Back to work

Sorry I haven't been posting, but as alluded to by Gimpy I was busy wasting time during my first weekend of this week (which happened on Tuesday and Wednesday thanks to the wonder of snow and the absence of anything resembling a snow plow in the Lou). However, I was forced back to work today (the humanity!) and had to relay one of the greatest things I have ever seen on Wikipedia.

One of my students told me to google something called a Hypercane. He didn't know how to spell it, he didn't really know what it was. All he could say was I saw something about it on the Discovery channel and you have to see it.

Here's essentially what it is: simultaneously the last thing you ever want to witness first hand and the coolest fuckin' thing you have ever seen.

As the name suggests, it's a gigantic hurricane, in theory at least. It would result from the superheating of the ocean (it would have to be 122 degrees Fahrenheit or 59 degrees hotter than the highest recorded ocean temp ever recorded). This could really only happen from a massive meteor of asteroid crashing into the ocean (in fact, there's a theory that it was hypercanes that resulted from an asteroid that really did in the dinosaurs).

I know precious little about the science of hurricanes, but here are the basic specs on a theoretical hypercane (all of which make me want to curl up in the fetal position and suck on my thumb):

-Wind speeds of over 500 mph (the strongest recorded reading is 195 mph)

-"A tremendous lifespan"

-One hypercane could likely be the size of North America

-It would create storm surges washing immeasureable gallons of water onto the shore from the ocean, absolutely drowning the coastline

-It would decimate the ozone layer resulting in lethal levels of UV rays reaching the Earth's surface

-And just in case one Hypercane doesn't do it for you...the oceans would stay hot for weeks allowing for many more hypercanes to form!

Now, to be fair, this is only some people's belief. Other scientists think those ocean conditions would merely create a storm 10 miles in diameter. The only problem is that that storm would be much more like a tornado, and the biggest tornado ever seen is only 2.5 miles wide. Gulp.

So, that was pretty pointless, but writing about the end of the world can't be all bad...