Far be it from me to detract from the pre-Super Bowl madness… I realize there’s plenty for you to do like stockpile beer and booze, load your shopping cart full of chips, dips, and other tension taming comfort foods. You already have enough of your mind. I realize that there’s little that can take your attention away from The Most Important Game of the Year, except maybe "BEER! TONS AND TONS AND TONS OF IT!"

Okay, fine, so it’s not really beer beer… It’s actually a massive cloud of ethyl alcohol – which is the alcohol you and I consume when we guzzle down a pint or a cocktail. In fact, it’s so massive (and this is gonna blow your mind) – it’s SO massive that it’s over 1000 times the size of our SOLAR SYSTEM!

So, this big cloud contains enough ethyl alcohol to make 40 TRILLION TRILLION pints of beer; and because "40 trillion trillion" doesn’t really give you an idea of the scale, let me describe it another way: "40,000,000,000" with a TRILLION more "0’s" after that!

To put that into a more down-to-earth terms, here’s a rather humorous explanation written by Elizabeth Freeman in her original Comedy Corner post entitled, "Beer in Space!":

"In human terms: remember that double-keg party you threw at the end of your Junior year in college (the second Junior year)? Imagine throwing that same party, every eight hours, for the next 30 billion years. You’d STILL have beer left over. And boy, would YOUR bathroom be a mess! Simply put, no one could ever drink 400 trillion trillion pints of beer, except maybe Buffalo Bills fans."

The major downside to this massive cloud of consumable alcohol is that it’s not only ethyl alcohol. Also in it are carbon monoxide, arsenic, lead, heavy metals and other not-so-good-for-you things – rendering it undrinkable. Personally I think we should expand our space endeavors to develop a means of filtering out all the nasty stuff and throw the biggest party of all time!

Enjoy the game, gang!

Ed

TAGS [ SPACE BEER | BEER CLOUD | BEER NEWS | SCIENCE NEWS ]