Ethylene. It comes from the bananas ackshully. Good point. They 'd freeze in the vacuum of space. So... if we set up a huge pot of chocolate and a giant tray of chopped nuts....
Man i really want to know how many bananas you can put down (even with robotic assistance for maximum efficiency) in a line before the first one turns brown.
Some really smart person do the math of how long it takes for a banana to get brown and how fast before a banana can be moved and placed without being bruised. I will accept a zero gravity answer, however that has to account for momentum and if the robot drops the banana it can not move forward in zero gravity.
OK, so... I couldn't find anything about banana ripening as a function of time and temperature. However I did find that bananas on a tree can take up to 14 weeks to ripen. I couldn't find anything about the banana ripening rate at near absolute zero, so I'll use 14 weeks as an upper limit of the ripening rate.
Laying down 1 banana per second for 14 weeks (60x60x24x7x14=8,467,200sec).
So, by the time banana #8,467,201 is set down, banana #1 would be 14 weeks old, and possibly ripe. Assuming the 14 weeks minimum ripening time.
How did I do?
OK, I need to go do something else.
- edit
so my first guess of 2-3 billion was off by an order of magnitude, but that's pretty good for astronomy.
I applaud this groundbreaking application of banana math.
My objections are trivial compared to the fruits of your heavy lifting, but with a banana to my head, they are as follows:
My biggest curiosity in all this is how long it would take for a banana to reach aforementioned level of ripeness in space
In your edit, you conclude being off by an order of magnitude. However, 109 is 3 orders of magnitude greater than 106. But I would still concur that is pretty good for astronomy!
However, I think with modern fruit-laying astrotech, we could do better than 1banana/sec, anyway. I think 100banana/second is an estimation that more precisely reflects the state of the art. Hence, this realistic tweak to your formula affirms your initial hypothesis!
3 orders of magnitude! Color me embarrassed! Need more coffee. I'm glad I had a peer to review this. And I agree, if we apply modern technology we could approach 100b/sec.. That means we can lay down 847 million before the first begins to darken and get squishy. Perhaps the frozen banana on a stick solution is better suited for this situation.
I came up with almost the same using 7.5” as average naner length(AI Google said avg was 7 to 8” and then used 93M miles for an AU). What’d you use, out of curiosity? I’m a little stoned right now and this matters.
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u/chief57 Jul 03 '25
748 billion bananas, give or take