The fastest object launched from Earth’s surface wasn’t a rocket, it was a manhole cover launched at around 150,000 MPH.

The back-of-the-envelope math on this is absolutely insane! Astrophysicist Robert Brownlee, who designed the test, calculated that the nuclear blast put so much pressure under that 2,000-pound iron cap that it launched at roughly six times the escape velocity of Earth.

To put 150,000 MPH into perspective: A commercial airliner takes about 5 hours to cross the US. This manhole cover could have done it in just under a minute!