Hey everyone, we’re really excited to let you know
that What If In Real Life is coming.
It’s a couple of episodes with
me in real life.
I’m not here,
I’m here.
Right?
I’m just a real person in real life.
Put that back up.
But make sure to watch for In Real Life
from What If.
OK, one Earth is good,
but two Earths is even better.
Today, we’re taking
our blue marble of a planet
and splitting it right down the middle.
There are many ways
you could attempt
to divide the planet.
You could crack it open
with an asteroid,
blow it apart
with nuclear weapons
or start digging.
But no matter what,
you’d have your work cut out for you.
Having an asteroid do the job
would be a risky move.
The one that made
this 160 km (99 mi) wide
and 40 km (25 mi) deep
crater in South Africa
was bigger than the Chicxulub asteroid
that killed the dinosaurs.
A planet-splitting space rock
would need to be much bigger.
And we wouldn’t fare very well.
Now, blowing things up
could get messy too.
Just to match the energy
of the dinosaur-killing asteroid,
you’d need to set up at least
one billion nuclear bombs.
To split the Earth in half,
you’d need to make a ring of bombs
running around the globe.
And yeah, that idea
probably wouldn’t work
very well, either.
Digging and cutting your way
through the planet
seems like the least damaging option.
And how hard could it be?
Humans dig things all the time, right?
Well, I hope you don’t mind
sweating up a storm because
things are about to get hot.
Really hot.
To start cutting through the planet,
first you’d need to get
through the crust.
And the best place to start digging
would be where
this first layer is the thinnest.
That would mean
venturing beneath the ocean
where the crust can be
as little as 5 km (3 mi) in thickness.
After that,
you’d be staring face to face
with the mantle.
At about 2,900 km (1,800 mi) thick,
this would be the layer
you’d spend the most time working through.
But luckily, the drilling
would get a little easier,
thanks to the fact that the mantle
is made up
of partially melted rock.
But this layer is melted for a reason.
It’s incredibly hot.
And the deeper you get,
the higher the temperature
and the pressure around you
would climb.
You’d need some serious
heat-resistant gear
for this kind of work.
Even at the top of the mantle,
temperatures can be
as high as 1,000 °C (1,832 °F).
Toward the bottom,
you’d be surrounded
by an even more scorching heat
up to 3,700 °C (6,690 °F).
Then, you’d run into a problem.
The kind of heat-resistant gear
you’d need to get through
this next layer
doesn’t exist.
Even Tantalum Hafnium Carbide Alloy,
the most heat-resistant material
you’d have at your disposal,
wouldn’t do you any good
once you reached
the 4,000 °C (7,200 °F) range.
But for the sake of our scenario,
you’d invent something new
that would get you
the rest of the way through.
Now you’d be working through Earth’s
2,200 km (1,370 mi) thick outer core.
OK, finally
reaching the inner core of our planet,
you’d be in
for a serious amount of heat.
But not only that, the pressure
within the core is
3.6 million times higher than it is
at sea level.
Yeah, imagine all that pressure unleashing
as you tapped into the core.
This would lead to
an extremely violent
ejection of molten iron,
nickel and silicates
from the Earth’s mantle.
So it’s a good thing
you decided to start
drilling at the bottom of the ocean.
Otherwise, this molten rock would come
all the way up on land
to drown landscapes
and create massive firestorms.
Now, on the other hand,
drilling under water,
you’d make a huge mess
for a lot of marine life.
You’d keep drilling until you
came out on the other side.
At long last,
this continuous ejection
of all this material
from the core
would propel the two halves
away from each other.
The planet would begin to separate.
Now, one major consequence
you probably missed
while planning this stunt is that
each half would start to collapse
in on itself almost immediately.
You'd be literally blown away
by powerful gusts of wind
as the atmosphere rushed to cover
the planet's broken sides.
All of that thanks to gravity
that would try to turn
these two semi spheres
into two spheres.
Luckily, that process
would take millions of years.
For now, you should check out
what crazy events
would unfold on a split planet,
while you can.
Some of the things that are coming
might make you want to stitch
these half-Earths
back together again.
For one, this would really
mess up our magnetosphere.
Usually, electric currents in the outer core
drive the Earth’s magnetic field.
But thanks to cracking
that wide open, liquid metal
from the Earth’s outer core
would begin to escape into space.
The core could cool down
or stop churning altogether.
And that means Earth
would lose the magnetic field
that protects us from dangerous
solar radiation.
Without our magnetic field,
solar winds would strip the atmosphere
from the half-Earth
before you even had a chance
to adapt to living there.
And from there,
things would get even worse.
These two halves
would be slowly
drifting further apart from each other.
And the Moon wouldn't like that.
There’s a chance that
neither of the halves
would have strong enough gravity
to keep a firm hold on
our lunar companion.
Yeah, the Moon might be
set free to roam
as a rogue space rock.
And without the Moon,
you can add smaller tides,
confused nocturnal animals
and a wobbly tilt
on both halves of Earth
to the list of upcoming disasters.
But if these two Earths stayed
close enough to each other,
we might just keep the Moon.
It would keep orbiting us
in a new orbit,
like a planet
in a binary star system.
This split would also wreak
havoc on all the satellites
that provide
vital communication systems
to both halves of the globe.
Like the internet.
Yeah, if you wanted to use the internet
to communicate
with friends and family
across space,
you'd have to hope
that the satellites
take on a new orbit
around the half-Earths.
It’s likely that most,
if not all of these satellites
would have their orbits destabilized.
And as a result,
they could be thrown
out into space
or come crashing down
onto either face of Earth,
causing even more destruction.
After all the initial chaos,
we’d have to settle
into the reality of life
on a split Earth.
The two semi-spheres
would keep slowly
moving away from each other.
And instead of sending shuttles
to the Moon or Mars,
we’d be sending spaceships
to the other half of Earth
to transport people and fetch food
and materials.
One side of Earth
might supply the other
with certain types of produce,
while the other could be
the supplier
of certain electronics
or important minerals and metals.
Only buying
anything that needs to travel
across space would become
enormously expensive.
Imagine a glass of milk costing
upwards of $20,000
in this topsy-turvy,
divided reality.
We probably should’ve
experimented on something
less consequential
to every living thing
on the planet.
Like splitting the Moon in half.
But that’s a story for another WHAT IF.