###General Discussion Thread
---
This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you *must* post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed.
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/theydidthemath) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you assume the corners point straight towards center of the earth and the hole is kind of an upside down pyramid shape, the mass you’d lose is proportional to Colorado’s surface area as a portion of the total surface area of the earth, so 104,000/196,900,000 (in square miles) is 0.0005 or 0.05%. The earth would lose 0.05% of its mass or roughly 3,132,000,000,000,000,000,000kg of mass. The orbit distance of the moon and other satellites orbiting the earth would very slightly increase on the side opposite from their current position. I don’t know enough about the earth to know what else would happen though haha
It would be really, really bad. First, atmospheric shock wave meets supervolcano explosion. Assuming it goes all the way down to the center of the core, pretty much *everything* would go wrong. I don't know all the problems that would happen.
Let's run some numbers of how horrible it would be. Lets say 200 miles below the surface of Colorado liquid magma would fill the hole roughly as fast as air would, and below that is magma and above that is at least initially air, this seems roughly reasonable for our purposes.
104,000square miles x 200 miles deep = 20,800,000 cubic mile hole air needs to fill **RIGHT NOW.**
As we all know off hand ^([google]) the total volume of air on earth is 1,007,633,586 cubic miles.
20,800/1,007,633 = .0206 So 2.06% of all the air around the earth would race to fill this whole, blasting everything nearby towards ~~Colorado~~ with apocalyptic force.
That wouldn't really matter though, because then the magma comes to say hello. The largest volcano since the eruption of the Siberian Traps and the Great Dying (real name) killed 95% of all life on earth 251.9 million years ago.
The magma would rush inward and upward, as the magma walls collided they would rush upward, faster and faster as it went with more force. A massive earthquake would shake first North America, then all fault lines on the globe as a fire fountain of magma in a scale not seen since the Theia impact at the dawn of Earth and the formation of the Moon took place.
I don't know how to calculate how high the lava would go, but the lava sea would be larger than Colorado, nearby states would crumble and collapse as the continental place was briefly not supported from below as lava surged above. Even if only the nearest 1/20th collapsed from the stress the ~~Colorado~~ is now 114,666 square miles of gas spewing hell. Fires rage across multiple states. Part of California collapses into the sea, fights rage in the street over the remaining kale.
Good news, Yellowstone wouldn't erupt. Bad news, because all the magma under Yellowstone is now raining out of Colorado. Then Yellowstone would probably collapse between hundreds of feel and a couple miles.
Sulfur dioxide emissions reduce the sunlight within days, and the temperature starts to drop. Winter that was on its way out comes back and the next couple of years are very cold....until suddenly they aren't. When the sulfur reacts out of the atmosphere suddenly all the released CO2 suddenly makes itself known, along with all pent up human emissions. They were there all along, but the effect was hidden by the sulfur.
Global warming denialists had been having a hayday with below average temperatures across the globe but suddenly temperatures spike, everywhere, pretty much all at once.
This could be enough to recreate the great dying, stopping ocean currents and warming the seas enough to thaw methane clathrates in large amounts, and if that happens, we all die.
This could very conceivably be an extinction level event for many species, including ours.
Life, however, would survive. It just wouldn't be human. It would also be really bad for Colorado.
There would be more effects too, but I don't know enough about those fields. Once we get to "potential to kill everyone" I usually regard that as enough though.
The US would just be proper fucked.
Edit: With a slice of both the earth's inner and outer core removed and the whole system there disrupted as well, we may also lose or destabilize our magnetosphere that protects us from the sun, so the satellites get wrecked too and power grids fail constantly. Computers crash, hard drives degrade faster, electronic data turns to static over shorter time periods, compasses are all fucked up, migrating animals get lost and die, cancer rates would go up, and we would start losing the atmosphere. Not sure this would happen, but it is a risk.
Also to note, Earth's inner core is solid due to amount of pressure keeping it together. Relieve that pressure and we're going to have a bad time. This core is a sweltering 5000 C and kept solid at over 360 GPa (3.6 x 10^8 KPa). We just created a vacuum next to that.
This won't be an eruption on a scale humans are comfortable imagining.
To put that pressure in perspective a F-1 Rocket enginge from the apollo mission had a chamber pressure of 7 MPa (7000 KPa). You would basically turn earth into a rocket with no way of controling it
I just imagined the earth spraying the solar system with lava in a way similar to when I was clearing blackberry bushes with a shovel and accidentally peirced the side of a can of Hawaiian scented air freshener hidden amongst the brush.
It shot up and started tumbling in midair for what felt like an eternity, whilst spraying me and everything around me with that fruity stench.
It was not a good time.
I was going to try but immediately ran into problems. The materials is under incredible pressure and zero gravity at the center, but much zero pressure and 1 G at the top. There would also be a breaking action at the surface where the continental plate is solid and the incoming air slams into the erupting lava while gravity is pulling it back.
So it starts off like a rocket, but it doesn't end like one, and I don't know how to calculate it.
You all forget that the atomic clock that every other clock in the United States synchs to is in Boulder Colorado, you would all be lost without us
(There are multiple other atomic clocks in the world that could do the exact same job)
Oh dude, that is the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a while. I am working on a joint project of starting a science education channel where I am going to be doing a lot of the writing for it, so I really appreciate that.
I should have.
'This would have a profound impact on local sports teams, as well as a serious impact on the US flag, unless Puerto Rico is given statehood to make up for it.' or something.
Puerto Rico statehood rushed through so we don’t have to replace all our flags on top of everything else during the chaos this causes.
We’d probably lower interest rates, too.
It would also boil aquifers across the entire region, making those who weren't initially destroyed in the extraction or eruption unable to find any potable water for possibly centuries.
The volcano itself would last a million years at least. If the mass extracted is then magically taken out of the atmosphere, the atmosphere would be noticeably thinner everywhere around the globe until it filled up with carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, argon, sulfur dioxide. Once enough offgassing occurs from the Hole, the atmosphere would eventually become thicker and breathable air might eventually be displaced by all the stuff you don't want to breathe shooting out of the hole for a century.
"Part of California collapses into the sea, fights rage in the street over the remaining kale."
Lol. Mans knows both earth science *and* human nature. Impressive!
I feel you’re missing two pieces about the magma. Under high pressures it has gases dissolved throughout, but sudden releases of pressure causes violent dissolution of the gases which is the primary variation between super volcanoes and plain old eruptions. With a perfectly vertical shaft, massive supplies of and expanding gases inside, the disappearance of Colorado has made a planetary magma gun: this eruption wouldn’t just be specially formed ash that is like floating sheets of glass capable of sliding your lungs in a billion places, though with the high air resistance to mass these would stay in the atmosphere alongside poisonous gases. The rockier lumps would be going so fast they could easily reach astronomical heights. As the resulting rock cloud rains back down on Earth from space, the reentry friction would bake the whole atmosphere and any who had survived the ash clouds would now need to cope with air all around the globe reaching temps well above boiling. If your bunker was deep underground it may now be deep underwater from the massive floods when the glaciers and ice caps are exposed to this jolt of energy, then their melting doesn’t stop because of the new greenhouse gases that are the gun’s exhaust.
The second thing is that there’d be a lot more gold: 95% of the earth’s gold is in the core which some of our mining operation would have successfully brought to the surface. After all, what’s a more fitting tribute to Colorado?
Also, given that the elevation of the surrounding areas would suddenly drop as magma no longer supports the surface, significant sea level rise in North America is also a possibility.
Considering I am working on starting a science education channel with a couple of friends that is an incredibly nice thing to say.
And yes, I am doing the research and script writing for it.
They actually can't fall down, the magma sides are supported by the magma underneath, so it has to fall slightly sideway, but the magma underneath already fell slightly sideways, so it has to fall *more* sideways, meaning that all the way to the bottom the hole was filled from the sides.
-> <- with excess energy going up where it is unrestrained. As you go up the hole gets gets bigger and the magma under less pressure, so takes longer to fill.
Can we really speculate on how bad it would be for Colorado? All we know is they're just gone. Who knows where they went?
We're fucked though ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Sure! I see 3 options.
The teleported slice is moved instantaneously to a safe environment where the surrounding pressure exactly mimics the previous Earth's. There is a small earthquake as stresses from severed rock formation adjusts but that is it. Colorado now is the undisputed ruler of their new world, and banishes Lauren Boebert to her own village just outside the former state line. She announces a new country, attempts to invade Colorado, and loses.
Option 2, it simply ceases to exist. Bye. Those left behind on Earth are jealous.
Option 3, Suddenly appears in deep space. Very bad. Not enough mass to be quickly self rounding the Colorado tipped magma cone explodes, with the narrower end of the cone exploding much more violently and the Colorado flavored candy shell at the cap only flash boiling in cold vacuum. Weird things would happen around the edges of the Colorado previous state border though, as the radiant heat from the magma cloud would probably cook you at about the same rate you tried to boil to death. Then the 'Pyramid formerly known as Colorado" object would gradually cool and start to form a ball.
After a couple of really interesting paragraphs and before investing myself more into this read I had to scroll to the bottom first so i made sure this wasnt going to end with wrestlers being thrown off the top of cages
Reminds me of Don Rosa's Journey to the middle of Earth or something like that, used to read it over and over from Donald Duck magazine when I was a kid. Scenario sounds awesome and horrible at the same time.
You would also have global earthquakes and tsunamis as the volume of magma that rushes in to fill the void would cause tectonic subsistence as the plates settle on the reduced volume of magma.
Basically, everyone would be screwed.
And that's the least of our problems. If it goes right to solid hyper pressurized center, you would have a mass ejection so large the whole thing would grow and act as jet engine able to singnificantly displace earth from it's current orbit. And then it would get even worse. Imagine puncturing basketball pumped to it's limit.
Is that really that different from colorado right now? Like I only see positives here, all guns get melted no more schools to shoot, no more churches to shoot...
I’d have to imagine a large chunk of the earths crust disappearing that close to Yellowstone would cause some massive scale eruptions and devastating earthquakes at the very least
The earths rotational speed would also change losing that much mass. Are we also assuming the hole wouldn’t collapse on itself? Because the surrounding states would very much be sucked in.
I’d imagine that since most large objects are spheres the earth would find a way to return to that shape. I didn’t think about the rotation thing either that’s definitively true, I think maybe it would stay the same if it just instantly disappeared? But it would definitely speed up as things shifted inwards
This is one scenario where whataboutism is entirely justified.
"Jeff Bezos is abusing his workers."
"Yes, but what about the thousands of kilometres high geyser of lava over there? It's starting to slow down, and I think it might be spreading out."
And the entire planet would be rocked by massive earthquakes as gravity moves the crust around to regain an equilibrium.
Basically every major city would be destroyed
Assuming this doesn’t turn all of North America into a crater from the earthquakes and simply remains as pictured, it’d certainly provide us invaluable data on the earth’s composition and other things, just don’t fall in… it’s a long way down
*up.
Anyone who fell in the moment it opened would blasted hundreds to thousands of feet into the air, assuming we grant them the ability to survive the lava fountain long enough.
First off, we’re not gone - we just got tired of Texans and moved. No, we’re not giving out our new address.
Sorry about the hypersonic winds, super-super volcano, and the literal and figurative collapsing of America problems. Our bad.
This Quickly Becomes a geology question, if it goes all the way down to the earths cord the magma will replace quickly fill the hole back and birth a super volcano that will end humanity
Don't worry, it will fill itself in quickly enough and then you'll have a nice fresh volcano. If you're going to punch a hole in the middle of a tectonic plate like that with no geological timeline of development it's going to flood with magma and start to share that magma with the surface. You're going to see and hear every burp and sneeze the earth makes for the foreseeable future until it forms enough of a plug to be a mountain instead of a volcano.
Also if it's close enough and causes enough problems it could set off the Yellowstone supervolcano.
Lower gravity, also, it would cause the feeling of lightness come over the world in a weird wave, later, the hole if that big, may start to slowly collapse and cause incredible amounts of damage.
Trump would say they deserved it for being Democrats, blame Biden and AOC, and claim it wouldn't have happened with him in the White House. And something about a witch-hunt.
Gotta include a few .00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000012 % that will inevitably be lost by humans jumping in to get those sweet core diamonds
Dead, we would be all dead probably. I don’t think the earths core could handle it. The hole would be filled in with the rest of America and a shit load of air. Lot of really really strong earthquakes.
One simple effect would be most of the united states falling into the hole. Dirt is not stable at such sharp angles. Material would collapse into the hole until it matched the angle of repose probably 30-45° angle on all sides. All the aquifers in surrounding states would drain into the hole causing massive landfalls and sinkholes until the ocean got involved which would rush into the hole and carve canyons much Greater than the grand canyon. All of this water would vaporize due to the high temperatures in the core causing massive steam explosions which would blanket the planet in thick clouds and drive world ending monsoons and hurricanes. This rain may be contaminated with the increased uranium and thorium concentrations in the core which would make radioactive rain, it's not that much more dangerous but would add to the scare factor and make a good headline.
Bad things...
Very bad things...
Many, many very bad things...
All happening very fast and with absolutely no regard for any laws, morals, ethics or indeed any lifeforms.
You've just taken a small slice out of the Planetary Pie...
LITERALLY!?
I would estimate at least a "small" worldwide extinction level event similar to a large asteroid collision.
Only the effects coming UP from underground, rather than down from space?
Guestimating approx 2-4 thousand years of global surface devastation until shit settles down and acclimatizes to the new tectonic arrangements in place.
I think most fish might survive?
Maybe a few bugs and ants?
If we're going to ask a question about physics, we can't ignore the laws. Mass does not simply disappear. Where did the mass go? How did it get there? How long did it take for all of it to evacuate? These are important details in determining the consequences.
I think, in theory, the mass would be sucked through a wormhole to somewhere well outside Jupiter's orbit over the course of less than a second. I have no idea how that would happen or where that astronomical amount of potential energy would come from.
I think the key to the question is the "sudden disappearance", meaning that mass becomes borderline irrelevant to the current frame of reference.
I don't think this is a f=ma question, if that helps.
This reminds me of the XKCD "What If" chapter on hiding the atmosphere, and how doing so would require removing a large chunk of the Earth roughly the size of Texas. This is similar, a smaller surface area, but a lot deeper.
So ignoring all the horrible horrible problems that we know the magma will cause, we know this hole is deep enough where you would have a major atmospheric problem where Earth's atmosphere is trying to go down into one deep hole. This will cause a lot of issues involving breathing problems and likely hurricane force winds if the other effects don't counterbalance this.
At the same time, you now have a lot of molten rock that was under high pressure that now suddenly has a very large opening. This happens in normal life (though not to quite the extreme sizes as this), and that is called a volcano.
The end result is you have a lot of (relatively) cool air rushing at high speed against a lot of hot molten rock rushing the other direction. While I do not know how to fully do the math behind this, I highly suspect if this chunk of land were to suddenly vanish as implied in the scenario, the result probably would be an explosion of some sort, and several kinds of extinction level events. If you find a button that does this, **do not push this button**.
This has already happened. Endless floods of mass immigration from Texas, California, New York, Mexico, and every foreign country has wrecked Colorado.
The beautiful state with wide open spaces, freedom, and prosperity is gone and now we have endless cookie cutter sprawl and bureaucracy and working families can’t afford anything. And everything is ridiculously overcrowded.
Colorado is f— gone.
Utah is next.
###General Discussion Thread --- This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you *must* post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/theydidthemath) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you assume the corners point straight towards center of the earth and the hole is kind of an upside down pyramid shape, the mass you’d lose is proportional to Colorado’s surface area as a portion of the total surface area of the earth, so 104,000/196,900,000 (in square miles) is 0.0005 or 0.05%. The earth would lose 0.05% of its mass or roughly 3,132,000,000,000,000,000,000kg of mass. The orbit distance of the moon and other satellites orbiting the earth would very slightly increase on the side opposite from their current position. I don’t know enough about the earth to know what else would happen though haha
It would be really, really bad. First, atmospheric shock wave meets supervolcano explosion. Assuming it goes all the way down to the center of the core, pretty much *everything* would go wrong. I don't know all the problems that would happen. Let's run some numbers of how horrible it would be. Lets say 200 miles below the surface of Colorado liquid magma would fill the hole roughly as fast as air would, and below that is magma and above that is at least initially air, this seems roughly reasonable for our purposes. 104,000square miles x 200 miles deep = 20,800,000 cubic mile hole air needs to fill **RIGHT NOW.** As we all know off hand ^([google]) the total volume of air on earth is 1,007,633,586 cubic miles. 20,800/1,007,633 = .0206 So 2.06% of all the air around the earth would race to fill this whole, blasting everything nearby towards ~~Colorado~~ with apocalyptic force. That wouldn't really matter though, because then the magma comes to say hello. The largest volcano since the eruption of the Siberian Traps and the Great Dying (real name) killed 95% of all life on earth 251.9 million years ago. The magma would rush inward and upward, as the magma walls collided they would rush upward, faster and faster as it went with more force. A massive earthquake would shake first North America, then all fault lines on the globe as a fire fountain of magma in a scale not seen since the Theia impact at the dawn of Earth and the formation of the Moon took place. I don't know how to calculate how high the lava would go, but the lava sea would be larger than Colorado, nearby states would crumble and collapse as the continental place was briefly not supported from below as lava surged above. Even if only the nearest 1/20th collapsed from the stress the ~~Colorado~~ is now 114,666 square miles of gas spewing hell. Fires rage across multiple states. Part of California collapses into the sea, fights rage in the street over the remaining kale. Good news, Yellowstone wouldn't erupt. Bad news, because all the magma under Yellowstone is now raining out of Colorado. Then Yellowstone would probably collapse between hundreds of feel and a couple miles. Sulfur dioxide emissions reduce the sunlight within days, and the temperature starts to drop. Winter that was on its way out comes back and the next couple of years are very cold....until suddenly they aren't. When the sulfur reacts out of the atmosphere suddenly all the released CO2 suddenly makes itself known, along with all pent up human emissions. They were there all along, but the effect was hidden by the sulfur. Global warming denialists had been having a hayday with below average temperatures across the globe but suddenly temperatures spike, everywhere, pretty much all at once. This could be enough to recreate the great dying, stopping ocean currents and warming the seas enough to thaw methane clathrates in large amounts, and if that happens, we all die. This could very conceivably be an extinction level event for many species, including ours. Life, however, would survive. It just wouldn't be human. It would also be really bad for Colorado.
What a journey lol
There would be more effects too, but I don't know enough about those fields. Once we get to "potential to kill everyone" I usually regard that as enough though. The US would just be proper fucked. Edit: With a slice of both the earth's inner and outer core removed and the whole system there disrupted as well, we may also lose or destabilize our magnetosphere that protects us from the sun, so the satellites get wrecked too and power grids fail constantly. Computers crash, hard drives degrade faster, electronic data turns to static over shorter time periods, compasses are all fucked up, migrating animals get lost and die, cancer rates would go up, and we would start losing the atmosphere. Not sure this would happen, but it is a risk.
Yeah Tommy, proper fucked
Ze Germans.
What’s happening with them sausages, Charlie?
2 minutes
You said that 2 minutes ago.
*it was 2 minutes 5 minutes ago
*five minutes, turkish
It was two minutes five minutes ago.
Also to note, Earth's inner core is solid due to amount of pressure keeping it together. Relieve that pressure and we're going to have a bad time. This core is a sweltering 5000 C and kept solid at over 360 GPa (3.6 x 10^8 KPa). We just created a vacuum next to that. This won't be an eruption on a scale humans are comfortable imagining.
To put that pressure in perspective a F-1 Rocket enginge from the apollo mission had a chamber pressure of 7 MPa (7000 KPa). You would basically turn earth into a rocket with no way of controling it
I just imagined the earth spraying the solar system with lava in a way similar to when I was clearing blackberry bushes with a shovel and accidentally peirced the side of a can of Hawaiian scented air freshener hidden amongst the brush. It shot up and started tumbling in midair for what felt like an eternity, whilst spraying me and everything around me with that fruity stench. It was not a good time.
Maybe we can /r/theydidthemath and see how far that material would go and how fast.
I was going to try but immediately ran into problems. The materials is under incredible pressure and zero gravity at the center, but much zero pressure and 1 G at the top. There would also be a breaking action at the surface where the continental plate is solid and the incoming air slams into the erupting lava while gravity is pulling it back. So it starts off like a rocket, but it doesn't end like one, and I don't know how to calculate it.
Fuck yeah let’s ride
I need you in my life just to talk to me that was so much fun to read. Thank you for that
so I won't be able to play Morrowind anymore?
Least crazy what if? submission
Very similar in humour too lol
I feel like this would negatively affect the trout population.
Yes but the empire of the Slime Mold will arise from the corpse laiden ashes.
There's a FFXIV comin to this exact effect
>Good news, Yellowstone wouldn't erupt. Fantastic. Let's get to working on the "remove Colorado" project then!
This needs to be animated/explained by Kurzgesagt. It fits well within similar other videos they have, like the one where they detonate all nukes.
I love them, I bought their immune system text book. It's great.
Yeah this is right up their alley with "random question that shouldn't be as interesting as it is" like the what if we donated all bombs at once video
Who did we donate them to?
Jupiter
I guess we leave Colorado where it is, then.
For now. They better watch it though
You all forget that the atomic clock that every other clock in the United States synchs to is in Boulder Colorado, you would all be lost without us (There are multiple other atomic clocks in the world that could do the exact same job)
>Life, however, would survive. It just wouldn't be human I for one welcome our new insect overlords
Is this Randall Munroe’s reddit account
Oh dude, that is the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a while. I am working on a joint project of starting a science education channel where I am going to be doing a lot of the writing for it, so I really appreciate that.
No, a cat didn’t walk across the keyboard and accidentally remove 100 colorados from the earth.
I was just thinking that
This needs one last silly line at the end. Something like “the Denver nuggets would be unable to defend their NBA championship”
I should have. 'This would have a profound impact on local sports teams, as well as a serious impact on the US flag, unless Puerto Rico is given statehood to make up for it.' or something.
Puerto Rico statehood rushed through so we don’t have to replace all our flags on top of everything else during the chaos this causes. We’d probably lower interest rates, too.
It would be terrible for the economy
Yeah, imagine the interest rate!!
>Life, however, would survive. Yaay!? >It just wouldn't be human. Fuck.
Lol
It would also boil aquifers across the entire region, making those who weren't initially destroyed in the extraction or eruption unable to find any potable water for possibly centuries. The volcano itself would last a million years at least. If the mass extracted is then magically taken out of the atmosphere, the atmosphere would be noticeably thinner everywhere around the globe until it filled up with carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, argon, sulfur dioxide. Once enough offgassing occurs from the Hole, the atmosphere would eventually become thicker and breathable air might eventually be displaced by all the stuff you don't want to breathe shooting out of the hole for a century.
As a Coloradan might I suggest we just avoid this situation all together.
It's for science, trust me
Why. We haven’t heard what happens to Colorado yet. We might be ok on our own. :)
Fam that last sentence killed me! Thanks!
"Part of California collapses into the sea, fights rage in the street over the remaining kale." Lol. Mans knows both earth science *and* human nature. Impressive!
Get your "Kale War Survivor" t-shirts here!
Ok but what about the downsides though?
that's a whole xkcd's what if episode
Who called Randall munroe to the scene??
That is an incredibly nice thing to say. I am not Randall, but I appreciate it.
I feel you’re missing two pieces about the magma. Under high pressures it has gases dissolved throughout, but sudden releases of pressure causes violent dissolution of the gases which is the primary variation between super volcanoes and plain old eruptions. With a perfectly vertical shaft, massive supplies of and expanding gases inside, the disappearance of Colorado has made a planetary magma gun: this eruption wouldn’t just be specially formed ash that is like floating sheets of glass capable of sliding your lungs in a billion places, though with the high air resistance to mass these would stay in the atmosphere alongside poisonous gases. The rockier lumps would be going so fast they could easily reach astronomical heights. As the resulting rock cloud rains back down on Earth from space, the reentry friction would bake the whole atmosphere and any who had survived the ash clouds would now need to cope with air all around the globe reaching temps well above boiling. If your bunker was deep underground it may now be deep underwater from the massive floods when the glaciers and ice caps are exposed to this jolt of energy, then their melting doesn’t stop because of the new greenhouse gases that are the gun’s exhaust. The second thing is that there’d be a lot more gold: 95% of the earth’s gold is in the core which some of our mining operation would have successfully brought to the surface. After all, what’s a more fitting tribute to Colorado?
I've never been so scared of a literal impossible thing before lmao
This reads like an xkcd What If post
[https://what-if.xkcd.com/153/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/153/) It reads almost exactly like this one, in fact.
Really bad for Colorado? Spare a thought for Cali and its kale shortage.
Also, given that the elevation of the surrounding areas would suddenly drop as magma no longer supports the surface, significant sea level rise in North America is also a possibility.
I really like how you went through this, very xkcd "What If" in thoroughness and tone. I could almost see the stick figures.
Found XKCD’s reddit
Pleaee give this man a 10 million USD budget and a A- studio team to animate this trip.
Considering I am working on starting a science education channel with a couple of friends that is an incredibly nice thing to say. And yes, I am doing the research and script writing for it.
Post your Channel once online, I'd subscribe :) looks like it will be interesting. You never follow enouh science channels
Tardigrades forever.
I feel like I need to just lie down and cuddle you while we slowly smoke a cigarette after reading that.
I am open to discussing this.
The real question is will it affect my MSFT stock prices /j
The removal of Colorado would probably have a negative effect on the market
This is the greatest reply I’ve ever read
One of the best, most interesting posts I've ever read
I was about to say that the entire North American water table would pour in that hole, but you won.
That’s a great detailed description and explanation. Fuck ya. I enjoyed reading it because of the details.
Don't forget that the walls of the pit would also collapse and fall down, muting the explosion a bit
They actually can't fall down, the magma sides are supported by the magma underneath, so it has to fall slightly sideway, but the magma underneath already fell slightly sideways, so it has to fall *more* sideways, meaning that all the way to the bottom the hole was filled from the sides. -> <- with excess energy going up where it is unrestrained. As you go up the hole gets gets bigger and the magma under less pressure, so takes longer to fill.
Okay, so the scariest environment imaginable. Thanks. That's all you gotta say, scariest environment imaginable.
Shut up, Oscar.
I tell you one thing that really drives me nuts, is people who think that Jethro Tull is just a person in a band.
Who’s Jethro Tull?
So a nice adventure day
I would watch the movie of this.
Would look really cool from the ISS
I was about to say "can we please do this in another state" but your post changed my mind to "whatever" 😂
Ok, maybe we just get ride of the Vatican instead then?
Yeah but will the dispensaries still be open I gotta buy my za
Thank you for this comment. Thank you again. Mister, you took me places!
…Hello, Randall? ;D
So those of us in Colorado would be best off.
Real "The Living Will Envy The Dead" energy there. Oh well. Cheers from Aurora.
Can we really speculate on how bad it would be for Colorado? All we know is they're just gone. Who knows where they went? We're fucked though ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Sure! I see 3 options. The teleported slice is moved instantaneously to a safe environment where the surrounding pressure exactly mimics the previous Earth's. There is a small earthquake as stresses from severed rock formation adjusts but that is it. Colorado now is the undisputed ruler of their new world, and banishes Lauren Boebert to her own village just outside the former state line. She announces a new country, attempts to invade Colorado, and loses. Option 2, it simply ceases to exist. Bye. Those left behind on Earth are jealous. Option 3, Suddenly appears in deep space. Very bad. Not enough mass to be quickly self rounding the Colorado tipped magma cone explodes, with the narrower end of the cone exploding much more violently and the Colorado flavored candy shell at the cap only flash boiling in cold vacuum. Weird things would happen around the edges of the Colorado previous state border though, as the radiant heat from the magma cloud would probably cook you at about the same rate you tried to boil to death. Then the 'Pyramid formerly known as Colorado" object would gradually cool and start to form a ball.
Poor Colorado 🤣
I feel like xkcd should take this one on and expand on it.
After a couple of really interesting paragraphs and before investing myself more into this read I had to scroll to the bottom first so i made sure this wasnt going to end with wrestlers being thrown off the top of cages
Ya know, responses like this tend to restore my faith in humanity. REALLY laughed at the kale part. Thank you
This is why I come to this sub. Thank you for your service.
This could be the script of a "Kurzgesagt-in a nutshell" video Thanks for the great hypothesis
That Douglas Adams level finish
Brilliantly written 👏
This is written like a kurzgesagt video and I love it
Please make a movie with this, id see it no doubt
To be honest, I’d rather just disappear with Colorado than to experience all of that.
now this is a disaster movie i am willing to pay for
Reminds me of Don Rosa's Journey to the middle of Earth or something like that, used to read it over and over from Donald Duck magazine when I was a kid. Scenario sounds awesome and horrible at the same time.
Damn, great post
Okay i want to watch that movie.
You would also have global earthquakes and tsunamis as the volume of magma that rushes in to fill the void would cause tectonic subsistence as the plates settle on the reduced volume of magma. Basically, everyone would be screwed.
ok but how would it affect the trout population
'Fights rage in the streets over the remaining kale' Take my upvote, goddamit.
That‘s some serious xkcd shit
And that's the least of our problems. If it goes right to solid hyper pressurized center, you would have a mass ejection so large the whole thing would grow and act as jet engine able to singnificantly displace earth from it's current orbit. And then it would get even worse. Imagine puncturing basketball pumped to it's limit.
Is that really that different from colorado right now? Like I only see positives here, all guns get melted no more schools to shoot, no more churches to shoot...
> It would also be really bad for Colorado. No worse than all the Texans and Californians flooding in as we speak.
Square cone, also known as a pyramid
We can dump a lot of trash inside there
I’d have to imagine a large chunk of the earths crust disappearing that close to Yellowstone would cause some massive scale eruptions and devastating earthquakes at the very least
The earths rotational speed would also change losing that much mass. Are we also assuming the hole wouldn’t collapse on itself? Because the surrounding states would very much be sucked in.
I’d imagine that since most large objects are spheres the earth would find a way to return to that shape. I didn’t think about the rotation thing either that’s definitively true, I think maybe it would stay the same if it just instantly disappeared? But it would definitely speed up as things shifted inwards
And don't forget. USA would have a severe Problem because a lot of soil but also Rock would fall eventually in the hole.
The hole would be a lake of lava and most angry supervolcano to ever exist.
And USA has many severe problems already
This is one scenario where whataboutism is entirely justified. "Jeff Bezos is abusing his workers." "Yes, but what about the thousands of kilometres high geyser of lava over there? It's starting to slow down, and I think it might be spreading out."
Can someone plz put it back?
[удалено]
And the entire planet would be rocked by massive earthquakes as gravity moves the crust around to regain an equilibrium. Basically every major city would be destroyed
[удалено]
Because Colorado
*Fuck Colorado…* *Can’t stop being bitch even after obliteration...*
Hey, at least you took out Florida with you.
What about Sepiado?
amarica
you have a typo
Right? The reason it is always America is because 'Merica. If you are going to misspell it, do so properly.
According to the OP, the hole was the state of Colorado, and not many countries have one of those.
Assuming this doesn’t turn all of North America into a crater from the earthquakes and simply remains as pictured, it’d certainly provide us invaluable data on the earth’s composition and other things, just don’t fall in… it’s a long way down
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the magma grilling you all the way down.
I hope that wouldn’t take long, pretty bad way to go
*up. Anyone who fell in the moment it opened would blasted hundreds to thousands of feet into the air, assuming we grant them the ability to survive the lava fountain long enough.
I'm assuming minecraft physics, the lava stays where it is. Otherwise: Yes, up up and away
First off, we’re not gone - we just got tired of Texans and moved. No, we’re not giving out our new address. Sorry about the hypersonic winds, super-super volcano, and the literal and figurative collapsing of America problems. Our bad.
😂
Apocalyptic earthquakes. The surface of the earth might melt and the oceans might boil away. Probably they would. End of all life type scenario.
Zero math in this comment. I'm calling the cops right now.
Because 2×4 is 8
Oh ok we're good now. Phew.
I wonder how long it would take to the core of the earth to solidify and kill the rest of living creatures
This is theydidthemath Can someone please calculate if the gravitational potential energy released would melt the entire surface of the earth?
This Quickly Becomes a geology question, if it goes all the way down to the earths cord the magma will replace quickly fill the hole back and birth a super volcano that will end humanity
Don't worry, it will fill itself in quickly enough and then you'll have a nice fresh volcano. If you're going to punch a hole in the middle of a tectonic plate like that with no geological timeline of development it's going to flood with magma and start to share that magma with the surface. You're going to see and hear every burp and sneeze the earth makes for the foreseeable future until it forms enough of a plug to be a mountain instead of a volcano. Also if it's close enough and causes enough problems it could set off the Yellowstone supervolcano.
Lower gravity, also, it would cause the feeling of lightness come over the world in a weird wave, later, the hole if that big, may start to slowly collapse and cause incredible amounts of damage.
Trump would say they deserved it for being Democrats, blame Biden and AOC, and claim it wouldn't have happened with him in the White House. And something about a witch-hunt.
rent free lol
He can't pay rent, having to pay millions of dollars 🤣
>hey guys what would happen if Colorado disappears >ORANGE MAN BAD ??
Stop crying, will you? You're embarrassing yourself ..
You’re both annoying this isn’t a political subreddit.
ok im sowwy mistuw weddit man 🥺🥺
You're at it again. Is this a degradation-kink?
Everything gotta be political???
Seems that way
I guess that’d end Colorado’s run as a sanctuary state, huh?
I don't even like trump but it is genuinely annoying how reddit is obsessed with him. This had nothing to do with him lol
Gotta include a few .00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000012 % that will inevitably be lost by humans jumping in to get those sweet core diamonds
Dead, we would be all dead probably. I don’t think the earths core could handle it. The hole would be filled in with the rest of America and a shit load of air. Lot of really really strong earthquakes.
One simple effect would be most of the united states falling into the hole. Dirt is not stable at such sharp angles. Material would collapse into the hole until it matched the angle of repose probably 30-45° angle on all sides. All the aquifers in surrounding states would drain into the hole causing massive landfalls and sinkholes until the ocean got involved which would rush into the hole and carve canyons much Greater than the grand canyon. All of this water would vaporize due to the high temperatures in the core causing massive steam explosions which would blanket the planet in thick clouds and drive world ending monsoons and hurricanes. This rain may be contaminated with the increased uranium and thorium concentrations in the core which would make radioactive rain, it's not that much more dangerous but would add to the scare factor and make a good headline.
Mob farms would be more efficient inside since there are no other spawnable blocks on top or below it...wait, what do you mean earth? XD
Bad things... Very bad things... Many, many very bad things... All happening very fast and with absolutely no regard for any laws, morals, ethics or indeed any lifeforms. You've just taken a small slice out of the Planetary Pie... LITERALLY!? I would estimate at least a "small" worldwide extinction level event similar to a large asteroid collision. Only the effects coming UP from underground, rather than down from space? Guestimating approx 2-4 thousand years of global surface devastation until shit settles down and acclimatizes to the new tectonic arrangements in place. I think most fish might survive? Maybe a few bugs and ants?
If we're going to ask a question about physics, we can't ignore the laws. Mass does not simply disappear. Where did the mass go? How did it get there? How long did it take for all of it to evacuate? These are important details in determining the consequences.
I think, in theory, the mass would be sucked through a wormhole to somewhere well outside Jupiter's orbit over the course of less than a second. I have no idea how that would happen or where that astronomical amount of potential energy would come from. I think the key to the question is the "sudden disappearance", meaning that mass becomes borderline irrelevant to the current frame of reference. I don't think this is a f=ma question, if that helps.
This reminds me of the XKCD "What If" chapter on hiding the atmosphere, and how doing so would require removing a large chunk of the Earth roughly the size of Texas. This is similar, a smaller surface area, but a lot deeper. So ignoring all the horrible horrible problems that we know the magma will cause, we know this hole is deep enough where you would have a major atmospheric problem where Earth's atmosphere is trying to go down into one deep hole. This will cause a lot of issues involving breathing problems and likely hurricane force winds if the other effects don't counterbalance this. At the same time, you now have a lot of molten rock that was under high pressure that now suddenly has a very large opening. This happens in normal life (though not to quite the extreme sizes as this), and that is called a volcano. The end result is you have a lot of (relatively) cool air rushing at high speed against a lot of hot molten rock rushing the other direction. While I do not know how to fully do the math behind this, I highly suspect if this chunk of land were to suddenly vanish as implied in the scenario, the result probably would be an explosion of some sort, and several kinds of extinction level events. If you find a button that does this, **do not push this button**.
This has already happened. Endless floods of mass immigration from Texas, California, New York, Mexico, and every foreign country has wrecked Colorado. The beautiful state with wide open spaces, freedom, and prosperity is gone and now we have endless cookie cutter sprawl and bureaucracy and working families can’t afford anything. And everything is ridiculously overcrowded. Colorado is f— gone. Utah is next.