Black Holes; A New Source of Energy

Quick, what’s the best way to provide an alternative source of energy for the Earth? If you answered, “Get a mini black hole to orbit Earth,” then you and physicist Stephen Hawking may be thinking on the same wavelength. In a lecture on Feb. 2, the famed scientist said tiny black holes, about as massive as the average mountain, could power all of the world’s energy needs.

The trick? Proving they exist, finding them and then figuring out how to harness all of that energy safely. “There is nothing technically wrong with this idea, but it is not very practical, at least within the next 10,000 years,” said Sabine Hossenfelder, a physicist at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, who blogs at backreaction.blogspot.com.

LEAKY BLACK HOLES

Originally, scientists believed black holes were regions of collapsed matter so dense that nothing, not even light, could escape from their gravitational pull. Then, in 1974, Hawking put forward the idea that black holes leak quantum particles, a process now known as Hawking radiation.

The biggest black holes, which are billions of times more massive than the sun, live at the hearts of galaxies, while black holes about 10 times the size of the sun are peppered throughout the universe, Hossenfelder said. Such massive black holes are very cold, and so emit Hawking radiation. But researchers have also proposed the existence of relatively tiny black holes that would be hotter, and so emit more particles via Hawking radiation.

“A mountain-sized black hole would give off X-rays and gamma-rays at a rate of about 10 million megawatts, enough to power the world’s electricity supply,” Hawking said in the lecture. “It wouldn’t be easy, however, to harness a mini black hole. You couldn’t keep it in a power station, because it would drop through the floor and end up at the center of the Earth.”

ELUSIVE SPACE OBJECTS

But there’s another problem: No one has ever found evidence of these mini black holes, and there are good reasons to doubt they exist, Hossenfelder said.

In theory, these black holes formed early in the universe’s history, when matter existed in a hot soupy plasma. As this primordial soup got squished together and flung apart, causing fluctuations in density, the theory held, occasionally some regions got so dense that the matter collapsed in on itself, forming mini black holes, Hossenfelder said.

But to form these primeval black holes, most models assume a high level of density fluctuations, which also tend to produce many more black holes than are present in the universe. “You don’t want everything to end up in black holes,” Hossenfelder told Live Science.

MAJOR TOWING PROBLEM

Then, presuming these miniature black holes are real and that people could detect the objects’ existence, the problem becomes how to reach the monstrous powerhouses. That could take tens of thousands or even 100,000 years, Hossenfelder noted.

Next comes the monumental task of harnessing the black holes’ power for energy.

“You cannot land on it and put some booster on it and move it, because it does not have a surface,” Hossenfelder said. By using the gravity of a much larger object, people could theoretically tow a mini black hole, eventually coaxing it to sit in Earth’s orbit, she said. Scientists would also have to harness the black hole’s energy while simultaneously shielding humans from the black holes’ harmful radiation (a relatively simple matter compared to all of the other tasks involved in the setup, she said).

DIY BLACK HOLES

Of course, if venturing deep into outer space is unrealistic, there are other ways to harness mini black holes, Hawking said in the lecture.

“We might be able to create micro black holes in the extra dimensions of space-time,” Hawking said.

But these extra dimensions may or may not exist: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has so far seen no trace of them, Hossenfelder said. And if there are extra dimensions, that doesn’t mean that lab-made mini black holes could power anything. If particle colliders such as the LHC did produce these tiny black holes, the objects would stick around for just 10 raised to the minus 23 seconds, she said.

“These tiny black holes would decay immediately. There is no way you could harness their energy,” she said.

SO? WHAT DO YOU THINK? SHARE YOUR PRECIOUS OPINION AND DISCUSS.

Did you know? (Issue 1)

This topic will shed light on some of the recently discovered facts and information from many parts of the world. Some of them is really impressing and worth knowing and memorizing.
1. JELLYFISH KILL MORE PEOPLE EACH YEAR THAN SHARKS DO.

Jellyfish is reportedly 15 – 30 times deadlier than sharks. Some species of stinging jellyfish are almost invisible in the water and the first warning anyone may get is large numbers of people leaving the water with painful, itching stings. Even after it is dead, the jellyfish can still continue stinging. The stingers activate upon touch and work whether the tentacle is still attached to a living jellyfish or not. Talk about a zombie ha?!!
2. DOGS UNDERSTAND HUMAN PERSPECTIVE.

A recent study revealed that dogs are much likely to steal food in the dark when humans cannot see them which indicates that they somehow understand that what they are doing is not right from a human’s point of view.
3. CHILDREN’S DAY!


India actually celebrates Children’s Day on November 14th which is exactly 9 months after Valentine’s Day. I guess protection is off the table during that day!!

5. FACEBOOK LANGUAGE.



You can actually change Facebook language to upside down or pirate if you want to. Jack Sparrow would be happy. Hey, how come there is no Klingon option?!!

6. MILLIONAIRES.



Half of all millionaires are self-employed or own a business. Around 80% of them are college graduates. Only 18% of millionaires have a Master’s Degree. 8% have law degrees, 6% have medical degrees and 6% have a PhD. I mean, if they can do it, why can’t we?

7. ST. VALENTINE.

In addition to love, St. Valentine is the patron saint of plague. How is that for a contradiction?!!

8. OH JAPAN!!

In Japan, women give chocolates on Valentine’s day. Men are supposed to return the favor a month later on White Day, March 14th.

9. HOW MANY PEOPLE SHARE YOUR BIRTHDAY?

You share your birthday with approximately 9 million other people in the world. Let’s put that to the test shall we? Mine is September 13th; who has the same birthday?

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Some scientific facts that will leave you speechless

It is really sad that only few people are into science nowadays. I think this is mainly due to the way science is portrayed and taught to kids at schools all around the world. Why can’t we learn science and still make if fun and interesting at the same time? Is it a bad idea to ask comedians, for instance, to include some science facts in their jokes? It is an idea worth mentioning and discussing I think.

With that being said, here are some amazing science facts that will literally blow your mind. These kind of facts just continue to amaze me and keeps me hungry for more. It just proves that with all the things we have learned in the world still have an ocean of facts to dive into.

IT CAN TAKE A PHOTON 40,000 YEARS TO TRAVEL FROM THE CORE OF THE SUN TO ITS SURFACE, BUT ONLY 8 MINUTES TO TRAVEL THE REST OF THE WAY TO EARTH

A photon travels, on average, a particular distance, d, before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction.From the core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) where it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps. The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes between many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, the light that reaches us today is energy produced maybe millions of years ago. Isn’t that just amazing! (image source)

THERE ARE 8 TIMES AS MANY ATOMS IN A TEASPOONFUL OF WATER AS THERE ARE TEASPOONFULS OF WATER IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

A teaspoon of water (about 5 ml) contains 2×1023 water molecules, but each water molecule is comprised of 3 atoms: two hydrogen and one oxygen. Moreover, if you’d laid down end to end each water molecule from a teaspoon full you’d end up with a length of 50 billion km or 10 times the width of our solar system. (image source)

IF BETELGEUSE WOULD EXPLODE TRANSITING FROM THE RED SUPER GIANT STAGE TO SUPERNOVA THEN OUR SKY WOULD LIGHT CONTINUOUSLY FOR TWO MONTHS. IT CAN HAPPEN ANYTIME, WITHIN A COUPLE OF THOUSAND YEARS, TOMORROW OR EVEN NOW!!

Betelgeuse lies some 430 light-years from Earth. Yet it’s already one of the brightest stars in Earth’s sky. The reason is that Betelgeuse is a super-giant star – the largest kind of stars in the Universe. Betelgeuse has a luminosity about 10,000 times that of the Sun and its radius is calculated to be about 370 times that of the sun. If it were positioned at the center of our sun, its radius would extend out past the radius of Mars. Because it’s near the end of its lifetime, Betelgeuse is likely to explode into a supernova. (image source)

THERE IS ENOUGH DNA IN AN AVERAGE PERSON’S BODY TO STRETCH FROM THE SUN TO PLUTO AND BACK. 17 TIMES

The human genome, the genetic code in each human cell, contains 23 DNA molecules each containing from 500 thousand to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled, or about 5 cm on average. There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body and if you’d uncoil all of the DNA encased in each cell and put them end to end, then these would sum to a total length of 2×1014 meters or enough for 17 Pluto round trips (1.2×1013 meters/Pluto round trip). (image source)

HOW BIG IS THE UNIVERSE?!!

The known universe is made up of 50,000,000,000 galaxies. There are between 100,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars in a normal galaxy. In the Milky Way alone there might be as many 100,000,000 planets. Do you still think you are alone?!! (image source)

THE AVERAGE HUMAN BODY CARRIES TEN TIMES MORE BACTERIAL CELLS THAN HUMAN CELLS

It’s funny how we compulsively wash our hands, spray our countertops and grimace when someone sneezes near us—in fact, we do everything we can to avoid unnecessary encounters with the germ world. The truth of the matter is that each and every one of us is a walking petri dish! All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug or 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho. Don’t worry, though. Most of these bacteria are helpful; in fact, we couldn’t survive without them.

For one thing, bacteria produce chemicals that help us harness energy and nutrients from our food. Germ-free rodents have to consume nearly a third more calories than normal rodents to maintain their body weight, and when the same animals were later given a dose of bacteria, their body fat levels spiked, even if they didn’t eat any more than they had before. The gut bacteria is also very important to maintaining immunity. (image source)

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10 Ridiculously Common Science Myths

There is nothing better than a bit of myth-busting (which accounts for the popularity of the television program of the same name), so here we are again, presenting you with a new list of terribly common misconceptions and myths.

1. EVOLUTIONARY IMPROVEMENTS.

The Myth: Evolution causes something to go from “lower” to “higher”.

While it is a fact that natural selection weeds out unhealthy genes from the gene pool, there are many cases where an imperfect organism has survived. Some examples of this are fungi, sharks, crayfish, and mosses – these have all remained essentially the same over a great period of time. These organisms are all sufficiently adapted to their environment to survive without improvement.

Other taxa have changed a lot, but not necessarily for the better. Some creatures have had their environments changed and their adaptations may not be as well suited to their new situation. Fitness is linked to their environment, not to progress.

2. HUMANS POP IN SPACE.

The Myth: When exposed to the vacuum of space, the human body pops.

This myth is the result of science fiction movies which use it to add excitement or drama to the plot. In fact, a human can survive for 15 – 30 seconds in outer space as long as they breathe out before the exposure (this prevents the lungs from bursting and sending air into the bloodstream). After 15 or so seconds, the lack of oxygen causes unconsciousness which eventually leads to death by asphyxiation.

3. BRIGHTEST STAR.

The Myth: Polaris is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere night sky.

Sirius is actually brighter with a magnitude of 1.47 compared to Polaris’ 1.97 (the lower the number the brighter the star). The importance of Polaris is that its position in the sky marks North – and for that reason it is also called the “North Star”. Polaris is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor and, interestingly, is only the current North Star as pole stars change over time because stars exhibit a slow continuous drift with respect to the Earth’s axis.

4. THE “5 SECONDS” RULE.

The Myth: Food that drops on the floor is safe to eat if you pick it up within five seconds.

This is utter bunkum which should be obvious to most readers. If there are germs on the floor and the food lands on them, they will immediately stick to the food. Having said that, eating germs and dirt is not always a bad thing as it helps us to develop a robust immune system. I prefer to have a “how-tasty-is-it” rule: if it is something really tasty, it can sit there for ten minutes for all I care – I will still eat it.

5. THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON.

The Myth: There is a dark side of the moon.

Actually – every part of the moon is illuminated at sometime by the sun. This misconception has come about because there is a side of the moon which is never visible to the earth. This is due to tidal locking; this is due to the fact that Earth’s gravitational pull on the moon is so immense that it can only show one face to us. Wikipedia puts it rather smartly thus: “Tidal locking occurs when the gravitational gradient makes one side of an astronomical body always face another; for example, one side of the Earth’s Moon always faces the Earth. A tidally locked body takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner. This synchronous rotation causes one hemisphere constantly to face the partner body.”

6. BRAIN CELLS.

The Myth: Brain cells can’t regenerate – if you kill a brain cell, it is never replaced.

The reason for this myth being so common is that it was believed and taught by the science community for a very long time. But in 1998, scientists at the Sweden and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California discovered that brain cells in mature humans can regenerate. It had previously been long believed that complex brains would be severely disrupted by new cell growth, but the study found that the memory and learning center of the brain can create new cells – giving hope for an eventual cure for illnesses like Alzheimer’s.

7. PENNIES FROM HEAVEN.

The Myth: A penny dropped from a very high building can kill a pedestrian below.

This myth is so common it has even become a bit of a cliche in movies. The idea is that if you drop a penny from the top of a tall building (such as the Empire State Building) – it will pick up enough speed to kill a person if it lands on them on the ground. But the fact is, the aerodynamics of a penny are not sufficient to make it dangerous. What would happen in reality is that the person who gets hit would feel a sting – but they would certainly survive the impact.

8. FRICTION HEAT.

The Myth: Meteors are heated by friction when entering the atmosphere.

When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere of the earth (becoming a meteor), it is actually the speed compressing the air in front of the object that causes it to heat up. It is the pressure on the air that generates a heat intense enough to make the rock so hot that is glows brilliantly for our viewing pleasure (if we are lucky enough to be looking in the sky at the right time). We should also dispel the myth about meteors being hot when they hit the earth – becoming meteorites. Meteorites are almost always cold when they hit – and in fact they are often found covered in frost. This is because they are so cold from their journey through space that the entry heat is not sufficient to do more than burn off the outer layers.

9. LIGHTNING.

The Myth: Lightning never strikes the same place twice.

Next time you see lightning strike and you consider running to the spot to protect yourself from the next bolt, remember this item! Lightning does strike the same place twice – in fact it is very common. Lightning obviously favors certain areas such as high trees or buildings. In a large field, the tallest object is likely to be struck multiple times until the lightning moves sufficiently far away to find a new target. The Empire State Building gets struck around 25 times a year.

10. GRAVITY IN SPACE.

The Myth: There is no gravity in space.

In fact, there is gravity in space – a lot of it. The reason that astronauts appear to be weightless because they are orbiting the earth. They are falling towards the earth but moving sufficiently sideways to miss it. So they are basically always falling but never landing. Gravity exists in virtually all areas of space. When a shuttle reaches orbit height (around 250 miles above the earth), gravity is reduced by only 10%.


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10 Real-Life Costs of Action Movies

Today I feel like tackling a new type of topics which is “Movies”. Action movies are known for their over-the-top destruction, high-tech gadgetry, amazing vehicles, and some really expensive set pieces. Of course, these movies are all fictional, and they sometimes utilize fictional technology. But if they did happen in real life, what would the financial costs be? This question has driven some people to examine a few famous action films, and they’ve even calculated the estimated costs of different aspects of the films.

It is also important to note that some of the entries may contain mild spoilers.

1. THE HARRY POTTER SERIES.

Putting a Muggle price on something in the wizard world of Harry Potter sounds like an impossible task. After all, having even one magical item or magical building would be priceless. That didn’t stop David Cross from trying to do the impossible (no, not that David Cross). Writing for the real estate websiteMovoto, Cross decided to figure out the theoretical real estate value for the wizarding school of Hogwarts. To calculate the cost, he used three determining factors for trying to establish a price: location, comparison to other similar real estate, and square footage.

In the books and the movies, it never says where Hogwarts is located, but there are clues throughout the series that indicate the school is situated in the United Kingdom. The Hogwarts Express leaves from London at 11:00 AM, travels 105 kilometers (65 mi) per hour, and arrives at Hogwarts at sunset. That means, logistically, the only place it could go is Scotland. With that in mind, the landscape and environment depicted in the books and movies resemble the area known as Galloway Hills. Looking at large and expensive houses in the area, Cross determined that the average price per square foot would be $493.

Next, Cross had to figure out how big Hogwarts is. Using scale models, he figured out that Hogwarts sits on a property that is approximately 28 acres. As for the building itself, he calculated the square footage based on the amount of students that attend the school every year, which is 280 pupils. If there are 20 students per class, and each student needs 5.6 square meters (50 ft2) to learn, then each classroom would be 93 square meters (1,000 ft2).

That means the school, which is seven stories with towers and an underground area, would have a total space of 38,000 square meters (414,000 ft2). However, this does not seem to include specialty rooms like the teachers’ offices, living quarters, a Quidditch pitch, or the Great Hall. But just for the land, main building, and towers, the real estate of Hogwarts is valued at around $204 million. But that is definitely worth the investment if it comes with the Room of Requirement.

2. JURASSIC PARK 1993.

Who wouldn’t want to visit a real-life Jurassic Park? Granted, the park is a death trap, but still, there would be real, live dinosaurs there! The question then is how much would it cost to construct and maintain Jurassic Park? Fandango Movieclips took a look at the 1993 classic to figure out that very question, and as you probably guessed, it’s a lot of money.

Jurassic Park is actually made up of two islands that are off the coast of Costa Rica. One island was used to house the park, and the other one was used to raise the dinosaurs. For the land alone, the cost is $10 billion. Then to staff the park with genetic engineers, lawyers, animal caretakers, paleontologists, and computer engineers, it will cost about $7.9 million.

For the price of cloning the dinosaurs, they compared it to the cost that a company called Bio Arts charges to clone dogs. That was $150,000. In the park, there are 50 different types of dinosaurs. So if you clone one of each, and throw in additional charges like surrogates, stem cell research, and gene modification, it brings the cost of cloning dinosaurs to $8.5 million (a bargain if you really think about it). But in order to get the DNA, you need to mine for mosquitoes in amber . . . which would cost $9 million.

For construction of the park, Fandango compared it to other world-class theme parks. The average cost of building one of those is about $1.5 billion. Then there are ongoing operational costs of running a theme park. For example, Disney spends $11.7 billion every year on park expenses. But Jurassic Park has a very unique add-on, which are live dinosaurs that need to be taken care of. For that estimated cost, Fandango thought that it would be comparable to the world’s largest zoo, the San Diego Zoo. They have 660 species and over 3,700 animals, and their expenses for the year are about $207 million.

If you combine all of the expenses, it means that to open Jurassic Park it would cost $23.4 billion, and then there would be an annual cost of $11.9 billion to run and maintain the park.

3. STAR TREK 2009.

How much would it cost to build your own USS Enterprise? Well, in order to do that, you would need to decide which Enterprise to calculate. So Eric Limer at Gizmodo decided to see how much it would cost to build the one in theStar Trek reboot directed by J.J. Abrams.

According to sources, the size of the spaceship is 725 meters (2,379 ft) long, 191 meters (625 ft) in height, and the saucer diameter is 305 meters (1,000 ft). That means for raw material, like steel, you’re going to shell out $12.4 billion. Then those raw materials need to be assembled.

But in order to construct something like the USS Enterprise, it would need to be built in parts and assembled in space, and that is where the real expense comes in. For example, let’s look at SpaceX’s real-life spaceship, the Falcon Heavy. This craft can ship one pound of stuff into space for $1,000. The raw material needed for the USS Enterprise would be 228,000 tons. That means it would cost $456 billion to just get the material into orbit for construction, and that doesn’t even include labor.

Of course, the USS Enterprise just wouldn’t be the same without its high-tech perks. For replicators, 3-D printers could be used, specifically MakerBot’s Replicator 2. These cost $2,000 each. But more than one would be needed for a ship that size. Limer suggests the ship would have 50, and around 10 of them would be large printers for manufacturing needs. Of course, it would need material to print. So if you factor in the cost of the printers, the printing materials, and shipping charges, the replicators would cost over $300,000. As for a holodeck, if you were to make one using curved televisions, high-powered computers, and motion-tracking cameras, it would run $6.5 million for one, counting shipping.

Once you have a giant spaceship pimped out with replicators and a holodeck, you’re going to need some weapons to protect yourself. In the series, they use photon torpedoes, but those don’t exist in real life so it’s hard to calculate their cost. But for argument’s sake, Limer suggests using advanced UGM-133 Trident II missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. One missile costs $30.9 million to make, and it weighs approximately 59,000 kilograms (129,000 lb). It is unclear how many torpedoes are on board, but in the original series, the USS Enterprise houses 38. So Limer uses the same amount just to make it easier. This means the torpedoes would cost approximately $6 billion to manufacture and ship.

Besides the torpedoes, the Enterprise also has six phaser beams, and the Navy has developed a laser gun that would be a suitable replacement. The estimated cost of six weapons shipped into space is a mere $171.6 million. Finally, personnel and supplies would cost around around $4.3 billion.

For all of that—which doesn’t even include the warp drives, the transporter, or electronics—the total is $478,947,711,160. That’s more than the GDP of Norway.

4. STAR WARS 1977.

One of the most impressive spacecraft to ever appear in any film is the Death Star from Star Wars. If someone were to build one, how much would it set them back? Economic students at Lehigh University decided to answer that question to see if even building the exterior was possible. The first Death Star is described as 140 kilometers (460,000 ft) in diameter, and the students believe it’s made out of steel. Using a modern warship as a frame of reference, they believe that the Death Star would need about 1.08 quadrillion tons of steel. While there is enough iron in the Earth to build two million Death Stars, the problem is at the current rate of steel production, it would take over 830,000 years to convert enough iron to steel.

Finally, the cost of all that steel would be $852 quadrillion, which is 13,000 times the GDP of Earth in 2013. And that is just the exterior! That doesn’t include anything inside the Death Star, like engines, life systems, electronics, or anything else. So if you want your own Death Star, you might want start pinching those pennies and stockpiling steel.

5. SAVING MATT DAMON.

What is it with Matt Damon and needing to be rescued? It seems in a lot of his movies that he’s either stranded or needs to escape a catastrophe. The fact that he needs to be saved so much inspired one Quora user to look up how much money would have been spent on rescuing Matt Damon’s many characters.

In Courage Under Fire, he needed a Gulf War I helicopter rescue ($300,000), and in Saving Private Ryan, he required a World War II search party ($100,000). Damon needed a Middle East private security return flight inSyriana ($500,000), a US army transport from Baghdad in The Green Zone($500,000), and there’s also the space station security deployment and damages in Elysium ($100 million). And let’s not forget his three biggest expenses to date. There was the Mars mission in The Martian ($200 billion), the Earth evacuation spaceship in Titan AE ($200 billion), and that interstellar spacecraft in Interstellar ($500 billion).

That brings the grand total to $900 billion. Luckily, this is all fictional, but is Matt Damon really worth $900 billion? Just for some context, all of Damon’s movies combined have brought in $2.9 billion at the box office.

6. GODZILLA 1998.

Disaster pornographer Roland Emmerich’s version of Godzilla is famous for being very underwhelming. But while there are problems with every aspect of the film, no one can deny that a lot of stuff was destroyed. YouTubers CinemaSins and VSauce3 actually tabulated the cost of destruction by Godzilla, plus damage incurred by people trying to stop the giant lizard. Some of the more expensive items that were destroyed include the MetLife Building ($565 million), the Chrysler Building ($190 million), the USSAnchorage ($1.1 billion), the Brooklyn Bridge ($250 million), and Madison Square Garden ($555 million). That’s not mentioning all the subway damage ($85 million).

The grand total of all the destruction depicted onscreen is $3.3 billion, and if that is adjusted for inflation, it would be over $4.9 billion. Of course, if you’ve seen the 2014 reboot of Godzilla, you’ll know that the cost of the damage in the 1998 version is a pittance compared to the newer film.

7. MAN OF STEEL.

In Man of Steel, after General Zod’s attempts at terraforming the Earth fail because of Superman, Zod vows to kill every last human. From there, the most destructive battle in superhero movie history (so far) unfolds. According to Watson Technical Consulting, a firm that estimates possible damage caused by disasters, the fight between Superman and Zod would cause $750 billion in physical damage. Even worse, it would have killed 129,000 people, with 250,000 missing (presumably dead) and another million injured.

Altogether, the damage, cleanup, loss of life, and injuries stemming from the fight would cost $2 trillion. In terms of destruction, it would be like detonating a 20-kiloton atom bomb. That’s about the size of the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. The difference would be that the battle between Superman and Zod wouldn’t leave any radiation behind.

8. THE AVENGERS 2012.

At the conclusion of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, Loki successfully uses the Tesseract to open up a wormhole above Stark Tower in Manhattan. This leads to the Avengers assembling to fend off the Chitauri invasion. As you might assume, the end battle is quite destructive, and it leaves a lot of Manhattan in ruins.

Curious at how much damage was actually caused by the battle, The Hollywood Reporter asked one of the leading disaster-cost prediction and assessment firms, Kinetic Analysis Corp. (KAC), to estimate the cost of the damage. According to KAC, the physical damage would cost $60–70 billion, and economic repercussions and cleanup costs would be $90 billion. When accounting for the loss of human life, the grand total of the destruction would be about $160 billion. Just for some perspective, the September 11 attacks cost $83 billion, while Hurricane Katrina cost $90 billion. If you combine those two disasters, then it is only $13 billion more than the fictional attack on New York.

9. THE IRON-MAN TRILOGY.

When it comes down to it, Tony Stark’s two real superpowers are his mind and his money. After all, if he was smart but didn’t have the money, his suits probably wouldn’t be nearly as effective. The problem Stark may face at some point is that being Iron Man is very expensive.

MoneySupermarket.com, a price comparison website, decided to calculate the amount of cash Stark would have spent by the end of Iron Man’s last standalone movie, Iron Man 3. One major cost is the 42 different suits of armor he constructed. Mark 1–7, which were featured in the first two movies, cost $1.5 billion combined. The suits he built by the end of Iron Man 3 are Mark 8–42, and they are worth about $7 billion.

Another important tool that Stark utilizes is Jarvis, the artificial intelligence system he developed. To create a similar system, it would cost $10 million. Besides Iron Man expenses, Stark lives in a swank Cliffside Malibu home valued at $25 million. Then you add in all his cars—worth around $1.7 million—and by the end of the trilogy, Stark spent over $10,086,485,000. Perhaps Stark should consider renting his Mark suits to kids’ birthday parties to start recouping those costs.

10. SPECTRE

At some point in your life, you’ve probably thought about how great it would be to be a spy like James Bond. He has cool clothes, awesome gadgets, and slick cars. Tech Insider decided to take a look at how much it would cost to be James Bond in Spectre, and let’s just say if you’re a taxpayer in the UK, you better hope that there really isn’t a spy in MI6 like Bond.

First, let’s take a look at what Bond wears. In the film, he has two pair of sunglasses that are $895 combined. Bond also seems to have an affinity for Tom Ford clothing. The white tuxedo jacket he wears is $4,390, while his black bomber coat is $2,222. Besides Tom Ford clothing, he wears an N. Peal mock turtleneck that costs $305. Yes. You read that right. There is a mock turtleneck that costs over $300. For footwear, his shoes are from Crockett & Jones Norwich, and they are $597. And really, how often do you see Bond’s feet?

As for his gadgets, he uses a Sony RX100 IV Camera, valued at $948. His cell phone is a Sony Xperia Z5, and that costs $927. His watch, an Omega Seamaster 300 that only tells time, runs about $7,500. His handgun is a $719 Heckler & Koch VP9. And of course, Bond wouldn’t be Bond without a little bit of alcohol. The vodka used in his famous martinis is made using limited edition Belvedere Vodka, and that costs $41. And if he is drinking wine, it needs to be chilled, so he uses a Bollinger Crystal Cooler set worth $6,895. Bond’s most expensive item is the Aston Martin DB10, a car specifically made for him, and it is expected to go for $1.5 million at auction.

Throw in an additional Craig Blouson jacket ($1,390) and a snazzy pair of Tom Ford stirrup pants ($1,531) and this brings Bond’s total for Spectre to $1,528,360. While this may not seem like much for James Bond, it’s important to remember that this does not include any other cars, gadgets, or clothes he had accumulated in his 23 other movies.

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Future is Here..

In order to preserve our stories, we used to carve and paint rudimentary images and basic text into stone tablets and onto the walls of caves. Nowadays, any of us can store hundreds of thousands of documents onto a cheap, thumb-sized USB, preserving them for decades. Scientists at the University of Southampton have taken this one extraordinary step further,announcing that they have developed a method to record data that could outlast the human race itself.

Back in 2013, a new type of data storing technology was debuted by the team at the university’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC). An abstract presented at a conference revealed that a 300 kilobyte copy of a text file was recorded into a specialized form of glass, a small “chip” that had been manipulated by a laser.

Extremely fast and intense pulses of light altered the nanostructure of the silica glass chip, creating incredibly small “dots” that could store up to three individual bits of information. Strings of these dots were aligned in three layers that, when aligned on top of each other, were no thicker than the width of a human hair.

This data was said to have been preserved in five dimensions (5D): the three-dimensional position of the data dot within the glass was recorded, along with two additional dimensions provided by the intensity and the wave pattern (polarity) of the laser used to form the dot. Scientists were then able to read the encoded text file, which in this case was the 2013 conference abstract itself.

Promoting their device ahead of the International Society for Optical Engineering Conference in San Francisco this week, the ORC team has now recorded several large documents onto their chips, including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Isaac Newton’s Opticks, and the Magna Carta, all in 5D. However, this 5D aspect is not actually the revolutionary part of the technology – the incredible capacity and resilience of each chip is.

The King James Bible stored on one of the chips. ORC/University of Southampton

The researchers claim that each chip, several of which can fit into the palm of your hand, can store up to 360 terabytes of data. Assuming one e-book is two megabytes in size, one 5D chip would be able to store 180 million of them. Considering that around 130 million books have been written, a record of humanity’s history could actually be preserved on one single chip.

These chips would also be likely to outlast our own species: They remain stable for up to 1,000°C (1,832°F), and at temperatures of even 190°C (374°F), they would survive for 13.8 billion years. This number was probably chosen by the researchers as it also happens to be the current age of the universe.

Professor Peter Kazansky of ORC said in a statement that “It is thrilling to think that we have created the technology to preserve documents and information and store it in space for future generations. This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilization: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten.”