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Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Wolf Cukier, Dominic Samra, Vighnesh Nagpal, Diana Powell, Maria Steinrueck, Christopher Wirth

Abstract

Speculative fiction has long served an inspiration for genuine scientific inquiry. One notable work that has almost acted in this manner is the the seminal comedic speculative fiction work Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. While exoplaneteers reference this work frequently, we have never engaged with the central prediction of this work... until now! We perform detailed microphysical modeling of meatball clouds, both bare and coated with marinara sauce, and find that while meatball condensation is possible in temperate atmospheres, the meatballs do not quite grow to the sizes predicted by Cloudy. We do find, however, that such meatball condensation, across a large enough planet, would be able to sustain humanity calorically.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Abstract

Speculative fiction has long served an inspiration for genuine scientific inquiry. One notable work that has almost acted in this manner is the the seminal comedic speculative fiction work Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. While exoplaneteers reference this work frequently, we have never engaged with the central prediction of this work... until now! We perform detailed microphysical modeling of meatball clouds, both bare and coated with marinara sauce, and find that while meatball condensation is possible in temperate atmospheres, the meatballs do not quite grow to the sizes predicted by Cloudy. We do find, however, that such meatball condensation, across a large enough planet, would be able to sustain humanity calorically.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 5 sections, 1 equation, 3 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. The Model
  3. Laboratory Data
  4. Results and Discussion
  5. Conclusions

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: Saturation vapor pressure curves for the meatball and marinara condensates. Points are the measurements taken in Denver (low-pressure) and Chicago (high-pressure). The line is the fit to this curve extrapolated into the relevant P-T regimes.
  • Figure 2: Collage of experimental techniques used to characterise the material properties of meatballs and marinara. a,d) evaporation temperature measurements, b) samples used (not sponsored), c,f) volume measurements, e) served meatballs coated in marinara (core-shell), g) contact angle between meatballs and marinara.
  • Figure 3: Left: Size distribution for meatball cloud particles as derived from our CARMApy models. Right: The same but for clouds composed of meatballs coated in marinara sauce.