This is a really good visual indication of just how small the Vatican is.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
242 points (97.6% liked)
Map Enthusiasts
5002 readers
79 users here now
For the map enthused!
Rules:
-
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
-
be nice
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This is a really good visual indication of just how big the Blue Whale is.
A very clear cut win to the Vatican City.
Unless they fight underwater; then the whale has the advantage.
Please, priests have been dipping people underwater for centuries!
You'd think their god would've got the message by now and granted them gills or something.
AND MOSES COMES IN WITH A STEAL CHAIR (AND GOD ON A STICK OR SOMETHING)!!!
Not again
Big if big
Even with this basin size SeaWorld would still be cruel. Look at what the orca's got. Its a shame.
My urge to spirograph the Vatican is getting stronger.
look out mr whale it's right behind you!! oh god he has earbuds in!
So you're saying it can be done
What would be the size of the crater when the whale falls from the sky?
How big is a bowl of petunias?
Oh no, not again
I’m not a mathemagician or a physexiest, so it’s safe to assume my assumptions are wild and my calculations suspect.
- Blue whales weigh between 90,000 and 180,000 kg. Let’s go right in the middle at 135,000 kg.
- A deviantart post from 2014 says Blue whales are as dense as water (approximately).
- According to an online calculator, seawater weighs 1,021kg/m^3 (I figure whales are salty, because of climate change and the centuries of being hunted to near extinction).
- If we assume that weight equals volume, then the same calculator puts our whale at 132.1m^3
- And, obviously, that doesn’t work for my porpoises. So we grind the whale into a slurry, and freeze it into a ball. Using an online tool to find the radius of a sphere from the volume, we come up with 31.6, which I assume is meters.
- Doubling that (in my head!) to get the diameter, we’d wind up with a ball that is about 63.2 meters across.
- Using this online calculator of unknown provenance, we put in a diameter of 63.2m, a velocity of 9.8m/s (earth’s gravity!), an angle of 90 (because our masticated and spheroidified whale would of course be dropped from space like a cartoon anvil), and selecting ice as the material, it says the crater would have a radius of 324 meters, with ejecta spread about twice that.
Not enough to destroy the whole thing, but enough to wipe out St. Peter’s Basilica, and do a lot of damage to the rest of it.
A deviantart post from 2014 says Blue whales are as dense as water (approximately).
That they don't sink uncontrollably should also be a hint. Most critters are around there, including us, because they're primarily made out of water, and then the empty bits offset the bony bits.
I'll refrain from correcting anything else, to not be a dick.
I'll refrain from correcting anything else, to not be a dick.
Always a good call, besides, why be a dick when you can be ridiculous?
What if the blue whale was accelerated to near light speed before colliding with the city?
This map but blank.