You know what always kind of surprises me, religiously? The fact that we don’t worship the sun. Yes, I get that humans have worshiped the sun at various times in our history, from Apollo to Helios to Ra to Inti and Shamash and more, but it hasn’t really stuck, at least not in mainstream religions. We’ve generally moved on to more subtle and complex ideas of deities, but you’d think the sun would have more of a religious following. I mean, it’s there every single day – hell, it defines the day – it’s responsible for all life on the planet, and even though it’s 93 million miles away, it can still burn you. That all sounds pretty godlike to me! Oh, and if that’s not enough to convince, you, you need to see what it did to this Jeep.
This was something published on Reddit’s Mildly Infuriating subreddit, though I might argue this is a little beyond “mildly.” Honestly, it’s a pretty remarkable event that happened, one that relied on a series of events happening, each seemingly unrelated, but also compounding on one another to make the ideal and improbable circumstances for the end result, which was, in this case, essentially turning the sun into a laser that caused a massive amount of damage to the inside of the Jeep.
Here’s what happened, right from the Reddit post:
Okay, wait wait wait. Let’s just go through this step by step: someone brings their Jeep Wrangler into a repair shop because their power retractable roof – I’d suspect it was one of these one-touch power retractable roof setups:
Okay, so the roof was stuck open, so the shop covered it in collision wrap, a tough plastic wrap material designed to keep car interiors dry and cover open sections of the car. All that seems reasonable. Then it rained. Water from the rain pooled on the crash wrap surface. The next day, there’s high temperatures and a lot of sun and – this is the part where it gets amazing – the shape of the volume of trapped water on the crash wrap was such that the water became, essentially, a magnifying lens, focusing the sunlight into the interior of the car in a powerful beam that did this damage:
Look at that! It’s astounding! Also, the pattern it makes is the result of the rotation of the Earth, so if you know any Flat Earth idiots, here’s more proof that they need to maybe just not talk so much anymore.
Also, it’s amazing the upper plastic didn’t melt; I guess the water-lens prevented that from happening?
What are the odds of all these things happening together to cause this? It’s bonkers! It feels like those dumb Final Destination movies where some shirtless dude trying to make fishsticks manages to burn down his apartment and die by a ladder stabbing:
Incredibly, this kind of thing isn’t unheard of in the automotive world and its continuing battle with the sun. Remember the Chrysler TC by Maserati? Sure you do. One doesn’t forget a car like that. Remember how it had that funny porthole window? That was its big trademark! Well, those windows would focus sunlight in the same way and burn the carpets in the back:
Incredible. You know what else is incredible? The fact that the Jeep we’re talking about here didn’t completely catch on fire! If you’re looking for a positive takeaway from all this, consider that: thanks to the federal FMV SS 302 (Flammability of interior materials) standard, automotive interior materials are remarkably flame retardant, which means that instead of the whole Jeep interior going up like a California forest in the middle of a drought, we just get those burned lines.
Anyway, maybe try praying to the sun every now and then? What could it hurt?
Top graphic images: Stellantis; NASA
This is mildly infuriating in the same way that finding out your Tinder date is a registered pedophile is mildly off-putting.
I ain’t got no minor kids…:D
Going into this article, I thought it was going to be one of the several I’ve seen that experienced small localized melting due to a water bottle. This is much more impressive and, I’m sure, much more frustrating for everyone involved.
I’d keep the burned interior and ask the shop to just put in new seats. And since they’re saving money not replacing the other panels, I’d ask them to get the exact pattern of the damage embroidered in the new seats. Of course that’s only if the burn is all cosmetic.
My broother in-law had a neighbor with some poorly manufactured (or installed) replacement windows on the house. You could see that the panes weren’t flat – they looked concave. In certain conditions they would focus the sun on my bother-in-law’s house and melt his vinyl siding.
Doesn’t always take concave windows. Just Low-E windows that are perfectly flat and do that too.
Sun? Not for me, like most of America’s cultural elite, I worship Pan, the goat god
So…what you’re saying is that Epstien and the island were to catch Peter?
I don’t know anything about any of that, I was only there for the manatees and a seminar on long duration space travel, that was it. Andrew and Alan can back me up, they were there, too
I thought LeBron was the GOAT.
Our 4xe has been recalled for battery fire risk, turbo fire risk, fuel line fire risk, and steering box fire risk. I thought we ran out of ways to catch it on fire! Glad to see Stellantis can still surprise us.
One of the most creative ways I’ve seen a car catch on fire was a pcv breather hose cracking and leaking onto an exhaust manifold, once it lit it provided a steady supply of oil to keep it going. I’m not saying there weren’t other more significant problems with this car, it just was an interesting way to self-immolate.
The only possible way you could make that Jeep be more prone to fire risk would be by fueling it up with Hydrazine.
They seem have managed to avoid the brake box fire risk.
Amazing how Torch manages to find the
coolesthottest car-related stuff out there for us to read about.Keep it coming!
This is one of those things that if it was my car, I’d be both furious and not even mad because of how ridiculous it is. With how common collision wrap is, I doubt the possibility of it turning into a giant death magnifying glass never even crossed anyone’s mind
Everyone knows the earth is not flat, the space lizards just pose as flat earthers to increase conflict and make the humans mad at each other.
They also secretly operate robot birds just to mess with us.
Of course there are no robot birds. What on earth would give you that idea?
We need to ask Lizardman in a human suit to see if this is true.
“…something, something…Jewish space lasers, something, something…”
Actual Elected Member of the US House of Representatives.
More space lizard lies, however the representative that was worried Guam might tip over if too many people were on it was telling the truth.
As you all probably know there are a quantity of
CabalGovernment surplus Jewish Space Laser Activation Panels available on the market.I had to google jewish space lasers, I naievly thought it had something to do with that old Mel Brooks bit “Jews in space!!”
At least it happened at a shop. So their shopkeepers insurance is on the hook for it.
The plastic at the top doesn’t melt because it’s not at the focal point where all the light is concentrated. It’s just like how when you hold a magnifying glass in your hand and use the focused light to burn a piece of paper, the lens itself is not burning hot in your hand even though the focal point is.
Dear Mercedes,
You should IN NO WAY take this as a sign to up the insurance coverage on your cursed Scion iQ, and park it in just such a way that the sun’s rays are focused on that bottle of nail polish remover you left on the front seat.
Repeat: this is NOT A SIGN that you should do that.
Edit: you should also totally NOT remove the post about how you would like to set the Scion on fire. I believe that is called “premeditated”, but Sheryl is probably a better person to comment on that.
They could have gotten the same effect by simply parking the thing in a certain spot of the pool terrace at the Las Vegas Vdara Hotel.
London’s Walkie-Talkie building did something similar, although since I believe the car it melted was a Jag, I’m wondering if the entire building was an elaborate insurance scam.
Queue “We are Farmers, dum, da dum, dum, dum, dum, dum,”.
There’s a building in London that’s melted a few cars. Good thing it’s in London, in LA it would have melted thousands.
https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/london-skyscraper-can-melt-cars-set-buildings-fire-8c11069092
Rafael Viñoly did that one, and the one in Paradise, Nevada with the same issue, it was kind of his thing
Huh – I knew about that one too, but no idea it was the same architect. Dude is a bit of a firebug. But he nuked a lot of ants with magnifying glasses when he was a kid. 🙂
There’s a casino in Vegas that does this with the reflections off the curved glass. There are super hot spots by the pool that move with the sun. The employees know where the hot spots will be on a given day, but the guests, not so much.
Bet those employees have a pool going for how long the guests suffer in the hot spot before realizing something is wrong.
I respect the sun. I do not worship it, for the sun is a being that hates me personally. (I get sun rash from UV exposure, and I have scars on my upper arms from the rashes I’ve gotten over the years.)
One of you said “kill it with fire” one too many times about Stellantis interiors, didn’t you?
I thought California was pretty much a sun worshipping state! All the beach babes and bums that hang out, just waiting for melanoma to set in just seems like the perfect cult following of a sun worshipping place.
I had a friend that got a job in the US Virgin Islands. When I went to visit her 2 years later it looked like she aged from 25 to 35 in that time.
You dare call Final Destination “dumb”? Death is listening.
Shoveling some 18″ to 24″ snowdrifts in my parents driveway as a kid, thoughts would travel to Caribbean islands, and sun worship. I think a few “religions” claimed tax exempt status while chasing endless summer.
The sun is totally the best star. I’m down to join a sun cult, I just don’t want to be the founder/leader or whatever. Seems like a lot of work. Somebody hit me up if you start a sun cult and need a minion with little to no responsibilities whatsoever.
“You have more fun as as follower, but you make more money as a leader”
What do you mean there are no sun worshipers? They are everywhere but mostly on the west Coast. The beach is there church and George Hamilton is their earthly leader. You can recognize them by their brown leathery skin and weird accent.
Pretty sure the cure for skin cancer is going to be found in George Hamilton’s DNA, he seems to have evolved some sort of immunity
One time I was sitting on my back deck having a glass of wine and the hand I was holding the glass with had a pointed stinging/burning sensation. The shape of the wine glass and the white wine was acting like a magnifying glass and burning my hand. Sorry, not car related since I don’t drink and drive.
Here comes the sun
Dooit n doo doo doo
Here comes the sun
And I say
RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
AAAGH! IT BURNS!!
The goggles do nothing
Good luck with the “Flat earth idiots” they usually don’t take proofs of their wrong ideas.
In fact, the melted line follows the flatness of the Earth! Checkmate, sheeple.