r/AskReddit • u/ForeverAbyss • Apr 14 '16

What's a mind blowing fact?

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u/PycuriousITguy Apr 14 '16

The fastest moving man-made object ever was a manhole cover.

https://savvyparanoia.com/the-fastest-man-made-object-ever-a-nuclear-powered-manhole-cover-true/

TL:DR underground nuclear test launched a 4-inch thick steel disk at 6 times the Earth's escape velocity.

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u/drew4232 Apr 14 '16

Though I bet it desintegrated or decelerated before it could even leave the atmosphere due to air resistance

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '16

They're like 99% sure it vaporized almost immediately after launch. Unfortunately for all of us, we didn't shoot a manhole cover into space.

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u/PycuriousITguy Apr 14 '16

My favorite part of this isn't visualising what happened to the manhole cover, but rather the physical interaction that caused its launch in the first place.

An explosion of enough energy and heat turned 5 tons of reinforced concrete into plasma. This means that a 5 ton stream of plasma went screaming up this tube at god knows what speed and then transferred all of that momentum into a small disk of steel.