What if a hole to space opened above Manhattan? #shorts - Video

What if a hole to space opened over New York?

You wouldn't get sucked into it. A mile-wide hole a mile above Midtown pulls air in at 680 mph, faster than a jet, and the air freezes into a white funnel of ice. On Fifth Avenue you'd feel a gale, not enough to lift you.

The real problem is the whole planet: a loaded supertanker's worth of air leaves Earth every second. You'd never notice in a year. After a century, your beach feels higher than Denver. After 1,000 years, water boils at hot-tub temperature. Around year 1,600, the oceans boil while staying cold.

The numbers:
• Choked (sonic) flow through a 1-mile hole at 1 mile up: ~410,000 t (450,000 US tons) of air per second at 305 m/s (682 mph), cooled to −42 °C (−43 °F) (our calc)
• Earth's air: 5.15 × 10¹⁸ kg = 5.7 quadrillion US tons (Trenberth & Smith 2005) → it drains with a ~396-year time constant
• 100 years: 78% of the air left, like standing at ~6,800 ft. 1,000 years: 8%, water boils at 104 °F. ~1,600 years: 1.7 kPa, water boils at 52 °F (our calc)

Honest notes: the hole is impossible. The drain is a simple exponential that ignores weather and temperature changes, and the street-level wind is a rough estimate. The funnel, the stars in the hole and the darkening sky are graphics, and terrain heights are exaggerated.

Narration: AI voice (ElevenLabs).

How long would you stay in New York?