Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: December 2023 Edition

A roundup of my strangest research on physics, metaphysics, and the world around us

Dec 01, 2023

Welcome to December’s edition of Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast! Here, you’ll find a round-up of my strangest and most curious (and curiouser) research on physics, metaphysics, and the world around us, plus, a healthy dose of mindfulness for nerds.

Last month, we discovered pocket-size black holes and nigh-invulnerable water bears. We found the answers to such burning questions as how fast do you have to run before you catch fire and can you really turn a human body into a copper top?

Let’s just say, if the machines took over, they’d probably just want to turn us into soylent green.

This month was a scatter-shot of research as I’m developing a setting that is also a sentient ship. :o I learned a lot of wild stuff about spaaaaaace…

What are shock diamonds?
They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but if you ask me, the diamonds you get at Kay’s Jewelers aren’t quite as pretty as shock diamonds. Recently, NASA produced the world’s largest shock diamond when Booster 9 successfully ignited all 33 of its Raptor engines on full burn.
All 33, whew! If you can get 33 of anything to cooperate these days, you’re some kind of wizard. Good work, NASA!
Celestial autobahns exist? I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, so I was blown away to find out that our solar system has gravitational highways that act like hyperspace routes! Sort of.
In Star Wars, ships travel from planet to planet via hyperspace lanes that act as highways. A ship uses its hyperspace drive to calculate the safest route because, as Han once said, flying through a black hole would end your Rebellion real quick.
In real life, you won’t be doing the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs, but you could conceivably reach Jupiter in your lifetime, and that’s pretty darn cool.
What does a black hole sound like? I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. But while there isn’t any sound in space, black holes, due to their extreme gravitational pull, are constantly surrounded by streams of matter that can support sound waves.
Thanks to NASA, you can now listen to the sounds of a supermassive black hole 250 million light-years away. It’s about as creepy as you’d imagine. No lie, it reminds me of HADES in Horizon Zero Dawn.
How close are we to a working warp drive? In addition to being a Star Wars fan, I also love me some Star Trek, so I was excited to see that the physics posited by warp drive technology led Miguel Alcubierre to define a type of space travel based on what is basically a warp bubble.
The design of the Alcubierre drive may not be perfect—gravity, as they say, is a harsh mistress—but it’s a great example of how important science fiction is to expanding our minds and our imaginations.
Also, just so you know, my captain’s catchphrase would be, “Make it go.”
Coming in hot in the “Could a Human Body Survive This” category, can you survive a fall from space? People have survived falls from as high as 33,000 feet. Multiply that by ten, and you’ve got space. Coincidentally, the answer is related to one of last month’s Six Impossible Things, How fast can you run before you catch fire?
My unofficial answer: faster than you were running before.
Now a real burning question: How hot is the sun anyway? A massive ball of gas and plasma raging around a dense-gravity core, the sun puts out more energy in 1.5 millionths of a second than all the people on Earth use all year.
But, how hot is the sun anyway? As they might say on the Great British Baking Show, “it all depends on the layers.”
That’s all for now. If you enjoyed this edition of Six Impossible Things, please consider sharing it. See you next time, fellow humans and people!