We all have these ideas, those that come to us within the small hours of the evening. Who am I? Why are we right here? What if my cellphone ran on vacuum tubes as a substitute? Randall Munroe has the reply to, nicely, solely a kind of questions, but in addition the solutions to a complete bunch of others collected collectively into What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Yes, that may be a T-Rex consuming an airplane. In the excerpt beneath Munroe examines what it will take to haul a median sized human in a chair over Australia’s tallest skyscraper, utilizing solely the facility of pigeons. Lots and tons of pigeons.
Penguin Random House
Excerpted from What If? 2 by Randall Munroe. Copyright © 2022 by Randall Munroe. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No a part of this excerpt could also be reproduced or reprinted with out permission in writing from the writer.
How many pigeons would it not require with the intention to raise the common individual and a launch chair to the peak of Australia’s Q1 skyscraper?
In a 2013 research, researchers on the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics led by Ting Ting Liu educated pigeons to fly as much as a perch whereas sporting a weighted harness. They discovered that the common pigeon of their research might take off and fly upward whereas carrying 124 grams, about 25 p.c of its physique weight.
The researchers decided that the pigeons might fly higher if the weights have been slung beneath their our bodies, quite than on their backs, so you’d most likely need pigeons to raise your chair from above quite than help it from beneath.
Let’s suppose your chair and harnesses weigh 5 kilograms and also you weigh 65 kilograms. If you used the pigeons from the 2013 research, it will take a flock of about 600 of them to raise your chair and fly upward with it.
Unfortunately, flying with a load is lots of work. The pigeons within the 2013 research have been capable of carry a load 1.4 meters upward to a perch, however they most likely wouldn’t have been capable of fly an excessive amount of greater than that. Even unencumbered pigeons can solely preserve strenuous vertical flight for a number of seconds. One 1965 research measured a climb fee of two.5 m/s for unencumbered pigeons,* so even when we’re being optimistic, it appears unlikely that pigeons might raise your chair greater than 5 meters.†
No drawback, you would possibly assume. If 600 pigeons can raise you the primary 5 meters, then you definately simply must carry one other 600 together with you, just like the second stage of a rocket, to hold you the following 5 meters when the primary flock will get drained. You can carry one other 600 for the 5 meters after that and so forth. The Q1 is 322 meters excessive, so about 40,000 pigeons ought to be capable to get you to the highest, proper?
No. There’s an issue with this concept.
Since a pigeon can carry solely 1 / 4 of its physique weight, it takes 4 flying pigeons to hold one resting pigeon. That means every “stage” will want not less than 4 occasions as many pigeons because the one above it. Lifting one individual could solely take 600 pigeons, however lifting one individual and 600 resting pigeons would take one other 3,000 pigeons.
This exponential progress implies that a 9-stage car, capable of raise you 45 meters, would wish nearly 300 million pigeons, roughly equal to your complete international inhabitants. Reaching the midway level would require 1.6 × 1025 pigeons, which might weigh about 8 × 1024 kilograms—greater than the Earth itself. At that time, the pigeons wouldn’t be pulled down by the Earth’s gravity—the Earth can be pulled up by the pigeons’ gravity.
The full 65-stage craft to succeed in the highest of the Q1 would weigh 3.5 × 1046 kilograms. That’s not simply extra pigeons than there are on Earth, it’s extra mass than there may be within the galaxy.
You might make issues extra environment friendly by reusing pigeons. In the 2013 research, the researchers gave the pigeons 30 seconds to relaxation on the perch earlier than bringing them down for an additional trial. If every “stage” is 2 seconds, and pigeons are refreshed after 30 seconds, you would fly arbitrarily excessive with a 15-stage craft—however that might nonetheless require trillions of pigeons.
A greater method is perhaps to keep away from carrying the pigeons with you. After all, pigeons can stand up to the highest of the skyscraper themselves, so that you would possibly as nicely ship them forward to attend for you there as a substitute of getting their mates carry them up with you. If you would prepare them nicely sufficient, you would have them glide alongside on the applicable peak, then seize you and tug you upward for a number of seconds while you attain their altitude. Keep in thoughts that pigeons can’t seize and carry issues with their ft, in order that they’d want little harnesses with aircraft-carrier-style hooks to intercept you.
With this association, it’s potential you would fly your self to the highest of the tower with just some tens of 1000’s of well-trained pigeons. You ought to most likely be sure to have some type of security system that can hold you from plunging to your demise each time a falcon flies by and spooks the pigeons.
The craft wouldn’t simply be extra harmful than an elevator, it will even be lots tougher to select your vacation spot. You would possibly plan to go to the highest of the Q1, however as soon as you’re taking off… you’ll be utterly beneath the management of anybody with a bag of seeds.
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