What if Superman Punched You?

Thanks to the passionate scientists at ASAP Science.com, a YouTube channel, science just got a lot more interesting. The YouTube channel was founded by Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown, two young biologists who graduated from the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada). The goal of ASAP Science is to present brief (3-minutes) videos about intriguing scientific questions (eg, “What Causes a Hangover?” “The Science of Orgasms” “Amazing Facts to Blow Your Mind”) that are informative as well as entertaining — makes you wonder: where were these guys when we were in high school? Clearly, the videos have found an audience, attracting more than 10 million curious viewers in less than one year. In an interview with the Daily Dot (Ontario), Moffit explained their mission: “We’re interested in inspiring people who maybe don’t know a lot about science and think of it as this hard subject in school. Hopefully, they’ll realize that [science] can be… cool; that they can follow that field or at least spend more time with it.”

And the proof is in the pudding — Exhibit A is ASAP Science contributor Jake Allison’s fascinating presentation of “What if Superman Punched You” which is like a Kahn Academy tutorial on steroids — the factoids come at you fast and furious — even veteran reporter Lois Lane would have trouble keeping up with her notes. So what would happen if Superman punched you?

Superman’s powers are legendary (can leap tall buildings in a single bound, can power the sun, lift 200 quintillion tons, punch dimensions apart) there is however one universal law of physics that he cannot break — to travel at or faster than the speed of light. Even though in the comics he can travel at the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s), for this scientific lesson, Superman’s speed will be set at 1% below the speed of light (slowing him down to 296,794,533 m/s). If Superman’s fist has a mass of 300 grams, traveling at 99% of the speed of sound, his punch would have the total energy if 190 quadrillion (that’s 15 zeroes) joules, equivalent to 45 megatons of TNT — 2,800 more powerful than the 9,000 pound nuclear bomb (“Little Boy”) that was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The energy expended by that flying fist would burn 45 trillion calories, equivalent to about 82 billion Big Macs.

So what happens when Superman releases this punch? As this powerful bomb, condensed into the frightening mass of a fist, flies toward your face, it releases enormous heat — 80 million kelvin (5 times hotter than the core of the sun). The fist will take 3.4 nanoseconds to reach your face. The fist is traveling so fast and with such tremendous energy that it freezes time, suspending all particles in the air, and creates nuclear fusion — generating gamma rays, a giant fireball, blast waves (destroying nearby building and uproots trees), and an explosion that would create a crater about 1 km in diameter and 221 meters deep. As Jake gushes, “Superman wouldn’t just knock the wind out of you — he would knock the atoms out of you!” Superman’s fist, like a particle beam, with the power of 7 billion electron volts would essentially liquify your body at the atomic level  – transforming them instantly into fundamental particles and quark-gluon plasma (similar to the elements created right after the Big Bang that occurred some 14 billion years ago). All this energy, would in turn, create new particles and anti-particles that would form into something entirely new — bringing an entirely new meaning to reincarnation.

To summarize — if this hasn’t been made abundantly clear — it would be best if you just didn’t piss off the man of steel. Class dismissed.

View the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-fL8zopddI

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For further reading: www.dailydot.com/entertainment/asapscience-youtube-mitchell-moffit-interview/
http://www.history.com/topics/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

http://www.youtube.com/user/AsapSCIENCE

All You Need Are Books

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BC), statesman and orator of Ancient Rome, in a letter (dated June 13, 46 BC) to his friend Terentius Varro (contained in Epistulae Ad Familiares, book IX, epistle 4). The original text in Latin, ““Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil” translated literally means “If you have a garden in your library, nothing will fail” that is paraphrased as “If you have a garden and a library, you will want for nothing.” A common misquotation substitutes a book for the library: “If you have a garden and a book, you have everything you need.”

What is the Value of a Human Life?

From a purely humanistic or philosophical perspective, the value of a human being is precious and immeasurable. Such a question might even seem heartless or offensive; however in the dispassionate realm of statistics and actuarial science it is routinely assigned an economic value by insurance companies, medical companies, the government, and the military. These cold calculations are used by federal agencies (like the EPA, FDA, and Transportation Department) to develop national health and safety regulations. The regulators ask “how much money does the government or businesses need to spend in order to save a life?” A safety regulation is evaluated by comparing the cost of implementation versus the cost of human lives saved. For example, each year in the U.S. more than 30,000 people die in car accidents. If the speed limit were reduced to 13 MPH, that number would approach zero; however the cost to implement such a regulation is too high, not to mention it would meet with enormous resistance from the voters who don’t want to change their dangerous driving habits.

What is surprising — and a bit disturbing — about their valuation of human life is just how much they differ. The list below lists the value of a human life for one year or for the value of a human life:

$50,000 per year – as determined by most government-run and private health insurance plans worldwide
$129,ooo per year – as determined by a Stanford Graduate School of Business research team, analyzing kidney dialysis data
$600,000 for a life – as determined by the military for the loss of a soldier’s life
$6 million for a life – as determined by the Transportation Department
$6.9 million for a life – as determined by the Environmental Protection Agency
$7 million for a life – as determined by finding the median value for prime aged workers

The U.S. Bureau of Chemistry and Soil determined that the value of a human body is worth $5.50 of chemicals and minerals. Specifically the human body is composed of 65% Oxygen, 18% Carbon, 10% Hydrogen, 3% Nitrogen, 1.5% Calcium, 1% Phosphorous, 0.35% Potassium, 0.25% Sulfur, 0.15% Sodium, 0.15% Chlorine, 0.05% Magnesium, 0.0004% Iron, 0.00004% Iodine (worth $4.50) and trace quantities of fluorine, silicon, manganese, zinc, copper, aluminum, and arsenic (worth $1.00). The Imperial State Institute for Nutrition at Tokyo determined that the average human body contains 18 square feet of skin, valued at $3.50, bringing the total value of the human body to $9.00 in raw materials. It’s a good thing that government regulators and insurance companies don’t use this figure as a baseline — otherwise humanity is headed to extinction way before the next massive asteroid strikes the planet.

Read related post: The Three Second Rule
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For further reading: www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulation.html?_r=2&.
http://www.livescience.com/15855-dollar-human-life.html. www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,00.html.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life. www.businessinsider.com/the-epa-has-tabulated-the-value-of-a-human-life-2012-8
http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/worth.asp

Top-Earning Deceased Celebrities

Students of art are familiar with the well-known stories of famous artists, like Vincent Van Gogh, who died penniless. Andy Warhol, who was as much a businessman as he was an artist, was keenly aware of the fate of some of his predecessors and  recognized the tremendous windfall that death could bring: “Death means a lot of money, honey. Death can really make you look like a star.” Each year, Forbes tracks the top annual earnings of people in the world of business, entertainment, and — perhaps most curious of all — in the afterlife. In some cases, celebrities make more money in death than in life — not the best situation if you want to party in style in the afterlife (presumably Hades has the better bar and fun-loving crowd) — and certainly more than some living celebrities. Not surprisingly, a dead celebrity’s peak earning period is the year of their death. For example, in 2010 (12 months following his death on June 25, 2009) the estate of Michael Jackson earned more than $1 billion — earning more than the top ten dead celebrities combined. Here is the list of the top-earning deceased celebrities of 2012:

1. Elizabeth Taylor: $210 million
2. Michael Jackson: $145 million
3. Elvis Presley: $55 million
4. Charles Schulz: $37 million
5. Bob Marley: $17 million
6. John Lennon: $12 million
7. Marilyn Monroe: $10 million
8. Albert Einstein: $10 million
9. Dr. Seuss: $9 million
10: Steve McQueen: $8 million

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For further reading: http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2012/1024_dead-celebrities.html

Best-selling Books of All Time

Excluding the Bible, which has sold more than 6 billion copies worldwide (and most likely, that is a conservative estimate), the list of the best-selling books of all times (single volumes, written in English) is dominated by classic works of fiction written in the early part of the 19th century by British authors (two of them were close friends). At the top of the list is one of the most popular, best-selling author of all time. Only one author has two books in the list; and there is only one book that was written in the 21st century. The remarkable feat is that all of these books have always been in print (some for as long as 150 years!) — and with their migration to the digital platform, perhaps they will be around for another few centuries. Approximate sales are listed after the title and author.

1. A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens: 200 million
2. The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J.R.R. Tolkien: 150 million
3. The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: 140 million
4. The Hobbit ((1937) by J.R.R. Tolkien: 100 million
5. And Then There Were None (1939) by Agatha Christie: 100 million
6. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C. S. Lewis: 85 million
7. She: A History of Adventure (1887)  by H. Rider Haggard: 83 million
8. The Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown: 80 million
9. Think and Grow Rich (1937) by Napoleon Hill: 70 million
10. The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger: 65 million

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For further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books
http://www.statisticbrain.com/bibles-printed/

Biggest Box Office Bombs

Lists about movies abound on the Internet, however the most dreaded — at least for producers and the studios — is the list of the biggest box office bombs. There is no pride in being ranked number one. The very mention of the list sends shivers down the spine of every big name producer in Tinseltown. Like any high stakes business, for the film industry the rewards are extremely high (eg, Avatar’s worldwide gross of almost $3 billion), but the risks are just as great — just ask the folks at Disney who wrote off a $200 million loss on John Carter that cost more than $350 million for production and marketing. Nothing proves the emotional power of movies when you witness a group of high-level studio executives cry uncontrollably like newborn babies thrust into the cold world. Below is the list of films that rank as the biggest box office bombs, based on the amount of money lost (production and marketing costs minus ticket receipts). All sums have been adjusted for inflation as of 2008:

1. John Carter (2012): Budget: $350 million;  net loss: $200 million
2. Cutthroat Island (1995): Budget: $115 million; net loss: 146.9 million
3. The Alamo (2004): Budget: $145 million; net loss: $134.8 million
4.  The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002): Budget: $120 million; net loss: $134.4 million
5. Sahara (2005): Budget: $241 million; net loss: $133.1 million
6. The 13th Warrior (1999): Budget: $160 million; net loss: $125.9 million
7. Town & Country (2001): Budget: 105 million; net loss: $115.3 million
8. Speed Racer (2008): Budget: $200 million; net loss: $106 million
9. Heaven’s Gate (1980): Budget: $44 million; net loss: $104.5 million
10. Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within (2001): Budget: $167 million; net loss: $99.8

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For further reading: http://www.boxofficemojo.com; www.cnbc.com/id/38815985

How a Bag of Dimes Turned into a Novel

When I was in my 40s, I had no money for an office. I was wandering around UCLA one day… and I heard typing down below — in the basement of the library. And I went down to see what was going on. I found there was a typing room down there. And for 10 cents for a half an hour, I could rent a typewriter. I said, “My God. This is great! I don’t have an office. I’ll move in here with a bunch of students. And I’ll write!” So, I got a bag full of dimes, and in the next nine days — I spent $9.80 — and I wrote Fahrenheit 451.

Ray Bradbury (1920-20120), one of the most celebrated science fiction writers of the 20th century, speaking to the graduating class of 2000 at commencement ceremonies held at the California Institute of Technology. Bradbury’s other classic works include The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something This Way Comes.