What would a magnitude 15 earthquake be like?

Рет қаралды 2,612,352

6 ай бұрын

Get a copy of What If? 2 and Randall’s other books at: xkcd.com/books
More serious answers to absurd questions at: what-if.xkcd.com/
Since we usually hear about earthquakes with ratings somewhere between 3 and 9, a lot of people probably think of 10 as the top of the scale and 0 as the bottom. In fact, there is no top or bottom to the scale!
Randall Munroe is the author of the New York Times bestsellers What If? 2, How To, What If?, and Thing Explainer; the science question-and-answer blog What If?; and the popular web comic xkcd (xkcd.com). A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time.
Henry Reich is the creator of MinutePhysics and executive producer of MinuteEarth and MinuteFood and founder of Neptune Studios (the parent company for all three youtube channels).
Credits
Narrated by and based on "What If?" by Randall Munroe
Written & Directed by Henry Reich
Illustration and Video Editing by Lizah van der Aart
Illustration and Animation by Ever Salazar
Music & Sound Effects by Know Art Studios
What If? The Video Series is the official adaptation of the What If? books by Randall Munroe and is produced by Neptune Studios LLC.
©2023 xkcd, inc.

Пікірлер: 2 400

@DemPilafian 6 ай бұрын

A typical keyboard press may be Magnitude -5 or -6, but an annoying co-worker of mine regularly smashes that keyboard at Magnitude -2.

@jakebishop7822 6 ай бұрын

wow, they got all the way up to a cat falling of a dresser. Except with the downside that there is no cat

@HypnosisBear 6 ай бұрын

Lol 😆😆

@abiyyupanggalih854 6 ай бұрын

damn

@bennyellis3512 5 ай бұрын

😂I am sorry for you, but I also love your description!😂

@jeb197 5 ай бұрын

Bwahahahah, My dad regularly typed at that magnitude, We could hear the keyboard "taps" from downstairs on the opposite side of the house 🤣

@fieryweasel 6 ай бұрын

We should go all-out and have complex earthquakes with measurements like 3 + 2i. Maybe that would bring back old TV shows, or something.

@globalincident694 6 ай бұрын

it would have to release a complex amount of energy. I'm not sure what a complex amount of energy would look like.

@Rilintar-live 6 ай бұрын

@@globalincident694 Perhaps like in electrodynamics and electrostatics, when electrical current can have a complex amplitude, when the imaginary part describes for example a phase shift.

@QwixLF 6 ай бұрын

The quake shifts it's vibrations into the past, altering events in the process. Like a butterfly effect, but in reverse.

@superchinmayplays 6 ай бұрын

ylfrettub effect@@QwixLF

@pa28cfi 6 ай бұрын

@@globalincident694 Dark energy/matter.

@robertofontiglia4148 5 ай бұрын

I love the end of that video where we are encouraged to think about progressively quieter and quieter things that, nevertheless, still happen.

@un3kn3own0 5 ай бұрын

Reminds me of the Dr. Manhattan quote "...seen events so tiny and so fast that they hardly can be said to have occurred at all"

@DavidMuri-lm5vy 5 ай бұрын

Yeah, and a magnitude -5 earthquake being the equivalent to someone pressing one button on a keyboard this means for every single computer that's being used every day we're generating magnitude -5 earthquakes All around the world in areas that have at least one computer!🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨

@BethesdaCakeDelivery 4 ай бұрын

this was a very fitting end in the original book

@Hell0hi15 4 ай бұрын

Ah yes, the Dallas Cowboys do indeed regularly collide with random objects in my lawn

@idiotcube 2 ай бұрын

@@Hell0hi15 And if I had a penny for every penny I've seen fall off a dog's back, I'd have...the...uh, wait, I confused myself.

@Antifrost 4 ай бұрын

If I saw an entire football team charge headfirst into my neighbor's house, I'd be stuck wondering what on earth they did to make them so angry

@NimhLabs 3 ай бұрын

I'd just assume it was some weird prank... or some viral Internet Challenge (like that thing where people would smash through fences that was a thing in the 00s) The "Entire Football Team Running into a House" viral craze =P

@jordanwarner1352 13 күн бұрын

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/eb2AZNt9r5zXXXU.htmlsi=wk47b5zgXFjapvvp

@piyo744 13 күн бұрын

"I was like damn! What did they do to make them that mad?"

@TheHeston83 13 күн бұрын

the NFL would probably use as marketing stunt

@h.a.9880 6 ай бұрын

"A coin falling from a small dog" sounds like something that's actually an imperial unit of measure. Most likely called the Terdongle or something.

@playgroundchooser 6 ай бұрын

Uhhhh... Yah. It's three Terdongles per Fathom if you measure from the left side of the dog, and 2.3 Terdongles per Yard if measured from the right. I don't get why this is so difficult for metric people to understand.

@pogwater5366 6 ай бұрын

terdoggle*

@gordonlekfors2708 6 ай бұрын

why does it sound like it? is there any other measurement like that?

@user-uy6st6ui2v 6 ай бұрын

@@gordonlekfors2708I mean some Peopel use Foot as a masurement scale so its not that far of

@augustuscaesar8287 6 ай бұрын

@@user-uy6st6ui2vSoem Peopel use Foot as Masurement, Soem use Meater. 🤣

@copycalico 6 ай бұрын

If I remember correctly I think this was the last chapter in the first What If book. It's honestly a great way to end it with the words "sometimes it's nice not to destroy the world for a change" after all the global and sometimes multiplanetary destructions present in this book.

@The360MlgNoscoper 6 ай бұрын

Proton Earth, Electron Moon lmao

@minlego. 6 ай бұрын

it is

@jeanstipisevic1080 6 ай бұрын

@@The360MlgNoscoperwrong book

@The360MlgNoscoper 6 ай бұрын

@@jeanstipisevic1080 It was on the online site first.

@owenmurray1405 6 ай бұрын

Black hole bigger than the entire universe

@Exarian 6 ай бұрын

there's something so soothing hearing about some of the lower negatives. "a mote of dust, landing on a table" "yeah... that's nice. The essence of gentleness."

@hondsdollekat 5 ай бұрын

This video taught me that I have absolutely no basic knowledge of what an earthquake actually is.

@muadeeb 6 ай бұрын

After dealing with many world disrupting articles, it IS nice to think about the pressures of a dust mote smacking into a table

@10Neon 6 ай бұрын

That table had it coming

@ND_R 6 ай бұрын

@@10Neon my toes, hips, back of my head, front of my head (when I was a child), those times you lift you arm and don't estimate the distance between you and the table then smack your hand on its way up, all agree with you.

@georgehill3087 6 ай бұрын

@@ND_R Maybe it's your desk saying fuck you for all the millions of times dust particles have hit it because you are too lazy to vacuum your room.

@Nicomv-eu3pd 5 ай бұрын

@@ND_R my friend who has a basically indestructible hand that he used to basically punch hard wooden tables has hit their hand with a table by moving it up and he said its the only thing that actually made him feel a lot of pain

@nielshihihihi 5 ай бұрын

@@Nicomv-eu3pd sounds like automutilation lmao

@iabervon 6 ай бұрын

"The Dallas Cowboys ran into his neighbor's garage with the force of a quadrillion dust motes landing on a table." Is my Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest entry.

@thegeekno72 3 ай бұрын

Excellent

@searchingforentertainment... Ай бұрын

that's gonna be a really dusty table

@evernewb2073 4 ай бұрын

that last section was a wonderful extra special touch, thank you.

@em.1633 3 күн бұрын

It's also the last page in the book :)

@Deathadder90 5 ай бұрын

Fun fact. A magnitude 11 earthquake is calculated to have happened when the Chixculub asteroid hit the earth. The researcher who determined this found a fossil of a sturgeon that had been washed ashore from the seiches that occurred as a direct consequence from the seismic waves travelling through the earth. This happened 3500km away from the point of impact. Another juicy factoid, he determined that the fish had been hit with micro particles of molten glass. Which had been launched into the atmosphere on impact and came down 3500km further. Insane.

@SunroseStudios 6 ай бұрын

in case anyone doesn't know, the reason it's like this is that the Richter scale is logarithmic, so increasing the number by 1 actually *multiples* the power, rather than adding a fixed amount.

@philipmorse-fortier5499 6 ай бұрын

Visible at 0:32.

@monkey_gamer_001 6 ай бұрын

Yes. It was an unfortunate detail to leave out

@ChinoKawaii1021 6 ай бұрын

wouldn't that be an exponential function? logarithm function climbs slower and slower the further you go

@Ishaan35 6 ай бұрын

@@ChinoKawaii1021 The numbers on the scale itself increase logarithmically. If we were looking at fixed values on the scale rather than "logged" numbers, then the numbers would be insanely large pretty quickly.

@westernbrumby 6 ай бұрын

@@ChinoKawaii1021each step of 1 on the scale is 32 times larger than the previous step

@nicksamek12 6 ай бұрын

My neighbors definitely register a magnitude -1.5 at 3 am every day

@BoredInNW6 6 ай бұрын

You live next door to two horny American football players?

@SkeletonLord 6 ай бұрын

NAHHH 😭💀

@adrianrybarczyk7902 6 ай бұрын

1.5 cats dropped from your table? Or maybe half of a footbol player hit the tree?

@paintedflop6150 6 ай бұрын

logarithmic scale, homeslice

@gwadamit8116 Ай бұрын

They are getting a lot of action eh?

@DistrosProjects 2 ай бұрын

“Let’s say New York City” that aged well

@IoIxD 2 ай бұрын

hi distro

@DistrosProjects 2 ай бұрын

@@IoIxD hi lol

@juST_LuKe-fw1ck 2 ай бұрын

real there was just an earthquake in New Jersey

@AT-qm8gv Ай бұрын

@@juST_LuKe-fw1ckyeah it was fun lol

@SupersuMC 22 күн бұрын

God has a strange sense of humor.

@bv-im1fg 6 ай бұрын

WTFFF I LOVED YOUR BOOK IN HIGH SCHOOL. AND YOU HAVE A KZfaq CHANNEL NOW?? YESSS

@aquilazyy1125 6 ай бұрын

I like the fact that the energy levels of negative-magnitudes "earthquakes" make less and less sense but are actually decreasing at a comprehensible rate.

@gordontaylor2815 6 ай бұрын

I believe in theory you could go even lower than the -15 example, but then you run into conceptual problems (e.g. "Can earthquakes can meaningfully be considered to occur on the microscopic and quantum scales?") If you don't care about how the results look and just define it as "a transfer of energy from one object interacting with another", then the scale would end in meaningful terms with the equivalent of the smallest amount of possible available free energy (i.e. non-zero-point energy) being transferred between two objects, whatever that value might be. If you try to do anything different, then it becomes just as much an exercise in definition and philosophy as it would be science to get an answer. :3

@lilyofluck371 6 ай бұрын

@@gordontaylor2815fellow :3 user spotted. Wouldn't expect that from a no pfp, first and last name channel

@gdonion 6 ай бұрын

nice pfp cutie

@DarkFrozenDepths 6 ай бұрын

@@gordontaylor2815 I don't even think it's theoretical, but instead already possible. Bacteria moving around is probably far less than a -20

@Crushnaut 6 ай бұрын

@@gordontaylor2815 It wouldn't be so much about the minimum amount of energy, so much as, the minimum detectable disturbance. Eventually the quake would be indistinguishable from a measurement error (Heisenberg uncertainty) aka background noise (quantum foam).

@bluesnote1 6 ай бұрын

As a geophysicist (earthquake scientist), I found this explanation extremely accurate and useful with 2 exceptions. There are no such things as "fault lines". We call them "fault zones" since a fault, especially at or near the surface, doesn't really have a definite boundary. Also, magnitude is proportional to rupture area. So a strike slip fault like the san Andreas is only about 30km deep and 800km long. While a subduction zone like Cascadia is about 1200 km long and can be several hundred kms deep. This is why large earthquakes (above 8.8) only occur here since the surface area of plate contact is much greater.

@andressanchez175 5 ай бұрын

In your explanation you said that magnitude is the proportion area of rupture. How in this video relate a magnitude with the falls of things, and also with destruction of sun?

@eduardoarmenta9232 4 ай бұрын

I live right on top of a fault zone then. There had been several newsworthy earthquakes with an epicenter very near my home in the south of Mexico. Is good to know there won't be any level 9 earthquakes here, I've always been worried about a very big one happening.

@bluesnote1 4 ай бұрын

@@eduardoarmenta9232 If you are in southwestern Mexico, then you are located along a major subduction zone which can cause earthquakes as large as 9.0. Luckily, these only happen every 300-600 years.

@bendalton5221 4 ай бұрын

also you forgot to mention that because of the way the scale works, there can't be an earthquake over 10.0, that is what the strongest earthquake could ever possible be

@bluesnote1 4 ай бұрын

@@bendalton5221 There can be, but it would require an impact.

@Tine_of_Nice_Dreams 5 ай бұрын

I have anxiety and really appreciate how you ended this video. Breathing a deep sigh of peace in my -15 magnitude earthquake state

@_shivam_vij 6 ай бұрын

I was about to watch all your videos you've uploaded because i really liked the 2 videos i watched so far. Only to discover that those are the only 2 available. Please upload more

@_knave 6 ай бұрын

The fact that the What If? series is now a KZfaq channel/series is just... Wild to say the least Anyway love xkcd, thank you for doing this

@Enteropy23 6 ай бұрын

what if it wasnt

@RealestKinga 6 ай бұрын

Whats wild about it

@ryanclemons1 6 ай бұрын

Wait what was it before I have never heard of what if before this channel.

@ThatGuyBrian 6 ай бұрын

@@ryanclemons1 It was a series of books.

@ryanclemons1 6 ай бұрын

@@ThatGuyBrian oh cool was it made by this guy or did he just copy the idea of the books?

@LordAJ12345 6 ай бұрын

Every time you walk around, you produce tiny little earthquakes. And yes, they are absolutely detectable by seismometers if any are nearby and connected to the ground you're walking on. That's why seismometers are preferrably placed in remote areas, where they are shielded from seismic noise produced by things like traffic

@stefangadshijew1682 6 ай бұрын

A professor at the university I briefly studied at was doing femtosecond spectrography. That means resolving the energy states of particles in a timescale of 10 ^(-15) s. Then, the city build a tram right next to the university, which seismically interfered with his measurements. He worked around that by scheduling his measurements around the Tram.

@gordonlekfors2708 6 ай бұрын

that's a lot of text for something very intuitive that needs maybe one short sentence, if anything at all.

@SahasaV 5 ай бұрын

@@gordonlekfors2708 1053

@LordAJ12345 5 ай бұрын

@@gordonlekfors2708 Ok Mr. Genius, who considers 3 sentences a long essay. How about something less intuitive? A seismometer placed in a chamber in the middle of a mountain, sealed off from any air pressure changes, can still detect a changes in weather. Seismometers are so accurate that they will measure the tilt of the chamber as a result of the atmospheric pressure change deforming the mountain.

@clockworkkirlia7475 5 ай бұрын

@@gordonlekfors2708 Okay, again, rude, and actually adds a whole sentence to the problem you imply exists, but let's take it as a challenge: "The tiny earthquakes made by footsteps can be heard by close seismometers, so we put seismometers far from disturbance." Hm... it's certainly a tad more concise, and has a little bit of XKCD simple-complex charm, but it loses a lot of its energy. LordAJ12345's version also parcels out the learning more clearly and attempts to speak to the reader, which may be better for learning depending on a few things. Conciseness is only useful insofar as it suits its purpose; here, the purpose is clearly to teach the passerby, which presents limitations other than simple efficiency.

@macronencer 5 ай бұрын

How did I not already know there was a YT channel for What If? What a ghastly oversight. Now I have to catch up on the hundreds of... wait - sorry, TWO other videos I missed. Subscribed, though, of course. :)

@pauldwyer7736 5 ай бұрын

Good to see something ramping up, even as minutephysics fades away! It's great that there is always new content like this!

@jameshughes6078 5 ай бұрын

'new' lol, this stuff is over a decade old. Minute physics started in 2011, what-if started in 2012 That said, yeah, still super happy to see it migrate to video form ❤

@pauldwyer7736 5 ай бұрын

@@jameshughes6078 The youtube channel looks to be new... doesn't it?

@JaggedFel621 6 ай бұрын

Was confused and thought "How could I have missed this channel", only to discover it's new. I love your books, more content!

@LongGoneFuture 6 ай бұрын

Same here

@BVasquezp 6 ай бұрын

Same!

@patrickdowling5668 6 ай бұрын

Same!

@__christopher__ 6 ай бұрын

Indeed, this must be the fastest I've ever subscribed a channel.

@HyperBirbN3rd 6 ай бұрын

I found it cuz xkcd

@PracticalEngineeringChannel 6 ай бұрын

2:01 A what truck!?

@CertifiedFooclandExplainer 6 ай бұрын

Hi verified dude, the answer is A -semen- cement truck

@OrcinusDrake 6 ай бұрын

I just got what you meant on literally the next youtube video I watched lol. "You've probably seen a mixer truck before- and I'll forgive you for calling them cement trucks, even though cement is just one of the ingredients in a concrete mix." 10:52 - "Every Construction Machine Explained in 15 Minutes"

@vladimirarnost8020 6 ай бұрын

Don't expect to get a concrete answer here, Grady.

@homelesszombie 5 ай бұрын

"A truck your dropppppppping off your mom"

@entredus7910 4 ай бұрын

it’s se-MENT not SEE-

@man-tb6xu 3 ай бұрын

caseoh when he jumps

@jggimi 5 ай бұрын

Wow. I really enjoyed the final animation sequence of this piece, I guess the outro. The zoom out from the table was stellar.

@pirobot668beta 6 ай бұрын

I was a kid in Bremerton when the Good Friday quake hit. The epicenter was nearly 1,000 miles away in Alaska, but it broke windows in our house, tumbled our neighbor chimney. And that was 'only' a 8.4-8.6!

@hansrojas9487 Ай бұрын

Wikipedia says 9.2 tho. in the 70s or 80s almost all intensities were recalculated from Richter to Mw scale. Valdivia 1960 changed from 8.6 to 9.6

@Cyberian_Khatru 6 ай бұрын

damn, randall actually narrates these, that's great been a fan on and off for for more than a decade and I'm glad to see xkcd in this format

@Petit_loup_Not_The_First 3 ай бұрын

i love how all sfx are done with the mouth

@octivuszerouno7632 5 ай бұрын

"To put in another way, the death star caused a magnitude 18 on alderan"

@ThePCguy17 3 ай бұрын

Honestly, it was probably more extreme than that, it's just that given what we saw it was _at least_ a magnitude 18 quake.

@jphilb 2 ай бұрын

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iLxlitSD06zJmn0.htmlsi=uD88OK6n1K3ap2mX

@skykid 6 ай бұрын

Side note, it's believed that the strongest earthquakes that have happened on earth were due to impactors, for example it's believed that the asteroid that killed the non avian dinosaurs caused a magnitude 11 quake. And I can scarcely imagine what kind of quake Theia hitting Earth would have caused...

@edwardlane1255 5 ай бұрын

given that Theia caused the moon to split from the Earth - that would be around about the gravitational binding energy of the planet earth - so based on the video that would be approximately magnitude 18 :)

@VitchAndVorty 5 ай бұрын

@@edwardlane1255 Plus, I think something like that will be called something else and not just simply 'earthquake'.

@TheFlauschig 5 ай бұрын

@@VitchAndVorty True, but if you consider the small side of the scale (droping a truck, having a football team run into your house etc.) its technically still an earthquake, as it makes the planet shake. Theia was just kind of an intergalatic Dallas Cowboys football player running into our houses wall :D

@Mahlak_Mriuani_Anatman 5 ай бұрын

@@edwardlane1255hmm, could be 17/16 too

@mg9854 5 ай бұрын

@@VitchAndVorty A "Megaquake"?

@lmost 6 ай бұрын

1:34 “Please don’t!” I’m quite certain we can’t.

@Zachyshows 3 ай бұрын

Are you sure? I think i had some spares lying around somewhere...

@Dunky-wq5tu Ай бұрын

@@Zachyshows We dont even have enough earth to fit in Jupiter, let alone nukes

@Zachyshows Ай бұрын

@Dunky-wq5tu i have a few spares in my storage, I'm sure if we all pitch in we can get them

@j.mikerosner5722 6 ай бұрын

Wow; that was honestly really interesting! Really cool animations also. Thank you! Much Peace, Blessings and Love to you!

@Entropoc 5 ай бұрын

This is one of my favorite questions from What If? and it brings be great joy to see it animated.

@the_candy_man_can 6 ай бұрын

So cool to hear Randall's voice after years and years of reading XKCD!

@gordonlekfors2708 6 ай бұрын

ok stop trying to date Randall. this ain't your game, buddy

@irrelevant_noob 5 ай бұрын

@@gordonlekfors2708 ok stop gatekeeping other people. this ain't your place, pal

@ivoryas1696 5 ай бұрын

the_candy_man_can _So _*_that's_* why the name seems familiar! I was thinking of Minute Physics in a couple of ways...

@devnol 5 ай бұрын

Yeah, now I can read his comics in a voice other than my normal reading voice which is obviously Morgan Freeman's

@lolbajset 5 ай бұрын

you don't even know what gatekeeping means, child@@irrelevant_noob

@joshuasims5421 6 ай бұрын

It's crazy how many earthquakes are caused by house pets every day.

@KarlBunker 6 ай бұрын

Yeah, I really should stop putting coins on my dog's back.

@GamingFrazix 6 ай бұрын

crazy how as im typing this im doing earthquakes

@lecutter9382 3 ай бұрын

I was in SF for the Mendocino earthquake - 7.2 - in 1992 and that was the single most terrifying moment(s) of my life. I've had a few near death experiences over the decades but none remotely as frightening as that. Everything is made of Jello. There's nowhere you can go. There's nothing you can do except cower and hope you don't get crushed like an ant, or worse. It lets you know just how fragile and mortal you really are unlike anything else.

@AjayDasgupta 5 ай бұрын

This is an example of amazingly made videos.

@MF99K 6 ай бұрын

I admittedly knew a decent amount of this given that I live in an earthquake prone area, but I didn’t know that the numbers could be negative or that pushing the upper limits would straight up just blow up the earth

@concept5631 6 ай бұрын

Didn't know they could blow up the damn sun either.

@vbscript2 5 ай бұрын

Yeah... welcome to logarithmic scales and exponential functions. Each increase of 1 in earthquake magnitude multiples the energy release by 32 (it's a factor of 10 in shaking amplitude, but that translates to a factor of 32 in energy release.) So, while a magnitude 6 is 32 times more energy than a magnitude 5, a magnitude 15 would be around 32^10 = 1,126,000,000,000,000 times as much energy as a magnitude 5 (and, on the flip side, a magnitude -5 would be 1/1,126,000,000,000,000 times as much energy release as a 5.)

@craigsparton 5 ай бұрын

But is it really an episode of "What If?" if we DON'T blow up the earth?

@andrewevenson2657 6 ай бұрын

This was an interesting video cause I never knew the magnitude could go negative, but I suppose it makes perfect sense since it’s an exponential function.

@HitBoxMaster 2 ай бұрын

The sound designer outdid themselves in this video lmfao. The sunquake pulsating sound absolute sent me.

@VanessaMagick 2 ай бұрын

For me it's the Dallas Cowboys running into my neighbor's garage

@zXDaishiXz 5 ай бұрын

"please don't" DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! *slams button*

@Steeks 6 ай бұрын

"Narrated by and based on "What If?" by Randall Munroe" Who knew a book could have such a nice voice.

@isavenewspapers8890 6 ай бұрын

Cursed syntactic ambiguity.

@1.4142 6 ай бұрын

If you separate the components of a magnitude -1 earthquake, you get a magnitude i.

@copter2000 6 ай бұрын

I don't think it's real. You're lying!

@ThatobjectArtist 6 ай бұрын

@@copter2000 i think you're just imagining stuff.

@aadityapratap007 6 ай бұрын

You earned a subscriber and regular viewer. Keep it coming.

@yunhokim7846 5 ай бұрын

These are soooo good keep up!

@ellenbryn 6 ай бұрын

"3.5 Earthquake Strikes Fear in Ohio Cornfield" gave me an extra chuckle, as I felt a *very* slight ~3.5 "wiggle wiggle" while sitting in my parked car yesterday.* The good news is I checked Bluesky and saw someone's "Obligatory earthquake tweet" to 1) verify I hadn't imagined it and 2) confirm the platform has enough Californians for our ritual "Did anybody feel that?" check-in while we wait for the USGS feed to update. [4 Dec 8:09 pm Fullerton, CA, 3.3, 6.1 miles deep]. *(I realize seismic waves transmit better in Ohio, where the bedrock is mostly solid granite, not limestone and sandstone beaten to smithereens by a zillion quakes.)

@brandonkdrummer 6 ай бұрын

Gotta say I love that you ended your video on a more positive or lighthearted note.

@stuartlawson6991 4 ай бұрын

Right at the end I was waiting for the "....nah", followed by mushroom cloud

@bblunder 5 ай бұрын

I have learned so much thing in just 3.05 minutes and it was fun to watch. Thank you.

@lforlight 6 ай бұрын

Keep these coming, Randall. The format is great, and your delivery is very pleasant.

@gordonlekfors2708 6 ай бұрын

get a room. don't stand here placating like a mild muppet 😤

@lforlight 6 ай бұрын

@@gordonlekfors2708 Are you saying one shouldn't provide positive feedback to something one wants to see more of?

@AenesidemusOZ 4 ай бұрын

@@gordonlekfors2708"Placating"? 🤨 The only person here who requires placating is you. Chill!

@joda7697 6 ай бұрын

I already loved the article, but the narration gives it that little extra flair that makes it just that much more enjoyable.

@InglouriousBradsterd 5 ай бұрын

Wow! That was really informative --- Subscribed immediately!

@TYsdrawkcaB 5 ай бұрын

man i loved this book so much, pretty funny, and quite educational. got gifted the first one a couple years back for my like 11th birthday cause i made a speech about the same question of "what if?"

@Maffoo 6 ай бұрын

This is the happiest I’ve ever been at experiencing the creation of a KZfaq channel in real-time. Keep em coming!

@suleyman9199 4 ай бұрын

what i this?

@sethdolin4207 6 ай бұрын

oh my god whoever did the little voice sounds in the background I love you, that's probably exactly what a sunquake sounds like

@onEmEmbErstudios 5 ай бұрын

Wow, KZfaq recommendation has done a good job this time It helped found your channel. And it's amazing!

@stizanley3987 5 ай бұрын

1:13 lol that was great

@evan 6 ай бұрын

I have read your comics since late 2006, and I did not expect your voice to be so soothing

@joshuatatum8519 6 ай бұрын

Such a great, well-produced series. Should be a bumper on PBS or Discovery!

@MaxLennon 6 ай бұрын

I love this idea! Not all the articles would be the best fit for general TV (looking at you, blood alcohol question...), but most of them would be fine and the snack-size format makes perfect sense.

@mfbfreak 6 ай бұрын

Discovery? Please, no! That station's been ruined ever since all those 'But will they make it in time?!!!!1!' "reality" shows.

@penonpaper3132 6 ай бұрын

I hate the idea that well produced content doesn't belong on KZfaq and that if you want your work to be respected, it has to be tied to traditional media. I know that that's probably what you didn't mean to say and that you're just regurgitating what most people already believe. I just think that it’s a backwards way of thinking. High quality KZfaq videos deserve to be praised on the same level as traditional media.

@ordelian7795 5 ай бұрын

So the vibration of me farting on the couch can be measured and has a certain magnitude.

@mohamadmoustafa2047 6 ай бұрын

Great video ! Please continue

@davecrupel2817 6 ай бұрын

2:38 Man this is STILL a bigger impact on the world than I'm ever going to have.

@cesare_the_somnambulistSWAG 5 ай бұрын

Judging by those negative magnitudes, a footstep would most likely be a higher magnitude than a single itsy bitsy grain of sand plunking onto other itsy bitsy grains of sand, so don't give up on yourself lol

@hfar_in_the_sky 6 ай бұрын

So you're saying that magnitude -15 quakes are happening around the world all the time? Neat!

@mathcookie8224 6 ай бұрын

Based on the examples in the video, that's true of any magnitude -3 or below (well, down until the point where the energy values get low enough that the quantum nature of energy prevents going lower). People drop their phones all the time. -2 to 0 are probably pretty common too, since something like a piece of furniture falling over would probably be somewhere in that range. Oh, and about that lower limit: according to Wikipedia's "Orders of magnitude (energy)" article and the Richter Scale formula, the emission of a single AM radio photon would be around magnitude -21. I'm sure there are lower meaningful values (I suspect something like "a single electron hitting your table" would be lower, but I'd need to spend a little more time remembering the physics on collisions before calculating the true minimum meaningful value).

@Maxr1998X 6 ай бұрын

Just a person working in an office would be a rapid fire of magnitude -6 earthquakes. Or -5, if they have a nicer keyboard.

@SimonBuchanNz 6 ай бұрын

There's literally hundreds of magnitude 3 quakes every day! In the last 24 hours we had 19 quakes above magnitude 5.

@falconwind00 6 ай бұрын

Also half of all cat videos contain magnitude -2 earthquakes.

@sailordolly 6 ай бұрын

@@mathcookie8224 Technically, people would be creating magnitude -3 quakes with every step that they take walking.

@santoshkumar-cr6gi 3 ай бұрын

That was a nice and on point video. I appreciate that.

@RM771000 5 ай бұрын

Seeing this channel made my day

@NoName-oz3gj 6 ай бұрын

So glad XKCD is continuing his work decades later

@alifalafel4831 6 ай бұрын

Having read every comic and book that you've published, I'm very excited to see you branching out into videos! And with wonderful quality right from the start, no less.

@casperlovesboo Ай бұрын

I love the way they give specific things for the bottom end of the scale

@user-kn9zx7up4h 5 ай бұрын

You guys earned a sub!

@flanger001 6 ай бұрын

I thought it was an xkcd article that said magnitude 40 on the Richter scale would release an equivalent amount of energy as the Big Bang itself, so, you know, all of the energy.

@appa609 6 ай бұрын

Accounting for the energy of the big bang is tricky. For one, many cosmologists believe the universe has exactly 0 total energy as a result of a balance between gravitational binding (negative) energy and mass-energy etc. For another, if you want to measure a particular component of this, the answer is probably infinite in most cosmological models which model the universe as infinite. I think the best you can do to get a nonzero finite answer is ask for the mass-energy of the observable universe, which is about 10^70J, or a magnitude 43.

@mr.merfington4200 6 ай бұрын

I remember when I received the what if book on Christmas. I was of course appreciative for the book but it wasn’t anything close to the video games on my list so I didn’t think much of it. At one point I was bored and decided to take the book out of my shelf where many other book say there collecting dust and boy was I hooked! I basically devoured the book in its entirety right then and there. It became my favourite book and one I’ll cherish and probably try to force onto my own kids in the future (emphasis on try… I was already hooked on video games when I was younger so who knows what else there will be in the future). In any case I want to say thank you for taking the time to solve the what if’s of our minds and thank you for bringing that magic to us again on KZfaq

@3g0st 5 ай бұрын

The music is quite nice and great mixing, props to the studio

@user-pp9bk9xz7f 5 ай бұрын

"A penny falling from the dog" - The definition of "anything but metric system". Good job, Mmerica

@Fry_tag 6 ай бұрын

I love how in random reddit conversations someone always seems to drop a link with: "Hey, there's actually an xkcd about that". Soon it won't just be a four panel strip anymore, but a link to this channel. Can't wait :)

@vbscript2 5 ай бұрын

"Obligatory xkcd" also happens pretty frequently on Stack Exchange Q&As.

@telesniper2 6 ай бұрын

1:22 HAHAH reminds me of the term "making the rubble bounce" when it came to redundant nuclear warhead targeting during the cold war

@chairman3279 5 ай бұрын

This is my favorite channel now

@ihtesham_emon 8 күн бұрын

This episode is amazing! ❤

@quacknatetv7837 6 ай бұрын

What If has always been my favorite part of XKCD, very excited for this channel.

@HJamesLucas 6 ай бұрын

“Uhhh…why did Randall ignore the *important* part of the question?” -every New Yorker

@dillonkeller4477 5 ай бұрын

Yo I remember reading XKCD in high school (2009-2012). Instant subscribe!

@kalkazar1371 5 ай бұрын

This "what if" series was basically MADE for KZfaq. It always felt like something was missing with the online text version. Putting it here as a video is just perfect.

@lootwijk 6 ай бұрын

I was not prepared for this being as lovely as it was. Thank you for your work.

@bartmannn6717 6 ай бұрын

Knowing that earthquake magnitudes are literally measured in orders of magnitude, I knew that asking about a magnitude 15 or 25 earthquake wouldn't make much sense. But I never thought that _negative_ earthquake magnitudes were a thing! And they are cute, too!

@mathcookie8224 6 ай бұрын

Funnily enough, they're measured not in exact orders of magnitude, but in orders of magnitude * 1.5, i.e. +2 earthquake magnitude = +3 orders of magnitude of energy

@Salsmachev 6 ай бұрын

@@mathcookie8224 If you are a nerd who refuses to use decimal, they can just be orders of magnitude.

@mathcookie8224 6 ай бұрын

@@Salsmachev Sure, orders of magnitude in base 10^1.5… good luck using base sqrt(1000).

@Salsmachev 6 ай бұрын

@@mathcookie8224 I mean, compared to some of the wacky irrational bases people try to use, base 10^1.5 is pretty tame. At least every two digits can be compressed into an integer base, unlike phinary. And by virtue of being useful for simplifying earthquake math, it's already more practical that many large prime bases.

@daenite2480 6 ай бұрын

Never in my life did the thought ever occur to me that someone would call earthquakes "cute".

@Haru-spicy Ай бұрын

Magnitude -15 is the substitute teacher breaking up a fight

@seancarter6492 3 ай бұрын

You got me with that "opposite end of the scale" thing 😆 I wasn't expecting that!

@kingpost497 6 ай бұрын

Hey! I've been a fan of your comic since I got the original 'What If?' for my birthday. I then went on to get complicated things explained with simple words, and the second what of book. I love your work, and this new voiced video series is super exciting! Keep it up, and have a wonderful day!

@mongolianstallion8274 6 ай бұрын

Each movemont of my body causes eathquakes. Don't worry about the magnitude.

@therealspeedwagon1451 2 ай бұрын

So when you go out to get the mail does it measure on the Richter scale?

@-siranzalot- 5 ай бұрын

Wait there is a KZfaq series of these now? Hurray!!!

@Jack-lp4jd Ай бұрын

I feel it would be usefull to explain why there can be negative earthquakes. When they say a scale of 10 or -4, what it actually means is a power of 1×10^10, or 1×10^(-4). So you arent actually having a negative magnitude, you are just have a magnitude 0

@emeraldnext 6 ай бұрын

XKCD’s humor translates amazingly well to video! Keep it up!

@dialga4688 6 ай бұрын

I remember one of my geology professors saying if you were to cut the Earth in half and rotate it (either half way around or all the way, I can't remember which) you'd have a magnitude 13 earthquake.

@maxelliot9426 5 ай бұрын

Excellent video, thank you

@larrythechipman 5 ай бұрын

Please more videos, these are great

@EliMaxx 6 ай бұрын

This is the first book I ever bought myself when I was 10 years old in 2014. To this day I have never re-read a book more times than Randall Munroe’s ‘what if?’- this book will live in my heart forever