Could You Outrun A Fart? Here's What The Science Says

Usain Bolt has his work cut out for him.

You can run but you can't hide.

When a fart detonates, you face a difficult race to avoid its impact, according to a new video (above) that was released by the YouTube series AsapScience on Wednesday.

Escaping the sound is out of the question. At around 340 meters per second, the sound can travel hundreds of meters per second faster than Olympic sprint champ Usain Bolt, according to the video. But as for your chances of beating the stink, well, you can try.

According to the new video, the stinky emissions in the farts can be quite swift. Skatole, one of the rank compounds found in a fart, can speed through the air with intimidating velocity under certain conditions.

"If we use the kinetic theory of gases, assume that the fart is at body temperature, and then we plug in the molar mass of skatole, we calculate that the smelliest skatole may be traveling around 243 meters per second," Mitchell Moffit, narrator and co-creator of the series, says in the video.

And there doesn't have to be a lot of it to stop you in your tracks. It turns out that only around 1 percent of a fart consists of chemicals that produce the putrid scent; however, they're so powerful that most people can smell them at levels of 1 part per 100 million parts of air, according to the website Science Dump.

But we say make a run for it anyway. Even if you don't win, it's still exercise.

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