Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe’s witty, offbeat webcomic, featuring stick-figure drawings addressing topics of science, technology, language and love.
The former NASA roboticist also maintains a popular Q-and-A page on the site, where he offers concrete scientific answers to oddball hypotheticals like, “How much Force power can Yoda output?” and “What would happen if someone’s DNA vanished?”
Now Munroe has collected updated and expanded versions of his most popular questions plus dozens of new ones into a book: “What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24).
The first chapter sets the tone as Munroe considers “What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity?” His six-page answer begins: “Nearly everyone would die. Then things would get interesting.”
For a humorous book, there is an awful lot of death.
- “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light?” (Death.)
- “What would happen if you made a periodic table out of cube-shaped bricks, where each brick was made of the corresponding element?” (Death.)
- “If you suddenly began rising steadily at 1 foot per second, how exactly would you die?” (Depending on what you’re wearing, either hypothermia or loss of oxygen. Either way, death.)
- “What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool?” (Surprisingly, not death — as long as you stay near the top and don’t get too near the actual fuel canisters at the bottom. A theory I don’t plan on testing.)
The chapters are broken up by lists of questions Munroe doesn’t answer — the “weird (and worrying) questions” that are apparently too weird and too worrying even for Munroe. (Examples: “Would it be possible to get your teeth to such a cold temperature that they would shatter upon drinking a hot cup of coffee?” “If a Venus fly trap could eat a person, about how long would it take for the human to be fully de-juiced and absorbed?”)
Questions range from the mathematically thought-provoking (“What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world?” “When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than living ones?”) to the just plain odd (“If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?” “Is it possible to build a jet pack using downward-firing machine guns?”).
Most of the questions — while entertaining to consider — can be summed up by Munroe’s response to “What would happen if you set off a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane?” Apparently this question is asked often enough that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration actually has an official response, which concludes: “Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”
If you were skimming this review and found yourself musing, “Hmm, what WOULD happen if a hair dryer with continuous power were turned on and put in an airtight box?” then this is the book for you.
