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A marshmallow meteorite hurtling straight toward Earth?
How would this sweet space object begin its descent toward our planet? Would the rapid speed of 99.9% of the speed of light, which is 299,792 km/s (186, 282 mps), cause the marshmallow to disintegrate in mid-air?
What would happen if a marshmallow traveling at light speed actually made contact with Earth?
Transcript and sources:
00:00 About marshmallows
01:40 Thank you, Grammarly!
02:39 Light speed
03:32 S’mores in space
5:10 Slow motion
06:51 Marshmallow meteorite
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What If is a mini-documentary web series that takes you on an epic journey through hypothetical worlds and possibilities. Join us on an imaginary adventure through time, space and chance while we (hopefully) boil down complex subjects in a fun and entertaining way.
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A marshmallow meteorite hurtling straight toward Earth? How would this sweet space object begin its descent toward our planet? Would the rapid speed of 99.9% of the speed of light, which is 299,792 km/s (186, 282 mps), cause the marshmallow to disintegrate in mid-air?
What would happen if a marshmallow traveling at light speed actually made contact with Earth?
Questions or concerns? Contact us at
Get our 100 best episodes in one mind-blowing book:
Join this channel to get access to perks:
Check out our other channels:
How to Survive:
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Origins of Food:
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Watch more what-if scenarios:
Planet Earth:
The Cosmos:
Technology:
Your Body:
Humanity:
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Suggest an episode:
Newsletter:
What If elsewhere:
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Discord:
Twitter:
Facebook:
What If in Spanish:
What If in Mandarin:
Podcast:
What If is a mini-documentary web series that takes you on an epic journey through hypothetical worlds and possibilities. Join us on an imaginary adventure through time, space and chance while we (hopefully) boil down complex subjects in a fun and entertaining way.
Produced with love by Underknown in Toronto:
Contact us at
Elon Musk proposed a fascinating and detailed theory about the origin of pyramids that contradicts conventional knowledge. What makes it even more intriguing is that his proposal involves the participation of extraterrestrial beings, and he has presented some convincing evidence to support it.
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Fully fledged self-driving technology appears to be perpetually just around the corner. It is a promise that the Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, has made almost every year since 2013.
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We see NASA is firing up its rockets to go back to the moon again and multiple startups and industries have sprung up in this new race with some huge billionaire giants like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson where all are racing to conquer the new space industry. In this video we will talk about all those big billionaires and what are their plans for the future of our space.
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This time it’s not only the US and the Russia. Several countries and private companies have announced plans for space exploration. This year alone India and China have announced their bids to be space powers with plans of launching missions to to mars and the moon. US has plans for many deep space missions along with Europe and United Arab Emirates, which has recently sent its probe on the red planet. So why has there been such interest in the space recently!! Well it because the space industry is a new gold rush. The economics is making sense and many new industries have formed around space. Already there are space 3d printing companies that have printed on the International space station (ISS). The manufacturing of more efficient fibre optic cables has also become possible in space. Space manufacturing could create many startling new technologies that would lead to industries that don’t even exist today. Extraterrestrial colonisation is a fascination for these billionaires, and space tourism is an exciting field for which many have even paid in advance. NASA had announce its lunar program Artemis “to land the first woman and the next man on the moon” and many private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are competing to provide their services of commercial payloads for the mission. NASA also plans to land Astronauts on the never visited part of the moon, The South Pole, and give astronauts 6.5 days on the lunar surface. For this NASA turns to private companies and the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, jumped at this opportunity. SpaceX founder Elon Musk successfully launched the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Centre on May 30, 2020 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Space tourism seems is also an area which SpaceX and Blue Origin want to accomplish. But there is another player who wants his part in this, Richard Branson and his V*rgin Atlantic. Recently he announced that he has 800 astronauts who have already signed up wanting to go to space.
So let’s discuss the first Billionaire and also the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos and his company Blue Origin. Jeff Bezos has shown his fascination about Space and possibilities of human life in space. The coming couple of years seem to be a busy year for Blue Origin, and American Aerospace manufacturer led by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos founded in the year 2000 the company has a goal of improving space tourism and make it accessible to everyone and even build space colonies for human beings in orbit complete with hotels, amusement parks, restaurants and other infrastructures. His ventures are comparative to that of Richard Branson and Elon Musk who also have put space Exploration as their foremost business interest. Blue Origin is planning for a construction of a warehouse in Florida for building and launching rockets with dreams to reach and find many ways to explore the moon. The company has been invested in developing a vertical takeoff and landing spacecraft called New Shepard, named after the astronaut Alan Shepherd who was the first American to go to space. It is a reusable rocket and will not only make safe takeoff and landing but also will save loads of cost of building and launching new rockets and aims to take passengers into space and have a quick view of the earth and feel the weightlessness and excitement of space. It plans to do so by sending a capsule into the orbit which would hold a maximum of six people which might increase.
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From the goals, to the plans, to the rivals, and more, join me as we ask the question of whether SpaceX can send their starship to the moon!
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13 Mysterious Moon Facts!
When you look at space, there are a lot of things out there that we as humans want to reach. And the first thing that we truly reached and could grasp was the moon itself. On July 20th 1969, after many years of trials, tribulations, setbacks, delays, fears and more, we sent three men into space, and two of them landed on the moon (the third stayed in the craft just for the record, someone had to watch their ride!). It was a triumphant moment in human history. But it was also something that afterwards…lost its luster in terms of repeating the feat.
We did go back to the moon multiple times, but each time it got more and more costly, more and more questioned, until eventually the Apollo program (which was the program to get people to the moon) was outright canceled. Only recently did things start to look better for the program as both NASA and Elon Musk via SpaceX decided to go and inspire the human race to try and get back to the moon in a good amount of time. In fact, it could be that we get to the moon again very soon, even before we reach the long-awaited Mars. Or at least, that’s what Elon Musk thinks:
“Well, this is gonna sound pretty crazy, but I think we could land on the moon in less than two years,” Musk told Time. “Certainly with an uncrewed vehicle I believe we could land on the moon in two years. So then maybe within a year or two of that we could be sending crew. I would say four years at the outside.”
In other words, Musk is saying his conservative estimate for sending people back to the moon aboard a SpaceX vehicle is 2023, the year before NASA hopes to send a crew — including the first female astronaut to visit the moon — as part of its new Artemis program.
You might think that this is a friendly competition thing going on, but it’s a little more complicated than that. You see, Elon Musk started SpaceX with others to try and restore humanities faith in reaching out to the stars, and it’s worked. But more importantly than that, he wanted to make an independent space company that didn’t rely on government funding (like NASA) and thus be able to make spaceships, satellites, and more at a much cheaper cost. Which, again, he succeeded in. This has actually put NASA and SpaceX on great terms, and the two are working together in various ways. Including sending certain SpaceX ships up to the International Space Station, and working together on plans to help get humanity to Mars.
However, NASA has noted recently that they desire to go the moon on their own craft, which of course prompted a response from Elon:
“If it were to take longer to convince NASA and the authorities that we can do it versus just doing it, then we might just do it. It may literally be easier to just land Starship on the moon than try to convince NASA that we can.”
And that right there is one of the cruxes of Elon Musk’s belief in his team and his spaceships. If he thinks he can do something, he’ll push to do it, and he’s been more right than wrong in recent months and years with his programs. His communications satellite system Starlink has started launching and is getting closer to its first minor test in North America. The various starships that he’s making is getting more and more tests, and so on and so forth.
That being said, we all know that Elon Musk can talk more than he can produce at times. A lot of his spaceships in recent months have had issues, including one of his ships trying to launch and creating a massive fireball instead. The ship was fine and it was revealed that a leak in a system caused a fireball, but still, it delayed future plans by a significant margin.
Which is why many aren’t exactly believing that Elon Musk is going to reach the moon in the next few years because of the uncertainty of space travel and all the dangers that can go along with it.
But, that doesn’t mean that NO ONE may be able to reach the moon in the next few years…
Before we dive more into what we mean by that , be sure to like or Dislike the video , that way we have a feedback to improve our work, and subscribe to the channel! That way you don’t miss ANY of our weekly videos!
Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon, you know the major website where you likely have bought more things than you care to admit? And throughout his life, he’s had a fascination with space. So much so that it was him who found the Apollo 11 Engines that were jettisoned during the launch of the legendary mission.
But unlike many, he’s not looking to Mars (unlike NASA and SpaceX among others), he feels that humanity has a lot to get from the moon itself.
World’s Future Events By 2100!
From what the future will bring, to the events that could change our world forever, join us as we explore what events will happen by 2100!
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What Will Happen By 2090!
I know it’s hard to look at the future and say exactly what’ll happen. If you think about it, we’re in 2020, but if you asked people in 1920 what today would look like? Yeah, their answers would be VASTLY different. Don’t forget that this point in time was supposed to be the “sci-fi” future that a lot of people envisioned (we’re already past Back To The Future for example). So in truth, there is no real way of knowing what’s going to happen between now and 2100. However, there are things that we can predict, try to acknowledge as likely, and see what humanity might just accomplish.
So let’s start off with the very near future. Mainly, 2021. It’s in this year that the James Webb Telescope is expected to launch. So…what is it?
“The James Webb Space Telescope is the most ambitious and complex astronomical project ever built, and bringing it to life is a long, meticulous process.
So basically, the reason that we need this telescope/observatory is because without it, we will be unable to observe a large part of the universe that we can only speculate on right now with the other devices we have. P
. And so in the VERY near future, we could have a greater understanding of our universe. Which is perfect, because also in 2021 we’re allegedly going to get the first “space hotel”.
No, really.
“We are launching the first-ever affordable luxury space hotel,” said Orion Span founder and CEO Frank Bunger, who unveiled the Aurora Station to the world.
Another thing you can bet on is our desire to go back to the moon, which allegedly is going to happen in 2023. Which would mean that if successful, it would’ve been about 50 years between the current (2023) and last (1976) manned moon mission. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve launched MANY thing to the moon between that time period, but a manned mission to land on the moon? Not so much.
And now…for the event that I’m sure you want to talk about…getting to Mars. SpaceX is leading the charge on this one, as they’re endeavoring to send humans to Mars in the year 2024. Or more accurately, the mission to Mars will START in 2024, and they’ll likely land therein 2025.
The goal of this “first phase” of the mission is simple, he wants to get the people to Mars (call that Step 1) and then see how they’re able to interact on the planet, how well the cargo supplies hold up, and of course, set up the first “home” on the planet.
Elon Musk intends to have a livable base, generators that will run off of various power sources on Mars to ensure they don’t run out of power, and more.
. So obviously SpaceX, NASA and many others are working together to try and suss out all the kinks and possibilities to give this launch and mission one of the smoothest things around.
What we’re also hoping to be smooth is an event going on in 2029, less than a decade from now we’re going to have a close encounter of the asteroid kind. Specifically a rock called 99942 Apophis that was detected all the way back in 2004 and predicted to potentially hit the Earth in 2029. This has since been toned down to saying that it’ll pass by Earth just 20,000 miles above the surface. Which is still REALLY close, but barring something happening, we don’t have to worry about us getting hit.
Halley’s Comet is known as a “short period comet”, as it circles the confines of space, and then arrives back at Earth every 75-76 years. So if you’re lucky, you could see it twice in a lifetime.
Now, in 2069, another very important NASA mission is said to happen, but you can take this one with a grain of salt because of advances in technology happening right now. You see, NASA wants to send a craft to the place known as Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri is a place that you may have heard about because it’s a place where it’s said that a very Earth-like planet resides. The problem is that it’s over 4 light years away and in our quickest ship it would take tens of thousands of years to reach there…not fun.
I mentioned, there is a project being made right now that could send things to Alpha Centauri a LOT fast, and it’s set to launch in the next decade or so. Thus, if it works…we could have a look at the system a lot sooner. Time will tell.
From a look to the stars, to the remains of our world, 2095 (based on current calculations) will be a devastating year for Earth because of the fact that we’ll have cut down the entire Amazon Rainforest.
As for 2100, if we reach that point, our population will be over 11 billion (overpopulation)
From its likelihood, to whether SpaceX is the right person for the job, and more, join me as we explore whether SpaceX can get his starship to Mars by 2024!
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The mission to Mars is without a doubt the “mission of the decade”. This is what many groups, including NASA and other international agencies are attempting to create. One of those groups though is a privately funded one called SpaceX. And it’s a team that is truly trying to go and get to Mars within the next few years. But to understand if that’s even possible, you really need to know more about SpaceX itself.
“SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”
While that may sound very basic, it’s actually quite a complex thing. You see, for all the advances that humanity has made in regards to going into space, the fact of the matter is that it costs a LOT to do that. So much so that the United States main space agency, NASA, was hit with major budget cuts because the attempts they were making to revolutionize space travel just wasn’t working.
Enter Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, and a man who truly believes in trying to make space travel not just the future, but the present. He founded SpaceX in 2002 to try and make space travel better, cheaper, more accessible, and beyond, and as the Space X website loves to boast, since 2002, they’ve had quite a few successes:
“SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company capable of returning a spacecraft from low Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in 2010. The company made history again in 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station.
SpaceX successfully achieved the historic first reflight of an orbital class rocket in 2017, and the company now regularly launches flight-proven rockets. In 2018, SpaceX began launching Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful operational rocket by a factor of two.”
So as you can see, this is more than just a company, it’s a place with a mission, and that mission is to get humanity into space, onto Mars, and more. And it’s been working REALLY hard to try and get a manned flight into space, and it’s getting closer than you might expect!
Why is that? Because Elon Musk over the last several months and years has been building various spaceships like we noted before, and in recent months, he’s been testing the ones that he believes will send us to the planet Mars, including the line of ships he simply calls the Starship.
The Starship architecture consists of a big spaceship called Starship, which Musk has said will be capable of carrying up to 100 people, and a giant rocket named Super Heavy. Both of these vehicles will be reusable; indeed, rapid and frequent reuse is key to Musk’s overall vision, which involves cutting the cost of spaceflight enough to make Mars colonization and other bold exploration feats economically feasible.
You see, that’s the big problem with going to Mars and trying to set up a home there. It’s easy in concept, we just have to get there, set up a home, make sure it can withstand certain things and self-sustain eventually. But with how things actually work? We’re talking hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of hours trying to figure out all the potential problems that could happen on Mars before we even set foot on it! And of course, since things NEVER go the way we think they will, it’s going to inevitably turn into a thing where we’re trying to make things work on the fly, or have to counter some big issues that no one saw coming.
But if you think that this is stopping Elon Musk from dreaming big and trying to get us to Mars and beyond? You don’t know Elon Musk.
Before we dive more into the big dreams of Elon Musk, be sure to like or Dislike the video , that way we have a feedback to improve our work, and subscribe to the channel! That way you don’t miss ANY of our weekly videos!
Musk wrote that the eventual goal is to launch each Starship vehicle three times per day on average. Each Starship will be able to carry about 100 tons of payload to orbit, so, at that flight rate, every vehicle would loft about 100,000 tons annually, he explained.
Now, Musk may sound like he’s just spouting out a number here (and if we’re being honest…he kind of is) but in truth, he is trying to abide by the laws of space and reality. What do we mean by that? Simple, when it comes to the facts of space travel, having the right windows to travel in are essential. Not the least of which is trying to minimize travel time by making sure you are in the correct windows.
Confused? I’ll explain.
From what it is, to what SpaceX’s part in it is, to what it could mean for the future of space travel, and more! Join me as we explore why SpaceX is making Starlink!
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SpaceX, created by Elon Musk, is aiming to do a lot of things in the world and beyond right now, including their efforts to put humanity on Mars. But, in the early parts of 2019, they started launching rockets into space for another reason. Mainly, they launched satellites to start up their Starlink program.
What is Starlink? Well, believe it or not, it’s a program that is meant to be used to help bring the internet to people all over the world, including bringing very high-quality internet to people in the most isolated parts of the world. Furthermore, to nations like the US, the intent is to boost the internets’ power so that there will be no latency issues. All you’ll have to do when the internet is “up” is get a special antenna that SpaceX is developing.
Fast forward to March of 2020, and Elon Musk has now gotten 360 of these satellites into space. That number is significant because once it reaches 400 satellites he’ll be able to do a test with some minor coverage over North America. Once he gets to 800 satellites he’ll be able to push that to moderate coverage over the continent. Plus, with each successful launch he’s continuing to test his Falcon rockets and their payload capabilities which will help him during the Mars missions in the future.
If you’re curious as to how many satellites he has planned for the Starlink project to get true worldwide coverage, that would be 12,000. Which of course he plans to distribute over the next decade or so. It’ll take a while, but should it work, it could be a huge deal.
Now, you might be thinking, “Wouldn’t this kind of satellite launching, and network connectivity, and computing power cost all sorts of money?” Yes, yes it would. It’s going to cost Musk and SpaceX billions of dollars to get this to work, and obviously, there is no guarantee that it’ll work the way that Musk hopes. So to that end, why is Musk going through all the trouble of trying to get Starlink up and running?
Let’s start back at the beginning for this, ok? This all started in 2015, when Musk took the stage and announced that they were working on a satellite communications network. Why? Because he believed that there was “a significant unmet demand for low-cost global broadband capabilities.”
To further help with this goal, Musk and his team opened up a new base of operations in Redmond, Washington in order to help them get the satellites built. Which you would think would be a sign that they had a good plan and that they were going to implement it as soon as possible, right? Well…yes and no.
The original plan for Starlink was that they were going to build two prototype satellites, launch them into space, and then test how the reception and broadband signal was. There was just one big problem. While building the satellites were easy enough, making a receiver that people could use to both connect with the satellites, and having it be a “low cost” one…wasn’t so easy. Because of this, instead of launching the satellites in 2016 as intended, they didn’t launch until 2018.
Specifically, February 2018 when the two satellites, called Tintin A & B were indeed launched into space, and they were successfully communicating with the Earth stations down below. This test allowed SpaceX to both ensure that their plan would work, while also refining certain elements to help make sure that everything would be ok for those who aren’t tech savvy. After all, if you make something complicated to use, no one will want to use it, am I right?
Anyway, with THIS success, you’d expect a big celebratory thing to happen, right? Except, it didn’t, not then at least. SpaceX was unusually quiet about everything going on with Starlink until November 2018 when the FCC approved their launching of the full 12,000 satellite grid. A huge win for SpaceX and Elon Musk, because without that approval, they wouldn’t have gotten their worldwide grid goal.
Once that approval was made, the preparations for the launch of the satellites began. Then, in May 2019, the first 60 satellites were launched, and they were done in such a way that you could actually see them in space going into their various positions if you were in the right spot to look.
These satellites are doing more than you think though. They’re not just there to be in the sky to help out with internet connection, or no, they do more than that. They also have ion thrusters that’ll allow them to navigate the rather heavy-laden atmosphere of our planet (which is loaded with space junk) as well as take themselves out of orbit when the time comes for their replacements to arrive.
From whether we can get to it regularly, to why it would need to be done a certain way, join me as we explore whether we can colonize the moon by 2024( or 2030)To the moon!
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Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute, shall we? As we begin this brand new decade of life on Earth, there are certain “goals” that every nation is trying to achieve. And for a more “global” goal, the mission is to get to Mars…and then start to colonize it. Trust me when I say that there are a LOT of plans on how to get to Mars in a decent amount of time and to start colonizing it as soon as possible. To the extent that if the plans work, and if everything goes as it should, we could be living on Mars in a certain capacity by the end of the decade.
But for some scientists, they see this as…inefficient to a certain extent. Not the least of which is because Mars is hundreds of millions of miles away from Earth at its closest point (due to the orbits of Earth and Mars not being on the same timeframe), and yet there is something much, MUCH closer to Earth for us to colonize…the moon.
Now sure, Mars has been the focus in recent years because of discoveries of water on Mars, and certain other things that could make it a livable place, but what about the moon? Have we honestly ever thought about colonizing it? Yeah, much more than you might think. In fact there are plans to potentially have it done by 2024, and one time there was even a plan to have it settled by 2022.
So what exactly has stopped us from doing this wonderful thing? Simple, money. Isn’t that always the answer? NASA used to be a very well funded operation, but now, their budget is much more slashed than in previous decades. While we are still aiming to get to Mars, it’s much more of a long term project for NASA, while companies like SpaceX are doing more private and low-cost funding in order to help them get to their goals for the red planet.
Thus, by that token, one cannot have one and the other. Do we colonize Mars, or the moon? Most people have chosen Mars for various reasons, but not all, especially since some people believe they can do it AND Mars within the budget NASA:
“The US could lead a return of humans to the surface of the Moon within a period of 5-7 years from authority to proceed at an estimated total cost of about $10 billion (±30 percent),” conclude NASA’s Alexandra Hall and NextGen Space’s Charles Miller in one of the papers about colonizing the moon.
A bold claim, and one that got many people’s attention. Especially when he explained how a formerly $150 billion dollar spacecraft would now cost $10 billion total for the whole thing. The answer there is that technology has grown a lot since the 70’s:
“The big takeaway,” McKay told Popular Science, “is that new technologies, some of which have nothing to do with space – like self-driving cars and waste-recycling toilets – are going to be incredibly useful in space, and are driving down the cost of a moon base to the point where it might be easy to do.”
In short, since we already have the materials here on Earth to build spacecraft, and people at SpaceX are doing it much cheaper than NASA, there’s no reason to think we can’t go to the moon and set up colonies there all the while doing our thing here on Earth and getting ready for Mars.
Some even think that the need to go to the moon ( lunar surface) is a perfect “prequel” to going to Mars:
“My interest is not the Moon. To me the Moon is as dull as a ball of concrete,” NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay, who edited the special, open-access issue of New Space journal,( use news) told Sarah Fecht over at Popular Science. “But we’re not going to have a research base on Mars until we can learn how to do it on the Moon first. The Moon provides a blueprint to Mars.”
Everything in regards to the moon colony mission is being furthered every day, especially when it comes to things like Blue Origin offering to help get people there.
What is Blue Origin? Well, that would be Jeff Bezos’ (founder of Amazon) personal space company (not unlike what Elon Musk has with SpaceX), and what he is working on is a reusable engine that wouldn’t just send astronauts to the moon, but also send tourists into space. All of which would help make Bezos billions of dollars in contracts from various space agencies since his rockets are currently very advanced. Plus, having reusable rockets saves time from having to build individual ones for each mission. Which obviously can be very costly as well.
Has he actually proven that his rockets work? Yes, actually he has, he has two rockets that he has both in the works and is also testing. One of them is the 59-foot New Shepherd Model. This is the one that he aims to use to put people into space. In May of 2019 he launched and landed one of these powerful rockets without any issue.
