Calculating Where Space Begins (Because Science Live!)

[becausescience]

CORRECTION: I’m not an ecologist—we do have enough oxygen in the atmosphere to survive without land plants. The majority of the Earth’s oxygen comes from marine plants, and we already have enough O2 in the atmosphere to live for hundreds of years. See MatterBeam’s comment for more info! — KH

[fentonryan]

Millikittens would be a difficult measurement. The smaller the kitten, the larger the cuteness. Even a 1/10th sized kitten saturates most known cuteness measurement devices. To successfully measure millikittens, you'd need hmmm... I'd say a 8.5 hypergrinch level of bleak-hearted stoicism.

[janroth]

Here's how I always thought Mr. Freeze's (and similar) freeze rays work: They don't shoot out a 'cold ray' of energy or something - they're shooting some kind of material that expands and freezes - When they shoot their victims/the heroes, they are most often encased in ice, not frozen solid - hence, they can survive.
A sciency-fictiony material with 4 properties: 1- Sticks to whatever it hits 2-rapidly expands and bonds to itself on contact with air 3- rapidly cools as it expands, and 4- becomes solid when cold enough.
Doesn't sound quite as hard as 'freezing someone solid through' levels of energy.

[kennethkates]

Interesting topic.

Question: If an object with the mass of a small moon (i.e. the Death Star) were to suddenly appear in orbit around a planet, somewhere between 20, 000 km and 300, 000 km, what effect, if any, would this have on the larger body in space? And if it is as devastating as I imagine it would be, would the Death Star even need a Super-laser to "destroy" Alderaan, or could it just drop out of hyperspace in near orbit?

[Elohist]

19:00 Bro, I knew I wasn’t crazy! I’ve been racking my brain over this same dilemma ever since I started learning about the physics of time travel. First there’s the issue of having a sufficient database or level of information about the quantum states of matter in the entire universe (order, assembly, etc.), but then comes the ludicrous part of how to generate enough energy to rearrange every molecule and atom in such a way as to either progress or regress the timeline, for example, to arrange all the atoms in the universe to a prerecorded state when dinosaurs walked the earth and so on. That’s why I think most movies and books go the route of inter dimensional travel to a point in the 4th dimensional timeline, either ahead of or behind their current position. Not to mention all the paradoxical issues of time travel, the act itself is logistically impossible. I think the tv show Sliders did it best by traveling to alternate universes that were either at an advanced or regressive state relative to our own; my brain hurts too much to go any further than that...

[alessiocasagrande]

AHAHAHAH i love thos questions that make him go "wwwhaaaa..?!"

[gidelix]

Commenter: What happens due to mass increase?

Kyle: *describes effects of volume increase down to the tiniest detail*

[Jindorek]

for that first awesome question, and its answer, you get my undying gratitude. absolutely agree!!

[jacobminnick]

Random question that I would be very glad you answered it on your live show or something: If wind can’t move a car that is stationary, how can it move a car that is moving if momentum is supposed to make it more difficult to move objects?

[DerekBarolet]

So, Mistborn by Bryan Sanderson takes the "problems" of telekinesis and uses them to his advantage.
In the series certain characters can push/pull metal. He uses the physics though instead of handwaving them. A character could for instance shoot a coin across the room, or they could shoot the coin onto the ground and push off of it to jump. They could pull a weapon to them, or pull on a car to pull themselves to it.
If I am not mistaken, there is a scene where a character falls off a tall building, pushes a coin to the ground and when it hits the pushing slows them down enough to land.
it is really dope.

[tomtatham]

Randall Munroe’s What If book was what got me into science

[fozball]

Hi Kyle, I just recently started watching your videos so I don't know if you talked about this before. As for your comment on time travel, there is another issue with time travel than just trying to find the coordinates the Earth was at when you go back in time. If you were able to jump through space and time and end up right where you wanted to on Earth, you still have the issue of speed. The Earth is traveling through the universe around 2 Million+ km/hr. So you literally would by hit by the Earth when you "Blinked" onto the spot you traveled back to. So much for going back and trying to save one of your loved ones when you become "pink mist" upon arrival. However; that changes if you need something to go back in time with. For example, if you use a car that say weighs a ton. Then we are talking about meteor levels of impact. The city you traveled back to would be leveled and your loved one would then still die... Just by something else that looks like a nuclear explosion.

Sorry Kyle, I took calculus 15 years ago. So I don't remember (or know if I ever knew) the equations to do the actual math on this. I would love if you or someone else did the math to see if I'm close to right on this.

[paulpieper]

The best instance of Hulk changing quick enough to produce a pressure wave would be his transforming punch in the first Avengers movie.

[Moonbagger]

"If you dropped a lightsaber, it might bounce!" That sounds way more funny than what Robot Chicken did.

[karenl]

And larger amounts of cuteness would be called "Pillipuppies".

[NatNyx]

I was about to comment on the fact that most of our O2 is actually produced by lovely photosynthetic algae, but I see you''ve already added a comment addressing that (woo!). I also wanted to add that one of the bigger problems with removing all plants on land would be the sudden loss of all of our agricultural crops and the inevitable starvation we would all face. Yay.

Also.... did you really just pronounce it "Orygone???" Kyle, Oregon isn't gone. It didn't go anywhere. Despite your mispronunciation of my home state, I still love your channel and its awesome educational and nerdy videos.

[FamilyManMotley]

The lightsaber bouncing would make a great episode. Since we already know that it would bounce, you could determine how high it would bounce or if it would start spinning in the air as it did.

[garrettmastantuono]

Nobel prize for becuase science. Ill start the paperwork

[acheron]

Question: Would it be possible to harness or recreate the powers of photosynthesis in a large scale without using plants to produce more oxygen?

[toddnolastname]

One question reminded me of an Iron Man comic from the 90s. Somebody created computer malware which would turn a computer into an actual bomb. There is nothing in a computer that can explode, and there is no way to download anything, because all you're downloading is energy in the form of "ones", that could blow up. This was before laptops became common, and the computers were definitely desktops.

If you could make a laptop battery explode by downloading bad software, the computer would shut down long before the battery got anywhere near exploding.