I dunno, how fast can a chisel carve stone before getting blunt, shattering the tablet, or something?
That’s an interesting question. Assuming he doesn’t use his own fingernails or his eyes and doesn’t have access to materials from his own fictional universe what sort of chisel would he use? The best I know of is Tungsten Carbide. Fortunately if extensive use blunts the chisel he can just sharpen it again with his fingers or eyes. He would of course also cool it down after every sentence or two by breathing on it so that friction doesn’t raise the temperature above 500°C where oxidisation starts. Or he could do his writing in a vacuum where he would only have to be concerned about the 2870°C melting point.
I’m not sure about limits when it comes to shattering the tablet (where the tablet could be, say, uluru). With a little practice, unbounded dexterity to rely on and no need to use something so crude as a hammer to apply force superman could get very close to the limits of the amount of shock the ‘tablet’ could absorb. While I have no formal training in superhuman engraving best practice I suspect the optimal technique would more closely resemble “extremely fast scratching” than “chiselling” per se. It seems highly probable that the limit that the rock could handle would be far faster than that of the PS/2 protocol. If it is necessary to reduce the concentrated stress on the rock superman can even fly back and forth like a dot matrix printer scratching a small parts of letters each time in the least damaging configuration.
I love his “What If?” even more than his cartoons. Yesterday I was wondering if he could tell me what would happen if all of the electrons in my body instantly vanished. Specifically how big the explosion would be but also whether a bunch of free protons and nuclei at that energy level would do anything exciting.
In your body there are about 0.55 electrons for each nucleon (from this and approximating Z/A as 1 for hydrogen and 0.5 for anything else); i.e., about 3.3e26 electrons per kilogram of matter; that is, their electric charge is about −5.3e7 coulombs per kilogram, and the electric charge of your body if the electrons vanished would be 5.3e7 C/kg. The electrostatic energy is then kQ^2/(4*pi*ε0*r), where r is your “size” and k is some factor roughly of order 1 depending on your “shape” (e.g. 3⁄5 for an uniform ball of radius r). That’d be in the ballpark of 1e30 joules, or 1e14 megatons of TNT: half a dozen orders of magnitude more than the Chicxulub Crater, but about fourteen orders of magnitude less than a supernova.
That’d be in the ballpark of 1e30 joules, or 1e14 megatons of TNT: half a dozen orders of magnitude more than the Chicxulub Crater, but about fourteen orders of magnitude less than a supernova.
So from the sounds of it extinction of complex life on earth but nowhere near enough to destroy the planet.
After estimating the total energy and thence the energy per particle, it looks like the average particle would have UHECR-like energy, so they would each generate an extensive air shower, “spreading” the energy over larger volumes than it otherwise would. (But when you have so many showers superimposed to each other, I’m not sure the total effect would be much different from each particle interacting locally.)
What about a laser pen, built to withstand some substantial G-forces, writing on to a light-sensitive material, which is then photographed with a high speed camera?
What about a laser pen, built to withstand some substantial G-forces, writing on to a light-sensitive material, which is then photographed with a high speed camera?
The guy who has laser eyes is going to use a laser pen built especially to accommodate his super-special needs? I suppose he could do that. Then he could choose not to use his flight power but use his super strength to power an awesome bike-helicopter.
That’s an interesting question. Assuming he doesn’t use his own fingernails or his eyes and doesn’t have access to materials from his own fictional universe what sort of chisel would he use? The best I know of is Tungsten Carbide. Fortunately if extensive use blunts the chisel he can just sharpen it again with his fingers or eyes. He would of course also cool it down after every sentence or two by breathing on it so that friction doesn’t raise the temperature above 500°C where oxidisation starts. Or he could do his writing in a vacuum where he would only have to be concerned about the 2870°C melting point.
I’m not sure about limits when it comes to shattering the tablet (where the tablet could be, say, uluru). With a little practice, unbounded dexterity to rely on and no need to use something so crude as a hammer to apply force superman could get very close to the limits of the amount of shock the ‘tablet’ could absorb. While I have no formal training in superhuman engraving best practice I suspect the optimal technique would more closely resemble “extremely fast scratching” than “chiselling” per se. It seems highly probable that the limit that the rock could handle would be far faster than that of the PS/2 protocol. If it is necessary to reduce the concentrated stress on the rock superman can even fly back and forth like a dot matrix printer scratching a small parts of letters each time in the least damaging configuration.
This looks like a job for Randall!
I love his “What If?” even more than his cartoons. Yesterday I was wondering if he could tell me what would happen if all of the electrons in my body instantly vanished. Specifically how big the explosion would be but also whether a bunch of free protons and nuclei at that energy level would do anything exciting.
In your body there are about 0.55 electrons for each nucleon (from this and approximating Z/A as 1 for hydrogen and 0.5 for anything else); i.e., about 3.3e26 electrons per kilogram of matter; that is, their electric charge is about −5.3e7 coulombs per kilogram, and the electric charge of your body if the electrons vanished would be 5.3e7 C/kg. The electrostatic energy is then kQ^2/(4*pi*ε0*r), where r is your “size” and k is some factor roughly of order 1 depending on your “shape” (e.g. 3⁄5 for an uniform ball of radius r). That’d be in the ballpark of 1e30 joules, or 1e14 megatons of TNT: half a dozen orders of magnitude more than the Chicxulub Crater, but about fourteen orders of magnitude less than a supernova.
So from the sounds of it extinction of complex life on earth but nowhere near enough to destroy the planet.
Prob’ly something like this.
Ahh, good point. That seems about right.
After estimating the total energy and thence the energy per particle, it looks like the average particle would have UHECR-like energy, so they would each generate an extensive air shower, “spreading” the energy over larger volumes than it otherwise would. (But when you have so many showers superimposed to each other, I’m not sure the total effect would be much different from each particle interacting locally.)
What about a laser pen, built to withstand some substantial G-forces, writing on to a light-sensitive material, which is then photographed with a high speed camera?
The guy who has laser eyes is going to use a laser pen built especially to accommodate his super-special needs? I suppose he could do that. Then he could choose not to use his flight power but use his super strength to power an awesome bike-helicopter.
Like this one?