When you cross the line from “driving a Nascar track quickly” to “Oops, we built a particle accelerator”, you know SCIENCE was involved.

@bloomsux69

6 ай бұрын

I laughed at that one

@irgendwieanders2121

6 ай бұрын

At least technology...

@moumdoh

6 ай бұрын

specifically all-caps... *inhales... SCIENCE*

@roryschussler

6 ай бұрын

As carcinization turns organisms into crabs, a similar process turns any "What if?" style question involving physics into a discussion of building a particle accelerator.

@louistech112

6 ай бұрын

lol nice one

The major innovation here is the driver seat gimbal to make sure the accelerations are always "Eyeballs In".

@yschroder

6 ай бұрын

That seems like a good classification of virtually all what if? experiments: eyeballs in or eyeballs out. Mostly it is out though...

@nicklachen5060

6 ай бұрын

This is a tatic in some sci-fy novels for ships so they can do crazy meanuevurs in space/atmospheres. The most recent I've that uses this is the Skyward Series by Brandon Sanderson (book #1 is called Starsight). Pretty neat. He consulted with pilots with his ship design and had to redo the whole cockpit basically so the fights he wanted to be done could actually be done without the pilots dying/severe injury (though he still uses a technology to reduce the effect of very high impulse).

@devynnagy2707

6 ай бұрын

Hey Destin!

@Krissco2

6 ай бұрын

Laces out! No wait, eyeballs in!

@alexortiz9777

6 ай бұрын

What if we hired a driver with no eyeballs?

"Let's say the human has to survive" is my favorite clause of what-if questions.

@azraelle6232

Ай бұрын

I love how quickly it was vetoed to make things more interesting.

Turns out, even if Nascar had no rules, the universe still would have

@Chleosl

2 ай бұрын

Great phrase

@Becky_Cooling

20 күн бұрын

👏 also 1000th like

@knpark2025

19 күн бұрын

💯

@bugado8953

16 күн бұрын

No, you're wrong. NASCAR's rules are the one thing holding the universe together.

@Dontbustthecrust

15 күн бұрын

beautiful

“Oops, we’ve accidentally built a particle accelerator” might be the most XKCD sentence ever

@Dervalanana

6 ай бұрын

As soon as we went from centrifuge to tube, I knew this would be the inevitable result

@davidegaruti2582

6 ай бұрын

Aww not again !

@DestructivelyPhased

6 ай бұрын

Nah, the most xkcd sentence is “you wouldn’t really die of anything in the traditional sense, you’d simply cease being biology and become physics.”

@aogasd

6 ай бұрын

​@@DestructivelyPhasedthat one's a classic 😂

@EmmaHopman

6 ай бұрын

​@@DestructivelyPhased Oh no Mr Stark I don't feel so physics

Between the requirements of "driver alive" and "no driver", there should be "driver, but not necessarily alive". How fast could we slush around a person's worth of soup-like homogenate?

@jkid1134

6 ай бұрын

Ah, the self-driving racecar hearse variant.

@tehguitarque

6 ай бұрын

This was Elon's original plan, but then he bought twitter. Similar if slower result.@@jkid1134

@trbz_8745

6 ай бұрын

Or alternatively, "driver, but not necessarily alive" as in an AI-piloted vehicle. The car can only go as fast as the sensors and computers can process what's happening and make decisions.

@alex.g7317

6 ай бұрын

Gaygenate

@tomfoolery4490

6 ай бұрын

@@trbz_8745 Well, at that point you might still be limited by the acceleration tolerance of the electronics. I believe most computer motherboards can survive 100 gees for short periods, but I'm not sure about long timeframes. Artillery fuzes and shell guidance computers can also survive peak loads of thousands of gees, but again I'm not sure about sustained loads. I would assume 100 gees sustained would probably be a reasonable upper limit for a purpose-built unit with enough processing power for a self-driving race car. The tires and engine would probably give out long before reaching that, though.

The "conCERNing" pun deserves an award

Man i hate when i accidentally create a particle accelerator

One of the best NASCAR cheats was Smokey Yunick realizing that there was a limit on the size of the gas tank, but not the size of the fuel line. Dude made an 11' x 2" fuel line that held an extra 2 gallons 😂 Serious legend right there. It's fair to say the entire rule book was written based on his stunts

@tncorgi92

6 ай бұрын

That's magnificent

@gamemeister27

6 ай бұрын

The story goes that the inspectors found a different issue with his car, and tired of his antics, remove the fuel tank so he'd have to have it towed back to the garage. He then hops in the car, starts it right up, and drives off while yelling about there's one more issue they didn't catch.

@GewelReal

6 ай бұрын

​@@gamemeister27how do you remove a fuel tank with fuel in it??

@RaquelFoster

6 ай бұрын

And Robert Duvall said that in Days of Thunder! But it's a pretty boring way to cheat! The Chaparral 2J had better downforce than anything in 1970 because it had an extra snowmobile engine powering two fans which sucked it down to the ground. I had to look that up when I saw how weird the car looked in Gran Turismo LOL

@gamemeister27

6 ай бұрын

@@GewelReal you're gonna have to ask someone who knows way more about mechanic stuff

Due to how the question is phrased, I'm pretty sure keeping the human and car stationary and moving the track relative to them at high acceleration would work.

@roryschussler

6 ай бұрын

Awesome idea! But then the structural integrity of the track would probably be a limitation, assuming you can engineer the massive machine to lift and spin a NASCAR track. If you can replace the asphalt with some kind of carbon nanotube material, is it still the same track? What if you reinforce it with an outer layer of super strong material?

@eqiniox

6 ай бұрын

I like the idea of a NASCAR track frisbee, but chatGPT says it can't exist :(@@roryschussler

@DirtyMardi

6 ай бұрын

Or, speed up time relative to anyone else on the track.

@canadiannomad2330

6 ай бұрын

@@DirtyMardi "Q:It's simple, change the gravitational constant of the universe."

@enterchannelname8981

6 ай бұрын

@@roryschussler And what if you replace a section of the track with carbon nanotube? What if over time you gradually replace the track with the nanotube? Is it still the Track of Daytona?

I binge-read xkcd over a decade ago, I always thought it stood out as one of the very best webcomics. I'm so surprised to have my perception of the author suddenly expanded with the addition of his voice.

@xxpersonxx

6 ай бұрын

I feel like his voice sounds exactly like I expected haha

@mayochupenjoyer

19 сағат бұрын

@xxpersonxx i don’t know why, but when i first heard these narrations, i was like “that couldn’t be him.” for some reason i had imagined his voice to be deeper

Fun fact: in 2001 Indycar actually found the limit of human tolerance for G force. The cars were going around the track in Texas so fast the drivers were beginning to lose consciousness and the race had to be cancelled.

@judo_ashtray

6 ай бұрын

IIRC the drivers were hitting 6 Gs in the turns

@VekhGaming

5 ай бұрын

Looked it up, apparently the pole in qualifying was averaged at 233mph/375kmh on a 1.5 mile/2.4 km course. Yea that sounds like it would lead to some new and interesting doctor's visits. Also minor correction, that was CART, not Indycar.

@jmur3040

5 ай бұрын

CART not Indy (Mandatory "Tony George ruined american open wheel racing") Built to the rules, Indy cars weren't as fast. People started to notice drivers walking strangely and having other obvious neurological symptoms after qualifying laps. Then after some research they realized they were hitting 5+ Gs in the turns every lap and that it was very likely someone - or multiple someones - would blackout during the race. Only race that CART ever cancelled for driver safety.

@acarrillo8277

4 ай бұрын

Was this the same event that cause driver's retinas to separate? or was it corneas

@UNHchabo

4 ай бұрын

@@VekhGaming The modern Indycar series considers CART, ChampCar, and the Indy Racing League to be predecessors. In 1999 Juan Pablo Montoya won the CART championship and Greg Ray won the IRL championship, and today they're both considered Indycar champions.

"Oops! We've accidentally built a particle accelerator" You need to stop doing that Randall

@johncho3467

6 ай бұрын

Channeling black hat.

@solalabell9674

6 ай бұрын

“Caaaarrrrlllllll!!!!”

@mckseal

6 ай бұрын

"What are you doing up honey? It's 1am" "Oh just finishing putting together the barbeque" "What's this part for?" "Oh that's the capacitor for the electromagnet, it'll accelerate the- god damnit"

I feel like "Oops, we accidentally made a particle accelerator" is going to become a running joke of this channel.

@leoaskham6564

6 ай бұрын

I really hope so

@mrptr9013

6 ай бұрын

So far these are all from the books, so no, the running gag is ending life on earth or worse.

@juliegolick

6 ай бұрын

@@mrptr9013 Why not both!

@MeTheOneth

6 ай бұрын

It's like the way that all efforts to perfect transportation end up reinventing the passenger train.

@Balsiefen

6 ай бұрын

That or "oops we accidently made a black hole" or "oops, we accidently made a particle accelerator followed by a black hole"

When I read the question itself it reminded me of Car Wars, the tabletop game. For a racing scenario like this, you usually had to limit cars to having no track-damaging or disrupting weapons, which meant no mines, caltrops, spike plates, non-flaming oil slicks, explosive rockets, etc. Just slug throwers, smoke or paint sprayers, lasers, etc. The question became what's the lightest armored car that could survive to reach the finish first.

@jothki

6 ай бұрын

Yeah, the lack of restrictions on preventing the competition from moving quickly is a significant oversight that the video fails to address. That sort of thing could end up being a serious issue when training AIs on how to perform tasks. The rules that humans claim they are following are always a small subset of the ones that they actually are following.

2:29 I love the casual mention here - "It would also mean breaking the sound barrier on the back stretch" like it's NBD 🤷‍♀️

Small, possibly pedantic issue: at 3:31 you say that diamond is one of the TOUGHEST materials, when in fact it's toughness (ability to deform plastically without breaking) is quite poor. Its HARDNESS, however, is spectacular. Other than that, great video, love your work!

@agonizin

6 ай бұрын

True! Toughness is the area under the stress strain curve.

@adrianthoroughgood1191

6 ай бұрын

Yes! Words have specific meanings in a science/engineering context.

@DavidCowie2022

6 ай бұрын

This is a safe space for pedantry.

@yitzakIr

6 ай бұрын

That's one point for PumpkinsAmongUs

@mloxard

6 ай бұрын

I'm sorry but you didn't say "Um, actually" so I can't give it to you

Fun fact! Formula 1 cars are limited by rules to keep them within what a human being can withstand because drivers started passing out on corners! Instead of incorporating g suits and such, they made rules that keep the cars from breaking their fragile human occupants!

@DavidCowie2022

6 ай бұрын

That's a funny way of spelling "squishy meatbag."

@davidaugustofc2574

6 ай бұрын

In other words, their balls were too heavy to go this fast

@jnhkx

6 ай бұрын

g-suit might not be the answer because it's not the same as fighter jet that pull you 9-10G downward. F1 are pulling 5-6G sideway. I think g-suit is just squeeze your legs and let less blood flow down when it got pulled. All the sideway protections are mostly there now. And the main thing is, they don't want to make it faster than this, it's very dangerous already at this speed. It probably capped at 7G,370 km/hr forever. Still, both are amazing enough that somehow, we as human can train to endure it hundreds of times per flight/race.

@bewilderbeestie

6 ай бұрын

I think they should drive them remotely, and eliminate all those annoying safety rules. It'd make for far more interesting races. You might want to avoid being in the audience, however, due to the increased risk of taking a F1 car to the face.

@Iceman259

6 ай бұрын

CART (now IndyCar) actually had to cancel a race at Texas Motor Speedway in 2001 because of this

That "oops we built a particle accelerator" line is so relatable. You don't know how many times I've been doing thought experiments in my head for fun, only to find I've come back to something that already exists.

3:40 "Diamonds: actually flammable"! 🔥

Here’s an idea: since all tracks are topologically circles, you can build a car that has the driver’s seat mounted on a retractable arm that can extend to some ludicrous length. The arm is on a pivot that allows it to point towards any direction. Now, during a race, just make sure that the human driver stays at an arbitrary point near the track, and have the arm swing in a certain way, such that the human stays relatively still as the car completes the race.

@chinook700

6 ай бұрын

The challenge is not move a car around a track, rather "get a human being around a track" not sure if yours fulfills that requirement.

@JurekOK

6 ай бұрын

cheater ;-)

@Adarisa

6 ай бұрын

It is not true that all racetracks are toplogically circles - Suzuka in Japan, for example, is a figure-8. But I think the solution works anyway.

@MikeyAntonakakis

5 ай бұрын

@@Adarisayou’d have trouble getting the arm under the bridge at Suzuka I think

@kiwitrainguy

5 ай бұрын

Oh, so it has a bridge/tunnel for the intersection, not both roads on the same level?🤔😅 Both roads on the same level would make the race much more interesting: "See you at the crossroads" (splat)😮.@@MikeyAntonakakis

whoever had the idea for this youtube channel is a genius. makes me wanna buy the books more and more. love you randall!

@punkdigerati

6 ай бұрын

Given how Randall follows the vocal conventions as the rest of Neptune studios productions, whether or not he pitched it, they're definitely the driving force behind it.

@Li-Nuss

6 ай бұрын

@@punkdigerati KZread videos are just a medium for the delivery of content. It's the content that matters. And the content is made by Randall Munroe.

@punkdigerati

6 ай бұрын

@@Li-Nuss you can read the same video description as I did to see the people and corporation behind this.

@adityakhanna113

6 ай бұрын

What's crazy is that minutephysics was inspired by xkcd and they now get to work together

@willschannel_

6 ай бұрын

that is awesome@@adityakhanna113

I remember getting into xkcd's what ifs about like 8-10 years ago. Loved the concept. After it kinda stopped I discovered lots of youtubers, that in my eyes took the formula, tweaked it and run with it, all great educators in their own right, guys like mustard and CGP grey, latter i think adapted the art style and tendency to go off a deep end. The scene bloom and grew, it became a staple, a phenomena, tracing roots to xkcd's what if. In a way it is to all others like AVGN was for comedy game reviews and letsplayers - a granddad. But as AVGN continued to work in the same medium, What if never really jumped to video format. Well, up until recently that is. And it worked out just about as well as I was imagining it (barring the mouse over quotes and footnote hyperlinks). That underlines how much the edutainment community borrowed from What If in my opinion. And it's great. Thanks, Randall!

@Frisbieinstein

5 ай бұрын

As far as I'm concerned this might as well be in a foreign language.

@solidjb

5 ай бұрын

@@Frisbieinstein sorry, English is not my native language, and I tend to ramble...

Nice touch having Buddy Baker and Bill Elliott's actual Daytona cars on the podium at 2:15.

Hmmm, the speed with a healthy human might be lower, rotating them to keep the G-forces oriented towards their chests would introduce significant torque on the body as it turned at those speeds. These kinds of motions are particularly prone to concussions due to the brain failing to rotate as fast as the skull.

@johnbennett1465

6 ай бұрын

There is only a slight divergence between the force and the desired "down" direction. So that should not be a problem. Instead the rotation will add a centripetal force adding to the G-force. This reduces the max G-force the vehicle can experience to keep the driver safe.

@jmchristoph

6 ай бұрын

I was about to say the same thing. One could probably calculate an acceleration profile which minimizes jerk or snap around the track, and simply take a couple integrals to find the time. But since that acceleration profile is periodic, I personally think a clever punch line would be to treat it as a wavefunction, put it through a Fourier transformation, and riff on the solution's units & dimensionality. Kinda like the previous "What If?" answer on fuel efficiency as a unit of area corresponding to the cross-section of a hypothetical ribbon of fuel along a highway.

@WyvernYT

6 ай бұрын

I do appreciate that he went for the re-orientation sphere, though.

I remember in _The Expanse_ one of the hard limitations of small ship space combat/racing is how many Gs the human body can handle. They have special chemicals that people are injected with to help mitigate the negative effects of high g maneuvers but even then 15g is about the maximum before people start dying

@utkarshsingh343

6 ай бұрын

"Here comes the juice!"

@tomsixsix

6 ай бұрын

Also racing ships have gyroscopes in them to orient the pilots into the safest position.

@alveolate

6 ай бұрын

ooh and they also had these really cool pilot seats that would swivel against the g-forces just like the ball thingy in the video

@The.Heart.Unceasing

6 ай бұрын

yeah, that's a huge problem for any hard-scifi witer that want human crews in space battles the following is a rant saying that drones would be great in space battles : (edit : disregard that, I fucked up my maths, you only need a 1-2 Gs to juke a laser at 5 light-seconds, the argument do not stand) (at least if you have the tech to make laser weapons effective at those ranges, but if you have torch-drives, I assume that you have at least hard-UV lasers) (unmmaned crafts still make sense in space because they are much more resilient to thing that would kill us, but g-forces are not one of them) (at least not in space battles) (edit edit : I also fucked up the earth-moon distance, it's 1 light-second, not 8) Given the fact that you can't dodge light-speed weapons (i.e. lasers, maser, xraser, etc) (and, realistically, close to light-speed, like particle beams and macrons accelerators) because you literally cannot see them coming, you have to randomly juke so that the enemy cannot know where you are due to light-lag, which mean you have to move fast enough that your ship isn't in the same place at all in a whatever your light-time distance is. So if you are engaging an enemy at 5 light-second, which is an enormous distance (for reference, the moon is at roughly 1 light-seconds from Earth), you have 5 second to move before they return fire with perfect accuracy. Having battle like that would be hell on any human crew, so the solution would be to have battle at 20-30 light-seconds or, much more practical, use unmanned ships ! You could even use highly mobile drones swarms with very fast, very small ships bouncing and refocusing a laser generated by a bigger ship much further away to engage enemies at maybe half to a third of a light-second ! (yeah, "close-quarter" has a different meaning is space) Or you could go the other way and say "fuck light-speed weapons" and use missiles and coil-guns instead. They have the same problems but at much, much closer range. But that's boring.

@thedman9052

6 ай бұрын

I love The Expanse, but I'm skeptical that drugs or chemicals could increase a human's g tolerance without killing them. G forces kill because they cause tissue to physically crush itself, so what could you inject that would counteract that? Something like embalming fluid??

3:47 O O P S

@bluey-next777

4 ай бұрын

4 likes in a month? That was fast...

@bluey-next777

3 ай бұрын

Also This is conCENing

So cool to actually hear Randall's voice along with these what-ifs! Congrats on arriving to a new platform buddy!

For anyone interested in actual no-rules racing, there's hill climbs, which while not strictly speaking wheel-to-wheel racing (it's a time trial), require some ridiculous aero devices to navigate twisty mountain roads at silly speeds.

@aspecreviews

6 ай бұрын

Also time attack. Google "KERS Kels" and that's not even close to the craziest one...

@thejman3489

6 ай бұрын

Super Modifieds. They race short ovals. I don't know if they have rules today but the whole series was built on an anything goes basis. Just had to have 4 tires and an engine that powers it.

@alimanski7941

6 ай бұрын

@@thejman3489 those are the ones with the gigantic rear wings, right?

@thejman3489

6 ай бұрын

@alimanski7941 Yes. The wings were originally on Sprint Cars and Sprint Cars still use it. The super modifieds took the wing a step further and made it lift up going down the straights, reducing drag, and goes down in the corners, increasing down force.

@basher20

6 ай бұрын

my first reaction for what a car that was reasonably expected to race an oval track without a rulebook or budget would end up being a hybrid of an unlimited hillclimber, a supermodified, and a Group-C sportscar, likely with a turbine engine for speedways and high-displacement piston for short-tracks.

I am so happy Randall started a KZread channel. Thank you for your content!

No freakin way we get an xkcd KZread channel!! THANK YOU FRIEND, I’ve missed binging your comics at work but our filters don’t allow it anymore, now you’re back where they can’t see you :)

These What-Ifs work so well in video format! Great idea.

The thing is, in the last example, The driver (particle accelerator operator) actually stays alive and well!

@abraveastronaut

6 ай бұрын

Not really going around the track anymore, though, are they?

@lemonmane69

5 ай бұрын

@@abraveastronaut No, but they’re still alive.

I love when these ideas trend to "Whoops, we accidentally built an x." Fastest NASCAR? Reduce the mass, magnetically levitate it! Oops, it's a particle accelerator. Cook a chicken by slapping? Reduce the size of the slaps, spread them out over time. What you're describing is an oven.

So glad you're still uploading! Thanks so much! I've loved this series so long, & am super eager for more videos of it!

I’m so happy this series is on KZread now. Thank you!

Discovering xkcd has a KZread channel is like Christmas coming early

If you allow for a circular track, orbiting a gravity well will get you moving pretty fast without any unhealthy acceleration. Tidal forces from the gravity well will set a lower limit to the track size.

@JurekOK

6 ай бұрын

The person in question would still have to contend with hard radiation from small particles that happen to be nearby, and from the gamma/x-ray radiation from the "spectator lights". So, yes, you could race "particles" this way, but for humans, the limit would be how much radiation do you agree to take to your balls.

@dielaughing73

6 ай бұрын

Isn't an orbit by definition a constant acceleration towards the centre? Just because we don't feel significant g-forces in freefall around the earth, doesn't mean we wouldn't while orbiting on the scale of 1-2km circumference

@JurekOK

6 ай бұрын

@@dielaughing73 the point of the OP is to compensate for the human-squashing acceleration by entering an orbit of a small black hole. so, in principle, if you set things just right, you could be orbiting a tiny black hole and doing just 3G inwards and that would be faster than doing a zero-G orbit around the same gravity well. You would still have to contend with the radiation though.

@Wick9876

6 ай бұрын

@@dielaughing73 As long as every bit of your body is being accelerated at the same rate it might as well be standing still. It's when some parts of the body are accelerated more than others and they bang into each to balance things out that you turn into goo.

@dielaughing73

6 ай бұрын

@@Wick9876 that's making my head hurt a bit but I can't find a way to refute it. I imagine you'd get a bit dizzy or disoriented still from spinning around so fast..

i love that these are being turned into videos. i read your first what if years ago and loved it

Dude I loved your books, so glad I found this channel :D

Soooo, the Large Hadron Collider is basically a miniature NASCAR track… Seriously love these videos. Good brain food.

@galoomba5559

6 ай бұрын

Miniature? It's 27 km long

@Appletank8

6 ай бұрын

@@galoomba5559 On the other hand, the "cars" are very small.

@aqimjulayhi8798

5 ай бұрын

@@galoomba5559 my bad. I mean the cars are miniature, the track is humongous.

I absolutely love your videos!!! Keep up the good work!

Thank you for making a KZread channel! I have been a fan of the xkcd site for years, and I was so happy to see a channel dedicated to your view of the universe.

there's a TON of fascinating science-based stuff in auto racing that frankly doesn't get covered enough on KZread. As a life long NASCAR fan, I couldn't be happier seeing this video pop up!

You could reanimate the dead driver right before the finish line just go fast enough to not have lasting damage from being dead but not too fast to make sure they don’t get damage from going to fast

I'm interested though if the sport were to evolve to have drivers remotely operating their vehicles. It becomes much more like a video game, but with the limitations of real life physics. What are the highest speeds that could be achieved before the reaction time of the driver is insufficient to operate the vehicle on these tracks?

@Kumquat_Lord

6 ай бұрын

Drone car racing would be an amazing sport

@emm6064

6 ай бұрын

such a sport would be required to make power-ups _mandatory_. Nascar with banana peels and turtle shells is something I might actually watch!

@toolbaggers

6 ай бұрын

They already race RC cars. Look at multirotor FPV racing, 3D heli aerobatics and pan car racing to get an idea. If you look at top level video gaming, the reaction times needed are superhuman.

@shortcat

6 ай бұрын

or even better - allow ai. at first it will be the same driving aids used in road cars but over time better ai will be developed that can completely replace the human driver.

Soooooo well done!!! Every time I had a thought to improve the process, the narrator was already there! Great job!

I love your books. It's fun and informative. Nice to see you on KZread.

I legitimately love this series! Own all of the books, favourite being what if and what if 2, thanks for making such a great series :)

@foximacentauri7891

6 ай бұрын

What other books are there? I only knowing these 2

@bobcoombs7924

6 ай бұрын

@@foximacentauri7891 Thing Explainer is great fun.

@lorenzovaleraini

6 ай бұрын

@@foximacentauri7891 there is how to and i think there is also a why if however it may have just been a parody inside the book

I guess the final step would be to make a black hole with event horizon just smaller than the track lenght. That way you could make light orbit in a straight line around the black hole.

@rtg_onefourtwoeightfiveseven

6 ай бұрын

You'd want the event horizon to be 2/3 the track radius. That way the track lines up with the photon sphere, the radius at which light orbits in a circle. Any lower than that and the light would plunge into the black hole.

Oh my god I'm so glad you've started uploading these. I lost my copy of the first book and this has made my day! Instant subscribe, looking forward to more :)

My favorite video in your series. Nice work 👍

3:00 this limit holds only if the strap has the same cross section all along. If the cross section is allowed to vary, you can go way faster.

Particle accelerator doesn't leave much room for advertisements thats for sure!

I'm sorry, where did you get such TOP TIER sound effects? I listened to this video 23 TIMES just for the sound effects, and I was brought to TEARS by them! Beautiful work!

I am so happy to hear Randall's voice after loving his work for so many years.

Did you consider the possibility of a frozen embryo? It's a stretch of the definition of human and alive, but I think it would be able to withstand more gs.

@TheAgamidaex

6 ай бұрын

ahah, now that's thinking with portals hell, let's go a step further. Change the laws to recognize a fertilized egg as a human. Think how much we could improve the record!

@greentoby26

5 ай бұрын

"It's a stretch of the definition of human and alive" Religious lunatics disagree

The NASCAR to particle accelerator pipeline is real

This is amazing, I been reading XKCD for years, so happy to see it on KZread!!

Here's my plan: Build a really tall vehicle where the driver sits at the top. Just before start of the race, it starts to tip over to the left. Once the driver is over the exact center of the track, the car can drive around as fast as it wants. The driver stays in place and only experiences rotation.

@timrtz

6 ай бұрын

That's what I was thinking!

These illustrations are neat! He should start a webcomic!

@MuhammadAmmar-oj1js

6 ай бұрын

Yeah. I think he could write a book or two as well. Hey I have a brilliant idea! He should name it "What if" just like his youtube channel!

“Eyeballs -fall out- distort” gave me a hearty chuckle, thanks Randall and Merry Christmas ❤️💚❤️💚❤️

Just subscribed. Im SOO glad i found this xkcd youtube channel. Seem pretty new or not many videos as of yet (unless im missing something). I REALLY Hope to see more what if videos AND potentially other new xkcd video series(!!!) in the future as im sure they would be popular! WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE.

This is an unusually good way to put the speed of light in perspective!

We've basically hit that limit of human capabilities in other racing categories - the Firestone Firehawk 600 in 2001 had to be cancelled due to concerns over g-force induced loss of consciousness. The average speed of the pole lap was 233.344 miles per hour, and that's on a 1.5 mile tri-oval, not the 2.5 mile configuration for Daytona, so your corners have a tighter radius

The human 3-6g limit is for g forces acting downwards. Thats what a pilot experiences while turning. This is the limit due to your blood being pulled down to your feet and leaving your brain without oxygen. But when making sure the g forces always act to your back, you could very likely sustain quite a bit more than that, and thus move at a higher speed

This channel is an absolute winner. I'm surprised it hasn't been established earlier.

This was an awesome concept and great video!

please make make more of these vids :-) love them so much

Loved your take on this wild question from Hunter! It's really cool to think about. The human body ends up being the speed breaker.

This channel rocks so hard. It reminds me of Minute Physics but with it's own personality. (I love both channels.)

@romeocharliegolf

6 ай бұрын

MinutePhysics used to collab with xkcd a couple of times. Also, if you checked the credits/the about page on the channel... These videos are also produced by the MinutePhysics guys ;)

Love xkcd. Didn't know about the youtube channel. Happy it showed up in my feed.

So glad I'm on this channel early. This one's going to blow up real soon

I'm shaking with laughter at "that's as fast as you can go". Thank you!

I'm so glad Randall has finally made it to KZread

Omg I had your what if book as a kid Awesome to find your channel

Love this video! And It’s the handwriting is inspiring. Kudos to the artists. An additional step comes to mind: surround your vehicle with enough mass to distort spacetime. Oops, we’ve built an Alcubierre drive.

Man those videos are amazing

You sound just like my old physics teacher…always had a compelling example and explaining all possible variants. Always interesting lessons

I love this and your books

Great content. Thank you. Merry Christmas.

I love the idea that a racetrack and a particle accelerator are two points along the same spectrum 'cause it's never something I'd think of but when I think about it it makes perfect sense

Casually breaks the sound barrier on the back stretch. Yep this is very much an XKCD moment.

One of the best scientific and humorous youtubers out there.

This is so informative! Great job, fantastic reporting!🌻🌼🐝 Keep it up 🙌

I genuinely feel that the "Oops we've accidentaly built a particle accelerator will stick to the channel as a lifelong meme and as a slogan. It is the most Randall Munroe sentence ever.

I adore the sound effects in this.

Ive been a big fan of the book series, and when I discovered that there is a youtube channel about What If, I was hooked!

This reminded me of a cartoon from early 2000's. It was about nascar racing where they did all sorts of crazy things with the cars and tracks, like rocket engines etc.

I'm so glad I discovered this channel 🎉

Yay! I'm so glad this channel exists!

I'm so ecstatic you're on KZread now, Randall. This platform needs people like you to steward the unshittification of the platform.

Yoooo I remember reading your book when I was a kid, man wow I didn't know you had a yt channel that makes alot of sense

Oh dang, I totally missed that Henry Reich was the writer & director for this! That's fantastic, love his work!

I loved these books and didn’t realize this existed until now!

"Oops! We've accidentally built a particle accelerator." That was my single favorite line from the original article XD

The assignment turned from "living driver" to "liquid driver"

I love the moment when you say "but what if we assume that nobody have to survive" 😂

I didn't know XKCD was on youtube. This is great!

Ah XKCD, reminding us how unintentionally terrifying everything is under the right circumstances.