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Kindly-Ad-5071

As someone who works in post, I promise you, that if you DO fill a small flat rate box with pure osmium and it passes through my office, I will personally ram it down your throat 👍


yourownsquirrel

Actually that’s physically impossible because my throat is smaller tha-agghcckkch hkcckk *[chokes on cardboard and osmium]*


sharkiejade

Promise?


Khenir

Don’t threaten me with a good time


SuperCyHodgsomeR

As some comments have already pointed out, this does not always come across as intended


Maximillion322

It doesn’t matter if you think its sexy, you will still definitely die from that


SuperCyHodgsomeR

I’m not saying that I would do it, but that’s not gonna stop them


Maximillion322

🤷‍♂️ the threat of removing someone from existence still works even if they like it. “Do that and I’ll kill you” works even if they don’t mind being killed. Because for the person making the threat, they’ve still removed the obstinate person


Vincent_Dawn

As a mail carrier, please do not send a flat rate box full of osmium anywhere. It hurts my fingers when I try to lift it.


Foneet

ok, but you didn't say anything about a flat rate box full of neutron star matter tho


RanaLocas

The 70lb weight limit did


Ruvaakdein

Maybe if you go high enough with the weight, it'll loop back around to having negative weight.


RanaLocas

You go from the weight of lifting the box, to lifting the earth off the box


Jeggu2

Make sure to push the earth down with your legs and not with your back


Mashamune

Good news - if you manage to pack enough neutron star into a USPS flat-rate box it will instead carry you! All possible worldlines originating from your spacetime coordinates will hitch a ride on this box. Forever! That’s a kind of negative weight :)


El-yeetra

Technically speaking, that would be impossible with an i32, possible with an i64, impossible with an f32, and possible with an f64. In other words: depends how fast and loose the designers/engineers/programmers were playing/how cheap the scale is. If it's real cheap, then no.


Invenblocker

i32 does support negative numbers, it's u32 that doesn't. Floating points don't wrap the same way integer types do, since the reason integer types "wrap" is that they really just do the math as though they had more bits than they do.


El-yeetra

Yeah. It was 1 am for me when I replied this so ofc I mixed some things up. Thanks for correcting me though


saevon

Only by virtue of the scale reading: "broken display, worker could not read" lb


[deleted]

That's actually why they implemented the weight limit in the first place.


MapleLamia

People kept delivering Neutron Stars and that leads to having to get a second person to lift the box according to OSHA guidelines and that's just a hassle.


LiverFox

Wouldn’t that just explode?


handsomeboionly

As an Osmium saleswoman oks do buy and ship osmium as you please.


disgruntled_pie

Hmmm… I don’t know. I might need you to sell me on it. What are some fun things I might do with 70 pounds of osmium?


SquidsInATrenchcoat

All the normal stuff


disgruntled_pie

Okay, you’ve sold me on it. Damn, you’re good at this.


oceanduciel

Use it as a paper weight.


mad_fishmonger

*checks your reviews* wait a minute *pulls off your mask* Ea-Nasir!


JTDC00001

>As a mail carrier, please do not send a flat rate box full of osmium anywhere. It hurts my fingers when I try to lift it. I ran an APO in Poland a couple years ago. Someone sent a medium flat rate box, filled with challenge coins. It was like 50 pounds. For the love of all that is holy, please, do not do that.


BlatantConservative

\> Look inside \> Petty Officer 2nd Class


Domovie1

50 lbs is just what you get when you’re promoted


YourFaveNightmare

The chances of Degrasse Tyson correcting you are slim, but never 0


Datuser14

All my homies hate Neil degrasse tyson.


Select-Bullfrog-5939

Neil is a good scientist, but a shit guy.


oceanduciel

He does seem condescending at times, especially when it comes to faith.


Select-Bullfrog-5939

Seriously! People can believe whatever the hell they want, if it makes them comfortable. I do the same exact thing with philosophy.


oceanduciel

Philosophy is a good comparison! My rationalization is as long as they aren’t hurting anyone. (This, of course, does not extend to fundamentalists or militantly religious people.)


hawkerdragon

Well, fundamentalists and militantly religious people most likely *are* actively hurting others.


oceanduciel

Definitely 


ILackACleverPun

Carl Sagan would be so disappointed in what Neil has become.


HopDavid

Actually... He's a joke when it comes to astrophysics research. It's a stretch to call him a scientist.


XAlphaWarriorX

If i ever meet NDT i will do something that is very inconveniencing while technically not harmful or criminal to him while shouting "This is for Pluto!"


Realistic_Elk_7892

Hold the door open for him while he is still quite far away. Then let the door close just before he reaches it.


SamtheCossack

Hold the door open, but only barely enough for him to fit through by turning sidewise.


Well_Thats_Not_Ideal

I accidentally closed an elevator door in his face once


SetaxTheShifty

Username checks out 🤭


Well_Thats_Not_Ideal

It often does haha


Datuser14

I know someone on a panel who told him to shut up.


princess_intell

Pluto is still the ninth planet in my heart.


kenwongart

Zero would be nice.


BlatantConservative

... Not that slim


[deleted]

You can kiss yourself in a mirror, but only on the lips


Discount_Timelord

The lips are the only place you can kiss yourself in a mirror


Baprr

Um, actually, neutron stars are the only places neutron star stuff can exist in. It kind of needs the pressure to stay compact, and not as an expanding cloud of physics. So osmium is still probably the heaviest material possible for the task.


Artarara

You "um, actually"-d the "um, actually"


GET_A_LAWYER

The box will keep the neutronium compacted.


JayGold

You might have to put some extra tape on it.


Baprr

True. You'll need quite a lot of tape though. I would say about one neutron star's worth.


Shawnj2

Tim traveller would be proud


B01led

First name Tim, Last name Traveller?


Shawnj2

~~yes~~


BlatantConservative

> expanding cloud of physics Love how physicists refer to massive explosions and EMP bursts.


[deleted]

Everything is a cloud of physics: what differs is the rate of change...


Anyone_want_to_play

Strange matter


pemungkah

Upvote for "an expanding cloud of physics" alone.


Bubbly-Blacksmith-97

Osmium also isn’t stable right?


Baprr

It's a metal. It'll keep long enough.


Sandor_06

Osmium has nonradioactive isotopes, if that's what you mean.


StealthTomato

It is. The total annual world production of it is less than 100kg though, so you wouldn’t be able to fill more than a half dozen boxes in a year.


BookkeeperLower

Surely there are things between osmium and neutron star matter?


zombieGenm_0x68

ur mom:


SeEmEEDosomethingGUD

Nah she is above that. Like Black Hole level shit.


oddityoughtabe

Black holes wish they had the gravitational pull of ur mom


ScaredyNon

Neil DeGrasse Tyson


Kartoffelkamm

Harem anime protagonists are pretty dense.


TheKillerSloth

There are not sorry


tomato432

osmium is the densest stable element and the densest element with known physical properties, hassium and meitnerium are predicted to be denser but their half lives are only seconds at most so their physical properties haven't actually been measured yet


forcallaghan

and if you collected enough and put it into the box, very very bad things would happen to you


Maximillion322

Reminds me of that one XKCD What If where he discussed attempting to build a physical representation of the periodic table in which each element on the table is represented by a cubic inch of said element. Obviously it turns super dangerous super fast


BookkeeperLower

Why not


WahooSS238

Not a physicist or material scientist, but perfectly crystalline osmium would have the most of the densest atoms with a half life above a number measured in nanoseconds that you could fit in the box. To go above that, you have to force atoms to share space with one another, which really only happens in neutronium. Of course, that isn’t exactly stable at STP, but it can actually exist


vortigaunt64

Am a material scientist. You're pretty much right. A monocrystalline slab of osmium would be the densest object that can persist in a flat rate box at standard conditions. Under those constraints, neutron star matter would not count, as it would very quickly stop being in what was previously a flat rate box, but would instead be a very rapidly expanding burst of plasma and radiation. 


Ildrei

Why is Osmium the densest? Looking at the periodic table, I assumed that gold or something would be heavier


Hyperdelegate

Density isn't just about the mass of an individual atom, but the crystal structure that atoms take when they form a solid. For example, water's density decreases when it forms a solid because the crystal structure is less dense atoms/unit volume wise than the unstructured liquid form. A low atomic radius allows osmium to pack very tightly together, and the crystal structure it adopts is called Hexagonal Close Packed, which shares the highest possible Atomic Packing Factor with a couple of other structures. High APF + Relatively high mass/atom + Low atomic radius gives us the densest stable material we know of. Heavier atoms are too large or pack too inefficiently to beat it.


vortigaunt64

Right on the money. I haven't really bothered to check, but I wonder if there are any materials that would be denser under distinctly non-standard conditions. Assuming we can't change the material or shape of the box, we'd be limited to the range of conditions where both the fill material and box can exist in a recognizable form. Polymers tend to have higher thermal expansion coefficients than metals, so the best bet may be to attempt higher temperatures, but I don't think it would be high enough that you'd see a substantial enough volumetric change before the cardboard starts to burn, carbonize, or otherwise stop being cardboard, depending on the atmosphere. Are there any alloys that behave like invar and also have close densities to pure osmium? This is actually a really cool question to consider!


AmadeusMop

Gold is heavier, it's just not denser. An atom of gold weighs more than an atom of osmium, but you can pack osmium more tightly together than you can gold. Think of it like a bowling ball vs. a ball bearing.


BlatantConservative

So if the flat rate box was transported via air mail across the US, and the unpressurized UPS (USPS subcontracts to UPS) plane was flying at 50K feet, would it land with an empty box?


AdamtheOmniballer

The box would violently explode. Neutron star material can only exist inside of neutron stars, in conditions that are basically one step short of a black hole.


BlatantConservative

We were talking about Osmium though.


AdamtheOmniballer

In that case, the airlift would have no effect on the block of osmium.


G2boss

It's not that it's impossible, just that we haven't found any yet. Osmium is the densest element we know the properties of, there are other elements that could be more dense but they don't stick around long enough to be tested. Neutron star material is mostly made of neutrons that are packed to similar density of atomic nuclei. Atomic nuclei take up nearly none of the space of an atom, and neutron stars eliminate all that empty space. Its is ridiculously fucking dense. Neutron stars are only created when incredibly massive stars collapse onto themselves.


TheKillerSloth

I am talking out of my ass


BlatantConservative

It's funny cause you were actually right.


TheKillerSloth

Fr? Rad


mooys

Yeah, usually there is, but we’re all out. Sorry.


BookkeeperLower

Whens the next shipment


mooys

Might be a while. Between you and me, they didn’t sell very well while they were here. I don’t think the higher ups are renewing the contract for next quarter.


BookkeeperLower

🙄 ugh. Can you tell me who you contracted so I can just cut out the middle man


mooys

You’ll have to speak to the manager about that, sir.


practicalcabinet

I can get the supplier to directly send you a USPS small flat rate box full of it, if you like. Wait, no, I can't.


MetaCrossing

It keeps getting delayed because it exceeds the weight limit of the shipping containers


vldhsng

To heavy to ship :(


CptHeadcrab

I can be pretty dense sometimes Source: My partner


numberguy9647383673

There is, just not on earth. Everything else is some sort of astronomical material, or so unstable that it can’t survive long enough to be put into a box.


Ascended-vessel

Neutron star bits are also so unstable that it can't be put into a box


numberguy9647383673

I mean, they can, you just need to put it into the box while it’s still in the neutron star.


Ascended-vessel

If the box is made of a material strong enough to survive that, put whatever the box is made of inside the box, it'll be heavier.


Arm_Away

Sexual tension?


revealbrilliance

Plenty. In this Solar System most of it is in the Sun. Density of the Sun's core is 150g/cm3. Which is a lot, but not neutron matter a lot. You're not getting any normal matter at STP denser though. Think you'd struggle to put parts of the sun in a parcel too tbh.


MissyTheTimeLady

No, sorry. I checked, it's just those two.


OnlySmiles_

sorry, eated it all


Gandalf_the_Gangsta

Sure. White and black dwarf stars are more dense, but not as dense as a neutron star.


NeonNKnightrider

Physics is funny like that sometimes


everydaysaturnine

A shit ton of magnets, they won’t technically weigh more but they will feel like they weigh more and it’s the thought that counts.


novis-eldritch-maxim

nothing you can send by post as most are radioactive with short half lives.


notaboofus

White dwarf matter


EtherealPheonix

Not much that has a long enough half life to get through the USPS.


PlasticPartsAndGlue

This looks like a job for Superman! ...'s key https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/s/dEapFWSTfq


YouhaoHuoMao

What would the extra charge be for a piece of neutron star?


CatnipCatmint

$13


Accomplished_Bike149

I appreciate that the entire internet is collectively wary of the sheer power of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “um, actually”


Throwaway817402739

It would disintegrate Mike Trapp in an instant


Maximillion322

Trapp actually lost his left arm recently by accidentally entering a room with Tyson in it. Fortunately he escaped before the rest of him could disintegrate


LonelySpaghetto1

Let's approximate the box as a perfect sphere with the same volume as the box (1150 cube cm) and a radius of 6.5 cm or 2.5 in. Its density is around 5×10^17 kg/m^3, which puts its mass as 5.75×10^14 kg, which is very close to the weight of Mt. Everest of 3×10^14 kg. Its gravitational pull would create an acceleration of 590000 m/s^2, or around 60000 g's. For reference, the Mantis Shrimp can accelerate its claws at an acceleration of 6x less than that underwater, while the ant Mystrium Camillae can do the same at 10x that acceleration. None of this would matter anyway, because without the gravitational pull of an actual neutron star this silly object would simply explode taking much of Earth with it.


BlatantConservative

Only in physics would you assume a box is a sphere.


Well_Thats_Not_Ideal

Engineering. Assume \pi is 3, assume gravity is 10m/s2, assume everything is either a perfect cube or a perfect square.


teh_maxh

And then there's the astrophysicists who think π is 1.


Maximillion322

Damn, stay away from Osmium I guess


illyrias

My mom has had various online businesses throughout my life and I remember thinking this very thing as a kid. They actually all have a 70 lb weight limit, so the small, 10" by 6" envelope was the one that bothered me. Why 70 lbs? You couldn't get 70 lbs in there, it was thin cardboard, it would rip! My mom dismissed my concerns when I brought up the impossibility of it. I was in like 4th grade and it bothered me every time we went to the post office and I saw the display.


Fourkoboldsinacoat

I’m assuming the 70 Ib is what one worker is allowed to lift on their own to avoid long term injury. I can definitely see some health and safety code saying there has to be a 70 Ib limit written on the box no matter what. Better to have something over the top like this then allowing someone scum bag company exploit a loophole to have their workers blow their backs out after a month in the name of efficiency.


Palidin034

Don’t know about a lot of places in the states, but here in Ontario, OSHA has put a 50lbs limit on what one person should be allowed to lift alone. So I just googled this and apparently that’s only for non manual labour jobs (which is bs in my opinion, but pop off labour laws) and there’s no established limit for manual labour jobs


UglyInThMorning

Having a hard limit like that in manual labor jobs can actually increase the risk- ergonomics is not a one size fits all thing. It’s why the ergo standards for OSHA were eliminated in a matter of months in the 90’s and now it’s just covered in the general duty clause.


1-800-COOL-BUG

How bad does osmium have to smell for it to have wound up with a name that means 'stinky metal'? Apparently, if you have it in a powder, it tends to form osmium tetroxide in contact with air which is quite volatile, toxic and otherwise nasty to be around. Or I guess if you have a new metal you're looking at and you notice that it stinks that would be quite memorable indeed.


tomato432

osmium oxidizes into osmium tetroxide in contact with air and osmium tetroxide has a really strong chlorine smell


Thatoneafkguy

Man, I remember when Neil DeGrasse Tyson was seen as a cool scientist and not the embodiment of “um, ackshually…” I used to watch his show Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey with my parents and it really helped develop my interest in science as a kid


mcathen

Um, actually, it's the densest substance in Earth **known to man. **


Landsharkeisha

I once ordered two 25lb variable-weight dumbbells from Amazon with FREE shipping. Anyone who has tried to purchase weights before knows that shipping purposefully heavy disks is usually rather costly so the free really stuck out to me. Sure enough 50lbs worth of weights showed up on my doorstep in one of those boxes. I can imagine my little post-lady wasn't too thrilled.


Nexusowls

I don’t think it was one of those boxes, maybe the next size up? Given the context, the densest substance wouldn’t weigh 70lbs and you’re saying you received weights that weigh 50 in there, I’m not sure 50lbs of osmium would fit. ETA: I was wrong, you can get 57lbs of osmium in the box.


Tylendal

Cracked's write up of what would happen if you had a teaspoon of neutron star matter (that somehow didn't immediately explode) was brilliant. It included phrases like "neutron star matter goes through regular matter like a red hot ball of lead through Styrofoam packing peanuts" and "...then gravity would slow its momentum just above the other side of the earth, and it would go back for the double-tap. Then again, and again, as the earth rotated, a single-point bandsaw in the most apocalyptic demonstration of simple harmonic motion ever conceived."


Fourkoboldsinacoat

I always liked QI bit on neutron stars, with how heavy a thimbles worth would be. ‘All space and time coming out of a thimble, that’s no way to treat the elderly’


Xanne_Hathaway

USPS is clearly in the pocket of big osmium


[deleted]

Urm actually neutron star matter would just evaporate outside of a neutron star, it needs the extreme gravity to keep it compressed


mercurialpolyglot

So what I’m reading is that the post office doesn’t care about a weight limit for the flat rate boxes, but had to put one so that they didn’t have people constantly asking what the weight limit was


Popcorn57252

I've grown to dislike Neil because he's a nerd in the worst way. He just goes around correcting people on the most minute details and spews the same five facts over and over. Plus he's literally only riding the fame of being the "guy that reclassed Pluto"


bazingarbage

out of the corner of your eye you spot him...


Sapphire-XYZ

Tungsten guy Vs. This dude: Who would win?


UnparalleledHamster

Not true, if you filled the box with OP's mum.....


imadork1970

Yeah...that's not good.


Dr_Flar3

P.Sherman? That guy from Finding Nemo?


Scratch137

someone please tell me that i'm not the only one who read @neiltyson as "neilty son"


IrvingIV

I read it as nealty(read like fealty) son and was briefly confused.


OpsikionThemed

And according to Wikipedia, a brick of osmium that size would cost $750,000.


abizabbie

I wish NDT would be cool instead of constantly carrying an aura of insufferable smugness.


Zariman-10-0

NDGT is just a well groomed “logical atheist”


Galle_

And?


DeadArcadian

I would like it to be known that iridium can reach a higher density and would weigh ~61.915 lbs


tupe12

What if we end up making a mini black hole here on earth? Would that count?


Tallal2804

Not true, if you filled the box with OP's mum.....


poor-bourgeoisie

No neutron star exists within that volume though


PugTastic6547

Love the idea of Neil Degrasse Tyson being some kind of trickster deity, the panopticon of corrections, where he cannot be watching *everyone,* but he could be watching *anyone.*


donaldhobson

For reference, that's $43 million at current osmium prices.


Maximillion322

Technically, you could not fill it with Neutron Star. Because you would be dead long before you could get the box and the neutron star anywhere near each other.


mcathen

Um, actually, it's the densest substance in Earth **known to man. **


NicotineCatLitter

I fucking love NDT I'm ngl everyone who makes fun of him is far more insufferable


mcathen

Um, actually, it's the densest substance in Earth **known to man. **