《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第20期:短回答環節(1)

SHORT-ANSWER SECTION

短回答環節

Q. If my printer could literally print out money, would it have that big an effect on the world?

Q．如果我的打印機能夠打印出紙幣，這會對世界有多大影響？

-Derek O'Brien

——德雷克•奧布里安

A. YOU CAN FIT FOUR bills on an 8.5" × 11" sheet of paper.

A．在一張8.5英寸×11英寸1的信紙上能夠放下4張紙幣。

If your printer can manage one page (front and back) of full-color high-quality printing per minute, that's $200 million dollars a year.

如果你的打印機1分鐘能夠打印出1張紙大小正反面高質量全綵色圖像，那麼一年下來就能印出2億美元。

This is enough to make you very rich, but not enough to put any kind of dent in the world economy. Since there are 7.8 billion $100 bills in circulation, and the lifetime of a $100 bill is about 90 months, that means there are about a billion produced each year. Your extra two million bills a year would barely be enough to notice.

這些錢足夠讓你過上富裕的生活，但對於全球經濟來說簡直是九牛一毛。全世界在流通的100美元紙幣有78億張，一張100美元紙幣的使用時間大約爲90個月，所以每年要印刷約10億張百元大鈔，而你自己印出來的額外的200萬張基本沒人會注意到。

Q. What would happen if you set off a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane? Would the storm cell be immediately vaporized?

Q．如果你在臺風眼裏引爆一顆核彈會發生什麼？風暴中心會被立刻氣化嗎？

-Rupert Bainbridge (and hundreds of others)

——魯珀特•班布里奇（以及其他許多人）

A. THIS QUESTION GETS SUBMITTED a lot.

A．許多人都提過這個問題。

It turns out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-the agency that runs the National Hurricane Center-gets it a lot, too. In fact, they're asked about it so often that they've published a response.

令人意外的是，美國國家海洋和大氣管理局——同時也是管理國家颶風中心的組織——也多次被問到這個問題。後來他們也受不了了，於是發表了一個回覆。

I recommend you read the whole thing,1 but I think the last sentence of the first paragraph says it all:

我建議你把那份回覆完整地看一遍，2a但我相信回覆中第一段的最後一句話已經很好地給出答案了：

“Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”

“不用說，這不是一個好主意。”

It makes me happy that an arm of the US government has, in some official capacity, issued an opinion on the subject of firing nuclear missiles at hurricanes.

美國政府的一個部門居然對“向颶風發射核彈”這一問題發表了官方看法，這很是讓我開心。

Q. If everyone put little turbine generators on the downspouts of their houses and businesses, how much power would we generate? Would we ever generate enough power to offset the cost of the generators?

Q．如果每個人都在自家和商店的落水管底部裝上小型渦輪發電機，這樣能夠產生多少電力？產生的電力能夠賺回安裝發電機的錢嗎？

-Damien

——達米安