https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZuOPH2YsjE (Age restricted video)
Another part in a series of blog posts where I react to ridiculous physics in YouTube videos.
First of all, in 1:27, 0.65 seconds into the time, Dane Boe shoots a fireball at the moon. 0.3 seconds later, the moon explodes and is presumed to be eliminated. Now, in order to eliminate an object, or in formal terms, destroy an object, one needs to shoot a projectile with kinetic energy equal to its object's gravitational binding energy. Let's assume that the moon is a uniform sphere. Plugging in the mass of the moon, 7.3459×1022 kilograms, and the radius of the moon, 1079.6 miles, gives us a gravitational binding energy of 1.244×1029 joules. No wonder it easily eliminated the problems of "any car in front of [one]'s parking space", "annoying pop-ups", "zebras", "clouds", "Britney Spears", and "that annoying neighbor".
Mass of the fireball
Next, we need to find the mass of the fireball in question. Now, at first glance, a direct plug and chug for velocity gives us an absurd velocity of 1.28×109 meters per second. Why absurd, you ask? Because this direct plugging and chugging of velocity gave us a velocity that is 4.27 times the speed of light. Now, as any Robloxian would tell you, it is not possible for velocities to be greater than the speed of light. Therefore, we must introduce a concept called lookback time.
According to this resource I found in Microblox Bing[1], the look-back time is just the time since the light that we see from an object was actually emitted. Lookback time is notable because it solves the problem of having to deal with velocities that are apparently greater than the speed of light. The fireball did not arrive at the moon 0.3 seconds after it was launched; the fireball arrived at the moon 1.584 seconds after it was launched. Using this, we find the true velocity of the fireball to be 2.431×108 meters per second.
Now, this is a significant fraction of the speed of light (81.07% to be precise to two decimal places). Because of this, we cannot use the classical formula for kinetic energy. We must use the relativistic generalization of the formula for kinetic energy instead. Using that and solving for mass gives us a mass of 1.953×1012 kilograms.
How much butane is required?
If 1.244×1029 joules are required to explode the moon, and if the specific heat of combustion of butane is 49.53 kilojoules per gram, then 2.5116×1024 grams of butane are needed. Our lighter will need to be a sphere of radius 6218.5 kilometers or be a cube with side length of 10024 kilometers to achieve this effect.
Is there enough oxygen in the atmosphere for the Lighter Hack to work?
The mass of the Earth's atmosphere is 5.1441×1018 kilograms. The current composition of the Earth's atmosphere is 20.948%. Therefore, the mass of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere is 1.0776×1018 kilograms. Our lighter hack requires 8.987×1021 kilograms. This means that the Lighter Hack does not work. One would need 4.29×1025 grams of Earth's atmosphere to do the trick properly. That is 3.502×1022 cubic meters of atmosphere, which would require the lighter to suck up every oxygen molecule within a 20296-kilometer radius to work properly.
What would happen if you lighted the Amazing Lighter?
First of all, it would use 3.011×1020 grams of butane. Second of all, the energy released will be 1.4913×1022 kilojoules. Third, the fireball will be launched at the launch velocity of 3.9077×106 meters per second. It will then arrive at the moon at 98.52 seconds. It will not explode the moon though.
Back on Earth, the consequences of your spontaneous ignition would result in Earth's oxygen being depleted entirely. In its place, it will be 9.12×1020 grams of carbon dioxide and 4.667×1020 grams of water. This is the Earth's atmosphere after your experiment:
- 4.017×1021 grams of nitrogen
- 5.181×1020 grams of water (10.07 times increase)
- 4.805×1019 grams of argon
- 9.14×1020 grams of carbon dioxide (467.5 times increase)
- 9.352×1016 grams of neon
- 2.696×1016 grams of helium
- 1.0288×1016 grams of methane
- 5.864×1015 grams of krypton
- 2.829×1015 grams of hydrogen
- 1.0288×1015 grams of carbon monoxide
- 4.475×1014 grams of xenon
- 2.0576×1013 grams of ammonia
- 2.572×1011 grams of hydrogen sulfide
- 5.1441×1012 grams of sulfur dioxide.
The Earth's atmosphere also gains 3.5319 × 1020 grams of mass for this reason.
This GIF shows what the Earth's atmosphere composition will look like if we ignite the Lighter.
So, what are the consequences of this ignition? We note that carbon dioxide (a main greenhouse gas by the way) on the planet increased 467.5-fold. After ignition, we should see the planet's temperature rise suddenly from a habitable 288 Kelvin to a hot 995 Kelvin as carbon dioxide starts to constitute 16.63% of the Earth's atmosphere.
The Earth's oceans would then boil away. In land, Earth's forests will burn up (even though we did not use the Amazing Lighter on them, ironically). Finally, Earth's lead will melt. Earth's rocky crust will remain solid.
So what is our conclusion:
Given that the world's oceans have not boiled away, forests have not burned up, and lead still remains rock solid by the copious amounts of oxygen required, it is concluded that our video is most presumably made using Special Effects.
That's all for today. I will see you in a Bloxy Cola moon!