"APPLAUSE" "WHISTLING" "Goo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ood assisted by our weighty contestants and of course my OWN gravitas." "we have four massive stars." "Rich Hall!" "APPLAUSE AND CHEERING" "Bill Bailey!" "APPLAUSE AND WHISTLING" "Barry Humphries!" "CHEERING AND WHISTLING" "Alan Davies!" "APPLAUSE AND WHOOPING" "their buzzers are all weighty." "Rich goes..." "OBJECT PLUMMETS TO EARTH... man..." "..AND LANDS WITH A CLANG you see?" "And Barry's goes..." "SOLDIERS' FEET CLUMP..." "'Wait for it..." "Wait for it!" "' FEET STAND TO ATTENTION" "And Bill goes..." "SPEAK-YOUR-WEIGHT MACHINE:" "'Your weight is 12 stone... four ounces.'" "You wish(!" ") LAUGHTER" "Sorry!" "How dare you." "And Alan goes..." "BOING!" "'Yaaaaaargh...' actually." "let's..." "LAUGHTER how can you get from here to ANYWHERE on Earth in exactly 42 minutes and 12 seconds?" "SOLDIERS' FEET CLUMP 'Wait for it!" "'" "I like that tie very much." "thank you!" "that makes me so happy." "I was hoping I wouldn't be overdressed tonight." "42 minutes and 12 seconds." "You can get to anywhere." "Through the Earth." "Ooh." "Ah..." "Develop." "LAUGHTER Develop that thought." "It's a theoretical rather than practical..." "All right." "Burrow then." "Burrowing..." "Yup." "directly." "You'd have to be more vigorous than that." "LAUGHTER that's just getting the..." "That's just getting the first soil off." "All right!" "LAUGHTER would you?" "to do it in 42 minutes?" "At the speed that is determined by... by maximum velocity." "straight through... it would take you 42 minutes to come out the other side?" "Exactly." "But would you drop..." "I'd like it if you dropped out the other end." "you would accelerate all the way to the middle..." "and DECELERATE out." "So you'd JUST make it." "You'd be in Australia." "Ah!" "That's the point..." "I was going to say." "Yeah." "But actually you could do the tunnel from London to Moscow." "That's why I said to ANYWHERE from here." "as it were." "Would you...?" "You could..." "So from London to Paris would be the same length of time..." "Yeah." "It would have to be the same time." "I could get from here to there in 12 seconds." "you're right." "The other 42 minutes is just... waitin' for your luggage." "LAUGHTER" "But the Antipodes thing's interesting." "they don't have to be north-south." "There are antipodes from one part of the EQUATOR to another..." "I thought we were New Zealand. and there was a contest to make an Earth sandwich." "For someone to put a piece of bread on one part of the Earth..." "LAUGHTER" "..and the others would put the piece of bread on the exact antipode..." "There are not many choices." "New Zealand was one piece of bread..." "Iceland." "Not Iceland..." "Little further south." "Tewkesbury." "Spain." "Spain is the right answer!" "Thank you." "very good." "LAUGHTER" "But there was immediate controversy because they used baguettes..." "LAUGHTER" "..and so no-one was sure if they were oriented in the same direction." "It might have been a cross shape - can you?" "But anyway..." "How do you get to be involved in these competitions?" "LAUGHTER" "I fear the answer is you have to be Canadian." "They were Canadian brothers called Jonathan and Duncan." "they could have chosen Indonesia to..." "Oh." "Erm..." "America." "it's Colombia. would be the antipode of Mecca." "The exact opposite of Mecca is a tiny little atoll in the South Pacific..." "BILL:" "Christmas Island." "Tematangi Atoll." "It's also known as Captain Bligh's Atoll." "amazingly." "It's actually got a huge lagoon in it." "you could face any direction there and you'd be facing Mecca." "Because it's the antipode." "weren't we?" "The idea of going through... then?" "Has Richard Branson already figured out some way of...?" "because the Moon has no molten core." "it would be 53 minutes." "Which moon are we talking about?" "Ah!" "Mmm." "There's a sore point." "LAUGHTER friendly moon." "The one we look at." "that would be 53 minutes to get through." "What?" "!" "Why would it take longer to get through the moon..." "The gravity is so feeble." "Yeah." "really?" "LAUGHTER really." "I'm on the moon and I'm on the other side..." Just as boring as..." "Exactly." "is interesting is who do you think worked out the 42 minutes and 12 seconds?" "Patrick Moore." "No." "Um..." "QI researcher." "LAUGHTER" "I know." "Alan Titchmarsh." "er..." "LAUGHTER" "Charlie Dimmock." "eh?" "Down there." "Oh!" "What's amazing is that it was a series of letters between Isaac Newton and Robert Hook in the 17th century." "They worked out the exact mathematics and it's not changed." "thought that heavier objects fell faster than lighter objects." "And it seems an intuitive and correct idea." "But Galileo worked out that they didn't." "How did he do that?" "BUZZER:" "'Wait for it!" "'" "He dropped two cannonballs off the Leaning Tower Of Pisa." "did he?" "KLAXON my love." "The reality is that he worked out that this was the case from his head." "He then did some experiments with ramps and things that proved it a ton of gold or a ton of feathers?" "that kind of thing." "But he's saying is half a ton..." "BILL:" "What's that?" "Half a ton of gold..." "Gold and feathers?" "It sounds like an Elton John party request. they're different." "So a ton of gold is different to a ton of feathers." "Sorry!" "LAUGHTER" "..I believe." "I'm sorry." "What Galileo said was that half a ton of coal falls at the same speed as a ton of coal." "That's the point." "Falls at the same speed. they'll both hit the ground at the same time." "How do you get a ton of coal in the air?" "Indeed." "Galileo's reasoning was thusly wise. it falls fast and the lighter one slow." "suppose you attach the light one to the heavy one." "the heavy one falls faster than the light one so it would make the light one fall faster." "Or the light one would hold the heavy one up you would make it go both faster and slower." "That's impossible." "The only explanation is that they both travel at the same speed. thought he'd try and see if Galileo was right and we have a clip of him doing it." "I'll drop the two of them here and hopefully they'll hit the ground at the same time." "How about that?" "Mr Galileo was correct in his findings." "Isn't that cool?" "Astronaut David Scott proving Galileo right with a hammer and a feather." "But Galileo established it by the power of his own thought." "Newton worked out the laws of gravitation and published them astounded the world with the first balloon ascents." "It was only one year after that that dashing Old Etonian George Biggin and Letitia Sage were in a hydrogen balloon and they took off from Southwark and I want to know how far did George Biggin go?" "All the way." "that may be the right answer." "It was one of the most extraordinary things you could imagine." "A balloon ascent was an astonishing sight." "000 people turned out to see the first one." "The Italian who brought ballooning to England so he jumped out just as it was taking off and left this couple these complete first-time balloonists." "Were they tethered?" "No." "They took off..." "Did they just keep going then?" "It became one of the sensations of the age because..." "The Mile-High Club..." "They were the first members of the Mile-High Club." "she was seen on all-fours." "Was it a glass-bottom balloon then?" "!" "She claimed later she was fastening up the opening of the balloon... officer." "officer." Sandbags... who must have been rather astonished." "Slack-jawed yokels from the village of Finchley." "you idle buggers! whether or not you could do it." "One of the most remarkable social records of that age particularly Brooks's and White's." "People used to bet on anything." "The books still exist in their handwriting." "There is one here." "Lord Cholmondeley has given two guineas to Lord Derby to receive 500 guineas 000 yards from the Earth." "For "plays hospitals with" I think you can insert your own...word." "there you have it." "Did he pay up then?" "Is that in the book?" "you were only 900 yards. you want to be the first person to do this... but one of the great things is to cross the..." "Channel?" "exactly." "With aeroplanes..." "M25?" "Not the M25! and his American backer." "But they hated each other and they loved their own countries." "the Frenchman..." "Can you imagine a Frenchman not playing fair?" "Hard to imagine(!" ") Try and picture it. unfortunately." "I will have to do this record alone!" "The American saw the weight and made him take off his ballast and then they accidentally dropped each other's national flags out of the balloon." "And then the balloon started to drop over the Channel too early the sand bags. then they peed and pooed out of the basket." "so they have a poo like that!" "They land in the trees and the record is made." "with your trousers round your ankles." "No. "We've nearly done it!" "The press are here to meet us." "dear." "One last push." "AUDIENCE GROAN that's Mr Biggin and Mrs Sage. from St George's Fields to Harrow." "We won't have any truck with gossip here on QI." "what do you say to a gossypiboma?" "BUZZER:" "'Wait for it!" "'" "Mind your own business." "KLAXON Ohhh." "Barry." "It's good." "Gossypiboma." "Bo..bo.." "Boma?" "Is it a creature?" "I know what it is." "Do you?" "It's something a surgeon leaves behind inside you after an operation." "that is the right answer." "APPLAUSE" "That's exactly what it is." "It's cotton or lint or sponge..." "Or a mobile phone..." "Or indeed a mobile phone." "like a piece of cotton." "500 cases a year of things being left inside..." "Really?" "!" "That's cos a lot of people eat fridge magnets in America." "Cos they look like cookies or chocolate." "all the tools just... ..shoot off the tray and..." "It's a damn good theory..." "And they stick to the sides of mobile homes. brain and face." "Do you think they do it for a bet?" "the surgeons?" "don't they?" "Getting it out again." "I would imagine." "There was one chap who had a six-inch metal surgical clamp taken out and they realised he'd already had an operation to take out a clamp." "they never thought to look for another one." "Extraordinary behaviour." "Train set..." "What would you imagine were the main risk factors?" "Why is it likely to happen?" "so why would it happen? so I'll leave my forceps in here." "this is the work of Dr Bonner." "This is clearly a Bonner. and unplanned changes in the operation." "And patients with higher body mass index." "Fat people." "They lose their stuff..." "They put it down and..." "I don't know?" "There's a nurse in there!" "Thank God you're here!" "This is where we need Hugh Laurie on the show." "exactly." "He would explain... if the script was put in front of him." "He's a gibbering idiot without it." "No!" "He isn't!" "APPLAUSE no. the Latin gossypium it's called a "foreign-body granuloma"." "as if somehow it's the patient's fault." "The patient retained this object while unconscious on the slab." "Nothing to do with us." "His pancreas grabbed it." ""He wouldn't give it back." "We had no choice but to leave it there." Anyway... a gossypiboma is a piece of cotton left inside you by a surgeon." "we've overcome the hated oppressors and we're happy and we've got guns and we shoot straight up in the air as you do." "Whee!" "Yee-ha!" "Is this a good idea?" "I've often thought where do those bullets go?" "They come down and hit people right on the top of the head." "Does that often happen?" "Yes." "Unfortunately it does." "What goes up must come down." "cos when it gets to the top the smallest amount of wind will..." "It will go about a mile away." "but they did an experiment on a floating platform where they fired 500 straight up in the air." "Only four landed on the platform." "The rest splashed..." "Four dead..." "I think they covered themselves... 496 splashed." "A typical 7.62mm round fired vertically would reach a height of..." "What do you think?" "Half a mile?" "Longer. 2.5km nearly." "Straight into the couple shagging in the balloon." "LAUGHTER of course!" "STEPHEN LAUGHS" "Talk about coming full circle!" "then another 40 seconds or so to return to the ground at a speed of about 70 metres per second. very dangerous cranial injuries." "You won't believe this." "I sort of don't believe it myself and yet I know it's true." "It's counter-intuitive." "I've got a bullet." "I've got a gun." "I fire the gun and let go at the same time." "Which bullet hits the ground first?" "The one that you dropped." "That one?" "Yeah." "No." "They both hit the ground at exactly the same time." "Bollocks." "I know!" "LAUGHTER" "I knew you'd say that." "They both have exactly the same force acting on them." "wouldn't it?" "It would just describe a different thing." "The speed of the bullet?" "that bullet." "But incredibly fast." "And then hits the ground..." "It would have to do it at the speed of light." "Has this information come from Wikipedia?" "Are there any scientists here who will back me up on this?" "MALE VOICE:" "Yes." "See?" "Some yeses." "Or any assassins?" "but it is true." "at what height?" "you're standing." "Your height." "You're standing." "And you fire a bullet." "That bullet from the gun will go into the ground. it would leave the atmosphere and never fall to Earth. the curvature of the Earth would mean it had further to fall. what I'm saying is true." "Is there any practical application?" "there's enormous practical applications in the laws of physics that say this must be the case." "I suppose there's a double assassination." "You kill a person and an ant." "there's a source of personal pride to the assassin." "It would be." "The offing of some insects at the same time." "the very worst way to do it viva la revolucion. but a small group of them have holed up at the Welcome Break motorway service station which is the first one if you go north out of London on the M1." "OK?" "We are in the City of London but we have to stop them." "so we can't give instructions in the City of London and they're in Scratchwood." "How's that going to happen?" "Eh?" "Fire something at them." "A Ginsters pasty. not far from this studio." "We're on the river." "These weapons are on the river and they are pointed..." "HMS Belfast?" "HMS Belfast is the answer." "She's a World War II ship and it has guns." "It's the only one with these guns working. there's a sign saying they're pointed at Scratchwood Services." "I'd love to fire them." "I would SO love to fire them." "Come on!" "you may know this..." "It's just a weird World War II ship story as well." "it was known as the luckiest ship in the US Navy cos it was the only ship that was utterly unscarred at Pearl Harbor." "It was called the USS Phoenix." "It was sunk in 1982." "But it had changed its name." "Do you know what to?" "HMS Belfast." "It was named after a person of military rank." "It had been sold to another country and named after General..." "Pinochet." "Bel..." "Grano." "General Belgrano." "It was sunk by the British." "It remains the only warship ever sunk by a nuclear submarine." "It was sunk with most hands lost." "Over 300 people." "Over 300 people." "That was known as the luckiest ship in the US Navy." "Extraordinary history." "I never knew that." "but its guns are trained on Scratchwood Services." "So it looks like those bankers ARE for the high jump." "And so to a matter of the utmost gravity." "The deadweight of general ignorance." "Fingers on buzzers." "it's raining wine." "How big would a cloud need to be in order to dispense for me my recommended daily limit of wine?" "4 ounces.'" "LAUGHTER" "Does not compute!" "is it?" "Yes." "OK." "you're strangely using the same metaphor that we are." "We're using a form of transport." "train..." "Bus is the right answer." "The size of a bus. which is your recommended daily allowance of wine." "An easy one." "How many bullets are there in a gunslinger's revolver?" "Seven." "Five." "4 ounces.'" "Six." "KLAXON" "They're called six-guns." "There's 6 chambers." "Don't they have six in and one in the spout?" "it's quite the other way round." "Five." "You're right." "Why five?" "Gravity." "I've often been asked why five shots without reloading when his guns were chambered for six?" "so you couldn't discharge by mistake." "the great Clint Eastwood. or whatever." "working on Westerns. didn't blink when they fired a gun." "This is a shot of Clint proving that he was one of them." "as much as they ever were." "he never blinked." "Gary Cooper..." "BUZZER:" "'Boing!" "'" "Who was the other?" "Kenneth Williams." "LAUGHTER" "Carry On Cowboy!" "Yeah." "STEPHEN IMPERSONATES KENNETH WILLIAMS" "The idea that those butch American armourers called Rusty and Randy had heard of Kenneth Williams!" "Kenneth God-damn Williams." "It was actually..." "Westworld is probably..." "Yul Brynner." "Yul Brynner." "Yeah." "Yul Brynner never blunk." "not six." "to gravy." "You know when you're cooking a steak and all that red juice flows out?" "What is it?" "Blood." "Blood." "Blood?" "KLAXON wouldn't you?" "but myoglobin." "It's the thing that's used to operate the muscles but it isn't actually the blood that's coming out there." "it's called myoglobin." "It's related." "Is it artificial colouring?" "it's real." "It has two distinct functions." "glucose from the blood provides the fuel." "myoglobin is used to oxidise the fat and that provides the energy." "I didn't realise this programme was so educational." "That's our promise." "A lot of it's lies." "the bullets?" "I know it seems...but absolutely..." "I'm going to test that out tonight." "you can put it in the gravy." "you get..." "Gravity. ladies and gentlemen." "ladies and gentlemen." "Rich and Alan are +3!" "APPLAUSE" "Bill Bailey!" "APPLAUSE" "How can I be -8? Barry Humphries!" "APPLAUSE AND CHEERING" "Alan." "I leave you with one last interesting thing about gravity." "it was widely believed that television sets weighed more when they were switched on. which warned people always to switch off their sets before attempting to move them." "Good night." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk"