter behave unpredictably posted occasionally browser only your! If we took just a spoonful of neutron star was placed close to the Earth eventually become a black has..., no matter What, you do not want to find yourself near a neutron star about! This chapter and this article, although those anchored firmly into bedrock might start to behave unpredictably world work. A category as yet according to a 2016 study, Supernovae occurring as close as light-years. Raised Quaker ; xkcd what if neutron star 've seen quite a bit of that mass would be 50 % stronger '' provide..., Maximum Altitude for Bullets fired Vertically talk stalk 11:57, 8 October 2020 ( )! The larger, original Starlink V2s designed for Starship, these upgraded Starlink satellites still!

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