[url]http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/[/url]

Git around, git around, I git around.
 

[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18824114[/url]

[QUOTE=Dubslow;304558][url]http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/[/url][/QUOTE]Fascinating.

Baseball is not a game I'm very familiar with (it's called rounders over here, but I'm not very familiar with that game either) so I had to look up the mass of a baseball. Turns out it's around 145g.

The kinetic energy of a mass m travelling at velocity v is mc^2 * (1/sqrt (1-v^2/c^2) - 1)

Plugging in v/c = 0.9, m=0.145 kg and c=3e8 m/s, I make that 1.7e16 J.

A megaton explosive yield is defined to be 4.2e15 J. The kinetic energy of the baseball is thus 17/4.2 megatons TNT. That is, 4 megatons to within the precision of the mass of the baseball.

The article makes much of the fusion reactions but, in fact, they generate very little energy. Fusion is less than 1% efficient at converting mass to energy. The kinetic energy of the ball is already over twice its rest mass.


Paul

[url]http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2012/07/hoff-heist-thieves-make-off-with-hundreds-of-david-hasselhoff-cardboard-cutouts/[/url]

[url]http://arcticready.com/[/url]

One of my more favorite web comics.

[URL="http://www.wastedtalent.ca/"]If a bunch of engineers are in the forest and nobody is around to hear them discussing strategies on how to hold a normal conversation, are they still huge nerds?[/URL]

Here's one for D
 

The first thing on the list I remember is 9/11.

[url]http://xkcd.com/1093/[/url]

Code tracks crime, rumors back to source
 

[url]http://www.worldnewstomorrow.com/?p=2588[/url]

[url]http://www.pedropinto.org.s3.amazonaws.com/publications/locating_source_diffusion_networks.pdf[/url]
[url]http://www.pedropinto.org.s3.amazonaws.com/publications/locating_source_diffusion_networks_supplem.pdf[/url]

Football (the good kind)
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKH8vr0oM8g[/url]

[URL]http://news.yahoo.com/long-lost-egyptian-pyramids-found-google-earth-005252340.html[/URL]

[QUOTE]"It seems that Angela Micol is one of the so-called 'pyridiots' who see pyramids everywhere," said James Harrell, professor emeritus of archaeological geology at the University of Toledo and a leading expert on the archaeological geology of ancient Egypt. "Her Dimai and Abu Sidhum 'pyramids' are examples of natural rock formations that might be mistaken for archaeological features provided one is [U]unburdened by any knowledge of archaeology or geology[/U]. In other words, her pyramids are just wishful thinking by an ignorant observer with an overactive imagination."[/QUOTE]:smile:

In other words, those are idiopathic pyramids?