What If?2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

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The explosion would be just the right size to maximize the amount of paperwork your lab would face. If the explosion were smaller, you could potentially cover it up. If it were larger, there would be no one left in the city to submit paperwork to. Will you, like me, be thrilled and delighted by his approach? Take this easy method of finding out: Read below; decide on that basis. Here is the opening hypothetical question. Through all of this, I carried my precious ARC around, waiting for the time when I'd be able to spare the brainpower to read it. I even took it on tour with me. (Honestly, this book has more frequent flier miles than any three of you put together.) Seriously. Please do not try making an actual Periodic Wall of Elements. A lot of those elements don't play well with others.

Then he has a footnote which reads, "Mathematically, this must be true. If the average were less than one, the virus would die out. If it were more than one, eventually everyone would have a cold all the time. But that can't be right? Can it? It's tough to tell whether he's serious or not, because sometimes the footnotes are jokes, and other times they're not. If everyone on the planet stayed away from each other for a couple of weeks, wouldn't the common cold be wiped out? But let's stop and consider for a moment. Is any of the above geek behavior novel or unpredictable? Hardly. Geeks are always doing this kind of thing, and society has learned to work around them. Important as they may be in the long run, there's always some dependable non-geek person ready to step in just in case the geek in question has stayed up all night playing Halo or watching a Star Wars marathon. The non-geek will cover for them until the geek has got over their fifteen hour internet speed-chess session and is ready to do whatever it is they're actually being paid to do. Q. What if every day, every human had a 1 percent chance of being turned into a turkey, and every turkey had a 1 percent chance of being turned into a human? - Kenneth

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These do not look like the kinds of questions you had to work on to learn about physics, chemistry, engineering, and the like when you were in school having to do that. Which is unfortunate, really, because it would have been a lot more interesting. But, because it is more important to our society that school be safe [read: boring] than that it be educational, you did not get to read about how to use science to answer these kinds of questions. Or, other questions like:

The questions throughout What If? 2 are equal parts brilliant, gross, and wonderfully absurd and the answers are thorough, deeply researched, and great fun. . . . Science isn’t easy, but in Munroe’s capable hands, it surely can be fun." — TIME If every human somehow simply disappeared from the face of the Earth, how long would it be before the last artificial light source would go out? Sometimes he would just "read" the comic as text, sometimes sort of "act it out"... but regardless it felt so seamless that I almost didn't feel like I was missing anything by not dusting off my decorative eyeballs and putting them to work for this one.

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If you saved a whole life’s worth of kissing and used all that suction power on one single kiss, how much suction force would that single kiss have? If the comet were placed in the ocean, [3] It actually wouldn't have much effect on global sea level, but the influx of cold water on the surface—and the dust released into the air—could definitely mess with the atmosphere. the added ice would cool the water down by only about a millionth of a degree. If you set the comet on land, it would soak up heat from the atmosphere—which contains much less stored heat than the oceans—briefly cooling the air by an average of one or two thousandths of a degree. So, I took the book home - slightly shamed that I hadn't realized it was more for coffee tables than actual reading.

Imaginative Scenarios: The scenarios explored in "What If?" are incredibly imaginative and diverse. From calculating the energy required to stop the Earth's rotation to determining the likelihood of finding a soul mate in a world with only 10,000 people, the book is a treasure trove of thought-provoking inquiries. Comets are more dust than ice, but they're not particularly dense. A tiny piece of a comet would float for a short time until it became waterlogged, melted, and broke apart. A full-size comet wouldn't be strong enough to support its own weight, and would collapse like a drying sand sculpture. No, this “answer” doesn’t end at this point. There are further considerations. Do you want to proceed? Then enjoy this book (my local library has several copies!). I guess the answer might be “what pharmaceutical products have you ingested during the last four hours?” or “May I speak to your parents?” Allain, Rhett (2014-12-19). "Book Review: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions". Wired. Archived from the original on 2016-04-06.

So delivering a copy of What If to every geek in the world will only really have two important effects. It will make a great many geeks very happy, and (assuming of course that the copies are paid for) it will turn Randall Munroe into a billionaire. I say almost, because I DID actually also borrow the ebook from the library so I could scope out the comics myself, and there were far more than included in the audio (which is to be expected, truthfully). Regardless, it was super fun. What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity?” Brief answer: “NEARLY EVERYONE WOULD DIE. Then things would get interesting.” There are even a few proposed experiments that DO NOT result in the destruction of our planet. My favorite involves the speed of the International Space Station AND the 1988 song by the Proclaimers, "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqq4B... stars for ending the book on a happy note, "Sometimes it's nice not to destroy the world for a change."