XKCD and their weekly “What If?” column answers the burning question, “From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?”

So, measuring steak speed against steak altitude, along with some NASA-level geekdom, we get an answer — sort of. Hopefully you like your steak Pittsburgh-style and partially frozen.

“For much of those 25 kilometers, the air temperature is below freezing—which means the steak will spend six or seven minutes subjected to a relentless blast of subzero, hurricane-force winds. Even if it is cooked by the fall, you’ll probably have to defrost it when it lands.”

“If dropped from 70 kilometers, the steak will go fast enough to be briefly blasted by 350°F air. Unfortunately, this blast of thin, wispy air barely lasts a minute—and anyone with some basic kitchen experience can tell you that a steak placed in the oven at 350 for 60 seconds isn’t going to be cooked.”

[full explanation here, via BoingBoing]