Science Memes

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[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago (11 children)

can you contextualise this? I thought it was about the flying manhole cover

During the Pascal-B nuclear test of August 1957,[8][9] a 900-kilogram (2,000 lb) steel lid was welded over the borehole to contain the nuclear blast, despite Brownlee predicting that it would not work.[8] When Pascal-B was detonated, the blast went straight up the test shaft, launching the cap into the atmosphere. The plate was never found. In a conversation with Bill Ogle, Brownlee estimated its velocity as "six times the escape velocity from the Earth"—approximately 67.2 km/s (150,000 mph).[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#cite_ref-Brownlee,_Harrington_9-0

hence this thing being posted here more than once.

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[–] janus2@lemmy.zip 23 points 4 months ago (5 children)

I know that thing definitely got some fancy physics flavor of fucking vaporized, but in my heart it's out in space just still zooming at breakneck fuckin speed as a testament to human engineering hubris

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[–] notabot@piefed.social 6 points 4 months ago

I would just like to commend your phrasing of:

some fancy physics flavor of fucking vaporized

It gave me a hearty chuckle.

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[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Only a tiny fraction of it probably melted. The atmosphere is really thin when you're moving at the velocity that cover seemingly achieved. Raw iron meteors that are much smaller, and moving significantly slower than that steel plate routinely reach the ground intact.

That's a real use of a time machine. Go back with ultra high speed film and camera so we can catch more than one frame of the thing and determine if it hit escape velocity of the solar system, or if it may be coming back to us in a few hundred thousand years.

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[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

A high-speed camera, which took one frame per millisecond, was focused on the borehole because studying the velocity of the plate was deemed scientifically interesting.[8] After the detonation, the plate appeared in only one frame. Regarding its speed Brownlee reckoned that "a lower limit could be calculated by considering the time between frames (and I don't remember what that was)", and joked that the best estimate was it was "going like a bat!"[10]

How many could we get now, 10? That would probably be enough. Time machine it is.

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[–] janus2@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

so you're saying there's a chance that if we ever encounter aliens, they might compliment us on our sick space yeet?

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[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago*

That probably depends on how litigious they are, and if we hit anything with it.

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[–] jackal@infosec.pub 13 points 4 months ago (1 child)

Here you go (from earlier this week): https://sopuli.xyz/post/47426503

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[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Thank you

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[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

It's the floating roof of an oil storage tank outside Moscow, Russia that got destroyed earlier this week. The video makes that gigantic piece of steel look like it thinks it's Wash from Firefly. Just a leaf on the wind.

Terrifying.