What if you dropped a bowling ball in the Mariana Trench?

Get a copy of What If? 2 and Randall’s other books at: https://xkcd.com/books More serious answers to absurd questions at: https://what-if.xkcd.com/ This question comes from Doug, who asks: If you were in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench and dropped a 7 kilogram bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom? It’s a good thing you mentioned the mass, because of a very surprising fact: Most bowling balls float. Credits ******* Randall Munroe | Narrator Henry Reich | Writer & Director Lizah van der Aart | Illustration and Video Editing Ever Salazar | Chief Chaos Controller Know Art Studios | Music & Sound Effects What If? The Video Series is the official adaptation of the What If? books by Randall Munroe and is produced by Neptune Studios LLC. Randall Munroe is the author of the New York Times bestsellers What If? 2, How To, What If?, and Thing Explainer; the science question-and-answer blog What If?; and the popular web comic xkcd (https://xkcd.com). A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time. Henry Reich is the creator of MinutePhysics and executive producer of MinuteEarth and MinuteFood and founder of Neptune Studios LLC (the parent company for all three youtube channels). ©2026 xkcd, inc.