explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3182: Telescope Types

2026-04-06T17:54:31Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3182
| date = December 17, 2025
| title = Telescope Types
| image = telescope_types_2x.png
| imagesize = 517x680px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I'm trying to buy a gravitational lens for my camera, but I can't tell if the manufacturers are listing comoving focal length or proper focal length.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows diagrams of a number of different types of {{w|telescope}} — some real, while others are other objects, or made up by [[Randall]]. It includes both refracting and reflecting designs; see [[1791: Telescopes: Refractor vs Reflector]] for the important (according to Randall) differences between them.

{| class="wikitable"
! Type !! Real telescope? !! Optic type !! Description
|-
| {{w|Reflecting telescope#Prime_focus|Prime focus}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design where the observer/receiver is situated at the focal point of a single mirror. Rare in optics, but a common design in radio telescopes.
|-
| {{w|Herschelian telescope|Herschelian}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design much akin to Prime Focus but with the mirror tilted so that the observer does not block incoming light. Named after astronomer William Herschel.
|-
| {{w|Newtonian telescope|Newtonian}} || Yes || Reflector || Newtonian telescopes employ a second, flat mirror along with the primary parabolic mirror.
|-
| {{w|Galilean telescope|Galilean}} || Yes || Refractor || What might usually come to mind when picturing a telescope. A long tube that uses lenses rather than mirrors (making it a refracting telescope) to magnify images.
|-
| {{w|Keplerian telescope|Keplerian}} || Yes || Refractor || An improvement on Galilean telescopes, using a convex lens rather than a concave one at the eyepiece (as shown in the diagram). It does however invert images.
|-
| {{w|Gregorian telescope|Gregorian}} || Yes || Reflector || Uses two concave mirrors, the secondary being placed beyond the primary's focal point. The image is reflected back through a hole in the primary mirror. Unique among reflectors in that the image is not inverted.
|-
| {{w|Cassegrain telescope|Cassegrain}} || Yes || Reflector || Similar to prime focus, but uses a secondary mirror to reflect light through a hole in the primary mirror to the observer (situated at the rear)
|-
| {{w|Cardboard}} tube || No, does not magnify || N/A || Children may sometimes use tubes, particularly the cardboard middles from paper rolls, as a play 'telescope'. Looking through a tube can give an illusion of magnification by removing distractions and focusing your attention on the object in view, but it doesn't actually magnify the object being viewed. It will still cause a minor optical effect due to {{w|diffraction}} on the edges of the tube.
|-
| {{w|Kaleidoscope|Kaleido''(scope)''}} || No, just used to create decorative patterns || Reflector || A {{w|kaleidoscope}} is similar in form to the stereotypical 'ship's telescope', being a tubular object that you look in to one end of. However, it isn't really a telescope, because you can't use it to magnify arbitrary objects of interest. The non-viewing end is closed, and you view patterns created by many fragmented reflections of tiny objects contained at the end, rather than remote objects. The mirrors (set lengthways and angled to each other) are also usually flat, so provide no magnification.
|-
| {{w|Liquid mirror telescope|Liquid mirror}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope with the same design as Prime Focus, using a rotating pool of reflective liquid (most commonly mercury) as a mirror, the steady rotation creating a parabolic lens. The diagram adds a straw so that someone can drink the liquid. This would not improve telescope performance or end well for the drinker (if the liquid was to be anything but water).
|-
| Narcissian || No, observers view themselves || Reflector || This is like a prime focus telescope, but the focus is outside the end of the telescope where the viewer is located, so they can only see themselves, magnified by the concave mirror. This is inspired by the myth of {{w|Narcissus}}, who fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water. A {{w|house of mirrors}} (a typical attraction at a funfair) might feature such a 'telescope', because it is basically a concave mirror.

Furthermore, a narcissist, someone who is inordinately self-centered and arrogant (named for Narcissus), would likely appreciate this kind of mirror, as a narcissist considers self-viewing more worthwhile than viewing the outside world.
|-
| {{w|Gravitational lens|Gravitational}} || Not as shown || Refractor || Using the gravitational effect of very large objects on the light passing around them to gain a magnified (if distorted) view of objects beyond them. These are formed naturally by large stars (particularly {{w|black holes}}) and galaxies, but can't be constructed on Earth{{cn}}. There are proposals to launch missions to the very far reaches of the Solar System to "construct" a {{w|Solar gravitational lens}} telescope, but the masses and distances involved are not compatible with consumer camera hardware.

In the title text, Randall is concerned about whether the listed focal length of a gravitational lens is measured in the {{w|comoving and proper distances|comoving or proper}} reference frame — that is, whether the expansion of the universe (between the place and time of the lens's creation or construction and Randall's decision to purchase) has been factored out or not. At the cosmological scales between stars and galaxies, where gravitational lensing is most relevant, this is a useful distinction to make, but [https://iauarchive.eso.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/ stars are not for sale] (by any legitimate commercial entity) and so nobody would be advertising any focal length in either reference frame for any purchaser.
|-
| Geological || No || Reflector || This 'telescope' employs a single mirror to show the observer the 2003 movie {{w|The Core}}, which was broadly derided by science-minded people. As a telescope it would not be useful, not least because it cannot be pointed at an arbitrary object. Its relevance to real geology is also dubious.{{Citation needed}}
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

[The comic contains cross-sections/diagrams of 13 different types of telescopes, each with a small eye representing the observer and shaded areas representing the path of light, with darker areas indicating where light overlaps itself. The light originates from the left in all but the Liquid Mirror and Geological diagrams.]

[Prime Focus: A telescope that contains a concave mirror at one end, which reflects and focuses a column of light directly to an observer within the telescope.]

[Herschelian: Similar to Prime Focus, except the mirror is angled such that its focal point is outside the telescope, along with the observer.]

[Newtonian: Similar to Prime Focus, although there is a smaller angled mirror that changes the direction of the light by 90° after being focused so that the focal point is outside of the telescope.]

[Galilean: Rather than being reflected, the light is refracted by a convex lens and focused until it hits a concave lens at the other end, where the observer is.]

[Keplerian: Similar to Galilean, although the light narrows to a point and effectively "flips" before being straightened out by a second convex lens.]

[Gregorian: Similar to a Prime Focus telescope, though the light is refracted a second time by a small concave mirror slightly after the focal point and exits through a gap in the first.]

[Cassegrain: Similar to Gregorian, though the second mirror is convex and slightly in front of the focal point.]

[Cardboard Tube: A simple tube that allows only a small potion of light in, which is then seen by the viewer.]

[Kaleido: A tube with several small pieces of some material at one end, which light passes through and is then repeatedly bounced around in a reflective inner tube.]

[Liquid Mirror: Similar to Prime Focus, except the mirror is vertical and made of liquid being rotated at a constant speed by a motor underneath. A drinking straw leads out of the liquid and toward a small closed mouth.]

[Narcissian: Similar to Prime Focus, except the light is emanating from Cueball, who is standing ~4m away from a Cueball-sized mirror. The light is being refracted directly into Cueball's face.]

[Gravitational: A small black hole is in the middle of the telescope, positioned just right to warp two streams of light coming around it directly to the observer.]

[Geological: Similar to a Newtonian telescope, except the primary mirror is replaced by a small television labeled "TV playing ''The Core'' (2003)."]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Telescopes]]
[[Category:Movies]]
[[Category:The Core]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

3182: Telescope Types

2026-04-06T17:48:33Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3182
| date = December 17, 2025
| title = Telescope Types
| image = telescope_types_2x.png
| imagesize = 517x680px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I'm trying to buy a gravitational lens for my camera, but I can't tell if the manufacturers are listing comoving focal length or proper focal length.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows diagrams of a number of different types of {{w|telescope}} — some real, while others are other objects, or made up by [[Randall]]. It includes both refracting and reflecting designs; see [[1791: Telescopes: Refractor vs Reflector]] for the important (according to Randall) differences between them.

{| class="wikitable"
! Type !! Real telescope? !! Lens type !! Description
|-
| {{w|Reflecting telescope#Prime_focus|Prime focus}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design where the observer/receiver is situated at the focal point of a single mirror. Rare in optics, but a common design in radio telescopes.
|-
| {{w|Herschelian telescope|Herschelian}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design much akin to Prime Focus but with the mirror tilted so that the observer does not block incoming light. Named after astronomer William Herschel.
|-
| {{w|Newtonian telescope|Newtonian}} || Yes || Reflector || Newtonian telescopes employ a second, flat mirror along with the primary parabolic mirror.
|-
| {{w|Galilean telescope|Galilean}} || Yes || Refractor || What might usually come to mind when picturing a telescope. A long tube that uses lenses rather than mirrors (making it a refracting telescope) to magnify images.
|-
| {{w|Keplerian telescope|Keplerian}} || Yes || Refractor || An improvement on Galilean telescopes, using a convex lens rather than a concave one at the eyepiece (as shown in the diagram). It does however invert images.
|-
| {{w|Gregorian telescope|Gregorian}} || Yes || Reflector || Uses two concave mirrors, the secondary being placed beyond the primary's focal point. The image is reflected back through a hole in the primary mirror. Unique among reflectors in that the image is not inverted.
|-
| {{w|Cassegrain telescope|Cassegrain}} || Yes || Reflector || Similar to prime focus, but uses a secondary mirror to reflect light through a hole in the primary mirror to the observer (situated at the rear)
|-
| {{w|Cardboard}} tube || No, does not magnify || N/A || Children may sometimes use tubes, particularly the cardboard middles from paper rolls, as a play 'telescope'. Looking through a tube can give an illusion of magnification by removing distractions and focusing your attention on the object in view, but it doesn't actually magnify the object being viewed. It will still cause a minor optical effect due to {{w|diffraction}} on the edges of the tube.
|-
| {{w|Kaleidoscope|Kaleido''(scope)''}} || No, just used to create decorative patterns || Reflector || A {{w|kaleidoscope}} is similar in form to the stereotypical 'ship's telescope', being a tubular object that you look in to one end of. However, it isn't really a telescope, because you can't use it to magnify arbitrary objects of interest. The non-viewing end is closed, and you view patterns created by many fragmented reflections of tiny objects contained at the end, rather than remote objects. The mirrors (set lengthways and angled to each other) are also usually flat, so provide no magnification.
|-
| {{w|Liquid mirror telescope|Liquid mirror}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope with the same design as Prime Focus, using a rotating pool of reflective liquid (most commonly mercury) as a mirror, the steady rotation creating a parabolic lens. The diagram adds a straw so that someone can drink the liquid. This would not improve telescope performance or end well for the drinker (if the liquid was to be anything but water).
|-
| Narcissian || No, observers view themselves || Reflector || This is like a prime focus telescope, but the focus is outside the end of the telescope where the viewer is located, so they can only see themselves, magnified by the concave mirror. This is inspired by the myth of {{w|Narcissus}}, who fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water. A {{w|house of mirrors}} (a typical attraction at a funfair) might feature such a 'telescope', because it is basically a concave mirror.

Furthermore, a narcissist, someone who is inordinately self-centered and arrogant (named for Narcissus), would likely appreciate this kind of mirror, as a narcissist considers self-viewing more worthwhile than viewing the outside world.
|-
| {{w|Gravitational lens|Gravitational}} || Not as shown || Refractor || Using the gravitational effect of very large objects on the light passing around them to gain a magnified (if distorted) view of objects beyond them. These are formed naturally by large stars (particularly {{w|black holes}}) and galaxies, but can't be constructed on Earth{{cn}}. There are proposals to launch missions to the very far reaches of the Solar System to "construct" a {{w|Solar gravitational lens}} telescope, but the masses and distances involved are not compatible with consumer camera hardware.

In the title text, Randall is concerned about whether the listed focal length of a gravitational lens is measured in the {{w|comoving and proper distances|comoving or proper}} reference frame — that is, whether the expansion of the universe (between the place and time of the lens's creation or construction and Randall's decision to purchase) has been factored out or not. At the cosmological scales between stars and galaxies, where gravitational lensing is most relevant, this is a useful distinction to make, but [https://iauarchive.eso.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/ stars are not for sale] (by any legitimate commercial entity) and so nobody would be advertising any focal length in either reference frame for any purchaser.
|-
| Geological || No || Reflector || This 'telescope' employs a single mirror to show the observer the 2003 movie {{w|The Core}}, which was broadly derided by science-minded people. As a telescope it would not be useful, not least because it cannot be pointed at an arbitrary object. Its relevance to real geology is also dubious.{{Citation needed}}
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

[The comic contains cross-sections/diagrams of 13 different types of telescopes, each with a small eye representing the observer and shaded areas representing the path of light, with darker areas indicating where light overlaps itself. The light originates from the left in all but the Liquid Mirror and Geological diagrams.]

[Prime Focus: A telescope that contains a concave mirror at one end, which reflects and focuses a column of light directly to an observer within the telescope.]

[Herschelian: Similar to Prime Focus, except the mirror is angled such that its focal point is outside the telescope, along with the observer.]

[Newtonian: Similar to Prime Focus, although there is a smaller angled mirror that changes the direction of the light by 90° after being focused so that the focal point is outside of the telescope.]

[Galilean: Rather than being reflected, the light is refracted by a convex lens and focused until it hits a concave lens at the other end, where the observer is.]

[Keplerian: Similar to Galilean, although the light narrows to a point and effectively "flips" before being straightened out by a second convex lens.]

[Gregorian: Similar to a Prime Focus telescope, though the light is refracted a second time by a small concave mirror slightly after the focal point and exits through a gap in the first.]

[Cassegrain: Similar to Gregorian, though the second mirror is convex and slightly in front of the focal point.]

[Cardboard Tube: A simple tube that allows only a small potion of light in, which is then seen by the viewer.]

[Kaleido: A tube with several small pieces of some material at one end, which light passes through and is then repeatedly bounced around in a reflective inner tube.]

[Liquid Mirror: Similar to Prime Focus, except the mirror is vertical and made of liquid being rotated at a constant speed by a motor underneath. A drinking straw leads out of the liquid and toward a small closed mouth.]

[Narcissian: Similar to Prime Focus, except the light is emanating from Cueball, who is standing ~4m away from a Cueball-sized mirror. The light is being refracted directly into Cueball's face.]

[Gravitational: A small black hole is in the middle of the telescope, positioned just right to warp two streams of light coming around it directly to the observer.]

[Geological: Similar to a Newtonian telescope, except the primary mirror is replaced by a small television labeled "TV playing ''The Core'' (2003)."]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Telescopes]]
[[Category:Movies]]
[[Category:The Core]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

3182: Telescope Types

2026-04-06T17:48:01Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3182
| date = December 17, 2025
| title = Telescope Types
| image = telescope_types_2x.png
| imagesize = 517x680px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I'm trying to buy a gravitational lens for my camera, but I can't tell if the manufacturers are listing comoving focal length or proper focal length.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows diagrams of a number of different types of {{w|telescope}} — some real, while others are other objects, or made up by [[Randall]]. It includes both refracting and reflecting designs; see [[1791: Telescopes: Refractor vs Reflector]] for the important (according to Randall) differences between them.

{| class="wikitable"
! Type !! Telescope? !! Type !! Description
|-
| {{w|Reflecting telescope#Prime_focus|Prime focus}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design where the observer/receiver is situated at the focal point of a single mirror. Rare in optics, but a common design in radio telescopes.
|-
| {{w|Herschelian telescope|Herschelian}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design much akin to Prime Focus but with the mirror tilted so that the observer does not block incoming light. Named after astronomer William Herschel.
|-
| {{w|Newtonian telescope|Newtonian}} || Yes || Reflector || Newtonian telescopes employ a second, flat mirror along with the primary parabolic mirror.
|-
| {{w|Galilean telescope|Galilean}} || Yes || Refractor || What might usually come to mind when picturing a telescope. A long tube that uses lenses rather than mirrors (making it a refracting telescope) to magnify images.
|-
| {{w|Keplerian telescope|Keplerian}} || Yes || Refractor || An improvement on Galilean telescopes, using a convex lens rather than a concave one at the eyepiece (as shown in the diagram). It does however invert images.
|-
| {{w|Gregorian telescope|Gregorian}} || Yes || Reflector || Uses two concave mirrors, the secondary being placed beyond the primary's focal point. The image is reflected back through a hole in the primary mirror. Unique among reflectors in that the image is not inverted.
|-
| {{w|Cassegrain telescope|Cassegrain}} || Yes || Reflector || Similar to prime focus, but uses a secondary mirror to reflect light through a hole in the primary mirror to the observer (situated at the rear)
|-
| {{w|Cardboard}} tube || No, does not magnify || N/A || Children may sometimes use tubes, particularly the cardboard middles from paper rolls, as a play 'telescope'. Looking through a tube can give an illusion of magnification by removing distractions and focusing your attention on the object in view, but it doesn't actually magnify the object being viewed. It will still cause a minor optical effect due to {{w|diffraction}} on the edges of the tube.
|-
| {{w|Kaleidoscope|Kaleido''(scope)''}} || No, just used to create decorative patterns || Reflector || A {{w|kaleidoscope}} is similar in form to the stereotypical 'ship's telescope', being a tubular object that you look in to one end of. However, it isn't really a telescope, because you can't use it to magnify arbitrary objects of interest. The non-viewing end is closed, and you view patterns created by many fragmented reflections of tiny objects contained at the end, rather than remote objects. The mirrors (set lengthways and angled to each other) are also usually flat, so provide no magnification.
|-
| {{w|Liquid mirror telescope|Liquid mirror}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope with the same design as Prime Focus, using a rotating pool of reflective liquid (most commonly mercury) as a mirror, the steady rotation creating a parabolic lens. The diagram adds a straw so that someone can drink the liquid. This would not improve telescope performance or end well for the drinker (if the liquid was to be anything but water).
|-
| Narcissian || No, observers view themselves || Reflector || This is like a prime focus telescope, but the focus is outside the end of the telescope where the viewer is located, so they can only see themselves, magnified by the concave mirror. This is inspired by the myth of {{w|Narcissus}}, who fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water. A {{w|house of mirrors}} (a typical attraction at a funfair) might feature such a 'telescope', because it is basically a concave mirror.

Furthermore, a narcissist, someone who is inordinately self-centered and arrogant (named for Narcissus), would likely appreciate this kind of mirror, as a narcissist considers self-viewing more worthwhile than viewing the outside world.
|-
| {{w|Gravitational lens|Gravitational}} || Not as shown || Refractor || Using the gravitational effect of very large objects on the light passing around them to gain a magnified (if distorted) view of objects beyond them. These are formed naturally by large stars (particularly {{w|black holes}}) and galaxies, but can't be constructed on Earth{{cn}}. There are proposals to launch missions to the very far reaches of the Solar System to "construct" a {{w|Solar gravitational lens}} telescope, but the masses and distances involved are not compatible with consumer camera hardware.

In the title text, Randall is concerned about whether the listed focal length of a gravitational lens is measured in the {{w|comoving and proper distances|comoving or proper}} reference frame — that is, whether the expansion of the universe (between the place and time of the lens's creation or construction and Randall's decision to purchase) has been factored out or not. At the cosmological scales between stars and galaxies, where gravitational lensing is most relevant, this is a useful distinction to make, but [https://iauarchive.eso.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/ stars are not for sale] (by any legitimate commercial entity) and so nobody would be advertising any focal length in either reference frame for any purchaser.
|-
| Geological || No || Reflector || This 'telescope' employs a single mirror to show the observer the 2003 movie {{w|The Core}}, which was broadly derided by science-minded people. As a telescope it would not be useful, not least because it cannot be pointed at an arbitrary object. Its relevance to real geology is also dubious.{{Citation needed}}
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

[The comic contains cross-sections/diagrams of 13 different types of telescopes, each with a small eye representing the observer and shaded areas representing the path of light, with darker areas indicating where light overlaps itself. The light originates from the left in all but the Liquid Mirror and Geological diagrams.]

[Prime Focus: A telescope that contains a concave mirror at one end, which reflects and focuses a column of light directly to an observer within the telescope.]

[Herschelian: Similar to Prime Focus, except the mirror is angled such that its focal point is outside the telescope, along with the observer.]

[Newtonian: Similar to Prime Focus, although there is a smaller angled mirror that changes the direction of the light by 90° after being focused so that the focal point is outside of the telescope.]

[Galilean: Rather than being reflected, the light is refracted by a convex lens and focused until it hits a concave lens at the other end, where the observer is.]

[Keplerian: Similar to Galilean, although the light narrows to a point and effectively "flips" before being straightened out by a second convex lens.]

[Gregorian: Similar to a Prime Focus telescope, though the light is refracted a second time by a small concave mirror slightly after the focal point and exits through a gap in the first.]

[Cassegrain: Similar to Gregorian, though the second mirror is convex and slightly in front of the focal point.]

[Cardboard Tube: A simple tube that allows only a small potion of light in, which is then seen by the viewer.]

[Kaleido: A tube with several small pieces of some material at one end, which light passes through and is then repeatedly bounced around in a reflective inner tube.]

[Liquid Mirror: Similar to Prime Focus, except the mirror is vertical and made of liquid being rotated at a constant speed by a motor underneath. A drinking straw leads out of the liquid and toward a small closed mouth.]

[Narcissian: Similar to Prime Focus, except the light is emanating from Cueball, who is standing ~4m away from a Cueball-sized mirror. The light is being refracted directly into Cueball's face.]

[Gravitational: A small black hole is in the middle of the telescope, positioned just right to warp two streams of light coming around it directly to the observer.]

[Geological: Similar to a Newtonian telescope, except the primary mirror is replaced by a small television labeled "TV playing ''The Core'' (2003)."]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Telescopes]]
[[Category:Movies]]
[[Category:The Core]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

3182: Telescope Types

2026-04-06T17:47:18Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3182
| date = December 17, 2025
| title = Telescope Types
| image = telescope_types_2x.png
| imagesize = 517x680px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I'm trying to buy a gravitational lens for my camera, but I can't tell if the manufacturers are listing comoving focal length or proper focal length.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows diagrams of a number of different types of {{w|telescope}} — some real, while others are other objects, or made up by [[Randall]]. It includes both refracting and reflecting designs; see [[1791: Telescopes: Refractor vs Reflector]] for the important (according to Randall) differences between them.

{| class="wikitable"
! Type !! Telescope? !! Type !! Description
|-
| {{w|Reflecting telescope#Prime_focus|Prime focus}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design where the observer/receiver is situated at the focal point of a single mirror. Rare in optics, but a common design in radio telescopes.
|-
| {{w|Herschelian telescope|Herschelian}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design much akin to Prime Focus but with the mirror tilted so that the observer does not block incoming light. Named after astronomer William Herschel.
|-
| {{w|Newtonian telescope|Newtonian}} || Yes || Reflector || Newtonian telescopes employ a second, flat mirror along with the primary parabolic mirror.
|-
| {{w|Galilean telescope|Galilean}} || Yes || Refractor || What might usually come to mind when picturing a telescope. A long tube that uses lenses rather than mirrors (making it a refracting telescope) to magnify images.
|-
| {{w|Keplerian telescope|Keplerian}} || Yes || Refractor || An improvement on Galilean telescopes, using a convex lens rather than a concave one at the eyepiece (as shown in the diagram). It does however invert images.
|-
| {{w|Gregorian telescope|Gregorian}} || Yes || Reflector || Uses two concave mirrors, the secondary being placed beyond the primary's focal point. The image is reflected back through a hole in the primary mirror. Unique among reflectors in that the image is not inverted.
|-
| {{w|Cassegrain telescope|Cassegrain}} || Yes || Reflector || Similar to prime focus, but uses a secondary mirror to reflect light through a hole in the primary mirror to the observer (situated at the rear)
|-
| {{w|Cardboard}} tube || No, does not magnify || N/A || Children may sometimes use tubes, particularly the cardboard middles from paper rolls, as a play 'telescope'. Looking through a tube can give an illusion of magnification by removing distractions and focusing your attention on the object in view, but it doesn't actually magnify the object being viewed. It will still cause a minor optical effect due to {{w|diffraction}} on the edges of the tube.
|-
| {{w|Kaleidoscope|Kaleido''(scope)''}} || No, just used to create decorative patterns || Reflector || A {{w|kaleidoscope}} is similar in form to the stereotypical 'ship's telescope', being a tubular object that you look in to one end of. However, it isn't really a telescope, because you can't use it to magnify arbitrary objects of interest. The non-viewing end is closed, and you view patterns created by many fragmented reflections of tiny objects contained at the end, rather than remote objects. The mirrors (set lengthways and angled to each other) are also usually flat, so provide no magnification.
|-
| {{w|Liquid mirror telescope|Liquid mirror}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope with the same design as Prime Focus, using a rotating pool of reflective liquid (most commonly mercury) as a mirror, the steady rotation creating a parabolic lens. The diagram adds a straw so that someone can drink the liquid. This would not improve telescope performance or end well for the drinker (if the liquid was to be anything but water).
|-
| Narcissian || No, observers view themselves || Reflector || This is like a prime focus telescope, but the focus is outside the end of the telescope where the viewer is located, so they can only see themselves, magnified by the concave mirror. This is inspired by the myth of {{w|Narcissus}}, who fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water. A {{w|house of mirrors}} (a typical attraction at a funfair) might feature such a 'telescope', because it is basically a concave mirror.

Furthermore, a narcissist, someone who is inordinately self-centered and arrogant (named for Narcissus), would likely appreciate this kind of mirror, as a narcissist considers self-viewing more worthwhile than viewing the outside world.
|-
| {{w|Gravitational lens|Gravitational}} || Not as shown || Refractor || Using the gravitational effect of very large objects on the light passing around them to gain a magnified (if distorted) view of objects beyond them. These are formed naturally by large stars (particularly {{w|black holes}}) and galaxies, but can't be constructed on Earth{{cn}}. There are proposals to launch missions to the very far reaches of the Solar System to "construct" a {{w|Solar gravitational lens}} telescope, but the masses and distances involved are not compatible with consumer camera hardware.
<hr/>In the title text, Randall is concerned about whether the listed focal length of a gravitational lens is measured in the {{w|comoving and proper distances|comoving or proper}} reference frame — that is, whether the expansion of the universe (between the place and time of the lens's creation or construction and Randall's decision to purchase) has been factored out or not. At the cosmological scales between stars and galaxies, where gravitational lensing is most relevant, this is a useful distinction to make, but [https://iauarchive.eso.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/ stars are not for sale] (by any legitimate commercial entity) and so nobody would be advertising any focal length in either reference frame for any purchaser.
|-
| Geological || No || Reflector || This 'telescope' employs a single mirror to show the observer the 2003 movie {{w|The Core}}, which was broadly derided by science-minded people. As a telescope it would not be useful, not least because it cannot be pointed at an arbitrary object. Its relevance to real geology is also dubious.{{Citation needed}}
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

[The comic contains cross-sections/diagrams of 13 different types of telescopes, each with a small eye representing the observer and shaded areas representing the path of light, with darker areas indicating where light overlaps itself. The light originates from the left in all but the Liquid Mirror and Geological diagrams.]

[Prime Focus: A telescope that contains a concave mirror at one end, which reflects and focuses a column of light directly to an observer within the telescope.]

[Herschelian: Similar to Prime Focus, except the mirror is angled such that its focal point is outside the telescope, along with the observer.]

[Newtonian: Similar to Prime Focus, although there is a smaller angled mirror that changes the direction of the light by 90° after being focused so that the focal point is outside of the telescope.]

[Galilean: Rather than being reflected, the light is refracted by a convex lens and focused until it hits a concave lens at the other end, where the observer is.]

[Keplerian: Similar to Galilean, although the light narrows to a point and effectively "flips" before being straightened out by a second convex lens.]

[Gregorian: Similar to a Prime Focus telescope, though the light is refracted a second time by a small concave mirror slightly after the focal point and exits through a gap in the first.]

[Cassegrain: Similar to Gregorian, though the second mirror is convex and slightly in front of the focal point.]

[Cardboard Tube: A simple tube that allows only a small potion of light in, which is then seen by the viewer.]

[Kaleido: A tube with several small pieces of some material at one end, which light passes through and is then repeatedly bounced around in a reflective inner tube.]

[Liquid Mirror: Similar to Prime Focus, except the mirror is vertical and made of liquid being rotated at a constant speed by a motor underneath. A drinking straw leads out of the liquid and toward a small closed mouth.]

[Narcissian: Similar to Prime Focus, except the light is emanating from Cueball, who is standing ~4m away from a Cueball-sized mirror. The light is being refracted directly into Cueball's face.]

[Gravitational: A small black hole is in the middle of the telescope, positioned just right to warp two streams of light coming around it directly to the observer.]

[Geological: Similar to a Newtonian telescope, except the primary mirror is replaced by a small television labeled "TV playing ''The Core'' (2003)."]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Telescopes]]
[[Category:Movies]]
[[Category:The Core]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

3157: Emperor Palpatine

2026-03-30T17:13:11Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3157
| date = October 20, 2025
| title = Emperor Palpatine
| image = emperor_palpatine_2x.png
| imagesize = 538x531px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Many things about Star Wars were not well planned out, but having a 37-year-old in old-age makeup play the Emperor in Return of the Jedi was such an incredible call.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|What happened when Palpatine was a toddler (all I know is he wasn't a Jedi and discovered the dark side)? This page was created by A BOT OF UNCERTAIN AGE. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This comic about {{w|extrapolation}} tracks the age of the {{w|Star Wars}} character {{w|Palpatine}} against the age of the actor who played him.

The primary film series of the Star Wars franchise consists of three trilogies: the original trilogy (1977-1983, portraying from the immediate lead up to the Battle of Yavin until 4 <abbr title="years After the Battle of Yavin">ABY</abbr>), the prequel trilogy (1999-2005, portraying 32 <abbr title="years Before the Battle of Yavin">BBY</abbr> to 19 BBY), and the sequel trilogy (2015-2019, during 34-35 ABY). Palpatine is played by {{w|Ian McDiarmid}} in at least one film from each trilogy (and all three films of the prequel trilogy).

* The character of Emperor Palpatine was briefly mentioned in the first {{w|Star Wars}} movie and appears briefly in {{w|The Empire Strikes Back}} (see the Trivia section below), but doesn't have significant screen time until {{w|Return of the Jedi}}, in 1983, which is when McDiarmid took on the role. He was presented as an elderly, withered, and physically decaying man, despite being played by an actor in his 30s. The character appears to be killed near the end of the film.
* The prequels portray Palpatine's rise from Senator to Chancellor to Emperor. McDiarmid was 55 when the first of the prequels was made, and used no obvious aging or de-aging makeup or other effects, implying that the Palpatine of this era was approximately the same age as the actor (which fits nicely with the established timeline of the universe).
* {{w|The Rise of Skywalker}} was the third film of the sequel trilogy. Infamously, this film reveals that "somehow, Palpatine returned". This is somewhat vaguely explained by references to "dark signs, cloning, secrets only the Sith knew", echoing elements of the non-film fiction that had existed before the sequels, but were no longer considered official canon. McDiarmid, now in his 70s, played the role once again. While he appears at least as aged as the actor (and far more physically corrupted) the joke is that, if he was cloned, his new body had an "undefined age", but was presumably much younger than Palpatine would have been had he survived beyond his previous appearances. However, the movie justifies it by cloned body decay. It is unknown whether this plot point was written to comply with actor's age, or if McDiarmid was cast because writers wanted a 'decaying' Palpatine anyway.

Putting all this together, [[Randall]] comes up with a chart comparing the actor's age to that of the character, and concludes that they have an inverse relationship. Extrapolating this forward, he proposes that McDiarmid (81 years old, as of the publication of this strip) be brought back to play the Emperor as a toddler.

Firstly, this suggestion is highly impractical. Where it has so far been possible, using make-up and additional effects, for this actor to play a character at first much older and now much younger than himself, it would require unusually extreme measures to make Randall's suggestion work, given the much larger changes that humans go through in childhood. Not only would his features need to be made radically younger, but his stature and body shape would have to be altered. It is hard to see how this could be done convincingly.

Secondly, this kind of extrapolation is ridiculous. In addition to the silliness of the subject matter, the data isn't used properly. Considering that there are only four good data points (plus a fifth where one of the dimensions is unclear, so is excluded), there is not really a sufficient sample to make a proper extrapolation from here. Furthermore, three of the data points are clustered closely together, reducing their usefulness as independent markers, and by themselves represent a period where character-age and actor-age are effectively directly equivalent, in contradiction to the extrapolated negative slope.

This would also mean, that toddler Emperor's adventures would take time around 87-74 BBY - [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Empire_era a period where nothing of importance has happened].

The title text suggests that the makers of Star Wars had planned this out from the beginning, and so deliberately chose a 37-year-old actor to play an elderly character, specifically so that he could continue to play the part throughout the entire film series. In fact, the long-term direction of the films was never so accurately anticipated, and the notion that the films would be made over the course of more than four decades was probably not ever predicted. The idea that casting was made on that assumption is unlikely in the extreme. The fact that the same actor was able to reprise his role over such a long period of time was almost certainly just a matter of luck, though Randall jokingly presents this as entirely intentional.

This comic continues a long xkcd [[:Category:Extrapolation|theme of applying graphing and extrapolation poorly]], and in situations where they're not appropriate, to show the kinds of ridiculous predictions they can lead to.

==Transcript==
:[A scatter chart with the X scale from 30 to 90 and Y scale from 0 to 120. The X axis is labeled "Ian McDiarmid age during filming" and Y axis is labeled "Emperor Palpatine character age".]
:[Point labeled "Return of the Jedi"] X value = ~39, Y value = ~87
:[Point labeled "The Phantom Menace"] X value = ~50, Y value = ~52
:[Point labeled "Attack of the Clones"] X value = ~52, Y value = 61
:[Point labeled "Revenge of the Sith"] X value = ~60, Y value = ~62
:[Hollow circle with a dashed outline labeled "Now"] X value = ~81, Y value = ~4
:[A thick black arrow trending downwards from "Return of the Jedi" pointing near "The Phantom Menace", "Attack of the Clones", and "Revenge of the Sith". "The Phantom Menace" is below it and "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith" are above it.]
:[Another thick black arrow trending downwards from "The Phantom Menace" and nearby points to the "Now" circle.]
:[Vertical line with gradient labeled "The Rise of Skywalker (cloned body, undefined age)". The gradient is darkest around the Y values from 40 to 50, and becomes lighter towards either extreme of the Y axis. It stops when it touches the black arrow.] X value = ~75

:[Caption beneath panel]
:To continue the trend, they should make a Star Wars movie where 81-year-old Ian McDiarmid plays the Emperor as a toddler.

==Trivia==
Not depicted upon the graph are Palpatine's prior actors, all from the original release of Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, when Palpatine would have been 88. {{w|Marjorie Eaton}} (79) visually played the character in an uncredited role (unless it was the trial footage of Elaine Baker, instead, at the time 27 and married to {{w|Rick Baker|the film's makeup designer}}), with different heavy prosthetics to McDiarmid and supposedly superimposed with the eyes of a chimpanzee ({{w|Chimpanzee#Mortality and health|age unknown}}!), whilst {{w|Clive Revill}} (50) provided the voice. For the 2004 DVD release, the scene was entirely reshot with McDiarmid, who was 60 at the time ''and'' given a make-over to more closely match his own initial appearance in the followup film.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Extrapolation]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]
[[Category:Scatter plots]]

what if? (blog)

2026-02-11T18:31:37Z

Cheesesentience: /* History */

{{DISPLAYTITLE:''what if?'' (blog)}}<noinclude>:''For other instances of this title, see [[What If (disambiguation)]].</noinclude>
{{TOC}}[[File:whatifbanner.jpg|400px|right]]{{incomplete|
*Fact-check the [[#History|History section]] on this page—I used ChatGPT to reorganise it and it might have hallucinated—the original is commented out below.
**In the first part of the [[#History|History section]], talk more about the changes in the [[Header text]], such as [[Header text#2012-07-10 - New: what-if.xkcd.com|the announcement]] and the [[Header text#2012-10-17 - New What-If - Lightning|following changes]].
** Also, improve the last paragraph.

*We have been alerted that the email that the What If? suggestions go to '''is wrong'''. Try submitting a "What if?" suggestion yourself, you should get an email from whatever email service you use saying that the email "Doesn't exist". Mention the email address and the issue, and find out more details.

*Add more info to the newly-created explanation of the official [https://youtube.com/@xkcd_whatif YouTube channel].

*Mention the 2022 website redesign of the ''What if?'' website (use the [https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://what-if.xkcd.com/ Wayback Machine] and take inspiration from page: [[Design of xkcd.com]])}}

'''''[http://what-if.xkcd.com/ what if?]''''' is a blog hosted on the [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] domain and written by [[Randall Munroe]] with entries posted occasionally. On the blog, [[Randall Munroe]] discusses hypothetical physics questions submitted by readers. Before publishing the [[What If? (book)|''What If?'']] book, articles were usually posted weekly. ''what if?'' typically takes questions beyond the original scope likely intended by the reader for humorous effect.
The featured questions range from questionably realistic possibilities (e.g. the probability of achieving a {{what if|2|perfect SAT score by guessing}}) to completely fictional questions (e.g. what happens if you create a {{what if|94|billion-story building}})). In his explanations, Randall, often uses diagrams in an ''xkcd'' style. Regardless of the context, he tends to take the questions extremely literally and responds seriously to them, however whimsical they are. This site is '''not''' under [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License], unlike normal xkcd comics. Most illustrations present on the blog have individual [[Title text|title texts]], similar to almost all xkcd comics. Initially, these title texts were just visual descriptions of the illustrations, but later explanations had title texts that added a bit of humor into the blog articles, more in line with their use in the comics.

In 2014, Randall released the first [[What If? (book)|''What If?'']] book, which was made up of articles that had already been released on the blog, as well as new, exclusive chapters. The same formula would later be used in 2022, with the release of the second book, ''[[What If? 2]]''. In 2024, Randall published [[What If? 10th Anniversary Edition]], a revised and updated version of the original containing one bonus chapter.

On August 31 2023, after the first two ''what if?'' books had been published, Randall created the official ''what if?'' YouTube channel, called [https://www.youtube.com/@xkcd_whatif ''xkcd's What If?''], and is produced by Neptune Studios LLC. In the channel, he voice-overs his previously published articles and adds novel corrections and illustrations.

A similar series of articles written and illustrated in the ''what if?'' style by Randall Munroe [[New York Times: Good Question|can be found in the New York Times' ''Good Question'' column]]

==History==
The creation of the ''what if?'' blog was [[Header text#2012-07-10 - New: what-if.xkcd.com|announced in a header text]] on [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com], and the first few articles were also promoted thru [[Header text#2012-10-17 - New What-If - Lightning|other changes to header text]]. The first two articles, {{what if|1|1: Relativistic Baseball}} and {{what if|2|2: SAT Guessing}}, were released simultaneously on July 10, 2012, likely to establish the blog and attract readers from xkcd. Following this, new articles were published weekly for nearly three years, with only occasional gaps of two or three weeks. This consistent schedule continued until article {{what if|136|136: Spiders vs. the Sun}} was released on April 12, 2015, marking two years and forty weeks of regular updates.

===Release schedule===
Initially, articles were published on Tuesdays, with the third article appearing on July 17, 2012. This changed to Wednesdays with article {{what if|100|100: WWII Films}}, released on June 11, 2014, and then to Thursdays with article {{what if|117|117: Distant Death}} on October 23, 2014. The final six articles of this period were released on four different weekdays, with only two appearing exactly one week apart.

After 25 articles, the first deviation from the weekly schedule occurred with a two-week Christmas break before article 26 was published on December 31, 2012. Over the following years, five additional two-week breaks, a single three-week break (before December 11, 2014), and a brief period where two articles, {{what if|133|133: Flagpole}} and {{what if|134|134: Space Burial}}, were released in quick succession led to minor fluctuations in the schedule. Another Christmas break occurred before article {{what if|77|77: Growth Rate}} was released on December 31, 2013. From August 2014 onward, more frequent two-week breaks appeared, including one in August, one in September, and two in November, culminating in the usual Christmas hiatus.

Following article {{what if|136|136: Spiders vs. the Sun}}, published on April 12, 2015, Randall took a 13-week break, returning on July 14, 2015. At the time, he announced, "What If updates are temporarily on hold, and will resume on July 14th, 2015, at 7:49:59 AM EDT." This timing coincided with the {{w|New Horizons}} probe’s closest approach to {{w|Pluto}}, which was also the topic of article {{what if|137|137: New Horizons}}, released that same day.

After this break, only three more articles appeared in 2015, with the last, article {{what if|139|139: Jupiter Descending}}, published on August 4. Another extended pause followed, with just one more release that year—article {{what if|140|140: Proton Earth, Electron Moon}} on September 18, 2015, after a six-week gap. Regular releases resumed in 2016 with article {{what if|141|141: Sunbeam}} on January 16, followed by nine more publications before the end of March, initially on Tuesdays, then shifting to Fridays and Saturdays. Article {{what if|149|149: Pizza Bird}}, released on March 26, 2016, was the last to appear before another slowdown.

Only three more articles were published in 2016, with gaps of roughly eight and twelve weeks between them. During the summer, the release frequency dropped to approximately one article every two months.

===Peptides incident===
The final article of the year, [https://web.archive.org/web/20161205191559/http://what-if.xkcd.com/153 153: Peptides], was published on December 5, 2016. However, it was removed the following day and [https://web.archive.org/web/20161206171630/http://what-if.xkcd.com/153/ replaced with a notice] explaining it was just an early draft:

:'''Whoops'''
:This article is still in progress. <span class="plainlinks">An early draft was unintentionally posted here thanks to Randall's '''[http://xkcd.com/1597/ troubled approach to git]''', and it took a little bit to get everything sorted out and rolled back.</span> Sorry for the mixup!

A completed version of this article was never published, and the URL was later reassigned to article {{what if|153|153: Hide the Atmosphere}}.

On [https://web.archive.org/web/20220913142437/https://xkcd.com/events/ Thursday, 15 September 2022], user [https://linktr.ee/ibid11962 ibid11962] personally asked [[Randall Munroe]] about the incident at the [[What If? 2]] book tour at the Strand Book Store in New York. According to him, Randall knew which article he was referring to, but didn't remember any of the circumstances of it being released and then unreleased. He recorded the conversation and sent [[User:FaviFake]] a [[:File:Chat with ibid11962.png|transcript on Discord]]. The transcript reads:

{{quote|<nowiki />''ibid11962: ''Six years ago you made a what-if called "Peptides" and then took it down the day later and said that it would be up soon. It still hasn't ever appeared. I'm wondering why is that and are there any plans to use it?

[[Randall Munroe]]: ''I am going to have to go and look and see why. I don't remember off-hand.''

ibid11962: ''It was a what-if about making words with amino acids.''

[[Randall Munroe]]: ''Hmm. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that I just had posted it by mistake. It was a draft that I was working on. And I don't know. I must have decided I didn't like the draft the way it turned out. I'm gonna have to go back through though, because I had forgotten about that until you brought it up just now. So I'll take a look. ... Yeah, I occasionally find something that I like got halfway through and then set aside for some reason and forgot about.''|''[[:File:Chat with ibid11962.png|Source]]''}}

===Sporadic releases===
The first article of 2017, article {{what if|153|153: Hide the Atmosphere}}, was released on January 30, nearly 15 weeks after the previous entry, making it the second-longest hiatus at the time. However, subsequent articles, including articles {{what if|154|154: Coast-to-Coast Coasting}} and {{what if|155|155: Toaster vs. Freezer}}, were released more frequently, appearing within a few weeks of each other. This marked a brief resurgence in activity, though the overall publication rate remained low—only eight articles were released between February 2016 and February 2017.

Following article {{what if|156|156: Electrofishing for Whales}}, released in March 2017, updates ceased entirely for over a year. It was not until May 2018, 62 weeks later, that article {{what if|157|157: Earth-Moon Fire Pole}}, was published. This marked the beginning of a nearly four-year absence of new content on the blog. The extended hiatus was likely due to Randall's work on the [[What If? 2]] book, as announced in [[2575: What If? 2]]. However, in the lead-up to the book’s release, the blog saw a brief return of activity:

*Article {{what if|158|158: Hot Banana}}, was published almost four years after the last update.

*Articles {{what if|159|159: Hailstones}}, {{what if|160|160: Transatlantic Car Rental}}, and {{what if|161|161: Star Ownership}} were each released about two months after the previous article.

*The most recent article, {{what if|162|162: Comet Ice}}, was released about a month later, on December 6, 2022.

Since {{what if|162|162: Comet Ice}}, no further articles have been published on the blog, marking a break of over three years.

There are many reasons Randall might have slowed down. Releasing too many articles may disincentivize people from buying the books, the YouTube page is better marketing, people aren't asking interesting questions, the increased popularity of the article has led to too many questions being asked and it becomes increasingly unfair to answer one over the other, or other more personal reasons that Randall may not want to share. During this time, Randall has likely focused on writing more book-exclusive chapters and producing content for the YouTube channel.
{{:What If? chapters}}

[[Category:What If?| 1]]{{xkcdmeta}}

3203: Binary Star

2026-02-06T15:47:51Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3203
| date = February 4, 2026
| title = Binary Star
| image = binary_star_2x.png
| imagesize = 353x365px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The discovery of a fully typographical star system comes with a big asterisk.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Binary star|Binary star systems}}, where two stars orbit each other, are common throughout the universe. In some cases, these are different types of stars, such as a {{w|neutron star}} co-orbiting with a {{w|main sequence}} star. Here, however, the comic depicts a system consisting of a real celestial object (just such a main sequence star), and a star which is instead a stylised five-pointed shape in which stars are often drawn, called a {{w|pentagram}}.

Pointed stars [https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/06/16/4253961.htm do not actually exist] as astronomical bodies. Stars seen in the night sky can sometimes appear as though they have spikes coming out of them, but these are just optical illusions caused by the {{w|diffraction}} [[2762|spike]] effect, and not {{w|Inverted World|something far weirder}}.

The title text puns on the * symbol (an {{w|asterisk}} - meaning little star), which is sometimes called a star, and is often used to indicate {{w|Note (typography)|footnotes}} in text. A "big asterisk" is used as a metaphor for a rather large caveat or significant reservations about the statement being made, suggesting that such qualifications would form a long footnote. This could be interpreted as meaning that the existence of the "typographical star system" is significantly doubtful. Alternatively, it could be read as meaning that the "big asterisk" is a physically very large (astronomical scale) symbol, which forms part of a system composed of other bodies in the form of typography.

Drawing a star as a pentagram, as shown in the comic, is referenced in [[1029: Drawing Stars]].

The orbital paths shown are anomalous. The main sequence star follows a path that's nearly circular, while the five-pointed star follows an elliptical path, and they're at different locations along their paths. If the two stars were the most massive objects in their system by a significant margin, approximating a two-body system, their paths should be the same shape (albeit at different sizes, if their masses differ) centered on opposite sides of the shared focal point of their {{w|Barycenter (astronomy)|barycenter}}, with all four of the ellipses' foci collinear. Their locations along those paths should be directly in (anti-)phase, and collinear with the barycenter. That this isn't true implies that there's at least one other massive object, which isn't shown, in the system. The much smaller path of the main sequence star suggests that it's in a (relatively) close orbit with the other massive object, with the five-pointed star being much less massive than either, and essentially orbiting them both at a greater distance. That the five-pointed star has much less mass makes sense, since it appears to consist only of five intersecting linear structures, with large empty spaces in between.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[Graphical depiction of a binary star system. The orbits are shown with dashed lines. One star is revolving circularly close to the center of mass and is shown as a filled circle. The other has a very elliptic orbit further out. It is currently close to its furthest point from the other star. This star is depicted as a pentagram.]
:[Caption below the image:]
:Space news: astronomers have found the first known system with a main-sequence star orbited by a five-pointed one.
{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

3202: Groundhog Day Meaning

2026-02-02T18:07:33Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3202
| date = February 2, 2026
| title = Groundhog Day Meaning
| image = groundhog_day_meaning_2x.png
| imagesize = 257x378px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Originally, the ceremony used a variety of rodents and mustelids, but over time most people agreed it made sense to standardize on a specific individual ground squirrel in Pennsylvania.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by someone stuck in a time loop. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

This comic was posted on Groundhog Day, February 2nd. Cueball is shown explaining the holiday to Black Hat.

{{w|Groundhog Day}} originates from a superstition regarding the behaviour of a groundhog. Supposedly, if the groundhog does not see its shadow, the spring thaw is likely to happen shortly thereafter. If it does see its shadow, however, it is frightened and retreats into its burrow, and six more weeks of winter await.

''{{w|Groundhog Day (film)|Groundhog Day}}'' is also the title of a 1993 film starring Bill Murray. In the film, Murray's character is trapped in a time loop centered on Groundhog Day; no matter how his day ends - whether by falling asleep at the end of the day or dying somewhere during the event - the world and everyone around him resets to that same morning. However, Murray's character retains all memories of the previous day. The movie has {{tvtropes|GroundhogDayLoop|become synonymous with the plot element of a time loop}} in English-speaking cultures.

Black Hat, apparently representing someone who has never heard of Groundhog Day in any context, is baffled. Whether his reaction is due to the historical origin, the time loop plot, or the incongruity between the two meanings is left as an exercise for the reader.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:Cueball: Historically, it refers to a ceremony to predict the weather using a rodent. But nowadays people often use it to mean "a time loop experienced by one person."
:Black Hat: ...what.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Easily our weirdest holiday.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

3202: Groundhog Day Meaning

2026-02-02T18:01:30Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3202
| date = February 2, 2026
| title = Groundhog Day Meaning
| image = groundhog_day_meaning_2x.png
| imagesize = 257x378px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Originally, the ceremony used a variety of rodents and mustelids, but over time most people agreed it made sense to standardize on a specific individual ground squirrel in Pennsylvania.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by someone stuck in a time loop. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

This comic was posted on Groundhog Day, February 2nd. Cueball is shown explaining the holiday to Black Hat.

Groundhog Day originates from a superstition regarding the behaviour of a groundhog. Supposedly, if the groundhog does not see its shadow, the spring thaw is likely to happen shortly thereafter. If it does see its shadow, however, it is frightened and retreats into its burrow, and six more weeks of winter await.

''Groundhog Day'' is also the title of a film starring Bill Murray. In the film, Murray's character is trapped in a time loop centered on Groundhog Day; no matter how his day ends - whether by falling asleep at the end of the day or dying somewhere during the event - he wakes up on the morning of Groundhog Day again, retaining his memories of the previous loop(s) while the rest of the world sees nothing amiss. The movie has {{tvtropes|GroundhogDayLoop|become synonymous with the plot element of a time loop}} in English-speaking cultures.

Black Hat, apparently representing someone who has never heard of Groundhog Day in any context, is baffled. Whether his reaction is due to the historical origin, the time loop plot, or the incongruity between the two meanings is left as an exercise for the reader.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:Cueball: Historically, it refers to a ceremony to predict the weather using a rodent. But nowadays people often use it to mean "a time loop experienced by one person."
:Black Hat: ...what.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Easily our weirdest holiday.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

857: Archimedes

2025-12-22T15:59:43Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 857
| date = February 7, 2011
| title = Archimedes
| image = archimedes.png
| titletext = Give a man a fish, or he will destroy the only existing vial of antidote.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic references a famous quote made by {{w|Archimedes}}: [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Archimedes δῶς μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω], which could translate as "Give me a long enough lever and a place to rest it, and I will move the Earth". Archimedes was illustrating the power of {{w|force}} multiplication by pointing out that the theoretical force that could be exerted by a {{w|lever}} is unlimited. In principle, an arbitrarily large force could be exerted by a single human with a lever of sufficient length (that also assumes that the lever is arbitrarily strong and rigid, and that the fulcrum is arbitrarily strong and stable). Obviously, this couldn't be taken as a practical proposal, but merely a demonstration of theory.

Here, [[Cueball]] begins as if he is quoting Archimedes, but then produces a gun and threatens to execute hostages if he does not receive the lever. This turns a statement of a thought experiment to an actual demand, connected to a serious threat. It's not clear what "long enough" means in this context, possibly he's trying to enact Archimedes' experiment for real. In any case, he's apparently sufficiently determined to have taken hostages and to threaten to murder them.

This may be a stealth pun on the term "leverage", as the threat of killing hostages is used to provide leverage to have the hostage taker's demands met. Of course, the leverage provided by a physical lever and the concept of leverage in terms of a negotiation are two wildly different ideas, despite the similar name.

The title text references another famous proverb, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." The quote starts out the same, but again ends with a sentence that is more fitting for an action movie.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing normally.]
:Cueball: In the words of Archimedes,

:[Cueball extends his left arm slightly.]
:Cueball: Give me a long enough lever and a place to rest it

:[Cueball is now holding a gun in his right hand.]
:Cueball: Or I will kill one hostage every hour.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Physics]]

1227: The Pace of Modern Life

2025-12-18T19:30:13Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 1227
| date = June 19, 2013
| title = The Pace of Modern Life
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = the pace of modern life.png
| titletext = 'Unfortunately, the notion of marriage which prevails ... at the present time ... regards the institution as simply a convenient arrangement or formal contract ... This disregard of the sanctity of marriage and contempt for its restrictions is one of the most alarming tendencies of the present age.' --John Harvey Kellogg, Ladies' guide in health and disease (1883)
}}

==Explanation==
The debate as to whether or not the pace of modern life is detrimental to society, culture, and the human experience in general has been going on for longer than we may realize. Presently, the debate has focused on technology such as smartphones, tablets, and other portable electronics; however, many of the same arguments were made against {{w|newspaper}}s, magazines, telegraphs, telephones, and even written correspondence 100 years ago.

People often tend to think of older times as better. The people complaining compare their present time to the time they lived in before, that is, a couple of decades ago, and this has been happening for over a century (at least). This comic makes a point that the older times people refer to, were also criticized in exactly the same fashion. Since the same criticism is applied to each generation by the generation before that one, every generation thinks that the one they were born in is the good one. This is presentism as explained by Randall in [[24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey]].

The comic begins and ends with very similar arguments, perhaps emphasizing how these debates cycle and repeat over time. The comic does not directly state whether these opinions and criticisms were justified or simple fallacies. There is a desire to consider our present existence as good and reasonable and that society has been improving over time. The difficulty lies in considering the possibility that each generation was perhaps correct in their criticism.

On reading all of these quotes, one may find these quotes redundant and tiresome to read. Readers may find themselves skimming the text and skipping several quotes once they get the overall idea. This could be a self-referential point demonstrating that the writing style of older times was less convenient than the oft-criticized brief modern style.

Some parts of all that long texts are in bold, others not. Here is the summary for only this bold text, picturing just our ''Modern World'':

:The art of letter-writing is fast dying out. We fire off a multitude of rapid and short notes, instead of sitting down to have a good talk over a real sheet of paper.
:In olden times it was different. Men now live think and work at express speed. Sulkily read as they travel leaving them no time to talk with the friend who may share the compartment with them.
:The age of leisure is dead, and the art of conversation is dying. A craving for literary nips. There never was an age in which so many people were able to write badly.
:The art of pure line engraving is dying out. We live at too fast a rate nothing is left to the imagination and human faculty dwindle away amid the million inventions that have been introduced to render its exercise unnecessary.
:Thirty pages is now too much. Fifteen pages further condensed a summary of the summary.
:Those who are dipping into so many subjects and gathering information in a summary and superficial form lose the habit of settling down to great works.
:Hurried reading can never be good reading. Mental and nervous degeneration among a growing class of people, a brain incapable of normal working in a large measure due to the hurry and excitement of modern life, almost instantaneous communication between remote points of the globe.
:Teach the children how to play instead of shutting them in badly ventilated schoolrooms, increased demand made by the conditions of modern life upon the brain.
:We talk across a continent, telegraph across an ocean, we take even our pleasures sadly and make a task of our play.
:The managers of sensational newspapers create perverted tastes and develop vicious tendencies.
:To take sufficient time for our meals seems frequently impossible, may I be permitted to say a word in favour of a very worthy and valuable old friend of mine, Mr. Long walk? I am afraid that this good gentleman is in danger of getting neglected, if not forgotten.
:People talk as they ride bicycles–at a rush–without pausing to consider their surroundings the profession of letters is so little understood, tendency among the children of today to rebel against restraint. Our modern family gathering, silent, each individual with his head buried in his favourite magazine, deal openly with situations which no person would have dared to mention in general society forty years ago.
:A hundred years ago it took so long and cost so much to send a letter that it seemed worth while to put some time and thought into writing it. A brief letter to-day may be followed by another next week–a "line" now by another to-morrow.

The style of the comic is very similar to that of [[1311: 2014]], which was released half a year later.

The title text shows that the meaning of the institute of marriage debate has likewise been going on for quite some time.

==Transcript==
:'''The art of letter-writing is fast dying out.''' When a letter cost nine pence, it seemed but fair to try to make it worth nine pence ... Now, however, we think we are too busy for such old-fashioned correspondence. '''We fire off a multitude of rapid and short notes, instead of sitting down to have a good talk over a real sheet of paper.'''
::''The Sunday Magazine''
:::1871

:It is, unfortunately, one of the chief characteristics of modern business to be always in a hurry. '''In olden times it was different.'''
::''The Medical Record''
:::1884

:With the advent of cheap newspapers and superior means of locomotion... The dreamy quiet old days are over... '''For men now live think and work at express speed.''' They have their ''Mercury'' or ''Post'' laid on their breakfast table in the early morning, and if they are too hurried to snatch from it the news during that meal, they carry it off, to be '''sulkily read as they travel ... leaving them no time to talk with the friend who may share the compartment with them'''... The hurry and bustle of modern life ... lacks the quiet and repose of the period when our forefathers, the day's work done, took their ease...
::William Smith, Morley: ''Ancient and Modern''
:::1886

:Conversation is said to be a lost art ... Good talk presupposes leisure, both for preparation and enjoyment. '''The age of leisure is dead, and the art of conversation is dying.'''
::''Frank Leslie's popular Monthly'', Volume 29
:::1890

:Intellectual laziness and the hurry of the age have produced '''a craving for literary nips.''' The torpid brain ... has grown too weak for sustained thought.
:'''There never was an age in which so many people were able to write badly.'''
::Israel Zangwill, ''The Bachelors' Club''
:::1891

:'''The art of pure line engraving is dying out. We live at too fast a rate to allow for the preparation of such plates as our fathers appreciated.''' If a picture catches the public fancy, the public must have an etched or a photogravured copy of it within a month or two of its appearance, the days when engravers were wont to spend two or three years over a single plate are for ever gone.
::''Journal of the Institute of Jamaica'', Volume 1
:::1892

:So much is exhibited to the eye that '''nothing is left to the imagination'''. It sometimes seems almost possible that the modern world might be choked by its own riches, '''and human faculty dwindle away amid the million inventions that have been introduced to render its exercise unnecessary.'''
:The articles in the ''Quarterlies'' extend to thirty or more pages, but '''thirty pages is now too much''' so we witness a further condensing process and, we have the ''Fortnightly'' and the ''Contemporary'' which reduce thirty pages to '''fifteen pages''' so that you may read a larger number of articles in a shorter time and in a shorter form. As if this last condensing process were not enough the condensed articles of these periodicals are '''further condensed''' by the daily papers, which will give you a '''summary of the summary''' of all that has been written about everything.
:'''Those who are dipping into so many subjects and gathering information in a summary and superficial form lose the habit of settling down to great works.'''
:Ephemeral literature is driving out the great classics of the present and the past ... '''hurried reading can never be good reading.'''
::G. J. Goschen, ''First Annual Address to the Students'', Toynbee Hall. London
:::1894

:The existence of '''mental and nervous degeneration among a growing class of people''', especially in large cities, is an obvious phenomenon ... the mania for stimulants ... diseases of the mind are almost as numerous as the diseases of the body... This intellectual condition is characterized by '''a brain incapable of normal working ... in a large measure due to the hurry and excitement of modern life''', with its facilities for rapid locomotion and '''almost instantaneous communication between remote points of the globe'''...
::''The Churchman'', Volume 71
:::1895

:If we '''teach the children how to play''' and encourage them in their sports ... '''instead of shutting them in badly ventilated schoolrooms''', the next generation will be more joyous and will be healthier than the present one.
::''Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Summary of the Press Throughout the World'', Volume 18
:::1895

:The cause of the ... increase in nervous disease is '''increased demand made by the conditions of modern life upon the brain'''. Everything is done in a hurry. '''We talk across a continent, telegraph across an ocean''', take a trip to Chicago for an hour's talk... '''We take even our pleasures sadly and make a task of our play''' ... what wonder if the pressure is almost more than our nerves can bear.
::G. Shrady (from P.C. Knapp)
::"Are nervous diseases increasing?" ''Medical Record''
:::1896

:'''The managers of sensational newspapers''' ... do not try to educate their readers and make them better, but tend to '''create perverted tastes and develop vicious tendencies.''' The owners of these papers seem to have but one purpose, and that is to increase their circulation.
::''Medical Brief'', Volume 26
:::1898

:'''To take sufficient time for our meals seems frequently impossible''' on account of the demands on our time made by our business... We act on the apparent belief that all of our business is so pressing that we must jump on the quickest car home, eat our dinner in the most hurried way, make the closest connection for a car returning ...
::Louis John Rettger. ''Studies in Advanced Physiology''
:::1898

:In these days of increasing rapid artificial locomotion, '''may I be permitted to say a word in favour of a very worthy and valuable old friend of mine, Mr. Long Walk?'''
:'''I am afraid that this good gentleman is in danger of getting neglected, if not forgotten.''' We live in days of water trips and land trips, excursions by sea, road and rail-bicycles and tricycles, tram cars and motor cars .... but in my humble opinion, good honest walking exercise for health beats all other kinds of locomotion into a cocked hat.
::T. Thatcher, "A plea for a long walk",
::''The Publishers Circular''
:::1902

:The art of conversation is almost a lost one. '''People talk as they ride bicycles–at a rush–without pausing to consider their surroundings''' ... what has been generally understood as cultured society is rapidly deteriorating into baseness and voluntary ignorance. '''The profession of letters is so little understood''', and so far from being seriously appreciated, that ... Newspapers are full, not of thoughtful honestly expressed public opinion on the affairs of the nation, but of vapid personalities interesting to none save gossips and busy bodies.
::Marie Corelli,
::''Free opinions, freely expressed''
:::1905

:There is a great '''tendency among the children of today to rebel against restraint''', not only that placed upon them by the will of the parent. But against any restraint or limitation of what they consider their rights ... this fact has filled well minded people with great apprehensions for the future.
::Rev. Henry Hussmann,
::''The authority of parents''
:::1906

:'''Our modern family gathering, silent''' around the fire, '''each individual with his head buried in his favourite magazine''', is the somewhat natural outcome of the banishment of colloquy from the school ...
::''The Journal of Education'', Volume 29
:::1907

:Plays in theatres at the present time present spectacles and '''deal openly with situations which no person would have dared to mention in general society forty years ago'''... The current representations of '''nude men and women in the daily journals''' and the illustrated magazines would have excluded such periodicals from all respectable families two decades ago... Those who have been divorced ... forty and fifty years ago lost at once and irrevocably their standing in society, while to-day they continue in all their social relationships, hardly changed...
::Editorial, ''The Watchman'', Boston
:::1908

:We write millions more letters than did our grandfathers, but the increase in volume has brought with it an automatic artificial machine-like ring ... an examination of a file of old letters reveals not only a remarkable grasp of details. But a '''fitness and courtliness too often totally lacking''' in the mechanical curt cut and dried letters of to-day.
::Forrest Crissey, ''Handbook of Modern Business Correspondence''
:::1908

:'''A hundred years ago it took so long and cost so much to send a letter that it seemed worth while to put some time and thought into writing it.''' Now the quickness and the cheapness of the post seem to justify the feeling that '''a brief letter to-day may be followed by another next week–a "line" now by another to-morrow.'''
::Percy Holmes Boynton, ''Principles of Composition''
:::1915

==Trivia==

* Unlike most comics, this comic seems to use a textual font that mimics Randall's handwriting, rather than actually being handwritten. This was likely done to save time, as the comic contains well over 1,000 words.
** Comics with dynamic elements such as [[1350: Lorenz]] and [[2198: Throw]] use a similar font out of necessity, but this seems to be the only static comic where this was done. 

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Language]]

3142: (City)-Style Pizza

2025-12-18T18:34:30Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

:''The correct title of this article is '''''3142: <City>-Style Pizza'''''. It appears incorrectly here due to {{w|Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)|technical restrictions}}.''
{{comic
| number = 3142
| date = September 15, 2025
| title = <City>-Style Pizza
| image = city_style_pizza_2x.png
| imagesize = 480x314px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If you want to see true audacity, do an image search for 'Altoona-style pizza.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Pizza}} is one of the most popular foods in the United States, and a number of major cities have {{w|Pizza in the United States#Variations|regional variations on pizza}}, which have come to be named after the city. {{w|New York–style pizza}} and {{w|Chicago-style pizza}} are two of the most well known. New York-style pizza is characterized by a distinctly thin, and flexible crust. Slices are intended to be eaten by hand, and are wide and flexible enough to typically be eaten folded (as opposed to being narrow and stiff enough to not ''need'' folding). Chicago-style pizza is cooked in a cast-iron dish, resulting in a very thick crust, which is topped with melted cheese, and sauce and toppings are added above the cheese. <sup>[[[Talk:3142: (City)-Style Pizza#pizzas|''ongoing discussion'']]]</sup>

This comic contains a chart that compares the tastiness of pizza styles with the size of the city in the name. They generally span a broad range, and the upper limit tends to be pretty consistent, suggesting that cities of all sizes can produce good pizza. The smallest cities are shown as having the least possibility for a good pizza named after them. The apex is shown as being for mid-sized cities toward the smaller end of the spectrum. This suggests that the best regional variant comes from a smaller city, though [[Randall]] doesn't specify which one.

The lower end of the range shows much more variation. The largest cities are shown as being incapable of having bad pizza as their specialty, with the worst examples still being okay. The smaller the cities are, the more potential there is for a bad pizza to qualify for the name. This may be due to the fact that large cities tend to have many restaurants. As a result, there is more chance of one of them producing a decent variant, and more competition for which one will become synonymous with the city. Smaller cities with fewer eating options might accept lower quality choices because they lack options.

At the lowest end of the range are very small cities with terrible regional pizza. The caption jokes that this is to due to "bored restaurant owners" deliberately making up bad pizza varieties as a "fun prank" on visitors. The implication is that some local pizza styles are so bad that they could only have been created as a joke, and even the people who created them don't think they're appealing.

New York-style pizza is indicated at the top of the city size axis (New York City being the largest city in the US), and near the top of the tastiness axis, but in the middle of the range of cities of its size. New York City is where pizza was first popularized in the US, having been brought by Italian immigrants in the 19th century. The style from New York has been highly influential over pizza throughout the country, and is generally acknowledged to be appealing to most people (though New Yorkers may take issue with the suggestion that their pizza is not, in fact, the best).
[[File:2023 Altoona Pizza from Dino’s.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|An {{w|Altoona-style pizza}}.]]
The title text gives a specific example of a terrible pizza from a small city, describing {{w|Altoona-style pizza}} as "true audacity". Created in the Altoona Hotel in {{w|Altoona, Pennsylvania}}, it has a thick square of bread-like Sicilian-style crust, topped with tomato sauce, bell peppers, salami, and a slice of American cheese. Not only does Randall implicitly find this to be highly unappetizing, but considers it audacious to even call it pizza. The structure of this dish is very odd for pizza (looking more like an open-faced sandwich), the toppings are somewhat abnormal, and the use of American cheese to top pizza is so strange as to border on culinary heresy. This is presumably the type of "pizza" that Randall believes could only be created as a joke.

==Transcript==
:[A graph.]
:[The x and y axes have no unit markings, and are labeled:]
::[X axis: City size]
::[Y axis: Tastiness of "<city>-style pizza"]

:[A shaded region is bounded by a lower bound and an upper bound. The upper bound has a slight peak corresponding to a smallish city, but is otherwise mostly flat. The lower bound appears on the X axis close to the left, evens out to being almost flat in the middle, and rises toward the right.]

:[An arrow points to the right end of the shaded area, with the label:]
::New York up here somewhere

:[A label is in the middle of the shaded region at a medium X value. Many arrows point outward from the text, which reads:]
::various controversial regional specialties

:[An arrow points to the region with a low x and y-value, where the line for the lower bound is missing. This region is labeled:]
::towns with bored restaurant owners who have come up with a fun prank to play on visitors

==Trivia==

A remarkable spike in [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fg%2F11nmt6q5kp Google searches for "Altoona-style pizza"] was observed at the publication date of this comic.

The original comic's title invokes an encoding error in terms of HTML rendering, and it was copied to this wiki page. It reads "<City>-Style Pizza", which can be interpreted by web browsers and scrapers as containing an HTML tag for a "City" element for some unknown semantic/formatting effect. Being not {{w|Document type definition|defined}} or implemented, this 'tag' ends up being ignored and the remaining content is rendered as just "-Style Pizza". It is not the [[3015: D&D Combinatorics|first]] [[3028: D&D Roll|time]] that Randall has accidentally clashed with HTML-rendering issues. The "<" and ">" signs are not supported on [[explain xkcd|this wiki]] and other wikis due to {{w|Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)|a technical restriction on page titles}}, so the wiki's pagename for this comic's explanation doesn't precisely match the official title.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category: Food]]
[[Category: Charts]]

576: Packages

2025-12-10T13:24:21Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 576
| date = May 1, 2009
| title = Packages
| image = packages.png
| titletext = Day six: 'The hell? Who mails a bobcat?'
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] wrote a script that searches online shopping sites for items that cost US$1 with free shipping. Because the script is programmed to use an account with a $365 balance, this script will buy one random item per day for a full year. [[Megan]] comments that Cueball might just end up with "lots of crap" but he replies that he might get something interesting.

Over five days the script orders a length of rubber hose, a ski mask, a bear trap, a map of {{w|The Pentagon}} and "lube" (sexual lubrication). This pattern prompts Cueball to stop the script out of fear of being placed on a FBI watch list; to a paranoid passerby, the purchased items make Cueball look like a terrorist who plans to kidnap and torture federal employees. And also a {{w|pervert}}.

In the title text a sixth item is sent, a {{w|bobcat}}. This is a reference to [[325: A-Minus-Minus]] where [[Black Hat]] delivered a bobcat instead of a chair.

"Every FBI watch list ever" was also referenced in the Expensive Shoe Box chapter of [[What If? 2]]. However, it was only added in the book, and not included in [https://what-if.xkcd.com/108/ the original blog post].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting at his computer.]
:Cueball: I love getting packages.

:[Megan enters and Cueball turns towards her.]
:Cueball: I set up a script to search eBay et. al. for $1 items with free shipping.

:[Cueball comes home with a backpack on his back and find a package waiting for him on his doorstop.]
:Cueball: I gave it $365, so each day it can buy me something random.

:[Cueball, again sitting at his computer.]
:Megan (off-screen): What if you just end up with lots of crap?
:Cueball: I'll give it away.
:Cueball: But I'm sure I'll end up with some interesting stuff.

:[The next five panels have a caption in a black frame at the top. The caption is written first for each panel. In the first panel Cueball has unpacked a hose. The paper lies in tatters on the floor. Megan stands next to him.]
:Day 1: Length of rubber hose
:Cueball: Could be handy around the house.

:[Cueball stands with a black item and the packaging material it came in. Megan looks on.]
:Day 2: Ski mask
:Cueball: It's spring, but hey.

:[Cueball is standing alone with a bear trap and the box it came in on the floor.]
:Day 3: Bear trap
:Cueball: Huh.

:[Megan is back as Cueball looks at a piece of paper that came in an envelope.]
:Day 4: Tourist map of the Pentagon.
:Megan: Uh oh.

:[Cueball is standing alone with a bottle of lube in one hand and the box it came in in the other hand.]
:Day 5: Lube
:Cueball: I'm stopping this before I end up on every F.B.I. watch list ever.

==Trivia==
Someone has set up an [http://bobcatinabox.com/ actual service] inspired by this comic, which does exactly what this comic describes, and has been featured in the advertisements section to the left.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Bobcats]]
[[Category:Money]]

576: Packages

2025-12-10T13:24:02Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 576
| date = May 1, 2009
| title = Packages
| image = packages.png
| titletext = Day six: 'The hell? Who mails a bobcat?'
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] wrote a script that searches online shopping sites for items that cost US$1 with free shipping. Because the script is programmed to use an account with a $365 balance, this script will buy one random item per day for a full year. [[Megan]] comments that Cueball might just end up with "lots of crap" but he replies that he might get something interesting.

Over five days the script orders a length of rubber hose, a ski mask, a bear trap, a map of {{w|The Pentagon}} and "lube" (sexual lubrication). This pattern prompts Cueball to stop the script out of fear of being placed on a FBI watch list; to a paranoid passerby, the purchased items make Cueball look like a terrorist who plans to kidnap and torture federal employees. And also a {{w|pervert}}.

In the title text a sixth item is sent, a {{w|bobcat}}. This is a reference to [[325: A-Minus-Minus]] where [[Black Hat]] delivered a bobcat instead of a chair.

"Every FBI watch list ever" was also referenced in the Expensive Shoe Box chapter of [[What If? 2]]. However, it was only added in the book, and not included in the original [https://what-if.xkcd.com/108/ blog post].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting at his computer.]
:Cueball: I love getting packages.

:[Megan enters and Cueball turns towards her.]
:Cueball: I set up a script to search eBay et. al. for $1 items with free shipping.

:[Cueball comes home with a backpack on his back and find a package waiting for him on his doorstop.]
:Cueball: I gave it $365, so each day it can buy me something random.

:[Cueball, again sitting at his computer.]
:Megan (off-screen): What if you just end up with lots of crap?
:Cueball: I'll give it away.
:Cueball: But I'm sure I'll end up with some interesting stuff.

:[The next five panels have a caption in a black frame at the top. The caption is written first for each panel. In the first panel Cueball has unpacked a hose. The paper lies in tatters on the floor. Megan stands next to him.]
:Day 1: Length of rubber hose
:Cueball: Could be handy around the house.

:[Cueball stands with a black item and the packaging material it came in. Megan looks on.]
:Day 2: Ski mask
:Cueball: It's spring, but hey.

:[Cueball is standing alone with a bear trap and the box it came in on the floor.]
:Day 3: Bear trap
:Cueball: Huh.

:[Megan is back as Cueball looks at a piece of paper that came in an envelope.]
:Day 4: Tourist map of the Pentagon.
:Megan: Uh oh.

:[Cueball is standing alone with a bottle of lube in one hand and the box it came in in the other hand.]
:Day 5: Lube
:Cueball: I'm stopping this before I end up on every F.B.I. watch list ever.

==Trivia==
Someone has set up an [http://bobcatinabox.com/ actual service] inspired by this comic, which does exactly what this comic describes, and has been featured in the advertisements section to the left.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Bobcats]]
[[Category:Money]]

576: Packages

2025-12-10T13:22:22Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 576
| date = May 1, 2009
| title = Packages
| image = packages.png
| titletext = Day six: 'The hell? Who mails a bobcat?'
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] wrote a script that searches online shopping sites for items that cost US$1 with free shipping. Because the script is programmed to use an account with a $365 balance, this script will buy one random item per day for a full year. [[Megan]] comments that Cueball might just end up with "lots of crap" but he replies that he might get something interesting.

Over five days the script orders a length of rubber hose, a ski mask, a bear trap, a map of {{w|The Pentagon}} and "lube" (sexual lubrication). This pattern prompts Cueball to stop the script out of fear of being placed on a FBI watch list; to a paranoid passerby, the purchased items make Cueball look like a terrorist who plans to kidnap and torture federal employees. And also a {{w|pervert}}.

In the title text a sixth item is sent, a {{w|bobcat}}. This is a reference to [[325: A-Minus-Minus]] where [[Black Hat]] delivered a bobcat instead of a chair.

"Every FBI watch list ever" was also referenced in the [https://what-if.xkcd.com/108/ Expensive Shoe Box] chapter of [[What If? 2]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting at his computer.]
:Cueball: I love getting packages.

:[Megan enters and Cueball turns towards her.]
:Cueball: I set up a script to search eBay et. al. for $1 items with free shipping.

:[Cueball comes home with a backpack on his back and find a package waiting for him on his doorstop.]
:Cueball: I gave it $365, so each day it can buy me something random.

:[Cueball, again sitting at his computer.]
:Megan (off-screen): What if you just end up with lots of crap?
:Cueball: I'll give it away.
:Cueball: But I'm sure I'll end up with some interesting stuff.

:[The next five panels have a caption in a black frame at the top. The caption is written first for each panel. In the first panel Cueball has unpacked a hose. The paper lies in tatters on the floor. Megan stands next to him.]
:Day 1: Length of rubber hose
:Cueball: Could be handy around the house.

:[Cueball stands with a black item and the packaging material it came in. Megan looks on.]
:Day 2: Ski mask
:Cueball: It's spring, but hey.

:[Cueball is standing alone with a bear trap and the box it came in on the floor.]
:Day 3: Bear trap
:Cueball: Huh.

:[Megan is back as Cueball looks at a piece of paper that came in an envelope.]
:Day 4: Tourist map of the Pentagon.
:Megan: Uh oh.

:[Cueball is standing alone with a bottle of lube in one hand and the box it came in in the other hand.]
:Day 5: Lube
:Cueball: I'm stopping this before I end up on every F.B.I. watch list ever.

==Trivia==
Someone has set up an [http://bobcatinabox.com/ actual service] inspired by this comic, which does exactly what this comic describes, and has been featured in the advertisements section to the left.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Bobcats]]
[[Category:Money]]

1532: New Horizons

2025-10-16T18:29:31Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1532
| date = June 1, 2015
| title = New Horizons
| image = new_horizons.png
| titletext = Last-minute course change: Let's see if we can hit Steve's house.
}}

==Explanation==
''{{w|New Horizons}}'' is a NASA mission launched in 2006 to study the dwarf planet {{w|Pluto}} and its moons. Its closest approach to Pluto was on July 14, 2015 ([http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html NASA countdown clock]), six weeks after the publication of this comic. In April and May 2015, it captured the first images of Pluto with enough resolution to see some details on Pluto's surface ([http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-new-horizons-sees-more-detail-as-it-draws-closer-to-pluto NASA photos from 12 April to 12 May]). These images are similar to the second panel of the comic, with Pluto shown as a gray dot only a few pixels wide.
''{{w|Dawn (spacecraft)|Dawn}}'' is a NASA mission launched in September 2007 to study the asteroid {{w|4 Vesta|Vesta}} and dwarf planet {{w|Ceres (dwarf planet)|Ceres}}. Its closest approach to Vesta began on July 16, 2011 by the {{w|Dawn (spacecraft)#Vesta_approach|Vesta approach}}, and entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015. And in fact the pictures of Ceres are still in a much better resolution like in this comic [[1476: Ceres]], but these images are also still mysterious.

On the day this comic was published, ''New Horizons'' was at 0.34 AU from Pluto and 32.55 AU from the Sun ([http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Where-is-New-Horizons/index.php Johns Hopkins University's New Horizons page]). One {{w|Astronomical unit|Astronomical unit (AU)}} is the approximate distance of Earth from the Sun, or about 150 million kilometers.

Distances from the Sun by {{w|semi-major axis}}: Vesta 2.36 AU; Ceres 2.77 AU; Jupiter 5.20 AU; Pluto 39.26 AU.

A {{w|Gravity assist|slingshot maneuver}} is a technique where a spacecraft is maneuvered or accelerated with the help of a gravitational field. In the comic, presumably someone named Steve made the calculations for the New Horizons spacecraft to accelerate toward Pluto using {{w|Jupiter}}'s gravity.

In the first panel we see [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] standing in front of a computer monitor and observing a series of images sent back from ''New Horizons'' as it approaches the planet. They are about to see the dwarf planet Pluto with the highest resolution ever.

As the spacecraft gets closer, the images return... {{w|Earth}}. Steve had miscalculated the gravity assist and the spacecraft is about to crash into Earth (or closely pass by, as it was planned to do with Pluto).

Because the spacecraft carries 10.9 kg (24 lb) of radioactive plutonium-238, a crash on Earth is extremely dangerous. It was estimated that a worst-case scenario of total dispersal of on-board plutonium during the launch would spread the equivalent radiation of 80% the average annual dosage in North America from background radiation over an area with a radius of 105 km (65 miles) ([http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Spacecraft/docs/NH_DEIS_Full.pdf Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the New Horizons Mission]). Because of decay during the flight, the situation would be slightly less dire if it crashed years later, but still a major disaster.

Less importantly,{{cn}} this is a huge embarrassment, especially in front of the successful ''Dawn'' team, who were the first to get a probe to visit a dwarf planet. Part of the joke is the utter implausibility of such an error being made, and then not being detected.

The title text suggests the team is considering crashing the probe into Steve's house as {{tvtropes|DisproportionateRetribution|punishment for his errors}}. However, doing so would expose Steve's neighbors, who almost certainly had no role in this screw-up,{{Citation needed}} to potentially lethal levels of radiation. Therefore, the team would most likely have to crash the probe into an unpopulated area or the sea, to minimize human exposure. [[Randall]] described what might happen if ''New Horizons'' crashed into one's car in the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|137|New Horizons}}'', and assuming the car was parked in the driveway the house would be similarly affected by the blast.

Luckily, this was not what happened, and when New Horizons reached Pluto a month and a half later Randall made this tribute to the achievement: [[1551: Pluto]] and the aforementioned ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|137|New Horizons}}''.

Randall has used a Steve in a similar context in [[809: Los Alamos]] (set in 1945). If this is the same person, then 'Steve' would be at least 90 years old in 2015. A person named Steve also comes up with an inappropriate suggestion in [[1672: Women on 20s]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Ponytail are standing in front of a large computer console. Cueball's hands are on the keyboard; both are looking at the screen.]
:Cueball: We made it! After all these years, ''New Horizons'' is finally revealing the surface of Pluto!
:Ponytail: Take ''that'', ''Dawn'' team.

:[In the next four frames, we see photos, entirely black except for a circle in the middle. The circle is initially small, indistinct and appears in shades of grey. Successive circles are larger showing more color and shade variation. In the last, we see a blurry but recognizable outline of Africa, the Middle East and part of Western Asia, along with some clouds. The lighting pattern suggests that it is daytime in Africa, sometime in the northern summer.]

:[A close-up of the two at the console.]
:Cueball: OK, who did the calculations for the Jupiter slingshot maneuver?
:Ponytail: (facing away from the computer console) Dammit, Steve...

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Space probes]]

2912: Cursive Letters

2025-10-16T17:37:14Z

Cheesesentience: /* Table */ values for upper G and upper J were swapped, fixed issue

{{comic
| number = 2912
| date = March 27, 2024
| title = Cursive Letters
| image = cursive_letters_2x.png
| imagesize = 549x484px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓬𝓪𝓹𝓲𝓽𝓪𝓵 𝓛 𝓲𝓼 𝓹𝓻𝓸𝓫𝓪𝓫𝓵𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓸𝓼𝓽 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓽𝓸 𝔀𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓼𝓮 𝓺 𝓲𝓼 𝓪𝓵𝓼𝓸 𝓪 𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻.
}}

==Explanation==
This graph ranks {{w|cursive}} Latin script letters. The type of cursive used is closest to {{w|D%27Nealian|D'Nealian}} though a few of the letters appear to be in the {{w|Zaner-Bloser_(teaching_script)|Zaner-Bloser}} style of cursive (specifically the P, Q, and p). The graph uses two criteria: legibility and coolness. According to the graph in the comic: 'L' is in the top-right quadrant indicating it is both cool and easy to read; 'C' is in the top-left, meaning it is easy to read, yet not cool; 'Z' and 'z' are in the bottom-right which means cool looking, yet not easy to read; and 'r' which is bottom-left indicating it is neither particularly cool nor very easy to read (perhaps being confusable as a form of 'n', or even 'M', at least until actual cursive versions of those are comparable against).

The purpose of cursive is to allow efficient handwriting and make characters look nice and more "connected" at the same time. This is a particular issue when writing with a quill or fountain pen which tends to make noticeable marks when lifting the pen, so joined letters are generally neater than separated ones. The possible downside of this is the legibility of the individual letters. This may be due to the similarity of cursive letter shapes (e.g. 'U' and 'V' or 'e' and 'l' in the graph), especially when joined to other letters, or due their dissimilarity from more familiar "block letter" counterparts (e.g. 'Z' and 'z' in the lower right corner).

In the title text, [[Randall]] states 'L' and 'q' are letters that he enjoys writing in cursive, which could possibly add a third axis (most fun to least fun) to the graph. Notably, some RSS apps have challenges displaying the font and result in settings of '???'s.

The title text is written in cursive-looking font using upper unicode characters (encoded as UTF-8). Example: the cursive 'I' character 𝓘 (Unicode [https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D4D8 120024 U+1D4D8]) is F0 9D 93 98 in UTF-8.
The title text includes 22 of 26 characters in the {{w|English alphabet|English lowercase alphabet}} and is thus 4 characters short of a {{w|pangram}} (missing letters: j, v, x and z). Pangrams are often used to show all the characters in a typeface in print or on a computer screen. It is unclear if the comic deliberately chose the words in the title text to show almost all the characters in cursive or if it is simply a coincidence.

To benefit those with lacking Unicode support, the title text reads: "''I think capital L is probably the most fun to write, though lowercase q is also a strong contender.''"

==Table==

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Letter !! Readability<br/>%age !! Coolness<br/>%age !! Notes
|-
| data-sort-value="A1" | upper-A || 72%  || 12%  || In this style, more closely resembles the lowercase than in many fonts.
|-
| data-sort-value="A2" | lower-a || 78%  || 30%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="B1" | upper-B || 96%  || 22%  || This is one of only 3 'completely' readable cursive letters.
|-
| data-sort-value="B2" | lower-b || 72%  || 38%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="C1" | upper-C || 98%  || 14%  || This is one of only 3 'completely' readable cursive letters.
|-
| data-sort-value="C2" | lower-c || 88%  || 24%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="D1" | upper-D || 78%  || 10%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="D2" | lower-d || 96%  || 42%  || Most readable lowercase cursive letter.
|-
| data-sort-value="E1" | upper-E || 46%  || 24%  || Some readers could confuse this with a 'loose' version of '&', being naturally so close to the traditional "Et"-ligature.
|-
| data-sort-value="E2" | lower-e || 32%  || 54%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="F1" | upper-F || 18%  || 46%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="F2" | lower-f || 38%  || 80%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="G1" | upper-G || 16%  || 66%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="G2" | lower-g || 52%  || 66%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="H1" | upper-H || 76%  || 22%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="H2" | lower-h || 66%  || 58%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="I1" | upper-I || 44%  || 52%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="I2" | lower-I || 78%  || 64%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="J1" | upper-J || 38%  || 90%  || Most unreadable uppercase, compared to its lowercase.
|-
| data-sort-value="J2" | lower-j || 70%  || 82%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="K1" | upper-K || 94%  || 34%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="K2" | lower-k || 54%  || 50%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="L1" | upper-L || 92%  || 96%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="L2" | lower-l || 42%  || 60%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="M1" | upper-M || 88%  || 8%  || Least cool uppercase cursive letter.
|-
| data-sort-value="M2" | lower-m || 52%  || 12%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="N1" | upper-N || 88%  || 18%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="N2" | lower-n || 26%  || 8%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="O1" | upper-O || 86%  || 34%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="O2" | lower-o || 78%  || 54%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="P1" | upper-P || 96%  || 28%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="P2" | lower-p || 66%  || 22%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="Q1" | upper-Q || 62%  || 90%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="Q2" | lower-q || 42%  || 68%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="R1" | upper-R || 98%  || 64%  || Most cool 'completely' readable cursive letter.
|-
| data-sort-value="R2" | lower-r || 10%  || 26%  || Most uncool lowercase, compared to its uppercase<br/>Most unreadable lowercase, compared to its uppercase.
|-
| data-sort-value="S1" | upper-S || 12%  || 52%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="S2" | lower-s || 10%  || 60%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="T1" | upper-T || 36%  || 46%  || Might be confused with a serifed 'I'. 
|-
| data-sort-value="T2" | lower-t || 86%  || 58%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="U1" | upper-U || 32%  || 20%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="U2" | lower-u || 52%  || 28%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="V1" | upper-V || 32%  || 28%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="V2" | lower-v || 20%  || 14%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="W1" | upper-W || 80%  || 16%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="W2" | lower-w || 62%  || 38%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="X1" | upper-X || 96%  || 52%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="X2" | lower-x || 86%  || 52%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="Y1" | upper-Y || 78%  || 44%  || Most uncool uppercase, compared to its lowercase.<br/>In this style, more closely resembles the lowercase than in many fonts.
|-
| data-sort-value="Y2" | lower-y || 88%  || 84%  ||
|-
| data-sort-value="Z1" | upper-Z || 10%  || 94%  || Very unlike a 'print Z', but also very cool.
|-
| data-sort-value="Z2" | lower-z || 8%  || 86%  || Very unlike a 'print z', but also very cool.
|}

==Transcript==
:[A graph with 10 ticks on both the X and Y axes that are labeled with text to the left and below the axis. Arrows points up and right from the labels.]
:Y axis: Easy to tell what letter it's supposed to be
:X axis: Looks cool

:[The graph contains cursive uppercase and lowercase Latin letters. From top to bottom, left to right, the letters are:]
:C, B, P, K, d, X, R
:M, N, c, O, x, t, y, L
:D, W, a, Y, o, i
:H
:A, b, j
:p, h
:w, Q
:m, u, k, g
:E, I, l, q
:f, J
:U, V, T, e
:n
:v, F
:G
:r, S, s, z, Z

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Scatter plots]]
[[Category:Rankings]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:Unicode]]

3139: Chess Variant

2025-09-09T13:54:43Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3139
| date = September 8, 2025
| title = Chess Variant
| image = chess_variant_2x.png
| imagesize = 310x344px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The draw-by-repetition rule does a good job of keeping players from sliding a tile back and forth repeatedly, but the tiles definitely introduce some weird en passant and castling edge cases.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently by an IMMOVABLE CHESS BOARD. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
A {{w|Sliding puzzle|sliding puzzle}} is a puzzle with movable pieces that challenges players to slide the pieces around the board to get them into a certain pattern or to move a certain piece into a certain position. Patterns can be anything from a completed image to a series of numbers. One of the most common variants, the {{w|15 puzzle}}, is a square board with 15 square pieces (usually numbered 1 through 15, to be placed in obvious order, but can also feature segments of a larger picture that needs to be correctly assembled) and one empty space in a 4×4 grid. The goal is to order the numbers (or reassemble the picture) without lifting any piece, only sliding adjacent pieces into the empty space. [[Randall]] contemplates making a {{w|Chess variant|variant of chess}} in which 2x2 sections of the board can be moved around, possibly as an alternative to moving your own pieces. It is possible that “sliding number chess puzzle” is a pun on actual {{w|chess puzzles}} in which pieces are set up in a position and the player must find the best move or sequence of moves in that position.

A similar concept exists in {{w|Three-dimensional chess#Star Trek Tri-Dimensional Chess|Star Trek 3D chess}}. Although there's no official rule set by the show creators, the rules were invented by Star Trek fans. In this variant, the board has several 2x2 "attack boards" that can be moved around. For a more prosaic analog, the game {{w|Labyrinth (board game)|Labyrinth}} uses a board composed of tiles that players use to rearrange the playing arena, and features a similar prohibition against reversing the change made by the previous play.

The title text states that because of the {{w|threefold repetition}} rule in chess, sliding a tile back and forth will result in a draw, just as would already happen with the moving of the ''pieces'' back into an overall state of the board. This may discourage unimaginative 'stalling' play by one player, in allowing the other player to claim a draw and avoid a loss. However, this rule would probably lead to more draws, as it allows the player in the losing position to move tiles in an attack that could easily be avoided by moving the tile back. Thus, it gives a small extra advantage to the player in the losing position, as the player who is winning is not likely to draw their position. Also, with the tiles, ''{{w|en passant}}'' pawn capture and {{w|castling}} has logistical challenges, due to the possibility of having to decide whether moving a tile's squares counts as moving a piece. Moving certain pieces make them ineligible for castling, and affects whether a pawn is eligible for ''en passant'' capture, as well as where the capturing pawn goes after an ''en passant'' capture. It is also left unclear whether the wider-ranging pieces are allowed to effectively move through the missing/virtual spaces in the board where there currently is no tile, beyond merely being unable to ''end'' their move in the current 'hole' where no traditional chess squares exist at that moment. It also brings up the question of whether pawns promote if the tile that they are on gets moved to the last rank of tiles with the pawn on the last rank of squares. If so, who would get to choose which piece to promote, if the player whose pawn it isn't moved the piece?

One interpretation of the game shown is that white played e4, black e5, continuing with Nf3 and Nc6, then white played d4 (all normal moves, so far, the [https://lichess.org/opening/Scotch_Game Scotch Opening]). In response, black slid the puzzle-square starboard to make white’s knight on the rim 'dim', and decentralize white’s pawn.

An early example of Randall depicting a 'movable' fragment of chessboard was used in [[839: Explorers]]. Though that one was of size 3x3, and had become entirely separated from the 'home board' (perhaps not even being originally part of it, having initially been assembled adjacent to it) and under its own motive power.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[A chessboard is shown with the white pieces at the bottom of the screen. The pieces are illustrated in the basic design of standard computer chess. The chessboard is divided into 16 2x2 sliding squares with the e3-f4 sliding square currently being moved to the g3-h4 spot. Otherwise the opening is a standard Scotch Opening, with the pieces in the e3-f4 spot like how they are supposed to be]
:[Text below the panel]
:Sliding number puzzle chess

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Chess]]

what if? articles

2025-08-27T17:05:52Z

Cheesesentience:

<noinclude>{{DISPLAYTITLE:''What If?'' chapters}}:''For other instances of this title, see [[What If (disambiguation)]].''<noinclude>
{{incomplete|There are about '''3''' incomplete explanations below, but [[#1-13|the books-exclusive ones]] are too short! (They should be a summary of the answer, not just 1-2 sentences.) [[#1-13|''(jump to the book-exclusive chapters)'']] ''(For help with the templates, see the '''''[[What If? chapters#Editors|Editors section]]'''''!''}}

</noinclude>This is an index of all articles featured in Randall Munroe's ''what if?'' [[what if? (blog)|blog]] and [[:Category:Books|book series]]. For each article, the original question and a summary of Randall's answer are provided. If an article is available on the blog, you can click the title to read it in full. You can use the columns to sort the table alphabetically, by release date on the blog or YouTube, or by chapter in the books. The thumbnail is only available for articles published on the blog. If the title of a blog article differs from the one in the book, the latter will be provided in the Book column. A much simpler list that doesn't include book-exclusive articles can be found in the [https://what-if.xkcd.com/archive archive section] of the blog.<noinclude>
[[Category:Incomplete explanations| ]]</noinclude>
<div style="clear: both"></div>
{| class="sortable wikitable"
! rowspan="2" scope="col" class="unsortable" | Thumbnail
! rowspan="2" scope="col" data-sort-type=text| Title
! rowspan="2" scope="col" data-sort-type=text| Reader's question
! rowspan="2" scope="col" class="unsortable" | Randall's answer
! colspan="3"| Article available in... <noinclude></noinclude> ''(click to sort)'' <noinclude></noinclude>
|-
! scope="col" data-sort-type=number | Blog
! scope="col" data-sort-type=number | Books
! scope="col" data-sort-type=number | YouTube
|-
|[[File:Relativistic Baseball.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|1|Relativistic Baseball}}'''
|''"What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?"''
<div align="right">—Ellen McManis</div>
|The ball would create plasma and reach home plate in about 70 nanoseconds. The result would be some kind of nuclear explosion, destroying everything about a mile from the field. A ruling of "{{w|hit by pitch}}" could be interpreted in this situation.
|{{blog|1|2012|07|10}}
|{{book|1|2}}
|{{book|5|2024|02|06|3EI08o-IGYk|What if you threw a baseball at nearly light speed?}}
|-
|[[File:SAT Guessing.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|2|SAT Guessing}}'''
|''"What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? How many perfect scores would there be?"''
<div align="right">—Rob Balder</div>
|No one would get a perfect score. The odds of guessing correctly on every question would be less than the odds of every living ex-president at that time and the main cast of [[:Category:Firefly|Firefly]] getting struck by lightning on the same day. To put this as a number, the odds of this happening would be less than 1/10^100 (one googol).
|{{blog|2|2012|07|10|7d early}}
|{{book|1|66}}
|
|-
|[[File:Yoda.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|3|Yoda}}'''
|''"How much Force power can Yoda output?"''
<div align="right">—Ryan Finnie</div>
|Yoda can output about 19.2 kilowatts, or 25 horsepower. "Yoda power" would cost about $2/hour.
|{{blog|3|2012|07|17}}
|{{book|1|32}}
|
|-
|[[File:A Moles of Moles.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|4|A Mole of Moles}}'''
|''"What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place?"''
<div align="right">—Sean Rice</div>
|In physics, a {{w|mole (unit)|mole}} is a number that equals approximately 6.022 × 10<sup>23</sup>. If this amount of moles (the furry animals) were put in space, they would form a sphere a little bit larger than our Moon with about the same gravity as Pluto. The surface would freeze and trap the interior warmth, causing geysers of hot meat and methane.
|{{blog|4|2012|07|24}}
|{{book|1|10}}
|{{book|30|2025|8|19|lLlwvmu1ZeA|What if you had a mole of moles?}}
|-
|[[File:Robot Apocalypse.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|5|Robot Apocalypse}}'''
|''"What if there was a robot apocalypse? How long would humanity last?"''
<div align="right">—Rob Lombino</div>
|Humanity would most likely survive. Most robots can easily be subdued because technology hasn’t been developed enough to allow them to walk, evade being destroyed, and kill us efficiently. They could decide to use our nuclear weapons, but that would hurt them more than us.
|{{blog|5|2012|07|31}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Glass Half Empty.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|6|Glass Half Empty}}'''
|''"What if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty?"''
<div align="right">—Vittorio Iacovella</div>
|If the vacuum were on the bottom half, it would explode, but if it were on the top half, the air rushes in and it becomes normal water.
|{{blog|6|2012|08|07}}
|{{book|1|26}}
|{{book|16|2024|09|24|0EytSWiKrFg|What if a glass of water were LITERALLY half empty?}}
|-
|[[File:Everybody Out.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|7|Everybody Out}}'''
|''"Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet?"''
<div align="right">—Adam</div>
|No, at least not without starving to death quickly and leaving our pets, belongings, and everything else behind. The best way to do it is either with a space tether or to ride the shockwave of a nuclear bomb, but the former lacks a good material and the latter is literally ''riding the shockwave of a nuclear bomb''. In any case, highly impractical.
|{{blog|7|2012|08|14}}
|{{book|1|35}}
|
|-
|[[File:Everybody Jump.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|8|Everybody Jump}}'''
|''"What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?"''
<div align="right">—Thomas Bennett (and many others)</div>
|Earth would be unaffected, but almost all humans would probably be wiped out, due to the congestion of everybody being in one place at once. Utilities and everything requiring human oversight would eventually fail because no one was maintaining them. If airports became functional, only the largest would be able to efficiently get everybody home. Only the people at the edges of the giant crowd would be able to escape, with the rest almost certainly dying due to suffocation. The Earth would then be a lawless wasteland, with a severely diminished population trying to restore humanity to its former glory.
|{{blog|8|2012|08|21}}
|{{book|1|9}}
|{{book|9|2024|04|16|p2M8Y0z9Rl0|What if everyone jumped at once?}}
|-
|[[File:Soul Mates.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|9|Soul Mates}}'''
|''"What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world?"''
<div align="right">—Benjamin Staffin</div>
|Assuming the soul mate can exist at any time, there is a high chance that you would not find your soul mate. Around 100 billion humans have ever existed, but only 8 billion of those people are alive today. This means that there is an over 90% chance that your soul mate is long dead. This is made worse by the fact that people will also be born in the future, and your soul mate could live very far in the future.

Even if it is assumed that someone's soul mate must be alive while they are alive, there's still a very low chance of finding your soul mate due to the sheer amount of people in the world. Even if you find them, they may speak another language and be unable to understand you.

Jobs would also be affected, with very social jobs such as waiters, cashiers, or traffic guards being highly sought-after.
|{{blog|9|2012|08|28}}
|{{book|1|6}}
|
|-
|[[File:Cassini.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|10|Cassini}}'''
|''"What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now - only rotated by an angle of 90 degrees?"''
<div align="right">—Socke</div>
|Hard to tell with any sort of certainty, but North America remains the same (just flipped, so Canada is tropical), South America becomes more like Europe before this question, Asia is flipped just like North America was, Europe becomes more like southeast Asia, Africa's climate is essentially rotated 90 degrees and East Africa gets a lot more tornadoes, Australia is colder and wetter, and Antarctica becomes a tropical rainforest. Of course, the biosphere collapses due to the shuffling and the ice caps (prematurely) melt, while also making certain wildlife appear elsewhere than normal.
|{{blog|10|2012|09|04}}
|
|{{book|23|2025|04|01|WH4g1ptJ-70|What if the Earth rotated 90 degrees?}}
|-
|[[File:Droppings.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|11|Droppings}}'''
|''"If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it?"''
<div align="right">—Adrienne Olson</div>
|Assuming an even distribution of all birds across the Earth's surface and a frequency of 1 poop per hour, it would take you about 195 years on average. However, those assumptions are unrealistic: It would probably be closer to a few hours if you were laying under an area where large amounts of birds are common, such as a power line or tree.
|{{blog|11|2012|09|11}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Raindrop.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|12|Raindrop}}'''
|''"What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop?"''
<div align="right">—Michael McNeill</div>
|The surrounding area would be obliterated via the violent rush of crushing water, causing flash flooding in the surrounding area. There would be mass confusion for many following years.
|{{blog|12|2012|09|18}}
|{{book|1|65}}
|
|-
|[[File:Laser Pointer.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|13|Laser Pointer}}'''
|''"If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?"''
<div align="right">—Peter Lipowicz</div>
|It would take lots of power, but yes, assuming you want to drain the Earth's oil and cover Asia in megawatt lasers. Going even further in power level fries the Earth and launches the Moon into the solar system.
|{{blog|13|2012|09|25}}
|{{book|1|7}}
|{{book|18|2024|11|05|JqFSGkFPipM|What if everyone pointed a laser at the moon?}}
|-
| rowspan="7" |[[File:Short Answer Section.png|100px]]
| rowspan="7" |'''{{What If|14|Short Answer Section}}'''
|''"How long would the Sun last if a giant water hose were focused upon it?"''
<div align="right">—Austin Dickey</div>
|The Sun would actually burn brighter due to water being mostly hydrogen (main fusion fuel of stars) and eventually become a black hole with all the mass of the water.
| rowspan="7"{{blog|14|2012|10|02}}
| rowspan="7" |
| rowspan="7" |
|-
|''"What if you shined a flashlight (or a laser) into a sphere made of one-way mirror glass?"''
<div align="right">—Chase Montgomery</div>
|One-way glass does not exist. The light shines through just like normal glass.
|-
|''"If Michael Phelps could hold his breath indefinitely, how long would it take for him to reach the lowest point in the ocean and back if he swam straight down and then straight back up?"''
<div align="right">—Jimmy Morey</div>
|Michael Phelps would die somewhere between 100 and 400 meters of depth. If he were immune to pressure, then it would take 3 hours to swim to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and back.
|-
|''"In the first Superman movie, Superman flies around Earth so fast that it begins turning in the opposite direction. This somehow turns back time [... ] How much energy would someone flying around the Earth have to exert in order to reverse the Earth's rotation?"''
<div align="right">—Aidan Blake</div>
|Superman wasn't pushing the Earth. He was flying {{w|Superluminal motion|superluminally}} and was thus travelling back through time.
|-
|''"How fast would you have to go in your car to run a red light claiming that it appeared green to you due to the Doppler Effect?"''
<div align="right">—Yitzi Turniansky</div>
|The {{w|Doppler Effect}} is when waves (such as light or sound) change based on movement or position. You would need to go about one sixth of the {{w|speed of light}}.
|-
|''"What would happen if you opened a portal between Boston (sea level) and Mexico City (elev. 8000+ feet)?"''
<div align="right">—Jake G.</div>
|There would be winds of 440 mph (708 km/h) sucking Boston into Mexico City.
|-
|''"When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. Her kitchen had something called Bauhaus chairs, which are full of holes, approx 5-6 millimeters in diameter in both back and seat. During this lovely dinner I was forced to liberate a small portion of wind and was relieved that I managed to do so very discretely. Only to find that the chair I sat on converted the successful silence into a perfect, and loud, flute note. We were both (luckily) amazed and surprised and I have often wondered what the odds are for something like that happening. We kept the chairs for five years but despite laborious attempts it couldn't be reproduced."''
<div align="right">—R. D.</div>
|This... isn’t actually a question, but thank you for sharing!
|-
|[[File:Mariana Trench Explosion.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|15|Mariana Trench Explosion}}'''
|''"What if you exploded a nuclear bomb (say, the Tsar Bomba) at the bottom of the Marianas Trench?"''
<div align="right">—Evin Sellin</div>
|Surprisingly, not much! Large waves already disappear quickly when created by surface explosions, and moving the detonation underwater only lessens the effect. If you exploded a Tsar Bomba at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the resulting eruption would create massive bubbles before turning into warm water and debris.
|{{blog|15|2012|10|09}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="6" |[[File:Today's topic- Lightning.png|100px]]
| rowspan="6" |'''{{What If|16|Today's topic: Lightning}}'''
|''"How dangerous is it to be in a pool during a thunderstorm?"''
<div align="right">—Jay Gengelbach</div>
|Pretty dangerous, as if the pool was hit, 20,000 amps of electricity from the lightning bolt would spread across the surface and shock you. Randall recommends that one should stay at least 12 meters away from a pool during a thunderstorm.
| rowspan="6"{{blog|16|2012|10|16}}
| rowspan="6"{{book|1|19|Lightning}}
| rowspan="6" |
|-
|''"What would happen if you were taking a shower or standing under a waterfall when you were struck by lightning?"''
<div align="right">—Same3Chords</div>
|The droplets of water wouldn’t be dangerous, but a tub of water or any puddle you stand in ''will'' be dangerous.
|-
|''"What would happen if you were in a boat, plane or a submarine that got hit by lightning?"''
<div align="right">—Soobnauce</div>
|A boat would be as safe as a car if it had a cabin and lightning protection, while a submarine would be completely safe. The plane was not mentioned.
|-
|''"What if you were changing the light at the top of a radio tower and lightning struck? Or what if you were doing a backflip? Or standing in a graphite field? Or looking straight up at the bolt?"''
<div align="right">—Danny Wedul</div>
|You would get shocked normally if you were on a radio tower, doing a backflip, or looking straight up. These all don’t matter much. Randall doesn’t know what a graphite field is and chose not to answer that part of the question.
|-
|''"What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair?"''
<div align="right">—Timothy Campbell</div>
|The bullet might be heated a little bit, but it’s travelling too fast to have any impact.
|-
|''"What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning?"''
<div align="right">—NJSG</div>
|It would bring you to “Microsoft BOB®”, “Gateway 2000 Edition”.
|-
|[[File:Green Cows.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|17|Green Cows}}'''
|''"If cows could photosynthesize, how much less food would they need?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|They would need 4% less food. There simply isn't enough area on the cow for photosynthesis to provide all its energy requirements.
|{{blog|17|2012|10|23}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:BB Gun.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|18|BB Gun}}'''
|''"In Armageddon, a NASA guy comments that a plan to shoot a laser at the asteroid is like “shooting a b.b. gun at a freight train.” What would it take to stop an out-of-control freight train using only b.b. guns?"''
<div align="right">—Charles James O'Keefe</div>
|100,000 shooters distributed over 2 kilometers of track, each firing a few dozen rounds as the train comes near them.
|{{blog|18|2012|10|30}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Tie Vote.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|19|Tie Vote}}'''
|''"What if there's LITERALLY a tie?"''
<div align="right">—Nate Silver (<span class="plainlinks">[https://twitter.com/fivethirtyeight/status/154434288287363072 '''Twitter, January 4th, 2012''']</span>)</div>
|In the case of each candidate getting the exact same amount of votes on Election Day, most states would randomly pick one, whether it be through tossing a coin, drawing a name or straws. The chances of this happening in 9 battleground states would be about equal to the elector drawing a name from a hat, then being smashed by a bale of cocaine by drug smugglers and obliterated by a meteorite impact while being swept away in a tornado.
|{{blog|19|2012|11|06}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Diamond.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|20|Diamond}}'''
|''"If a meteor made out of diamond and 100 feet in diameter was traveling at the speed of light and hit the earth, what would happen to it?"''
<div align="right">—Aidan Smith, Age 8, via his father Jeff</div>
|Nothing made of matter can travel at the speed of light, but at the closest speed observed (99.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light, the speed of the {{w|Oh-My-God particle}}), the Earth would explode with enough force to obliterate the entire Solar System.
|{{blog|20|2012|11|13}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Machine Gun Jetpack.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|21|Machine Gun Jetpack}}'''
|''"Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns?"''
<div align="right">—Rob B</div>
|You'd need a Russian 30 mm rotary cannon to do it optimally, and the excessive force would definitely hurt you. If you braced the rider, created an aerodynamic craft strong enough to survive the acceleration, and cooled the craft, you'd be able to jump mountains.
|{{blog|21|2012|11|20}}
|{{book|1|14|Machine-Gun Jetpack}}
|
|-
|[[File:Cost of Pennies.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|22|Cost of Pennies}}'''
|''"If you carry a penny in your coin tray, how long would it take for that penny to cost you more than a cent in extra gas?"''
<div align="right">—Leto Atreides</div>
|140,000 miles if gas was the only cost involved. The exercise of picking up the penny can prolong your lifespan, but you've wasted valuable seconds reading this article.
|{{blog|22|2012|11|27}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="7" |[[File:Short Answer Section II.png|100px]]
| rowspan="7" |'''{{What If|23|Short Answer Section II}}'''
|''"If my printer could literally print out money, would it have that big an effect on the world?"''
<div align="right">—Derek O’Brien</div>
| You'd make 200 million dollars a year, so no.
| rowspan="7"{{blog|23|2012|12|04}}
| rowspan="7"{{book|1|18|Short-Answer Section}}
| rowspan="7" |
|-
|''"What would happen if you exploded a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane? Would the storm cell be immediately vaporized?"''
<div align="right">—Rupert Bainbridge (and hundreds of others)</div>
|No. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has [https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd-faq/#hurricane-mitigation:~:text=Stop%20a%20Hurricane%3F-,Nuclear%20Weapons,-Adding%20Hygroscopic%20Particles has published a response] explaining why it wouldn't work.
|-
|''"If everyone put little turbine generators on the downspouts of their houses and businesses, how much power would we generate? Would we ever generate enough power to offset the cost of the generators?"''
<div align="right">—Damien</div>
|If it's very rainy, it would generate 800 watts of power, which isn't enough to offset the cost of the generators.
|-
|''"Using only pronounceable letter combinations, how long would names have to be to give each star in the universe a unique one word name?"''
<div align="right">—Seamus Johnson</div>
|About 24 characters.
|-
|''"I bike to class sometimes. It's annoying biking in the wintertime, because it's so cold. How fast would I have to bike for my skin to warm up the way a spacecraft heats up during reentry?"''
<div align="right">—David Nai</div>
|You'd have to bike at 200 m/s, but you'd fry alive from overexerting your body.
|-
|''"How much physical space does the internet take up?"''
<div align="right">—Max L</div>
|Using humanity's total produced storage space from the last few years as an upper bound, and assuming 3.5" drives, the Internet is less than the size of an oil tank.
|-
|''"What if you strapped C4 to a boomerang? Could this be an effective weapon, or would it be as stupid as it sounds?"''
<div align="right">—Chad Macziewski</div>
|Aerodynamics aside, you'd have a bomb that comes back if you miss.
|-
|[[File:Model Rockets.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|24|Model Rockets}}'''
|''"How many model rocket engines would it take to launch a real rocket into space?"''
<div align="right">—Greg Schock, PA</div>
|It would take about 65,000, but they’d have to be layered in a cone shape with about 30 stages so the vehicle has thrust for long enough. It could carry 60 kg, much of that spent on all the parts of the rocket that aren't the engine. And this contraption would not attain orbital velocity, but rapidly fall back to Earth after briefly leaving the atmosphere. Accelerating to orbital velocity is a whole other class of problem and cannot be achieved using model rocket engines in any practical way.
|{{blog|24|2012|12|11}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Three Wise Men.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|25|Three Wise Men}}'''
|''"The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? What path would you trace on the Earth? Does it converge to a fixed cycle?"''
<div align="right">—N. Murdoch</div>
|No, but the paths they would take would make some really cool patterns due to various factors, such as the Earth's rotation and its position changing in its orbit around the Sun.
|{{blog|25|2012|12|18}}
|
|{{book|22|2025|03|04|YL2VNtus4xk|What if the wise men kept walking after Jesus’s birth?}}
|-
|[[File:Leap Seconds.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|26|Leap Seconds}}'''
|''"Every now and then we have to insert a leap second because the Earth’s rotation is slowing down. Could we speed up Earth’s rotation, so that we do not need Leap Seconds?"''
<div align="right">—Anton (Berlin, Germany)</div>
|The only real way to do this is by hitting Earth with asteroids; all other ideas would be too difficult or wouldn’t work. With 50,000 planets B-612 hitting the Earth each second and a few assumptions, we could stop worrying about leap seconds (mostly because it would deliver the energy of about one dinosaur-killer asteroid every couple days, wiping out life on Earth quite quickly)
|{{blog|26|2012|12|31|6d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Death Rates.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|27|Death Rates}}'''
|''"If one randomly chosen extra person were to die each second somewhere on Earth, what impact would it have on the world population?"''
<div align="right">—Guy Petzall</div>
|The world population would continue to grow, though 40% more slowly. Pilots, drivers, and surgeons would die en route and mid-operation, but these would be comparable to usual accident rates and handled fairly easily.
|{{blog|27|2013|01|08|1d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Steak Drop.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|28|Steak Drop}}'''
|''"From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?"''
<div align="right">—Alex Lahey</div>
|From the very edge of the atmosphere, but even in that case it might not be fully cooked, as the steak will have to pass through parts of the atmosphere that are freezing cold and the parts of the fall where heat is being applied are more likely to char and disintegrate the steak than cook it.
|{{blog|28|2013|01|15}}
|{{book|1|23}}
|
|-
|[[File:Spent Fuel Pool.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|29|Spent Fuel Pool}}'''
|''"What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface?"''
<div align="right">—Jonathan Bastien-Filiatrault</div>
|As long as you don't touch strange things and you don't swim too close to the fuel rods, it would be just like a regular pool. Except for the fact you would never make it to the pool, as the guards would notice and shoot you to death.
|{{blog|29|2013|01|22}}
|{{book|1|3}}
|{{book|8|2024|04|02|EFRUL7vKdU8|What if you swam in a nuclear storage pool?}}
|-
|[[File:Interplanetary Cessna.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|30|Interplanetary Cessna}}'''
|''"What would happen if you tried to fly a normal Earth airplane above different Solar System bodies?"''
<div align="right">—Glen Chiacchieri</div>
|It would be difficult to fly on Mars, so you would crash. The gas giants also have this problem, and you would freeze and tumble. Titan and Venus are the best bets, but Titan is cold and Venus is full of sulfuric acid.
|{{blog|30|2013|01|29}}
|{{book|1|30}}
|
|-
|[[File:FedEx Bandwidth.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|31|FedEx Bandwidth}}'''
|''"When - if ever - will the bandwidth of the Internet surpass that of FedEx?"''
<div align="right">—Johan Öbrink</div>
|Probably never, unless the Internet's transfer rate grows faster than storage rates, the Internet won't surpass an army of FedEx trucks. However, the ping times would be ''absurd''.
|{{blog|31|2013|02|05}}
|{{book|1|44}}
|
|-
|[[File:Hubble.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|32|Hubble}}'''
|''"If the Hubble telescope were aimed at the Earth, how detailed would the images be?"''
<div align="right">—Kyle Rankin</div>
|Very blurry because Hubble isn't able to rotate fast enough to track it on the surface of the Earth. Hubble is the wrong tool for the job, you're thinking of a spy satellite.
|{{blog|32|2013|02|12}}
|
|{{book|1|2023|11|29|2LSyizrk8-0|What if we aimed the Hubble Telescope at Earth?}}
|-
|[[File:Ships.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|33|Ships}}'''
|''"How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Toje</div>
|The sea level would fall by about 6 microns, slightly more than the diameter of a strand of spider silk. However, since the oceans are currently rising at about 3.3 millimeters per year due to global warming, the water would be back up to its original average level in 16 hours.
|{{blog|33|2013|02|19}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:what if? Twitter.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|34|Twitter}}'''
|''"How many unique English tweets are possible? How long would it take for the population of the world to read them all out loud?"''
<div align="right">—Eric H., Hopatcong, NJ</div>
|Since there are 2 * 10<sup>46</sup> meaningful English tweets, reading them all would take 10,000 "eternal years", with an eternal day being the length of time needed to wear down a mountain if a bird scraped 1 grain every thousand years.
|{{blog|34|2013|02|26}}
|{{book|1|50}}
|
|-
|[[File:Hair Dryer.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|35|Hair Dryer}}'''
|''"What would happen if a hair dryer with continuous power was turned on and put in an airtight 1x1x1 meter box?"''
<div align="right">—Nathan Terrell</div>
|The box would heat until the ground starts melting, and going further, it would eventually create updrafts and bounce around everywhere. Turning it off and on again would launch it out of the sky in glowing fury.
|{{blog|35|2013|03|05}}
|{{book|1|11}}
|
|-
|[[File:Cornstarch.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|36|Cornstarch}}'''
|''"How much cornstarch can I rinse down the drain before unpleasant things start to happen?"''
<div align="right">—Anna R., Fort Wayne, IN</div>
|It depends what you consider unpleasant. Your sink will clog and your house will flood with oobleck, but if you really really like cornstarch then nothing unpleasant will happen.
|{{blog|36|2013|03|12}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Supersonic Stereo.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|37|Supersonic Stereo}}'''
|''"What if you somehow managed to make a stereo travel at twice the speed of sound, would it sound backwards to someone who was just casually sitting somewhere as it flies by?"''
<div align="right">—Tim Currie</div>
|Assuming the stereo is indestructible, yes. Although you’d only get it supersonic for less than a second, and the music would be heavily compressed after the sonic boom.
|{{blog|37|2013|03|19}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:what if? Voyager.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|38|Voyager}}'''
|''"With today's technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I?"''
<div align="right">—Elliot Bennett</div>
|You could ''reach'' Voyager I with some well-timed gravity assists from Jupiter and Saturn, but getting back would require an ''absurd'' amount of fuel. You could use ion fields to require less fuel, but they also produce less thrust.
|{{blog|38|2013|03|26}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Hockey Puck.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|39|Hockey Puck}}'''
|''"How hard would a puck have to be shot to be able to knock the goalie himself backwards into the net?"''
<div align="right">—Tom</div>
|This can't really happen, due to the size and weight difference between the goalie and a hockey puck. You'd need to fire an object at Mach 8 to knock the goalie back, but firing a puck at that speed would char the puck while air resistance would slow it down. If you actually did fire a hockey puck at a goalie at high speeds, it would have the same effect as hitting a cake with a tomato as hard as you can.
|{{blog|39|2013|04|02}}
|{{book|1|24}}
|
|-
|[[File:Pressure Cooker.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|40|Pressure Cooker}}'''
|''"Am I right to be afraid of pressure cookers? What's the worst thing that can happen if you misuse a pressure cooker in an ordinary kitchen?"''
<div align="right">—Delphine Lourtau</div>
|Ordinarily, the worst that can happen is the lid blowing off and superheated liquid spraying everywhere, but you can use one to make {{w|Dioxygen difluoride}}, which is much worse.
|{{blog|40|2013|04|9}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Go West.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|41|Go West}}'''
|''"If everybody in the US drove west, could we temporarily halt continental drift?"''
<div align="right">—Derek</div>
|No. While technically the car fleet would outpace the continental drift, the continental drift is being powered by the forces in the Earth's mantle, and these forces outmatch the car fleet by millions of times.
|{{blog|41|2013|04|16}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Longest Sunset.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|42|Longest Sunset}}'''
|''"What is the longest possible sunset you can experience while driving, assuming we are obeying the speed limit and driving on paved roads?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Berg</div>
|The longest way you can experience a sunset is by driving on certain roads in Norway and Finland for 95 minutes, as this is where the best method to outpace the Sun works (outpacing {{w|Terminator (solar)|the terminator}}). A similar concept has been explored in comic [[162: Angular Momentum]].
|{{blog|42|201304|23}}
|{{book|1|52}}
|
|-
|[[File:Train Loop.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|43|Train Loop}}'''
|''"Could a high-speed train run through a vertical loop, like a rollercoaster, with the passengers staying comfortable?"''
<div align="right">—Gero Walter</div>
|Even if we change the requirements to just the passengers surviving, this isn't plausible. A train can't complete a full loop without the loop being too small, making the train move too fast and making every passenger die from the g-forces involved.
|{{blog|43|2013|04|30}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:High Throw.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|44|High Throw}}'''
|''"How high can a human throw something?"''
<div align="right">—Irish Dave on the Isle of Man</div>
|Using estimations and aerodynamics calculations, Aroldis Champman (holder of the record for fastest pitch) could probably throw up to 16 giraffes high if he was using a golf ball. Unless you count letting go of balloons, of course.
|{{blog|44|2013|05|07}}
|{{book|1|38}}
|
|-
|[[File:ISS Music Video.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|45|ISS Music Video}}'''
|''"Is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo '''this'''] the most expensive music video ever?"''
<div align="right">—Various Youtube commenters</div>
|No. If the construction cost of the setpiece is how this is measured, then it would be U2's "Last Night on Earth" on a section of Interstate Highway. If not, then it doesn't even come close to Thriller.
|{{blog|45|2013|05|14}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Bowling Ball.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|46|Bowling Ball}}'''
|''"I've been told that if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a bowling ball, it would be smoother than said bowling ball. My question is, what would a bowling ball look like if it were blown up to the size of the Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Seth C.</div>
|A bowling ball the size of the Earth would be much less dense, and have much less gravity. Due to this, the finger holes would collapse. causing eruptions of hydrocarbons and scars similar to those on the Moon.
|{{blog|46|2013|05|21}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Alien Astronomers.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|47|Alien Astronomers}}'''
|''"Let's assume there's life on the the nearest habitable exoplanet and that they have technology comparable to ours. If they looked at our star right now, what would they see?"''
<div align="right">—Chuck H.</div>
|They wouldn't be able to see us very well. Radio waves fade quickly in space and we've stopped sending out as many of them. If they happened to pick up, they would only get a message similar to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal Wow! Signal]. The best message they could see is visible light, as the water and weather on Earth's surface would be a telltale marker of some form of life.
|{{blog|47|2013|05|28}}
|{{book|1|28}}
|
|-
|[[File:Sunset on the British Empire.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|48|Sunset on the British Empire}}'''
|''"When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire?"''
<div align="right">—Kurt Amundson</div>
|If the British Empire kept the borders it had when the question was written, it would continue to experience eternal sunshine for many thousands of years until a total eclipse hits the Pitcairn Islands at the right time. However, after the publication of this article, it has been announced that [https://www.mondayeconomist.com/p/british-empire#:~:text=On%20March%2021st%2C%202025%2C%20a,part%20of%20the%20British%20Empire the British Indian Ocean Territory will become part of Mauritus] in March 2025, allowing the Sun to finally set on the British Empire.
|{{blog|48|2013|06|04}}
|{{book|1|60}}
|
|-
|[[File:Sunless Earth.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|49|Sunless Earth}}'''
|''"What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off?"''
<div align="right">—Many, many readers</div>
|We would see a variety of benefits across our lives such as the elimination of time zones, more reliable satellites, easier astronomy, and safer wild parsnip, but the downside is we would all freeze and die.
|{{blog|49|2013|06|11}}
|{{book|1|57}}
|{{book|24|2025|04|15|X7sbn9LMZOg| What if the sun suddenly went out?}}
|-
|[[File:Extreme Boating.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|50|Extreme Boating}}'''
|''"What would it be like to navigate a rowboat through a lake of mercury? What about bromine? Liquid gallium? Liquid tungsten? Liquid nitrogen? Liquid helium?"''
<div align="right">—Nicholas Aron</div>
|It would be difficult to row the boat on mercury because it's very dense. Bromine smells terrible and is highly toxic. Gallium would dissolve an aluminium boat. Liquid tungsten would incinerate you instantly. Liquid nitrogen would kill you either by suffocation or hypothermia. Liquid helium's superfluid properties would sink your boat, but at least you'd hear the “third sound” as you die.
|{{blog|50|2013|06|18}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Free Fall.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|51|Free Fall}}'''
|''"What place on Earth would allow you to freefall the longest by jumping off it? What about using a squirrel suit?"''
<div align="right">—Dhash Shrivathsa</div>
|It takes 26 seconds to fall from the top of {{w|Mount Thor}} into a pit of cotton candy at the bottom of the cliff. The record for the longest wingsuit glide is enough time for Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi to eat 45 hot dogs.
|{{blog|51|2013|06|25}}
|{{book|1|45}}
|
|-
|[[File:Bouncy Balls.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|52|Bouncy Balls}}'''
|''"What if one were to drop 3,000 bouncy balls from a seven story parking structure onto a person walking on the sidewalk below? Should the person survive, what would be the number of bouncy balls needed to kill them? What injuries would occur and what would the associated crimes be?"''
<div align="right">—Ginger Bread</div>
|Around 3,000,000 balls. Death would occur and you would be charged with manslaughter or murder.
|{{blog|52|2013|07|02}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Drain the Oceans.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|53|Drain the Oceans}}'''
|''"How quickly would the ocean's drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space was created at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean? How would the Earth change as the water is being drained?"''
<div align="right">—Ted M.</div>
|Hundreds of thousands of years, so you'll need a bigger portal. As their basins are cut off, many shallow seas and a few deep trenches remain, leaving much of Earth still covered with water. Massive, unpredictable environmental changes would probably wipe out mankind. If they didn't, the Dutch would take over the world, no longer preoccupied with preventing their lands from flooding as they are now.
|{{blog|53|2013|07|09}}
|{{book|1|48}}
|{{book|12|2024|06|18|Jpy55EgMQgY|What if you drained the oceans?}}
|-
|[[File:Drain the Oceans Part II.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|54|Drain the Oceans: Part II}}'''
|''"Supposing you did '''{{what if|53|Drain the Oceans}}''', and dumped the water on top of the Curiosity rover, how would Mars change as the water accumulated?"''
<div align="right">—Iain</div>
|The water would fill the {{w|Valles Marineris}}, eventually leaving only {{w|Olympus Mons}} and some other small islands. The sea would ultimately freeze over, become covered in dust, and migrate to permafrost at the poles. In the meantime, the Netherlands would colonize Mars through the portal. The video additionally mentions that the greenhouse gas effects caused by all the new water might keep Mars's oceans liquid.
|{{blog|54|2013|07|16}}
|{{book|1|49}}
|{{book|14|2024|08|13|FkUNHhVbQ1Q|What if we teleported the oceans to Mars?}}
|-
|[[File:Random Sneeze Call.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|55|Random Sneeze Call}}'''
|''"If you call a random phone number and say "God bless you", what are the chances that the person who answers just sneezed? On average, not just in spring or fall."''
<div align="right">—Mimi</div>
|The chances they just sneezed are 1 in 40000. There's also a 1 in a billion chance that the person you called just murdered someone, a 1 in 10 trillion chance they've just been killed by lightning, and another 1 in 10 trillion chance that you and the other person called each other simultaneously.
|{{blog|55|2013|07|23}}
|{{book|1|53}}
|
|-
|[[File:Restraining an Airplane.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|56|Restraining an Airplane}}'''
|''"If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn't be able to take off, what would the rope have to be made out of?"''
<div align="right">—Connor Childerhose</div>
|A steel cable an inch thick, the lines of an army of fishermen, or the hair of 20 people. Hair has the highest tensile strength of any material in your body.
|{{blog|56|2013|07|30}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Dropping a Mountain.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|57|Dropping a Mountain}}'''
|''"What if a huge mountain—Denali, say—had the bottom inch of its base disappear? What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? What about 1 foot? What if the mountain's base were raised to the present height of the summit, and then the whole thing were allowed to drop to the earth?"''
<div align="right">—John-Clark Levin</div>
|An inch or a foot wouldn't do much, it would only feel like a 3.5 magnitude earthquake. Dropped from its own height, Denali would cause a magnitude 7 earthquake and crush coal to diamonds. Dropped from space, that's just a large asteroid and it would cause an impact winter.
|{{blog|57|2013|08|06}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="3" |[[File:Orbital Speed.png|100px]]
| rowspan="3" |'''{{What If|58|Orbital Speed}}'''
|''"What if a spacecraft slowed down on re-entry to just a few miles per hour using rocket boosters like the Mars-sky-crane? Would it negate the need for a heat shield?"''
<div align="right">—Brian</div>
| rowspan="3" |No, because you need to go 8 km/s to stay in orbit, and it would take impossible amounts of fuel to slow down.
| rowspan="3"{{blog|58|2013|08|12|1d early}}
| rowspan="3"{{book|1|43}}
| rowspan="3" |
|-
|''"Is it possible for a spacecraft to control its reentry in such a way that it avoids the atmospheric compression and thus would not require the expensive (and relatively fragile) heat shield on the outside?"''
<div align="right">—Christopher Mallow</div>
|-
|''"Could a (small) rocket (with payload) be lifted to a high point in the atmosphere where it would only need a small rocket to get to escape velocity?"''
<div align="right">—Kenny Van de Maele</div>
|-
|[[File:Updating a Printed Wikipedia.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|59|Updating a Printed Wikipedia}}'''
|''"If you had a printed version of the whole of (say, the English) Wikipedia, how many printers would you need in order to keep up with the changes made to the live version?"''
<div align="right">—Susanne Könings</div>
|You'd need six printers, but if using an ink printer, costs would rack up to $500,000 a month, dwarfing paper and maintenance costs. You'd need to file away past versions in case they were reverted (restored), which would be a nightmare.
|{{blog|59|2013|08|20|1d late}}
|{{book|1|58}}
|{{book|13|2024|7|9|RgBYohJ7mIk|What if you tried to print Wikipedia?}}
|-
|[[File:Signs of Life.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|60|Signs of Life}}'''
|''"If you could teleport to a random place of the surface of the Earth, what are the odds that you'll see signs of intelligent life?"''
<div align="right">—Borislav Stanimirov</div>
|70% of the time you would end up in the ocean, while most of the rest will be somewhere uninhabited. But if it’s night, you can see satellites just by looking up.
|{{blog|60|2013|08|27}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Speed Bump.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|61|Speed Bump}}'''
|''"How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?"''
<div align="right">—Myrlin Barber</div>
|At highway speeds, you could wreck your tires and suspension. Around 150-300 mph, the aerodynamics of a typical sedan will cause it to flip and crash before even reaching the speed bump. At 90% the speed of light, you could face a billion-dollar speeding ticket.
|{{blog|61|2013|09|03}}
|{{book|1|41}}
|
|-
|[[File:Falling With Helium.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|62|Falling With Helium}}'''
|''"What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? Then, while falling, I release the helium and fill the balloon. How long of a fall would I need in order for the balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely?"''
<div align="right">—Colin Rowe</div>
|You would need a balloon at least 10 to 20 meters across to slow your fall, as well as needing 10 helium tanks that are 250 cubic feet. You'd have to do it really quickly though, and starting from a higher place will not help due to the atmosphere's thinness making you accelerate.
|{{blog|62|2013|09|10}}
|{{book|1|34}}
|
|-
|[[File:Google's Datacenters on Punch Cards.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|63|Google's Datacenters on Punch Cards}}'''
|''"If all digital data were stored on punch cards, how big would Google's data warehouse be?"''
<div align="right">—James Zetlin</div>
|Using electric consumption and datacenter spending as a measuring stick, Google probably has around 1-2 million servers, which equates to around 15 exabytes (or 15,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes). Assuming a punch card holds 80 characters, all of that data comes out to 4.5 kilometers/2.8 miles, 3x deeper than the New England ice sheets.
|{{blog|63|2013|09|17}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Rising Steadily.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|64|Rising Steadily}}'''
|''"If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? Would you freeze or suffocate first? Or something else?"''
<div align="right">—Rebecca B</div>
|A nudist would survive for five hours, then succumb to the cold. With a good coat, one would survive for seven, even plausibly eight, until reaching the low-oxygen {{w|death zone}} and suffocating. However, your corpse would outlast the Earth as it was swallowed by the Sun.
|{{blog|64|2013|09|24}}
|{{book|1|15}}
|
|-
|[[File:Twitter Timeline Height.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|65|Twitter Timeline Height}}'''
|''"If our Twitter timelines (tweets by the people we follow) actually extended off the screen in both directions, how tall would they be?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|It's difficult to pin down an "average" for Twitter timeline lengths, but an estimate by Diego Basch and the Tweet rate as of 2013 suggests that the section timeline extending to the past would have 345 billion tweets and be 8,000,000 kilometers (5,000,000 miles) tall. Using extrapolation techniques similar to those used in the {{w|German tank problem}}, the future and past timelines combined would likely contain 690 billion tweets.
|{{blog|65|2013|10|01}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:500 MPH.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|66|500 MPH}}'''
|''"If winds reached 500 mph, would it pick up a human?"''
<div align="right">—Grey Flynn, age 7, Stoneham, MA</div>
|500 mph winds are more than fast enough to pick up a person and propel them through the air. In fact, 500 mph winds are so fast that they only occur on Earth in extreme situations like the immediate vicinity of an erupting volcano or the aftermath of a major asteroid impact at which point wind speed would only be one of many dangers to human survival.
|{{blog|66|2013|10|08}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |[[File:Expanding Earth.png|100px]]
| rowspan="2" |'''{{What If|67|Expanding Earth}}'''
| rowspan="2" |''"How long would it take for people to notice their weight gain if the mean radius of the world expanded by 1cm every second? (Assuming the average composition of rock were maintained.)"''
<div align="right">—Dennis O’Donnell</div>
| rowspan="2" |After a month, the gain would be measurable but within the normal variation of gravity. After a year, it would be more prominent at 5%. Humans could survive with difficulty for a decade, but even in specially-built environments, they would succumb within a century as air itself became toxic from atmospheric pressure. After a few centuries, the Moon would fall into the Roche limit and crumble into rings.
| rowspan="2" {{blog|67|2013|10|15}}
| rowspan="2" {{book|1|55}}
|{{book|17|2024|10|15|-1-ldW4kpLM|What if Earth grew 1cm every second?}}
|-
|{{book|6|short-video=yes|2025|08|05|5k8ciEx__5w|Circumference pop quiz!}}
|-
|[[File:Little Planet.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|68|Little Planet}}'''
|''"If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince?"''
<div align="right">—Samantha Harper</div>
|Technically, yes. However, there would be major challenges. For one, gravity would be at full strength at your feet, but only 25% strength at your head, giving the illusion that you're being stretched. You would need to sprint at 3 meters per second to leave orbit. However, if you don't make it to that point, you would enter a highly eccentric orbit which would pull on your body in strange ways. Alternatively, you could escape the atmosphere by jumping. If you can make a dunk in basketball on Earth, you could escape this body by jumping.
|{{blog|68|2013|10|22}}
|{{book|1|22}}
|
|-
|[[File:Facebook of the Dead.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|69|Facebook of the Dead}}'''
|''"When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?"''
<div align="right">—Emily Dunham</div>
|This depends on if Facebook stays popular or declines in popularity over time. In the former case, the dead would only outnumber the living well into the 2100s; while in the latter, this happens around 2060. Facebook can afford to keep all our data indefinitely, but there are ethical questions.
|{{blog|69|2013|10|29}}
|{{book|1|59}}
|
|-
|[[File:The Constant Groundskeeper.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|70|The Constant Groundskeeper}}'''
|''"How big of a lawn would you have to have so that when you finished mowing you'd need to start over because the grass has grown?"''
<div align="right">—Nick Nelson</div>
|A normal, standard-issue mower running for 10 hours straight could cut an area of 25,000 square meters, or 27,000 yards. Using a much faster mower commissioned by the magazine ''Top Gear'' that is used all day, every day, it could cut an adult male cougar's home range (which [https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/species/puma-concolor#:~:text=Adult%20male%20cougars%20roam%20widely,terrain%2C%20and%20availability%20of%20prey. the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife] reports as 50-150 miles or 80-240 kilometers).
|{{blog|70|2013|11|05}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Stirring Tea.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|71|Stirring Tea}}'''
|''"I was absentmindedly stirring a cup of hot tea, when I got to thinking, "aren't I actually adding kinetic energy into this cup?" I know that stirring does help to cool down the tea, but what if I were to stir it faster? Would I be able to boil a cup of water by stirring?"''
<div align="right">—Will Evans</div>
|No, not really, It would take at least 1 horsepower (a lot for a person stirring), and reducing the power would just make it cool faster. Stirring faster and faster would cause a vacuum to form and stirring to become ineffective.
|{{blog|71|2013|11|12}}
|{{book|1|61}}
|
|-
|[[File:Loneliest Human.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|72|Loneliest Human}}'''
|''"What is the furthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? Were they lonely?"''
<div align="right">—Bryan J. McCarter</div>
|The most well-document candidates are six Apollo astronauts who ventured behind the dark side of the Moon. Antarctic explorers and pre-colonialism Polynesian explorers have a shot, but there's no good evidence of specific people who beat the Apollo record. Astronauts Mike Collins and Al Worden said they were not at all lonely, the latter even enjoying his soltitude.
|{{blog|72|2013|11|19}}
|{{book|1|63}}
|
|-
|[[File:Lethal Neutrinos.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|73|Lethal Neutrinos}}'''
|''"How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation?"''
<div align="right">—(Overheard in a physics department)</div>
|Neutrinos are subatomic particles that barely interact with the universe at all, so it's hard to imagine a scenario where they could harm you, even in a supernova. But at about 2.3 AU, or a little farther than Mars is from the Sun, even the neutrinos would be dense enough to kill you.
|{{blog|73|2013|11|26}}
|{{book|1|39}}
|
|-
|[[File:Soda Planet.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|74|Soda Planet}}'''
|''"How much of the Earth's currently-existing water has ever been turned into a soft drink at some point in its history?"''
<div align="right">—Brian Roelofs</div>
|Humans have likely consumed 6.5 trillion liters or 1.7 trillion gallons of soda ever, based on estimates of population growth and popularity of soda. Assuming humanity has drunk 100 trillion liters (26 trillion gallons) of water, it is reasonable to conclude that only 0.0000005% of Earth's current water reservoir has been turned into a soft drink. However, considering how long water takes to cycle around and certain prehistoric life forms, the water in the average soda was likely once consumed by a dinosaur.
|{{blog|74|2013|12|03}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Phone Keypad.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|75|Phone Keypad}}'''
|''"I use one of those old phones where you type with numbers—for example, to type "Y", you press 9 three times. Some words have consecutive letters on the same number. When they do, you have to pause between letters, making those words annoying to type. What English word has the most consecutive letters on the same key?"''
<div align="right">—Stewart Bishop</div>
|The English word with the most consecutive letters on the same key is "Nonmonogamous".
|{{blog|75|2013|12|10}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Reading Every Book.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|76|Reading Every Book}}'''
|''"At what point in human history were there too many (English) books to be able to read them all in one lifetime?"''
<div align="right">—Gregory Willmot</div>
|About the 1500s, as the population of active English writers reached a few hundred, meaning you would never be able to catch up (using the average word count for a few famous authors as a baseline). You might not want to read them, anyways.
|{{blog|76|2013|12|17}}
|{{book|2|10}}
|
|-
|[[File:Growth Rate.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|77|Growth Rate}}'''
|''"What height would humans reach if we kept growing through our whole development period (i.e. till late teens/early twenties) at the same pace as we do during our first month?"''
<div align="right">—Maria</div>
|We would reach 10 to 12 meters at age 20, though the human body is not scalable to those heights, as our bone structure is too thin, while our hearts wouldn't be able to pump the blood around.
|{{blog|77|2013|12|31|7d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:T-rex Calories.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|78|T-rex Calories}}'''
|''"If a T-rex were released in New York City, how many humans/day would it need to consume to get its needed calorie intake?"''
<div align="right">—Tony Schmitz</div>
|Estimates vary, but the T-rex was estimated to need 40,000 calories per day. Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics tells us that the average 80 kg/175 pound human [http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=QW-PERSON&Category_Code=QW contains 110,000 calories]. Therefore, a T-rex would need to eat someone every 2 days or so.
|{{blog|78|2014|01|07}}
|{{book|2|7|T. Rex Calories}}
|
|-
|[[File:Lake Tea.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|79|Lake Tea}}'''
|''"What if we were to dump all the tea in the world into the Great Lakes? How strong, compared to a regular cup of tea, would the lake tea be?"''
<div align="right">—Alex Burman</div>
|An average cup of tea requires 2 grams of tea per 100 mL of water, and to make proper tea out of the Great Lakes, you would need 450 billion tons of tea for the Great Lakes' 22,600 cubic kilometers/5400 cubic miles of water. A total year's supply of tea is only 4.8 million tons, which would make tea about as strong as 2 drops in a bathtub. To make proper lake tea, you could use Wular Lake in Kashmir or Ullswater in UK's lake district, due to the volume of both being small enough for the tea to work.
|{{blog|79|2014|01|14}}
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|[[File:Pile of Viruses.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|80|Pile of Viruses}}'''
|''"What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? How much volume would they take up and what would they look like?"''
<div align="right">—Dave</div>
|''Human'' viruses would fill about ten oil drums. ''All'' viruses would form a wet heap the size of a small mountain, with a texture resembling pus or meat slurry.
|{{blog|80|2014|01|21}}
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|-
|[[File:Catch!.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|81|Catch!}}'''
|''"Is there any way to fire a gun so that the bullet flies through the air and can then be safely caught by hand? e.g. shooter is at sea level and catcher is up a mountain at the extreme range of the gun."''
<div align="right">—Ed Hui, London</div>
|Yes, eventually the bullet would come to a maximum height, at which point you could grab the bullet before it fell down. You'd need to grip it firmly, because the bullet would still have it's rotational momentum and might jump out of your hand. A larger bullet would require a larger height to catch it at, and even then, it would still be difficult to grab. Of course, this is illegal and can injure you or other people.
|{{blog|81|2014|01|28}}
|{{book|2|12}}
|
|-
|[[File:Hitting a comet.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|82|Hitting a comet}}'''
|''"Astrophysicists are always saying things like "This mission to this comet is equivalent to throwing a baseball from New York and hitting a particular window in San Francisco." Are they really equivalent?"''
<div align="right">—Tom Foster</div>
|The baseball thing is much harder. You'd have to hit it out of the atmosphere, and a baseball is too small to do that. Even if you could, it's still not a fair comparison because astrophysicists are allowed to refine their approach as they close in on the target, which you can't do with a thrown baseball. It turns out that the comet mission requires about the same level of precision as laser eye surgery.
|{{blog|82|2014|02|05|1d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Star Sand.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|83|Star Sand}}'''
|''"If you made a beach using grains the proportionate size of the stars in the Milky Way, what would that beach look like?"''
<div align="right">—Jeff Wartes</div>
|Although red giants aren't as common as Sun-like stars or red dwarfs, they would form a stretch of gravel that went on for miles due to their large relative volume. 99% of all stars would form a small patch of sand.
|{{blog|83|2014|02|11|1d early}}
|{{book|2|16}}
|
|-
|[[File:Paint the Earth.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|84|Paint the Earth}}'''
|''"Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire land area of the Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Josh (Bolton, MA)</div>
|There isn't enough paint to go around. The total estimated amount of produced paint, a trillion litres, is only enough to paint as much as the land area of Russia.
|{{blog|84|2014|02|18}}
|{{book|2|14}}
|
|-
|[[File:Rocket Golf.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|85|Rocket Golf}}'''
|''"Assuming that you have a spaceship in orbit around the Earth, could you propel your ship to speeds exceeding escape velocity by hitting golf balls in the other direction? If so, how many golf balls would be required to reach the Moon?"''
<div align="right">—Dan (Kanata, Ontario)</div>
|You ''could'' propel your ship using golf balls, but, assuming they are being fired at 226 mph (363 km/h), the fastest world record, the amount of golf balls needed for this would be around the size of Earth and wouldn't even get you to the Moon. You'd need a potato cannon fueled by acetylene firing golf balls at 310 mph (500 km/h) which reduces the size of the golf mass to 150 miles (240 kilometers). This would be incredibly costly and firing them faster would essentially be the same as building a normal rocket.
|{{blog|85|2014|02|25}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Far-Traveling Objects.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|86|Far-Traveling Objects}}'''
|''"In terms of human-made objects, has Voyager 1 travelled the farthest distance? It's certainly the farthest from Earth we know about. But what about the edge of ultracentrifuges, or generator turbines that have been running for years, for example?"''
<div align="right">—Matt Russell</div>
|There are a few different frames of reference you can look at, but in normal terms Mariner 10 has traveled much farther than Voyager 1. It's travelled a couple of light-days around the Sun, while the Voyager probes have only travelled a dozen light-hours.
|{{blog|86|2014|03|04}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Enforced by Radar.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|87|Enforced by Radar}}'''
|''"I've occasionally seen "radar enforced" on speed limit signs, and I can't help but ask: How intense would radio waves have to be to stop a car from going over the speed limit, and what would happen if this were attempted?"''
<div align="right">—Joausc</div>
|Radio waves are generally ''very weak''. You'd need the collective energy of trillions of cell phones just to levitate a snow flake. To stop a car, you'd need at least 2 trillion joules of radiation, which would vaporize the car and everything else around it.
|{{blog|87|2014|03|11}}
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|-
|[[File:Soda Sequestration.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|88|Soda Sequestration}}'''
|''"How much CO2 is contained in the world's stock of bottled fizzy drinks? How much soda would be needed to bring atmospheric CO2 back to preindustrial levels?"''
<div align="right">—Brandon Seah</div>
|There are currently 400 parts of carbon dioxide per million. To bring it down to pre-Industrial levels, you'd need 450 quadrillion cans of soda, each being able to hold 2.2 grams of CO2. This would cover Earth's land 10 times over.
|{{blog|88|2014|03|18}}
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|[[File:Tungsten Countertop.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|89|Tungsten Countertop}}'''
|''"How far would a tungsten countertop descend if I dropped it into the Sun?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Leuchtenburg</div>
|Tungsten has the highest melting point of any element, but even tungsten would melt before it got too far. If you protected it with a heat shield, it would get destroyed all the same by the battering of the particles in the Sun's atmosphere. It could possibly penetrate the surface if it was larger, but as it stands, it wouldn't get past the outer layers.
|{{blog|89|2014|03|25}}
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|[[File:Great Tree, Great Axe.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|90|Great Tree, Great Axe}}'''
|''"If all the seas were one sea,''
''What a great sea that would be!''
''If all the trees were one tree,''
''What a great tree that would be!''
''If all the men were one man,''
''What a great man that would be!''
''If all the axes were one axe,''
''What a great axe that would be!''
''And if the great man took the great axe,''
''And cut down the great tree,''
''And let if fall into the great sea,''
''What a great splish-splash that would be!''

''... How great would all of these things be?"''
<div align="right">—John Eifert (quoting a ''Mother Goose'' rhyme)</div>
|The seas would be a little bigger than the Pacific Ocean. Trees can't grow taller than about 130 meters naturally, and would physically crush itself if above a few kilometers tall. Ignoring these restraints, the tree would be about 75 km tall with trunk diameter of 2 km. Ignoring human size restraints, the person would be close to 3 km tall. The axe would be about 500 meters long and relatively the size of a flimsy hatchet. It may take a few weeks to chop down the tree and the impact would create a tsunami that probably wouldn't wipe out the human race, but would be likely the deadliest single disaster in our history.
|{{blog|90|2014|04|03|2d late}}
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|[[File:Faucet Power.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|91|Faucet Power}}'''
|''"I just moved into a new apartment. It includes hot water but I have to pay the electric bill. So being a person on a budget ... what's the best way to use my free faucet to generate electricity?"''
<div align="right">—David Axel Kurtz</div>
|A small hydroelectric dam in the bathtub would yield about $0.25 per month of electricity, but the best option would probably be to bottle and sell your tap water, yielding about $38 million per year at $1.50 per bottle.
|{{blog|91|2014|04|08|2d early}}
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|[[File:One-Second Day.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|92|One-Second Day}}'''
|''"What would happen if the Earth's rotation were sped up until a day only lasted one second?"''
<div align="right">—Dylan</div>
|Everything on Earth would die, but if it happened when the Moon crosses the plane of the Earth, then everything in the Solar System will die (whether there is a difference is debatable).
|{{blog|92|2014|04|15}}
|{{book|2|21}}
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|-
|[[File:Windshield Raindrops.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|93|Windshield Raindrops}}'''
|''"At what speed would you have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield?"''
<div align="right">—Daniel Butler</div>
|Water droplets in air are normally lighter than the air, so this wouldn't happen under normal circumstances. However, at supersonic speeds, the water droplet would impact the windshield at Mach 18. It wouldn't shatter the windshield, but it would slowly batter it away.
|{{blog|93|2014|04|22}}
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|[[File:Billion-Story Building.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|94|Billion-Story Building}}'''
|''"My daughter — age 4.5 — maintains she wants a billion-story building. It turns out not only is that hard to help her appreciate this size, I am not at all able to explain all of the other difficulties you'd have to overcome."''
<div align="right">—Keira, via Steve Brodovicz, Media, PA </div>
|The tower would be far too big to support itself under its own weight. The tower would also extend past the Moon. The sheer amount of elevators needed would provide little to now room for actual usable space. Additionally, space junk would be a large problem, as there is a high probability that space junk would collide with the tower.
|{{blog|94|2014|04|29}}
|{{book|2|22}}
|{{book|21|2025|02|11|Z_xJ40QXu7Q|What if you built a billion-story building?}}
|-
|[[File:Pyramid Energy.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|95|Pyramid Energy}}'''
|''"What took more energy, the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Apollo Mission? If we could convert the energy to build the Great Pyramid, would it be enough to send a rocket to the Moon and back?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Marmol</div>
|The Apollo Program took about the same manpower as the building of the Great Pyramids, but physics wise, the Great Pyramid only contains 10<sup>12</sup> joules of gravitational potential energy. A single Saturn V rocket's fuel has 20 times more energy.
|{{blog|95|2014|05|06}}
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|[[File:$2 Undecillion Lawsuit.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|96|$2 Undecillion Lawsuit}}'''
|''"What if Au Bon Pain lost '''[http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/05/2-undecillion-dollar-demand.html this lawsuit]''' and had to pay the plaintiff $2 undecillion?"''
<div align="right">—Kevin Underhill</div>
|The debt would be incredibly great, to the point that everything ever created by man does not have enough value to pay it off. For comparison, former soliciter general Ted Olson leaked that he charges $1600 per hour for his services. Even if every habitable planet in the Milky Way had a population of 8 billion Ted Olsons, and you hired all of them for a thousand generations, the cost would still be lower than if you lost.
|{{blog|96|2014|05|14|1d late}}
|{{book|2|23}}
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|-
|[[File:Burning Pollen.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|97|Burning Pollen}}'''
|''"What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have?"''
<div align="right">—Jessica Thornburg</div>
|It would just warm up the air by a very tiny bit, but only because it's so thinly spread. Gathering all of it from a large enough region into one pile could equal a nuclear weapon.
|{{blog|97|2014|05|20|1d early}}
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|[[File:Blood Alcohol.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|98|Blood Alcohol}}'''
|''"Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood?"''
<div align="right">—Fiona Byrne</div>
|No, you can't. Alcohol in a drunk person's blood would be very diluted and by the time you drank the 14 glasses needed to get drunk, you would've vomited on the account of drinking blood. That aside, you could also get iron overload as well as various blood-borne diseases.
|{{blog|98|2014|05|27}}
|{{book|2|42}}
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|-
|[[File:Starlings.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|99|Starlings}}'''
|''"I was watching '''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY this video]''' and was wondering: How many birds there would need to be for gravity to take over and force them into a gargantuan ball of birds?"''
<div align="right">—Justin Basinger</div>
|Each bird is 85 grams, with a density of around 43 grams per square meter. Because of this, the air would be 25 times stronger than the starlings and the substance governing the collapse. The air would have to be bigger than the Earth to collapse the starlings and the starlings themselves would need to be bigger than the Solar System. They would then promptly turn into a star.
|{{blog|99|2014|06|03}}
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|[[File:WWII Films.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|100|WWII Films}}'''
|''"Did WWII last longer than the total length of movies about WWII? For that matter, which war has the highest movie time:war time ratio?"''
<div align="right">—Becky</div>
|Assuming the average run time of a WWII film was 95 minutes, the combined length was 300 days, meaning World War II was longer than the movies 7 times over. The two most likely candidates for highest movie:war ratio are the Indo-Pakistani war, which lasted 13 days and has 5 catalogued films about it, and the Anglo-Zanzibar war, which only lasted 38 minutes but lacked any films.
|{{blog|100|2014|06|11|1d late}}
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|[[File:Plastic Dinosaurs.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|101|Plastic Dinosaurs}}'''
|''"As plastic is made from oil and oil is made from dead dinosaurs, how much actual real dinosaur is there in a plastic dinosaur?"''
<div align="right">—Steve Lydford</div>
|Contrary to the name, oil is not made of dead dinosaurs, mostly being composed of marine plankton and algae. Geology is complicated, but the gist is that only a small fraction of a plastic dinosaur toy could've come from dinosaur oil, and depending on the location, it may contain none at all.
|{{blog|101|2014|06|18}}
|{{book|2|26}}
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|-
|[[File:Keyboard Power.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|102|Keyboard Power}}'''
|''"As a writer, I'm wondering what would be the cumulative energy of the hundreds of thousands of keystrokes required to write a novel."''
<div align="right">—Nicholas Dickner</div>
|Writing one full novel would provide enough energy to run a laptop for 15 seconds. If each novel takes you six months, this would save a fraction of a penny of electricity. To keep a laptop, you'd need to write a novel every ten seconds, and to run a microwave would require one novel per second.
|{{blog|102|2014|06|25}}
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|[[File:Vanishing Water.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|103|Vanishing Water}}'''
|''"What would happen if all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared?"''
<div align="right">—Joanna Xu</div>
|If all water vanished, the first to notice would be anybody currently in the ocean, and over the course of a minute, they would all fall, some of them dying but some surviving with minor injuries. After this, all marine life will have perished. Humans follow soon after as the water cycle would've stopped, collapsing global infrustructure and killing every plant and person by dehydration. The end of the water cycle also leads to a runaway greenhouse effect later on.
|{{blog|103|2014|07|02}}
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|[[File:Global Snow.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|104|Global Snow}}'''
|''"From my seven-year-old son: How many snowflakes would it take to cover the entire world in six feet of snow? (I don't know why six feet...but that's what he asked.)"''
<div align="right">—Jed Scott</div>
|Snow isn't very dense, and 1 inch of rain would lead to a foot or more of snow. Factoring in snow compressing throughout the day, you would need a mole of snowflakes to cover the Earth in 6 feet in snow.
|{{blog|104|2014|07|09}}
|{{book|2|59}}
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|-
|[[File:Cannibalism.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|105|Cannibalism}}'''
|''"How long could the human race survive on only cannibalism?"''
<div align="right">—Quinn Shaffer</div>
|If half of the world eats the other half, then it would take about 32 months before it came down to 2 people. However, this is also a very efficient way to get a {{w|Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy|prion disease}}.
|{{blog|105|2014|07|16}}
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|[[File:Ink Molecules.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|106|Ink Molecules}}'''
|''"Suppose you were to print, in 12 point text, the numeral 1 using a common cheap ink-jet printer. How many molecules of the ink would be used? At what numerical value would the number printed approximately equal the number of ink molecules used?"''
<div align="right">—David Pelkey</div>
|You'd use about 100,000,000,000,000,000 molecules.
|{{blog|106|2014|07|23}}
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|[[File:Letter to Mom.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|107|Letter to Mom}}'''
|''"What’s the fastest way to get a hand-written letter from my place in Chicago to my mother in New Jersey?"''
<div align="right">—Tim</div>
|An ICBM would take 12-15 minutes to cross the distance. While that is the best method, a few other methods come close. The Concorde would only take 30 minutes, while firing something with a rail gun down a vacuum tube would take only 10-20 minutes.
|{{blog|107|2014|07|30}}
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|[[File:Expensive Shoebox.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|108|Expensive Shoebox}}'''
|''"What would be the most expensive way to fill a size 11 shoebox (e.g. with 64 GB MicroSD cards all full of legally purchased music)?"''
<div align="right">—Rick Lewis</div>
|There are many options (precious materials, hard drugs, physical file storage, etc.), but they all cap out at ~$2,000,000,000. That amount of platinum would be worth $13 million, while diamonds, Adcetris and LSD would be valued around 1-2 billion,
|{{blog|108|2014|08|13|7d late}}
|{{book|2|31}}
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|-
|[[File:Into the Blue.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|109|Into the Blue}}'''
|''"If I shot an infinitely strong laser beam into the sky at a random point, how much damage would it do?"''
<div align="right">—Garrett D.</div>
|Infinitely powerful laser beams do not exist, and if they did, they would vaporize the air and destroy everything like in the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|13|Laser Pointer}}''. That being said, if it were truly random, it would be aimed at Earth 50% of the time. If you miss the Earth, 89,999 times out of 90,000, your beam will pass right out of the galaxy without hitting anything. When it does hit something, it will almost always be the Sun or the Moon.
|{{blog|109|2014|08|20}}
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|[[File:Walking New York.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|110|Walking New York}}'''
|''"Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? (including inside apartments)"''
<div align="right">—Asif Shamir</div>
|Based on estimates of US Postal Service carriers and their travel times, we know that walking every street in NYC would probably take 14 years. Assuming it takes about 25 seconds to enter an apartment building, leave, and go to the next one, it would only take an additional 10 years to visit every apartment. However, under [http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article140.htm New York Penal Code], the punishment would take 2 million years or 2,000 millenia to finish.
|{{blog|110|2014|08|27}}
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|[[File:All the Money.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|111|All the Money}}'''
|''"People sometimes say "If I had all the money in the world ..." in order to discuss what they would do if they had no financial constraints. I'm curious, though, what would happen if one person had all of the world's money?"''
<div align="right">—Daniel Pino</div>
|Currency only makes up a fraction of Earth's money, and it's unlikely people would agree to your sudden claims of ownership over all of the land, nor would they let you spend the actual currency you have. Said currency would quickly crush you, as most of its weight is in coinage. You could build a structure to contain the coins, but this would violate NYC building codes.
|{{blog|111|2014|09|02|1d early}}
|
|{{book|25|2025|05|06|saj7b5C6TCM|What if you literally had all the money in the world?}}
|-
|[[File:Balloon Car.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|112|Balloon Car}}'''
|''"My 12-year-old daughter is proposing an interesting project. She is planning to attach a number of helium balloons to a chair, which in turn would be tethered by means of a rope to a Ferrari. Her 13-year-old friend would then drive the Ferrari around, while she sits in the chair enjoying uninterrupted views of the countryside. Leaving aside the legal and insurance difficulties, my daughter is keen to know the maximum speed that she could expect to attain, and how many helium balloons would be required."''
<div align="right">—Phil Rodgers, Cambridge, UK</div>
|A balloon just big enough to lift you would be pushed down by the wind, and a balloon big enough to counteract that would lift up the car along with you. The way to achieve this result is [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=parasailing parasailing].
|{{blog|112|2014|09|17|8d late}}
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|[[File:Visit Every State.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|113|Visit Every State}}'''
|''"How fast could you visit all 50 states?"''
<div align="right">—as discussed by Stephen Von Worley <span class="plainlinks">on [http://www.datapointed.net/2012/08/fastest-route-to-visit-all-fifty-united-states/ '''''Data Pointed''''']</span>
|It would take you 160 hours by car, 39 hours by landing a private jet in each state, and 18 hours by F-22 fighter jet and helicopter landing in each state. However, if you relax the requirement to land in each state and simply count entering the state's airspace as "visiting" it, you can do it in around 7 hours with an SR-71 Blackbird. If we allow satellite orbits, you can do it in just over 6 hours with five orbits, assuming your satellite makes a course correction on each orbit.
|{{blog|113|2014|09|24}}
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|[[File:Antimatter.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|114|Antimatter}}'''
|''"What if everything was antimatter, EXCEPT Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Sean Gallagher</div>
|It would wipe out all life on Earth, but surprisingly slower than you might expect. The annihilation of antimatter entering the atmosphere would add enough extra heat to create a runaway greenhouse effect and make Earth similar to Venus. We would be in much more danger from meteorites, with dinosaur-killer equivalents hitting the upper atmosphere every few months.
|{{blog|114|2014|10|01}}
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|[[File:Into the Sun.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|115|Into the Sun}}'''
|''"When I was about 8 years old, shoveling snow on a freezing day in Colorado, I wished that I could be instantly transported to the surface of the Sun, just for a nanosecond, then instantly transported back. I figured this would be long enough to warm me up but not long enough to harm me. What would actually happen?"''
<div align="right">—AJ, Kansas City</div>
|You would not be warmed if you went to the surface, as the energy received by your skin would be minimal. You would maybe see a bright flash of light. The core, on the other hand, would vaporize you, as the energy delivered there would be able to give you a second-degree burn after 1 femtosecond (1 millionth of a nanosecond) in the core.
|{{blog|115|2014|10|08}}
|{{book|2|61}}
|{{book|15|2024|09|03|UXA-Af-JeCE|Could you survive a nanosecond on the Sun?}}
|-
|[[File:No-Rules NASCAR.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|116|No-Rules NASCAR}}'''
|''"If you stripped away all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible, what strategy would win? Let's say the racer has to survive."''
<div align="right">—Hunter Freyer</div>
|If the rider has to survive, 90 minutes is the limit based on human G-force tolerances. If survival is not a priority, you'd build a particle accelerator.
|{{blog|116|2014|10|15}}
|{{book|2|35}}
|{{book|3|2023|12|19|JcXpCyPc2Xw|What if NASCAR had no rules?}}
|-
|[[File:Distant Death.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|117|Distant Death}}'''
|''"What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died?"''
<div align="right">—Amy from NZ</div>
|The farthest that any human has died is about 167 kilometers. In terms of any living thing, however, bacterial spores on Voyager 1 are dying every few months, setting a new record each time.
|{{blog|117|2014|10|23|1d late}}
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|[[File:Physical Salary.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|118|Physical Salary}}'''
|''"What if people's incomes appeared around them as cash in real time? How much would you need to make to be in real trouble?"''
<div align="right">—Julia Anderson, Albuquerque, NM</div>
|At minimum US wage, a worker would earn about one water bottle of mixed coins per day. A CEO would earn about 600 such bottles per day, and the coins would accumulate on the floor at a rate of about 0.5 inches per day. Mark Zuckerberg would earn 25 such bottles ''per second'', and the coins would bury him if he sat still for an hour.
|{{blog|118|2014|10|30}}
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|[[File:Laser Umbrella.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|119|Laser Umbrella}}'''
|''"Stopping rain from falling on something with an umbrella or a tent is boring. What if you tried to stop rain with a laser that targeted and vaporized each incoming droplet before it could come within ten feet of the ground?"''
<div align="right">—Zach Wheeler</div>
|It's doable in theory, but the energy required to completely vaporize a raindrop (rather than merely splattering it) is high enough that your surroundings would get dangerously hot. Targeting the droplets might be possible with adaptive optics, but it would require a complicated device. You could try firing rapidly in random directions instead, but your high-powered laser might go several hundred meters without hitting a raindrop, which would endanger your local neighborhood.
|{{blog|119|2014|11|13|7d late}}
|{{book|2|37}}
|{{book|6|2024|02|20|zgBTwtg7H8E|Could you make an umbrella out of lasers?}}
|-
|[[File:Alternate Universe What Ifs.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|120|Alternate Universe What Ifs}}'''
|''"Dispatches from a horrifying alternate universe"''
|Excerpts from ''what if?'' articles written in a world which, thankfully, is not the one we live in.
|{{blog|120|2014|11|20}}
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|[[File:Frozen Rivers.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|121|Frozen Rivers}}'''
|''"What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer?"''
<div align="right">—Zoe Cutler</div>
|Anywhere with rain or snowmelt would be horrifically flooded, and ice would break, then dam up rivers, forming huge lakes. Humanity would be worse for the wear, but all in all fine.
|{{blog|121|2014|12|11}} 14d late)
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|[[File:Lava Lamp.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|122|Lava Lamp}}'''
|''"What if I made a lava lamp out of real lava? What could I use as a clear medium? How close could I stand to watch it?"''
<div align="right">—Kathy Johnstone, 6th Grade Teacher (via a student)</div>
|The container would glow opaque from the heat, making it impossible to see the lava, which would solidify after a minute.
|{{blog|122|2014|12|18}}
|{{book|2|40}}
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|-
|[[File:Fairy Demographics.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|123|Fairy Demographics}}'''
|''"How many fairies would fly around, if each fairy is born from the first laugh of a child and fairies were immortal?"''
<div align="right">—Mira Kühn, Germany</div>
|They would have the same birth rate as humans, and they would become a major part of the ecosystem.
|{{blog|123|2015|01|01|7d late}}
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|[[File:Lunar Swimming.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|124|Lunar Swimming}}'''
|''"What if there was a lake on the Moon? What would it be like to swim in it? Presuming that it is sheltered in a regular atmosphere, in some giant dome or something."''
<div align="right">—Kim Holder</div>
|It would be super-cool, given that lower gravity would increase the size of splashes and the height of jumps.
|{{blog|124|2015|01|08}}
|
|{{book|20|2024|12|24|aIIBBj6KR-Y|What if we put a pool on the moon?}}
|-
|[[File:Bowling Ball 2.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|125|Bowling Ball}}'''
|''"You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom?"''
<div align="right">—Doug Carter</div>
|It would take two hours and 20 minutes.
|{{blog|125|2015|01|15}}
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|[[File:Stairs (What If?).png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|126|Stairs}}'''
|''"If you made an elevator that would go to space (like the one you mentioned in the '''{{what if|94|billion-story building}}''') and built a staircase up (assuming regulated air pressure) about how long would it take to climb to the top?"''
<div align="right">—Ethan Annas</div>
|{{notice|Could be made clearer (e.g., the order we gave is: professional stair-climber→motorcycle→by foot. Seems unintuitive.)}}It would take about half a day by motorcycle, or a week or two for a professional stair-climber. If going on foot, you'd also need to carry a huge backpack stuffed with nothing but sticks of butter in order to get your daily caloric intake (including the energy expended from climbing the stairs).
|{{blog|126|2015|01|22}}
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|[[File:Tug of War.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|127|Tug of War}}'''
|''"Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? How big would the teams have to be?"''
<div align="right">—Markus Andersen</div>
|Two teams of 25 people each would be able to rip a half-inch iron bar apart: tug-o-war is a very dangerous game, as there's so much force being exerted on the rope. The theoretical upper limit of a game is 100,000 players each, pulling a 200-mile–long rope made of graphite ribbons.
|{{blog|127|2015|01|28|1d early}}
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|[[File:Zippo Phone.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|128|Zippo Phone}}'''
|''"What in my pocket actually contains more energy, my Zippo or my smartphone? What would be the best way of getting the energy from one to the other? And since I am already feeling like Bilbo in this one, is there anything else in my pocket that would have unexpected amounts of stored energy?"''
<div align="right">—Ian Cummings</div>
|The Zippo has more energy than your phone battery, but your hand would have even more, when burned as fuel.
|{{blog|128|2015|02|05|1d late}}
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|[[File:Black Hole Moon.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|129|Black Hole Moon}}'''
|''"What would happen if the Moon were replaced with an equivalently-massed black hole? If it's possible, what would a lunar ("holar"?) eclipse look like?"''
<div align="right">—Matt</div>
|Not much would change. A black hole of the Moon's mass would be the size of a sand grain, but gravitational effects would still be more or less the same here on Earth. There would be no moonlight, which would make the Earth a bit colder and mess with some nocturnal animals. You wouldn't see any lunar eclipses due to the tiny size of the Moon. It would only cause significant problems if the Moon replacement occured while humanity was exploring the Moon.
|{{blog|129|2015|02|12}}
|
|{{book|28|2025|07|08|UQgw50GQu1A|What if the moon turned into a black hole?}}
|-
|[[File:Snow Removal.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|130|Snow Removal}}'''
|''"I've long thought about putting a flamethrower on the front of a car to melt snow and ice before you drive across it. Now I've realized that a flamethrower is impractical, but what about a high-powered microwave emitter?"''
<div align="right">—Matt Van Opens</div>
|The flamethrower is more practical because microwaves don't heat ice very well. The microwave beam would require the power output of three aircraft carriers, and the flamethrower would have a gas mileage of 17 feet per gallon.
|{{blog|130|2015|02|19}}
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|{{book|26|2025|05|27|WYf9-xfm6t8|What if you used a flamethrower as a snowblower?}}
|-
|[[File:Microwaves.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|131|Microwaves}}'''
|''"I have had a particular problem for as long as I can remember. Any time I attempt to heat left over Chinese food in a microwave, it fails to heat completely through somewhere. Usually the center but not always and usually rice, but often it will be a small section of meat. It's baffling and has made me automatically adjust heating times to over 2 minutes. In most cases this tends to heat the bowl or plate more than the food. So I suppose the question is what is the optimal time to heat left over Chinese food in the microwave, how about an 800 watt microwave?"''
<div align="right">—James</div>
|The first cause of this issue is that the wave pattern of microwaves create 'dead spots' where the food isn't heated. Secondly, melted ice causes some parts to cook while the rest is still defrosting. Use a lower power level, stir your food partway through microwaving, and let it sit for a few minutes before you eat it. This allows the heat to spread evenly.
|{{blog|131|2015|02|27|1d late}}
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|[[File:Hotter than Average.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|132|Hotter than Average}}'''
|''"I saw a sign at a hot springs tub saying "Caution: Water is hotter than average" with water at about 39°C. Although they were presumably trying to say "hotter than the average swimming pool," this got me wondering: What is the average temperature of all water on the Earth’s surface, and how does that temperature compare to 39°C?"''
<div align="right">—Graham Ward</div>
|The water average is the year-round average air temperature. By saying the water is "hotter than average", they're implying the water in the pool is not tied to it. Give the signmakers some credit.
|{{blog|132|2015|03|07|1d late}}
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|[[File:Flagpole.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|133|Flagpole}}'''
|''"So, you're falling from a height above the tallest building in your town, and you don't have a parachute. But wait! Partway down the side of that skyscraper there's a flagpole sticking out, sans flag! You angle your descent and grab the pole just long enough to swing around so that when you let go you're now heading back up toward the sky. As gravity slows you and brings you to a halt, you reach the top of the skyscraper, where you reach out and pull yourself to safety. What's the likelihood this could happen?"''
<div align="right">—Rex Ungericht</div>
|It would be impossible, even a gymnast's arms would be ripped off from the force.
|{{blog|133|2015|03|17|3d late}}
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|[[File:Space Burial.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|134|Space Burial}}'''
|''"I've often joked I'd like to have my remains put into orbit. Not in a "scatter my ashes" sense, but, like, "throw my naked corpse out the airlock" sense. Honestly, my main motivation is to baffle someone in the distant future, but it's an interesting scientific question: what would happen to my body in orbit over the course of years, decades or centuries?"''
<div align="right">—Tim in Fremont</div>
|Even before you were launched, your body would dry out very quickly. In low orbit, your body would fall to Earth and be burned from atmospheric re-entry. In a higher orbit, it would be destroyed from space debris. In high orbit, you could last for a few centuries. If your body was ever found it would mean there are a lot of people travelling around: making bodies pretty common.
|{{blog|134|2015|03|28|4d late}}
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|[[File:Digging Downward.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|135|Digging Downward}}'''
|''"What would happen if I dug straight down, at a speed of 1 foot per second? What would kill me first?"''
<div align="right">—Jack Kaunis</div>
|To remove all that soil, the energy required would heat up the surrounding beyond fatal levels pretty quickly. Immune to the heat, you could survive for one to two hours, as oxygen becomes toxic at depths higher than 5 kilometers.
|{{blog|135|2015|04|05|1d late}}
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|[[File:Spiders vs. the Sun.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|136|Spiders vs. the Sun}}'''
|''"Which has a greater gravitational pull on me: the Sun, or spiders? Granted, the Sun is much bigger, but it is also much further away, and as I learned in high school physics, the gravitational force is proportional to the square of the distance."''
<div align="right">—Marina Fleming</div>
|The Sun, by 13 orders of magnitude (the Sun is very big). But spiders are a lot more scary.
|{{blog|136|2015|04|12}}
|{{book|2|44}}
|
|-
|[[File:New Horizons.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|137|New Horizons}}'''
|''"What if New Horizons hits my car?"''
<div align="right">—Robin Sheat</div>
|This is extremely unlikely. But if it did, NASA would be on the hook to replace your car, along with most of your neighbourhood, and clean up the radioactive mess.
|{{blog|137|2015|07|14|2m 25d late}}
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|[[File:Jupiter Submarine.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|138|Jupiter Submarine}}'''
|''"What if you released a submarine into Jupiter's atmosphere? Would it eventually reach a point where it would float? Could it navigate?"''
<div align="right">—KTH</div>
|No. Before it got to the point where it could float, the submarine would be crushed by the high pressure and melted by the high temperature. This is because gasses behave differently to fluids: the point where things can float is at a much higher pressure.
|{{blog|138|2015|07|28|7d late}}
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|[[File:Jupiter Descending.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|139|Jupiter Descending}}'''
|''"If you did '''{{what if|138|fall into Jupiter's atmosphere in a submarine}}''', what would it actually look like? What would you see before you melted or burned up?"''
<div align="right">—Ada Munroe</div>
|There's not a whole lot to go on here; we have some data and educated guesses about what's going inside these gas giants, but we haven't sent any probes equipped with operational cameras into a gas giant so we don't really know. A book by Michael Carroll suggests that there is a layer between the upper ammonia haze and lower ammonium hydrosulfide clouds, that could provide some good views, and if so, the view would be similar to Earth's atmosphere in that clouds and fellow submarines would fade into blue.
|{{blog|139|2015|08|04}}
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|[[File:Proton Earth, Electron Moon.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|140|Proton Earth, Electron Moon}}'''
|''"What if the Earth were made entirely of protons, and the Moon were made entirely of electrons?"''
<div align="right">—Noah Williams</div>
|There would be so much energy packed into one space that it would create a black hole as massive as the observable universe that would expand outwards at the speed of light. Because of the charge from the electrons, it would be a {{w|naked singularity}}, a black hole with infinite mass that allows light to escape.
|{{blog|140|2015|09|18|1m 7d late}}
|{{book|2|48}}
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|[[File:Sunbeam.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|141|Sunbeam}}'''
|''"What if all of the sun's output of visible light were bundled up into a laser-like beam that had a diameter of around 1m once it reaches Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Max Schäfer</div>
|According to Randall, parts of the atmosphere would be heated to millions of degrees, and the bubble of destruction would wrap around the Earth before it even reached the other side. The light reflected off the Moon would be hot enough to burn you to death. If the beam couldn't track the Earth, part of it would survive as the Earth orbited out of the way. If the beam reached another planetary system, it could heat up the surface of some distant exoplanets. However, this conclusion depends on the precise nature of the "bundling up". If this "bundling" is accomplished via passive optics such as lenses and mirrors, then the temperature (and geometry) of the incoming beam will be restricted according to all the optics principles described in "Fire from Moonlight", and under no circumstances would any part of Earth's atmosphere or surface exceed 5000 K, due to the laws of thermodynamics. If, however, the "bundling" consists of an "active" procedure of generating electricity via PV panels, and then powering actual laser emitters with it (not just "laser-like") - which doesn't sound like Max's conception - then yes, the narrow beam of essentially "infinite" temperature and consequent destruction that Randall describes could indeed occur.
|{{blog|141|2016|01|12|3m 18d late}}
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|[[File:Space Jetta.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|142|Space Jetta}}'''
|''"What if I tried to re-enter the atmosphere in my car? (a 2000 VW Jetta TDI). Would it do more environmental damage than it is already apparently doing?"''
<div align="right">—Casey Berg</div>
|The effect of the car's re-entry itself on the environment is going to be small, verging on negligible. The effect of ceasing its usage to burn hydrocarbon fuel for the remainder of the car's life is likely significantly greater than the re-entry, but in practice also negligible. The main non-negligible environmental effect might be from the launch mechanism that was used to get into orbit in the first place, although even this effect, at current rocket launch rates, is still tiny compared to global air travel or ground-based automobile usage.
|{{blog|142|2016|01|20|1d late}}
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|[[File:Europa Water Siphon.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|143|Europa Water Siphon}}'''
|''"What if you built a siphon from the oceans on Europa to Earth? Would it flow once it's set up? (We have an idea for selling bottled Europa water.)"''
<div align="right">—A group of Google Search SREs</div>
|No, at least not with a siphon. Siphons can only pull water upward to a height where the air pressure feeding water into one side of the siphon equals the weight of the water falling out the other side (creating negative pressure, trying to form a vacuum, which nature abhors). This effect requires a gravitational field and an atmosphere, but cannot be used to pump water above the local atmosphere, and hence out of the local gravity well, under any circumstances - including on Europa.
|{{blog|143|2016|01|26|1d early}}
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|[[File:Saliva Pool.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|144|Saliva Pool}}'''
|''"How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva?"''
<div align="right">—Mary Griffin, 9th grade</div>
|For an Olympic pool, it would take you 8,345 years. In order to finish by the present day, you'd need to start during the invention of agriculture.
|{{blog|144|2016|02|02}}
|{{book|2|53}}
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|-
|[[File:Fire From Moonlight.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|145|Fire From Moonlight}}'''
|''"Can you use a magnifying glass and moonlight to light a fire?"''
<div align="right">—Rogier Spoor</div>
|Unfortunately, it is not possible to summarize Randall's article succinctly, because most of his explanation is completely irrelevant to the question. Randall's answer is effectively "No, and here are a set of correct principles of optics that do not support my claim." The correct answer is "Yes, just like it is possible to start a fire with sunlight reflected off anything else, because the temperature/wavelength/energy of light does not change (substantially) when it is reflected, and the temperature of visible sunlight is around 5000 to 6000 K." (The obvious assumption about the intent behind Rogier's question is that "moonlight" refers to the reflected sunlight, and not the Moon's own surface emission of longwave infrared radiation with a temperature of 300 - 400 K, which we can't see - but this should really be clarified by Rogier.)
|{{blog|145|2016|02|09}}
|{{book|2|51}}
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|-
|[[File:Stop Jupiter.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|146|Stop Jupiter}}'''
|''"I understand that the ''New Horizons'' craft used gravity assist from Jupiter to increase its speed on the way to Pluto. I also understand that by doing this, Jupiter slowed down very slightly. How many flyby runs would it take to stop Jupiter completely?"''
<div align="right">—Dillon</div>
|Even if we were to throw Earth at Jupiter, this could never happen, because Jupiter is much more massive than Earth. Gravity assists are like bouncing a tennis ball off a train, and to stop the train, you'd need an awfully large tennis ball. 
|{{blog|146|2016|02|16}}
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|[[File:Niagara Straw.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|147|Niagara Straw}}'''
|''"What would happen if one tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw?"''
<div align="right">—David Gwizdala</div>
|In order to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw, you'd need to accelerate the water to one-quarter light speed, and no machine exists that's capable of doing that. If you somehow could do it, the resulting waterjet would have the power output of a small star, and would boil away the oceans and wipe out all life on Earth.
|{{blog|147|2016|02|26}} 3d late)
|{{book|2|55}}
|{{book|27|2025|06|17|pfbzrrcQZjs|What if you funneled Niagara Falls through a straw?}}
|-
|[[File:Eat the Sun.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|148|Eat the Sun}}'''
|''"What percentage of the Sun's heat (per day) does the population of Earth eat in calories per year? What changes could be made to our diets for the amount of calories to equal the energy of the Sun?"''
<div align="right">—James Mitchell</div>
|0.000000000065%. This is such a ridiculously small portion of the Sun's heat exhaust, that we cannot increase our personal calory intake enough to compensate. Instead we need to add more persons. A lot of them in fact. So many that we need to spread them - and the food that they eat - out throughout not just our galaxy but multiple galaxies. Otherwise, the food alone would be massive enough to turn into a black hole.
|{{blog|148|2016|03|12|8d late}}
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|[[File:Pizza Bird.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|149|Pizza Bird}}'''
|''"My boyfriend recently took a flight on a plane with wifi, and while he was up there, wistfully asked if I could send him a pizza. I jokingly sent him a photo of a parrot holding a pizza slice in its beak. Obviously, my boyfriend had to go without pizza until he landed at JFK. But this raised the question: could a bird deliver a standard 20" New York-style cheese pizza in a box? And if so, what kind of bird would it take?"''
<div align="right">—Tina Nguyen</div>
|After careful analysis of wing types, relative weights, and pizza grabbing mechanisms, it is deduced that even the most compatible bird - the eagle - would be hard-pressed to deliver a pizza to an airliner, the relative speed being the largest hurdle. However, delivery to a house - where the relative speed is not so much of a problem - would be possible, though the pizza might be found a slice or two short.
|{{blog|149|2016|03|26|7d late}}
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|[[File:Tatooine Rainbow.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|150|Tatooine Rainbow}}'''
|''"Since rainbows are caused by the refraction of the sunlight by tiny droplets of rainwater, what would rainbow look like on Earth if we had two suns like Tatooine?"''
<div align="right">—Raga</div>
|Each sun is the source of not just one rainbow, but a whole series of rainbows of diminishing intensity; the elusive 5th order rainbow had apparently been pictured at the time of publication. A planet with two suns would consequently have two series of rainbows. A solar system arranged like Tatooine would have to be circumbinary, which limits the separation of the two rainbow series to about 20 degrees. As the main rainbow is 84 degrees across, this leads to the conclusion that the rainbows would always be overlapping.
|{{blog|150|2016|05|23|1m 21d late}}
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|[[File:Sun Bug.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|151|Sun Bug}}'''
|''"How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness of the Sun?"''
<div align="right">—Luke Doty</div>
|30 nonillion fireflies (3 with 31 zeroes after it), which is surprisingly small on the astronomical scale. Counterintuitively, it turns out a single firefly actually glows brighter than an equivalent mass of Sun. However, there are logistical problems with organizing that many fireflies, as you need to arrange them so that they're not blocking each others' lights. You can try to simplify it by just using one very large firefly, but it would be larger than the entire Solar System and immediately collapse into the biggest black hole in the universe.
|{{blog|151|2016|07|21|1m 23d late}}
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|[[File:Flood Death Valley.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|152|Flood Death Valley}}'''
|''"Since Death Valley is below sea level could we dig a hole to the ocean and fill it up with water?"''
<div align="right">—Nick Traeden</div>
|Basically, yes. But there is a lot of digging, and the end result would be quite similar to the Salton Sea which is characterized as "gross" (technical term). Also, heat world records would likely move elsewhere.
|{{blog|152|2016|10|18|2m 21d late}}
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|''The thumbnail for this blog article wasn't archived.''
|'''<span class="plainlinks">[https://web.archive.org/web/20161205191559/http://what-if.xkcd.com/153 Peptides]</span>'''
|''"What is the longest English word you can spell using the one letter abbreviations of the 20 genetic amino acids? What about the three letter abbreviations? What would the resultant peptides look like?"''
<div align="right">—Kira (Lysine-Isoleucine-Arginine-Alanine) Guth</div>
|For any peptides, 19 letters is the highest possible, that being the word "interdepartmentally". For naturally existing peptides in the human body, 8 letters is the highest known. Examples of 8 letters are: GRISETTE, DATELESS, REVERSAL.
|{{blog|153|2016|12|05|notAvailable=Published by accident and deleted: [[what if? (blog)#top|learn more]]}}
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|[[File:Hide the Atmosphere.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|153|Hide the Atmosphere}}'''
|''"Earth’s atmosphere is really thin compared to the radius of the Earth. How big a hole do I need to dig before people suffocate?"''
<div align="right">—Sam Burke</div>
|The hole would need to be very big. Under the right circumstances, a five-mile hole over the entire state of Texas might suffice.
|{{blog|153|2017|01|30|3m 5d late}}
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|[[File:Coast-to-Coast Coasting.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|154|Coast-to-Coast Coasting}}'''
|''"What if the entire continental US was on a decreasing slope from West to East. How steep would the slope have to be to sustain the momentum needed to ride a bicycle the entire distance without pedaling?"''
<div align="right">—Brandon Rooks</div>
|The ramp would need to be five miles high (eight kilometres) to make this possible, and that would be at a speed slower than walking. You would also need oxygen for the first third of the way down.
|{{blog|154|2017|02|08|9d late}}
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|[[File:Toaster vs. Freezer.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|155|Toaster vs. Freezer}}'''
|''"Would a toaster still work in a freezer?"''
<div align="right">—<span class="plainlinks">[https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/my-brother-my-brother-and-me/ '''My Brother, My Brother, and Me'''], [https://maximumfun.org/episodes/my-brother-my-brother-and-me/mbmbam-343-sauce-doctors-blessing/ '''Episode 343'''], discussing a </span>Yahoo Answers question</div>
|As a superior being, the Toaster casts its gaze upon lowly humans and hrumphs at their bickering about such measly temperature variations as 40C. The Toaster regularly reaches 600C and thus, to it - much like to the Fire - everything else is cold, be it room temperature or freezer temperature. Winnipeg locals have it easy and can try this for themselves, as long as they can stave of the wolves.
|{{blog|155|2017|02|28|13d late}}
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|[[File:Electrofishing for Whales.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|156|Electrofishing for Whales}}'''
|''"I used to work on a fisheries crew where we would use an electro-fisher backpack to momentarily stun small fish (30 - 100 mm length) so we could scoop them up with nets to identify and measure them. The larger fish tended to be stunned for slightly longer because of their larger surface area but I don't imagine this relationship would be maintained for very large animals. Could you electrofish for a blue whale? At what voltage would you have have to set the e-fisher?"''
<div align="right">—Madeline Cooper</div>
|Electrofishing has long-term effects on fish and especially dolphins. Larger animals, especially mammals, are likely to die rather than just get stunned. But it is also harder to get any effect in saltwater, which explains why electrofishing is mainly done in rivers and lakes, compared to fresh water. This means it wouldn't work on blue whales.
|{{blog|156|2017|03|09|2d late}}
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|[[File:Earth-Moon Fire Pole.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|157|Earth-Moon Fire Pole}}'''
|''"My son (5y) asked me today: If there were a kind of a fireman's pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Ramon Schönborn, Germany</div>
|This set-up would face many challenges, but these would be the different domains of the slowest extreme sport: climbing out of the Moon's gravity, accelerating through the middle transfer phase, and then decelerating to your supersonic arrival on Earth.
|{{blog|157|2018|03|21|1y 2m 5d late}}
|{{book|2|58}}
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|[[File:Hot Banana.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|158|Hot Banana}}'''
|''"I heard that bananas are radioactive. If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. How many bananas would you need to power a house?"''
<div align="right">—Kang Ji</div>
|Bananas are not very radioactive, so it would take an absurdly large number. However, gathering that many bananas in one place would have negative consequences. New York no longer exists.
|{{blog|158|2022|05|04|3y 11m 7d late}}
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|[[File:Hailstones.png|100px]]
|'''{{What If|159|Hailstones}}'''
|''"My 4 year old son and I were wondering about soccer ball sized hail today. How much damage would a hail storm with size 5 soccer ball sized hail do?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Grill</div>
|Hailstones get increasingly dangerous as they get larger, as their increased weight cancels their air resistance, allowing them to reach a higher terminal velocity while still carrying all that mass. Regular hailstones are too slow and light to be lethal, but a soccer ball-sized hailstone would hit at around 140 mph, capable of punching straight through the roof of a car or building. Fortunately, no hailstone on record has ever been that big, although storms can on occasion produce hailstones large enough to damage cars, and in rare cases even kill people.
|{{blog|159|2022|07|05|1m 30d late}}
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|''This blog article doesn't have a thumbnail.''
|'''{{What If|160|Transatlantic Car Rental}}'''
|''"My daughter recently received her driver's permit in the US, and aspires to visit mainland Europe someday. She has learned enough about the rules of the road to know never to drive into the ocean; however, she jokingly suggested that given a sufficient quantity of rental cars, she could eventually get to Europe by driving east repeatedly. The question is, how many vehicles would it take to build a car-bridge across the Atlantic?"''
<div align="right">—Eric Munson</div>
|You'd need approximately a billion plus a trillion cars to pull this off. Also, in addition to destroying global ocean circulation and creating an illegal naval blockade, this is definitely a violation of her rental car agreement. Also, organizing a fleet of that many rental cars would be difficult.
|{{blog|160|2022|09|06|1m 26d late}}
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|''This blog article doesn't have a thumbnail.''
|'''{{What If|161|Star Ownership}}'''
|''"If every country's airspace extended up forever, which country would own the largest percentage of the galaxy at any given time?"''
<div align="right">—Reuven Lazarus</div>
|Given that the South pole (of Earth) points towards the Milky way centre, most of the galaxy will wind up in the air-space (space-space?) of countries of the southern hemisphere. However, due to Earth's rotation around its axis, the nadir of the galaxy core (on Earth) will constantly shift. Given that Australia is the largest of the southern countries, Australia will most often be the Rulers of the Universe. Northern hemisphere jurisdictions, such as New Jersey, will have to contend with some pretty nifty black holes and possibly murderous exoplanets.
|{{blog|161|2022|11|01|1m 19d late}}
|{{book|2|24}}
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|''This blog article doesn't have a thumbnail.''
|'''{{What If|162|Comet Ice}}'''
|''"Could I cool down the Earth by capturing a comet and dropping it in the ocean, like an ice cube in a glass of water?"''
<div align="right">—Daniel Becker</div>
|Only if you had a magical sky-crane that could cancel the comet's initial kinetic energy during capture, then slowly lower it to the ground without converting all of its gravitational potential energy back into more kinetic energy. Converting that potential energy into electricity to substitute for existing fossil fuel power plants would reduce CO2 emissions, but the effect of that substitution on global temperatures is uncertain and likely negligible. Meanwhile, the amount of ice in a comet that could be used to cool the oceans directly is also less than one would expect from its size, since comets are not solid. Overall, the answer is effectively "no".
|{{blog|162|2022|12|06|29d late}}
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|'''Global Windstorm'''
|''"What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity?"''
<div align="right">—Andrew Brown</div>
|Everyone would die. Then, the wind would destroy everything, with gusts blowing more than 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h) around the equator, killing 85% of the world population. The highest winds would only last a few minutes, but that would be enough to vaporise most human structures. Bunkers would be useless, because, even if your bunker were stuck to the ground hard, others would not be as strong and would hit yours at 1,000 mph. However, most of the researchers at the {{w|Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station}} would be completely fine. The wind blast would then become a heat blast with scorching temperatures and create global thunderstorms in moist areas. After a while, the Earth would gradually start to regain its rotational velocity thanks to the Moon.
|
|{{book|1|1}}
|{{book|4|2024|01|09|gp5G1QG6cXc|What if Earth suddenly stopped spinning?}}
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #1'''
| colspan="2" |''"Would it be possible to get your teeth to such a cold temperature that they would shatter upon drinking a hot cup of coffee?"''
<div align="right">—Shelby Hebert</div>
<div align="right"></div>
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2"{{book|1|4}}
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"How many houses are burned down in the United States every year? What would be the easiest way to increase that number by a significant amount (say, at least 15%)?"''<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|-
|
|'''New York–Style Time Machine'''
|''"I assume when you travel back in time you end up at the same spot on the Earth’s surface. At least, that’s how it worked in the Back to the Future movies. If so, what would it be like if you traveled back in time, starting in Times Square, New York, 1000 years? 10,000 years? 100,000 years? 1,000,000 years? 1,000,000,000 years? What about foward in time 1,000,000 years?"''
<div align="right">—Mark Dettling</div>
|
*1,000 years back, you'd see many chestnut trees, wolves, and passenger pigeons.
*10,000 years back, the ground would be mostly bedrock, with large chunks of ice and dropped boulders, called glacial erratics.
*100,000 years back, several islands were pushed upwards by the ice. You would see many now-extinct species, such as Canis dirus, Smilodon fatalis, and Arctodus.
*1,000,000 years back, you'd see relatives of hyenas called Chasmaporthetes.
*1,000,000,000 years back would be no plants or animals, only single-celled organisms in the ocean.
|
|{{book|1|5}}
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|-
|
|'''Periodic Wall of the Elements'''
|''"What would happen if you made a periodic table out of cube-shaped bricks, where each brick was made of the corresponding element?"''
<div align="right">—Andy Connolly</div>
|The top two rows wouldn't be too dangerous to build, but the rest of the periodic table would seriously injure or kill you. In the sixth row, elements with short half-lives would destroy the room you were in as well as causing nuclear fallout to fall nearby. Past the sixth row, the entire city you were in would be destroyed.
|
|{{book|1|8}}
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #2'''
| colspan="2" |''"Would dumping anti-matter into the Chernobyl reactor when it was melting down stop the meltdown?"''
<div align="right">—AJ</div>
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2"{{book|1|12}}
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"Is it possible to cry so much you dehydrate yourself?"''<div align="right">—Karl Wildermuth</div>
|-
|
| rowspan="2" |'''The Last Human Light'''
| rowspan="2" |''"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?"''
<div align="right">—Alan</div>
| rowspan="2" |Radioactive waste that was mixed with glass will glow for centuries.
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |{{book|1|13}}
|{{book|11|2024|05|28|8fADp43wJwU|If all humans died, when would the last light go out?}}
|-
|{{book|5|short-video=yes|2025|07|29|kNry0bf7eC0|Could this be the last surviving human light source?}}
|-
| rowspan="3" |
| rowspan="3" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #3'''
| colspan="2" |''"Given humanity’s current knowledge and capabilities, is it possible to build a new star?"''
<div align="right">—Jeff Gordon</div>
| rowspan="3" |
| rowspan="3"{{book|1|16}}
| rowspan="3" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"What sort of logistic anomalies would you encounter in trying to raise an army of apes?"''<div align="right">—Kevin</div>
|-
| colspan="2" |''"If people had wheels and could fly, how would we differentiate them from airplanes?"''<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Orbital Submarine'''
| rowspan="2" |''"How long would a nuclear submarine last in orbit?"''
<div align="right">—Jason Lathbury</div>
| rowspan="2" |The submarine could last as long as it was in space.
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" {{book|1|17}}
|{{book|7|2024|03|05|EsUBRd1O2dU|Would a Submarine Work as a Spaceship?}}
|-
|{{book|4|short-video=yes|2025|07|22|sFTRRdHqZIQ|Why Space Is Actually Warm!}}
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #4'''
| colspan="2" |''"Would it be possible to stop a volcano eruption by placing a bomb (thermobaric or nuclear) underneath the surface?"''
<div align="right">—Tomasz Gruszka</div>
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2"{{book|1|20}}
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"A friend of mine is convinced that there is sound in space. There isn’t, right?"''<div align="right">—Aaron Smith</div>
|-
|
|'''Human Computer'''
|''"How much computing power could we achieve if the entire world population stopped whatever we are doing right now and started doing calculations? How would it compare to a modern-day computer or smartphone?"''
<div align="right">—Mateusz Knorps</div>
|The combined computing power of all devices surpassed the power of all humans in 1977.
|
|{{book|1|21}}
|
|-
|
|'''Common Cold'''
|''"If everyone on the planet stayed away from each other for a couple of weeks, wouldn't the common cold virus be wiped out?"''
<div align="right">—Sarah Ewart</div>
|No, because immunocompromised individuals can harbor rhinoviruses for a long time. Only a few hosts are needed for the virus to spread again.
|
|{{book|1|25}}
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #5'''
| colspan="2" |''" If global warming puts us in danger through temperature rise, and super-volcanos put us into danger of global cooling, shouldn’t those two dangers balance each other out?"''
<div align="right">—Florian Seidl-Schulz</div>
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2"{{book|1|27}}
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"How fast would a human have to run in order to be cut in half at the bellybutton by a cheese-cutting wire?"''<div align="right">—Jon Merrill</div>
|-
|
|'''No More DNA'''
|''"This may be a bit gruesome, but... if someone's DNA suddenly vanished, how long would that person last?"''
<div align="right">—Nina Charest</div>
|You could live for several hours or days before succumbing to infection or systemwide organ failure.
|
|{{book|1|29}}
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #6'''
| colspan="2" |''"What is the total nutritional value (calories, fat, vitamins, minerals, etc.) of the average human body?"''
<div align="right">—Justin Risner</div>
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2"{{book|1|31}}
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"What temperature would a chainsaw (or other cutting implement) need to be at to instantly cauterize any injuries inflicted with it?"''<div align="right">—Sylvia Gallagher</div>
|-
|
|'''Flyover States'''
|''"Which US state is actually flown over the most?"''
<div align="right">—Jesse Ruderman</div>
|Virgina, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America.
|
|{{book|1|33}}
|
|-
| rowspan="3" |
| rowspan="3" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #7'''
| colspan="2" |''"In Thor the main character is at one point spinning his hammer so fast that he creates a strong tornado. Would this be possible in real life?"''
<div align="right">—Davor</div>
| rowspan="3" |
| rowspan="3"{{book|1|36}}
| rowspan="3" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"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?"''<div align="right">—Jonatan Lindström</div>
|-
| colspan="2" |''"How many nuclear missiles would have to be launched at the United States to turn it into a complete wasteland?"''<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|-
|
|'''Self-Fertilization'''
|''"I read about some researchers who were trying to produce sperm from bone marrow stem cells. If a woman were to have sperm cells made from her own stem cells and impregnate herself, what would be her relationship to her daughter?"''
<div align="right">—R Scott LaMorte</div>
|The resulting child would have many genetic defects, effectively being inbred.
|
|{{book|1|37}}
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #8'''
| colspan="2" |''"A toxin blocks the ability of the nephron tubule reabsorption but does not affect filtration. What are the possible short-term effects of this toxin?"''
<div align="right">—Mary</div>
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2"{{book|1|40}}
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"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?"''<div align="right">—Jonathan Wang</div>
|-
|
|'''Lost Immortals'''
|''"If two immortal people were placed on opposite sides of an uninhabited Earthlike planet, how long would it take them to find each other? 100,000 years? 1,000,000 years? 100,000,000,000 years?"''
<div align="right">—Ethan Lake</div>
|Depending on strategy and terrain, a few years to a few decades.
|
|{{book|1|42}}
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #9'''
| colspan="2" |''"Could you survive a tidal wave by submerging yourself in an in-ground pool?"''
<div align="right">—Chris Muska</div>
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2"{{book|1|46}}
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"If you are in free fall and your parachute fails, but you have a Slinky with extremely convenient mass, tension, etc., would it be''
possible to save yourself by throwing the Slinky upward while holding on to one end of it?"<div align="right">—Varadarajan Srinivasan</div>
|-
|
|'''Sparta'''
|''"In the movie 300 they shoot arrows up into the sky and they seemingly blot out the sun. Is this possible, and how many arrows would it take?"''
<div align="right">—Anna Newell</div>
|300 arrows per second with densely packed archers could blot out 99% of the Sun's light. If the Sun were low in the horizon, you could more effectively block sunlight with less arrows.
|
|{{book|1|47}}
|
|-
|
|'''Lego Bridge'''
|''"How many Lego bricks would it take to build a bridge capable of carrying traffic from London to New York? Have that many Lego bricks been manufactured?"''
<div align="right">—Jerry Petersen</div>
|Enough bricks have been manufactured to connect London and New York, but the bridge would not be structurally sound enough to stay together for very long.
|
|{{book|1|51}}
|
|-
| rowspan="3" |
| rowspan="3" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #10'''
| colspan="2" |''"What is the probability that if I am stabbed by a knife in my torso that it won’t hit anything vital and I’ll live?"''
<div align="right">—Thomas</div>
| rowspan="3" |
| rowspan="3"{{book|1|54}}
| rowspan="3" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"If I were on a motorbike and do a jump off a quarter pipe ramp, how fast would I need to be moving to safely deploy and land using the parachute?"''<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|-
| colspan="2" |''"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?"<div align="right">—Kenneth</div>
|-
|
|'''Weightless Arrow'''
|''"Assuming a zero-gravity environment with an atmosphere identical to Earth's, how long would it take the friction of air to stop an arrow fired from a bow? Would it eventually come to a standstill and hover in midair?"''
<div align="right">—Mark Estano</div>
|It would stop at about 5 to 10 kilometers.
|
|{{book|1|56}}
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''All the Lightning'''
| rowspan="2" |''"If all the lightning strikes happening in the world on any given day all happened in the same place at once, what would happen to that place?"''
<div align="right">—Trevor Jones</div>
| rowspan="2" |It would create a crater the size of a basketball court.
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" {{book|1|62}}
|{{book|10|2024|05|07|fs28lEq9smw|What if all the lightning on Earth struck the same place at once?}}
|-
|{{book|3|short-video=yes|2025|07|15|_efsqO-4OoQ|Could We Harvest Power From Lightning?}}
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #11'''
| colspan="2" |''"What if everyone in Great Britain went to one of the coasts and started paddling? Could they move the island at all?"''
<div align="right">—Ellen Eubanks</div>
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2"{{book|1|64}}
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"Are fire tornadoes possible?"''<div align="right">—Seth Wishman</div>
|-
|
|'''Neutron Bullet'''
|''"If a bullet with the density of a neutron star were fired from a handgun (ignoring the how) at the Earth's surface, would the Earth be destroyed?"''
<div align="right">—Charlotte Ainsworth</div>
|No. The bullet would fall through the ground and stop in the center of the Earth.
|
|{{book|1|67}}
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #12'''
| colspan="2" |''"What if I swallow a tick that has Lyme disease? Will my stomach acid kill the tick and the borreliosis, or would I get Lyme disease from the inside out?"''
<div align="right">—Christopher Vogel</div>
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2"{{book|1|68}}
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| colspan="2" |''"Assuming a relatively uniform resonant frequency in a passenger jet, how many cats, meowing at what resonant frequency of said jet, would be required to "bring it down"?"<div align="right">—Brittany</div>
|-
| rowspan="3" |
| rowspan="3" |'''Richter 15'''
| rowspan="3" |''"What if a Richter magnitude 15 earthquake were to hit America at, let's say, New York City? What about a Richter 20? 25?"''
<div align="right">—Alec Farid</div>
| rowspan="3" |A magnitude 15 earthquake would destroy the Earth, but going higher won't make much difference. You can actually go lower than 0, though.
| rowspan="3" |
| rowspan="3" {{book|1|69}}
|{{book|2|2023|12|05|e3uk7jU3RHo|What would a magnitude 15 earthquake be like?}}
|-
|{{book|1|short-video=yes|2025|06|24|wBLVmEZV2Oc|How high could the magnitude of Earthquakes go?}}
|-
|{{book|2|short-video=yes|2025|07|01|FKXVs4UteSc|Is there such a thing as a magnitude 0 earthquake?}}
|-
|
|'''Soupiter'''
|''"What would happen if the Solar System was filled with soup out to Jupiter?"''
<div align="right">—Amelia</div>
|The soup would collapse into a black hole and devour the Milky Way, though we would feel mostly fine for the first 10 to 15 minutes.
|
|{{book|2|1}}
|
|-
|
|'''Helicopter Ride'''
|''"What if you were hanging on a helicopter blade by your hands and then someone turned it on?"''
<div align="right">—Corban Blanset</div>
|Without any grip assistance, you'd fall off before it completed its first revolution. With handholds, your body would instead fall off of your arms.
|
|{{book|2|2}}
|
|-
|
|'''Dangerously Cold'''
|''"Would there be any danger from standing next to a large object that was 0 Kelvin?"''
<div align="right">—Christopher</div>
|There wouldn't be a lot of direct danger from the cube itself, though it would make you feel cold. The bigger danger would be from liquid oxygen condensing and igniting flammable objects. It would take a while to reheat the cube
|
|{{book|2|3}}
|
|-
|
|'''Ironic Vaporization'''
|''"What if we somehow evaporated a solid block of iron on {{asic|ear|th''}}''?"''
<div align="right">—Cooper C.</div>
|The cube would ignite whatever is near it and deposit large quantities of iron flakes downwind. However, it wouldn't make a huge impact on the total amount of atmospheric iron.
|
|{{book|2|4}}
|
|-
|
|'''Cosmic Road Trip'''
|''"If the universe stopped expanding right now, how long would it take for a human to drive a car all the way to the edge of the universe?"''
<div align="right">—Sam H-H</div>
|First off, a human can't do this. Assuming a normal crash rate, an average human driver wouldn't make it past Mars without crashing. Even truck drivers, a field where the crash rate is much lower, wouldn't make it past Jupiter. Using a self-driving car, however, would negate this. It would take an incredibly long time, on the order of approximately 480 quadrillion years if you're driving at a steady pace of 65 miles per hour. Assuming you want to keep your car functional, you would go through 30 quintillion oil changes. Assuming a reasonable 33 MPG highway mileage, the amount of gasoline needed would be similar to the Moon in size. You would also need 10^17 tons of snacks. Entertainment would be another issue. If every person who has ever lived had 150 friends/acquaintances, listening to a real-time podcast of someone's life, all from the perspective of a different friend/acquaintance, you would need to re-watch them all 150 times to make it to the edge of the observable universe. Once you get there, there would be no Earth to come back to.
|
|{{book|2|5}}
|
|-
|
|'''Pigeon Chair'''
|''"How many pigeons would it require in order to lift the average person and launch a chair to the height of Australia's Q1 skyscraper?"''
<div align="right">—Nick Evans</div>
|The optimal method for using the least amount of pigeons would be to use a multi-stage system of sorts. A group of pigeons would lift you about 10 feet, before dropping you as another group swoops in to take their place. However, even with this system, the number of pigeons would be large enough that the Earth would be pulled into the pigeons by gravity instead of the other way around. In other words, if you want to get to the top of Australia's Q1 skyscraper, use an elevator.
|
|{{book|2|6}}
|
|-
|rowspan="11"|
|rowspan="11"|'''Short Answers #1'''
|''"What if your blood became liquid uranium? Would you die from radiation, lack of oxygen, or something else?"''
<div align="right">—Thomas Chattaway</div>
|You would die Having-no-Blood-and-Being-Full-of-Molten-Uranium Syndrome. Also known as Jeff's Disease.
|rowspan="11"|
|rowspan="11"{{book|2|6.5}} (S1)
|rowspan="11"|
|-
|''"Could someone have an anime-style attack where they created a sword out of air? I'm not talking about an air blade, but something like cooling the air enough so that you had solid air to attack people."''
<div align="right">—Emma</div>
|Theoretically yes, but it would be extremely impractical. The temperature to turn oxygen solid is very low, and even with proper insulation it would still cause frostbite. It would also be very weak and very soft, and would sublimate quickly, basically making it useless for all intensive purposes, except for PR.
|-
|''"How much water do you have to drink to become 99 percent water?"''
<div align="right">—LyraxH</div>
|About 500 gallons of water.
|-
|''"What would we see if we attached a lightweight camera to a balloon and let it fly away?"''
<div align="right">—Raymond Peng</div>
|We would see a balloon slowly flying away, fading into the sky. It would be quite pretty. Though next time we should probably attach a transmitter.
|-
|''"How many calories does Mario burn a day?"''
<div align="right">—Daniel and Xavier Hovley</div>
|Mario starved to death in late 1985.
|-
|''"If a snake unhinged its jaw and swallowed a balloon whole, could/would the balloon carry the snake up?"''
<div align="right">—Freezachu</div>
|No.
|-
|''"If you were to jump out of an airplane that was traveling at Mach 880980 that was 100,00 feet above ground in New York City, with skydiving gear, could you survive?"''
<div align="right">—Jack Catten</div>
|rowspan="2"|No, you would die.
|-
|''"If there was no water on Earth, would we all live?"''
<div align="right">—Karen</div>
|-
|''"Is it possible to make a homemade jetpack?"''
<div align="right">—Azhari Zadil</div>
|It's very easy to make one that works once; much harder to make it work more.
|-
|''"I was wondering whether there's a way to use my welder as a defibrillator? (The specific model I own is an Impax IM-ARC140 arc welder.)"''
<div align="right">—Łukasz Grabowski</div>
|No, and you probably shouldn't be allowed to use it as an arc welder either.
|-
|''"What if all atoms on Earth were expanded to the size of a grape? Would we survive?
|I don't know how to answer this with science, but now I want grapes.
|-
|
|'''Geyser'''
|''"If one were to stand on top of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park, at what speed would they be launched upwards and what injuries would they likely sustain?"''
<div align="right">—Catherine McGrath</div>
|If you positioned yourself in just the right way, and used an umbrella to catch as much lift as possible, you could be launched hundreds of feet in the air. Unsurprisingly, you'd receive severe burns and almost certainly die. Surprisingly, however, you would be far from the first person to get severe burns from the geysers.
|
|{{book|2|8}}
|
|-
|
|'''Pew, Pew, Pew'''
|''"If you shot a ridiculously powerful gun/{{asic|la|zer''}}'' would it go off the edge of the world in a straight line or curve around the world?"''
<div align="right">—Maelor</div>
|The beam would go off the edge of the world, except under certain circumstances.
|
|{{book|2|9}}
|
|-
|rowspan="4"|
|rowspan="4"|'''Weird & Worrying #1'''
|colspan="2"|''"Can bees or other animals go to hell? Or can they murder other bees without consequences?"''
<div align="right">—Sadie Kim</div>
|rowspan="4"|
|rowspan="4"{{book|2|10.5}} (W1)
|rowspan="4"|
|-
|colspan="2"|''"How many mirrors reflecting (sun)light would it take to kill, or at least, injure somebody?"''
<div align="right">—Eli Collinge</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"If you had to remove the tonsils of a giant, what would be the safest way for you to do it? The surgeon is a normal human."''
<div align="right">—Tirzah</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"What would it take to defeat Air Force One with a drone???"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|-
|
|'''Banana Church'''
|''"Can all the world's bananas fit inside of all of the world's churches? My friends have had this argument for a little over 10 years now."''
<div align="right">—Jonas</div>
|<big><big>{{notice2|'''Most of these are too short!'''}}</big></big> <big><big>{{notice|'''If you own the second book, please help us by explaining more!'''}}</big></big> Yes. They would likely only fill the churches to 6 inches deep. For the bananas to be unable to fit, each person would need to eat a 1 foot by 1 foot by 2 meter crate's worth of bananas per year.
|
|{{book|2|11}}
|
|-
|
|'''Lose Weight the Slow and Incredibly Difficult Way'''
|''"I want to lose 20 pounds. How much of the Earth's mass would I have to "relocate" to space in order to achieve my goal?"''
<div align="right">—Ryan Murphy</div>
|You would have to remove 85% of the Earth's mass. However, due to the increase in density in the mantle, you would actually gain weight until you've removed about half the Earth's diameter. An image of what it would look like is shown in [[2575: What If? 2]], where a potato peeler is used to remove the crust of the Earth.
|
|{{book|2|13}}
|
|-
|
|'''Jupiter Comes to Town'''
|''"Dear Randall, what would happen if you shrunk Jupiter down to the size of a house and placed in a neighborhood, say, replacing a house?"''
<div align="right">—Zachary</div>
|Assuming density stayed the same when you shrunk Jupiter down, the biggest issue would be that the gravity that keeps its hot interior together would no longer exist, essentially creating a giant fireball that would turn into a mushroom cloud, and eventually spread out into a big cool cloud. This would, effectively, be the reverse of the formation of Jupiter, which started as clouds before being compressed into a small hot ball.
|
|{{book|2|15}}
|
|-
|
|'''Swing Set'''
|''"How tall can a swing set be while still being powered by a human pumping their legs? Is it possible to build a swing set tall enough to launch the rider into space if they jump at the right time? (Assuming the human has enough energy, which my 5-year-old seems to have.)"''
<div align="right">—Joe Coyle</div>
|This is impossible due to the fact that, by pumping the legs, you are essentially pushing against the crossbar of the swing set. A string which is too long will result in a very low amount of force being delivered to the crossbar, lowering the maximum angle you can swing relative to the base of the curve. Calculations show that the optimal crossbar height to gain the most angle relative to the ground is approximately 8 feet.
|
|{{book|2|17}}
|
|-
|
|'''Airliner Catapult'''
|''"My friend is a commercial airline pilot. She says that a significant amount of fuel is spent on takeoff. To save fuel, why couldn't we launch airplanes using catapult systems like on aircraft carriers (calibrated to normal human accelerations)? Could significant amounts of fossil fuels be saved if the catapults could be run by some other clean energy? I'm imagining a rope ... one end tied to the airplane, the other tied to a large boulder at the edge of a cliff. Just push the boulder off the cliff!"''
<div align="right">—Brady Barkey</div>
|It's not a completely ridiculous idea, but the most practical issue is that you'd have to extend the roughly mile-long runway several times more to take full advantage of it. Using the proposed rope-and-cliff system, you'd need to use a thousand ton weight dropped at the height of a super tall skyscraper - of course, if you used something heavier, like the 80,000-ton Washington Monument, you wouldn't need to drop it as far.
|
|{{book|2|18}}
|
|-
|rowspan="14"|
|rowspan="14"|'''Short Answers #2'''
|''"Billy the Clown is running out of cash, so in order to raise money, he devises his newest trick: He will inflate, by mouth, a standard-size party balloon until the material (some form of indestructible rubber) is just one atom thick. How large would the inflated party balloon be?"''
<div align="right">—Alan Fong</div>
|It's a total mystery why Billy is running out of cash.
|rowspan="14"|
|rowspan="14"{{book|2|18.5}} (S2)
|rowspan="14"|
|-
|''"How many leaf blowers would it take to move a standard SUV"''
<div align="right">—Ashley H.</div>
|Somewhere around 1-2 dozen leaf blowers would do the trick. However, it would be very impractical, consume a lot of fuel, and the acceleration would be very slow. Many more leaf blowers would be needed to accelerate the car at a reasonable rate.
|-
|''"If you put a vacuum at extremely high suction and aimed it at a normal BMW sedan, what would happen?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|Nothing. Cars, even small ones like sedans, are far too large and heavy to be affected by a vacuum, even a very large and powerful one.
|''"On a warm summer evening, when you sit outside with a light on, you can be sure that bugs will be attracted to the light. Then why is it that these same bugs don't fly toward the biggest and strongest lamp of them all, namely the Sun, during the day?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|Those that would would die and not be able to produce offspring with the same traits.
|-
|''"If you collected all of the guns in the world and put them on one side of the Earth, then shot the all simultaneously, would it move the Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Nathan</div>
|It would not move the Earth, but it would make the other side a nicer place to live.
|-
|''"What would happen if you microwaved a small microwave, while the smaller one was on as well?"''
<div align="right">—Micheal</div>
|Randall gave the meme answer of 'You would no longer be welcome in that IKEA.' In reality, this would almost certainly lead to some dire consequences. Microwaves contain sensitive electronics which would be damaged from excess heat{{cn}}, leaving the microwave functionally useless. Most microwaves are also made of metal, which is known for exploding when exposed to microwaves. This is the same principle that causes forks to explode when placed in one.
|-
|''"If you're jumping on a trampoline, how fast would your body have to be going to:<br>'''A.''' Break all bones on impact<br>'''B.''' Make your body go though the tiny holes of the mesh."''
<div align="right">—Micah Lane</div>
|<ol style="list-style-type: upper-alpha">
<li>Breaking all of the bones in your body would be hard because a lot of them are very small, but it would be fast enough that the trampoline wouldn't make much of a difference.</li>
<li>This can't happen, no matter how fast you're going.</li>
</ol>
|-
|''"I have a Nothing Grenade™. When detonated, it instantly replaces itself with a sphere of perfect vacuum 2 meters across. What would actually happen when it went off?"''
<div align="right">—Dave H.</div>
|As the two-meter vacuum circle appeared, the surrounding air would rapidly fill in the sudden gap. Almost instantaneously, the air would collide and expand out with enough force to possibly kill a human and damage small structures such as bookshelves or walls. In other words, you basically have a regular grenade.
|-
|''"Is space hot or cold?"''
<div align="right">—Isaac</div>
|The answer to this is complicated. Temperature is a measurement of the speed of particles. In space, having no air resistance, particles move incredibly fast. However, because it's a vacuum, there are almost no particles. This is a similar principle to the reason you don't get burned when welding sparks touch your skin. They're so small they do basically nothing to you. As there are almost no particles to impact you, space is the hottest place you can freeze to death.
|-
|''"How many bones can you remove from the human body while allowing the human to continue living? Asking for a friend."''
<div align="right">—Chris Rakeman</div>
|That person is not your friend.
|-
|''"What would happen if you put a human under a g-force of 417 Gs for twenty seconds?"''
<div align="right">—Nythill</div>
|The human is guaranteed to die. Scientific tests have shown that, despite the human body's ability to withstand g-forces into the hundreds for very short periods of time (a car crash may exceed 100 Gs of force), going over 18 Gs for a long period of time is likely to cause the human to black out and quickly die, as the force would prevent blood from being able to flow through a human body properly. This is the same reason why bugs are unable to move after hitting a car on the highway, even if they survive.
|-
|''"Where or how can one commit a murder and not be prosecuted for it?"''
<div align="right">—Kunai Dhawan</div>
|Theoretically, in a section of Yellowstone National Park, where {{w|Zone of Death (Yellowstone)|a jury would have to be formed from a non-existent population}}. In practice, you'd definitely still be prosecuted for committing a murder there.
|-
|''"I read today that insects make at least $57 billion a year for the US economy. If we were to pay every single insect in the United States equally for their economic contribution, how much would each insect get?"''
<div align="right">—Hannah McDonald</div>
|Each insect would get $0.0000029.
Broken down:
*$18 billion to flies, including mosquitoes
*$16 billion to bees, wasps, and ants
*$10 billion to beetles
*$7 billion to thrips
*$1 billion to butterflies and moths
*$1 billion to true bugs
*$4 billion to all other insects
|-
|''"What, in today's world and yesterday's world, does it mean to be human, in all social and biological factors?"''
<div align="right">—Seth Carrol</div>
|You meant to submit this to ''Why If?: Deeply Ungrammatical Answers to Unanswerable Philosophical Questions''.
|-
|
|'''Slow Dinosaur Apocalypse'''
|''"What if an object like the Chicxulub impactor hit earth with a relatively low relative speed of (let's say) 3 mph"''
<div align="right">—Beni von Alemann</div>
|Even though the meteor is slow, it's still very big. The impactor would not create a crater, but would instead create a weird effect which makes the rock flow like water, creating a large "space dirt pancake" about the same diameter as the Chicxulub impact Crater. If {{w|Jurassic Park}} were a real place, it could certainly cause a dinosaur extinction over there, if dropped on it.
|
|{{book|2|19}}
|
|-
|
|'''Elemental Worlds'''
|''"What if Mercury (the planet) were entirely made of mercury (the element)? What if Ceres was made of cerium? Uranus made of uranium? Neptune made of neptunium? What about Pluto made of plutonium?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|Earth would (mostly) be fine. Mercury, uranium, neptunium, plutonium, and cerium would all replace the old planets. Changes are as follows:
*Pluto would be visible to the naked eye
*Ceres would be visible to the naked eye
*Mercury would be visible to the naked eye
*Uranus would look a fairly bight star in the night sky
*''When Neptune hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that's an x-ray..''
|
|{{book|2|20}}
| 
|-
|
|'''Tire Rubber'''
|''"Rubber tires on millions of cars and trucks start with about ½" tread and end up bald. Rubber should be everywhere, or at least our highways should be made thicker. Where's the rubber?"''
<div align="right">—Fred</div>
|An average tire sheds about 1.6 liters of rubber over the course of its lifetime (from new to bald). If all tire rubber stuck to the road, it would rise by about a third of a millimeter per year. However, most tire rubber shavings are small enough to drift through the air, or for rain and wind to wash them off the road. Tire rubber is more than enough to cause environmental disruption and it's one of the leading causes of microplastics in our oceans.
|
|{{book|2|25}}
|
|-
|rowspan="10"|
|rowspan="10"|'''Short Answers #3'''
|''"How long do you think two people would have to kiss continuously before they had no lips left?"''
<div align="right">—Asli</div>
|That's not how lips work
|rowspan="10"|
|rowspan="10"{{book|2|26.5}} (S3)
|rowspan="10"|
|-
|''"My college friend and I have had this debate for years now: If you put a million hungry ants in a glass cube with one human, who's more likely to walk out alive?"''
<div align="right">—Eric Bowman</div>
|The human would try to break out of the cube, and probably succeed. Although disgusted, the human would probably be fine. Ants generally do not eat meat, preferring leaves and other foliage. If they escaped, both the human and the ants would go after the person who put them in the glass box. If they did not escape, both the human and the ants would eventually die of suffocation.
|-
|''"What if all of humanity set all of their differences aside and work together to level out the Earth into a perfect sphere?"''
<div align="right">—Erik Andersen</div>
|This would quickly create new differences.
|-
|''"People talk a lot about a space elevator or a building that would reach into low orbit to save time and resources getting things into space. This is going to sound incredibly stupid, but why has no one proposed building a road into space? Since orbit is generally considered to be 62 miles out, would it be possible to build a 62-mile-high mountain somewhere in the United States? Colorado would be my suggestion, since it has a low population density and is about a mile above sea level already."''
<div align="right">—Brian</div>
|Where are you going to get the materials to build the mountain? Also, Colorado has a lot of people in it.
|-
|''"If I shot a rocket and a bullet through Jupiter's center, would they come out the other side?"''
<div align="right">—James Wilson</div>
|No, as the leading theory is that Jupiter has a solid core. Shooting a bullet through the center would simply cause the bullet to collide with the core of the planet.
|-
|''"What if Mount Everest magically turned into pure lava? What would happen to life; would we all die?"''
<div align="right">—Ian</div>
|We would mostly be okay.
|-
|''"Can you fall down into the Mariana Trench, or would you just swim over it?"''
<div align="right">—Rodolfo Estrella</div>
|You can do both of those things. Assuming what he was trying to say was "Can you swim over the Marianas Trench without falling into it?" the answer is that you would just swim directly over it.
|-
|''"I play Dungeons & Dragons, and my DM doesn't want to let us use the Gust of Wind spell to push wind into the sails of a ship and make it move. Her argument is that you can't use this spell to move a ship because someone on a sailboat can't aim a fan at the sail to propel the boat. We argue that since the spell doesn't push you backward when you use it, then we should be able to use it to make the ship sail. She says she'll allow it only if you say so."''
<div align="right">—Georgia Paterson and Allison Adams</div>
|Since the spell doesn't push you backwards, it should work. If the spell pushed you backwards, you would just have to aim the spell backwards.
|-
|''"What if I struck a match on Titan? Would it light if there's no oxygen?"''
<div align="right">—Ethan Fitzgibbon</div>
| While the match would light initially due to the small amount of oxidizer in a matchhead (typically {{w|potassium chlorate}}, in a safety match), it would quickly dissipate due to the lack of oxygen to titan's atmosphere.
|-
|''"I posted a question on social media asking what would be the smallest change that would create the biggest disaster. One of the responses I got said "if every atom gained 1 proton." So my question for you is, what would happen if every atom gained 1 proton?"''
<div align="right">—Olivia Caputo</div>
|That would not be a small change.
|-
|
|'''Suction Aquarium'''
|''"When I was a child, I discovered that if I took a container into the swimming pool, i could fill it with water and then bring the container (open-end down) to the surface of the water, and the water level in my container was higher than the water level in the pool. What would happen if you tried to do this with a giant container and the ocean? Could you create a giant aquarium on top of the water that the animals could swim in and out of freely? Maybe an irregularly shaped container that you would walk around on to get closer to the fish?"''
<div align="right">—Caroline Collett</div>
|It would work, but the water level would slowly lower back to sea level over time. However, this process can be accelerated by whale farts. I am not joking.
|
|{{book|2|27}}
|
|-
|
|'''Earth Eye'''
|''"If the Earth were a massive eye, how far would it see?"''
<div align="right">—Alasdir</div>
|Its 'resolution' would be over 500 million times better than a normal human eye. It would be able to see the color of a shirt worn on Mars. It could also see incredibly far objects, such as some of the most distant galaxies that haven't been {{w|redshift}}ed to the point of being infrared. However, a planet-sized eye would be inconvenient, as it would certainly go blind from the Sun and could be damaged from nearby stars as well.
|
|{{book|2|28}}
|
|-
|
|'''Build Rome in a Day'''
|''"How many people would it take to build Rome in a day?"''
<div align="right">—Lauren</div>
| It would take anywhere between 15 minutes and 150 minutes with the whole Earth working.
|
|{{book|2|29}}
|
|-
|
|'''Mariana Trench Tube'''
|''"If I put an indestructible 20-meter-wide glass tube in the ocean that goes all the way down to the deepest part of the ocean, what would it be like to stand at the bottom? Assuming the sun goes directly overhead."''
<div align="right">—Zoki Čulo</div>
|You would likely see many new and undiscovered species. You would also be incredibly cold as the freezing waters of the deep would cool the glass. Getting up would be another problem entirely. If you didn't use an elevator, you could break the glass. That would create a geyser, accelerating you upwards at lethal G-forces. Once you reach the surface, you would fly high into the air before crashing back down into the ocean. Also, you would be heralded as a hero by a lot of marine biologists.
|
|{{book|2|30}}
|
|-
|
|'''MRI Compass'''
|''"Why don't compasses point toward the nearest hospital because of the magnetic fields created by MRI machines?"''
<div align="right">—D. Hughes</div>
|They actually do, but only within ~10 meters.
|
|{{book|2|32}}
|
|-
|
|'''Ancestor Fraction'''
|''"I noticed recently that the number of people within a family tree increases exponentially with each generation: I have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, and so on. Which got me thinking—are most people descended from the majority of Homo sapiens who have ever lived? If not, what fraction of all the people that have ever lived am I descended from?"''
<div align="right">—Seamus</div>
|Likely between 2-3 twenty-fourths of all humans who have ever lived.
|
|{{book|2|33}}
|
|-
|
|'''Bird Car'''
|''"I'm a lowly college student stuck in a car without AC. As such, the windows are down most of the time when I'm driving, and I started thinking: If a bird happens to match my speed and direction perfectly, and I swerve to catch the bird in my car ... what happens next, other than an angry bird? Does the bird stay right where it was? Fly into the windshield? Drop into the seat? My roommate and I disagree. Any help settling this would really make all our lives easier."''
<div align="right">—Hunter W.</div>
| The bird would fall onto the seat at an angle, and then would fly out of the window (hopefully).
|
|{{book|2|34}}
|
|-
|rowspan="4"|
|rowspan="4"|'''Weird & Worrying #2'''
|colspan="2"|''"What would happen if you put the end of a vacuum hose up to your eye and turned on the vacuum?"''
<div align="right">—Kitty Greer</div>
|rowspan="4"|
|rowspan="4"{{book|2|35.5}} (W2)
|rowspan="4"|
|-
|colspan="2"|''"Is it possible to hold your arm straight out of a car window and punch a mailbox clean off its pole? Could you do it without breaking your hand?"''
<div align="right">—Ty Gwennap</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"If people's teeth kept growing, but when they were fully grown they come off and are swallowed, how long would it take before it causes any problems?"''
<div align="right">—Valen M.</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"In a defensive situation, how much epinephrine (in a EpiPen) would it take to subdue a possible attacker?"''
<div align="right">—Henry M.</div>
|-
|
|'''Vacuum Tube Smartphone'''
|''"What if my phone was based on vacuum tubes? How big would it be?"''
<div align="right">—Johnny</div>
| The phone would be about the size of one to five city blocks, and would melt its way through the Earth's crust. Conversely, the UNIVAC constructed with modern electrical components would be smaller than a grain of salt.
|
|{{book|2|36}}
|
|-
|
|'''Eat a Cloud'''
|''"Could a person eat a whole cloud?"''
<div align="right">—Tak</div>
|Not unless you can squeeze the air out first. If you don't you will burp out more cloud than you ate.
|
|{{book|2|38}}
|
|-
|
|'''Tall Sunsets'''
|''"Let's say that two people of different heights (159 cm and 206 cm) stand beside each other while looking at the sunset. How much longer will the taller person be able to see the sun than the shorter one?"''
<div align="right">—Rasmus Bunde Nielson</div>
|Over a second longer.
|
|{{book|2|39}}
|
|-
|
|'''Sisyphean Refrigerators'''
|''"Suppose everyone with a fridge or a freezer opened them at the same time, outdoors. Would that amount of cooling be able to noticeably change the temperature? If not, how many fridges would it take to lower the temperature, say, 5 degrees F? What about even lower?"''
<div align="right">—Nicholas Mittica</div>
|Refrigerators don't work like that, and would likely increase global temperatures by 0.3 degrees celsius. The infinite spite of Hades is surprisingly green.
|
|{{book|2|41}}
|
|-
|
|'''Basketball Earth'''
|''"You know how when you spin a basketball on your finger you hit the side to make it go faster and balance it? If a meteor passes close enough to the earth, can it make the Earth spin faster like your hand does the basketball?"''
<div align="right">—Zayne Freshley</div>
|Yes.
|
|{{book|2|43}}
|
|- 
|
|'''Inhale a Person'''
|''"If house dust comprises up to 80 percent dead skin, how many people worth of skin does a person consume/inhale in a lifetime?"''
<div align="right">—Greg</div>
|You could inhale at most 3 gallons of human skin in a lifetime, and dust is not mostly dead skin. Instead it is a cursed salad of soil, pollen, cotton fibers, crumbs, powdered sugar, glitter, pet hair and dander, plastic, soot, human or animal hair, flour, glass, smoke, mites, and various miscellaneous gunk.
|
|{{book|2|45}}
|
|-
|
|'''Candy Crush Lightning'''
|''"How many Wint-O-Green Life Savers would it take to create a life-size lightning bolt if you crushed them"''
<div align="right">—Violet M.</div>
|Billions
|
|{{book|2|46}}
|
|-
|rowspan="13"|
|rowspan="13"|'''Short Answers #4'''
|''"Can humans safely eat rabid creatures?"''
<div align="right">—Winston</div>
|No.
|rowspan="13"|
|rowspan="13"{{book|2|46.5}} (S4)
|rowspan="13"|
|-
|''"What if the Earth's core suddenly stopped producing heat?"''
<div align="right">—Laura</div>
|We would be mostly fine. While one may picture a scenario similar to ''The Core'', the difference would only be noticed long after you're gone, so you don't really need to worry about it :)
|-
|''"Could humanity, with our current technology, destroy the Moon?"''
<div align="right">—Tyler</div>
|No.
|-
|''"Can global warming cause the Earth's magnetic fields to weaken?"''
<div align="right">—Pavaki</div>
|No.
|-
|''"If you used a laser, would you be able to bake something?"''
<div align="right">—Andrew Liu</div>
|Yes.
|-
|''"What if Earth was sliced in half, like an apple? Where should you be such that you have the best chance of survival?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|You should be holding the object that's slicing the Earth.
|-
|''"What would happen if a person dropped into a pool full of jellyfish?"''
<div align="right">—Lorenzo Belotti</div>
|It depends on the species.
|-
|''"Would it be possible to make a house floor into a massive air hockey table, so you could move heavy furniture across the room?"''
<div align="right">—Jacob Wood</div>
|Yes, and now I know what my next home improvement project will be.
|-
|''"My 7-year-old son asked us over dinner recently at which point potatoes melt (I assume in a vacuum). Please advise."''
<div align="right">—Steffen</div>
|Potatoes don't really melt at any temperature. Also, do you automatically add 'in a vacuum' to anything your son says?
|-
|''"Would a pigeon be able to make it to space if it was not affected by gravity?"''
<div align="right">—Nick Evans</div>
|No. The air in the upper atmosphere is too thin to breathe and too cold
|-
|''"If you were flying blind through the Milky Way what would be the odds of hitting a star or planet?"''
<div align="right">—David</div>
|If you flew edge-on, it would be about 1 in 10 billion.
|-
|''"On various bodies in our Solar System (feel free to group any that are equivalent), roughly how long could you survive on the surface (for gas giants, assume you are on a magical platform at some point in the atmosphere that you could reasonably treat as the surface) with nothing but an infinite air supply and warm winter clothing? That is, no helmet, no pressure suit, just a nose-and-mouth air mask attached to a magic air generator, and clothing that would be suitable for, say, Chicago in winter. (No cute tricks like using the magic air supply to generate heat or whatever.)"''
<div align="right">—Melissa Trible</div>
|
*Earth: 100-ish years
*Venus: Weeks to months
*Everywhere else: Minutes to hours
Venus would be great if it weren't for the sulfuric acid.
|-
|''"What would happen if someone dropped an anvil on you from space?"''
<div align="right">—Sam Stiehl</div>
|About the same as if someone dropped an anvil on you from a building.
|-
|
|'''Toasty Warm'''
|''"What if I want to heat my house using toasters. How many do I need?"''
<div align="right">—Peter Ahlström</div>
|Not many, because the house would quickly catch on fire.
|
|{{book|2|47}}
|
|-
|
|'''Eyeball'''
|''"If I pulled out my eyeball and aimed it so that it was looking into my other eyeball, what would I see (assuming the nerves and veins remain undamaged)"''
<div align="right">—Lenka</div>
|You would see an eye superimposed with your head and the background of the room overlapping.
|
|{{book|2|49}}
|
|-
|
|'''Japan Runs an Errand'''
|''"If ALL of Japan's islands disappear, would it affect Earth's natural phenomena (plates, oceans, hurricanes, climate, and so on)?"''
<div align="right">—Miyu Uchida</div>
|It could shift the Earth's center of mass and axis of rotation by a foot. Sea level could also rise by up to a foot and a half in some areas. Ocean circulation in the Pacific could also be impacted.
|
|{{book|2|50}}
|
|-
|
|'''Read All the Laws'''
|''"If a person wanted to read all of the governing documents that apply to them—from the federal and state constitutions, treaties, agency-issued regulations, federal and state laws, local ordinances, etc.—how many pages would they have to read?"''
<div align="right">—Keith Yearman</div>
|Between 145000 and 12.3 million pages.
|
|{{book|2|52}}
|
|-
|rowspan="3"|
|rowspan="3"|'''Weird & Worrying #3'''
|colspan="2"|''"If I were to jump into a container of liquid nitrogen (or dispose of a body that way), how deep would it have to be for me/them to shatter into frozen pieces at the bottom?"''
<div align="right">—Stella Wohnig</div>
|rowspan="3"|
|rowspan="3"{{book|2|52.5}} (W3)
|rowspan="3"|
|-
|colspan="2"|''"What would happen to you if a colony of ants suddenly appeared in you bloodstream all at once?"''
<div align="right">—Matt, on behalf of Declan</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"If Harry Potter forgets where the invisible entrance to Platform 9¾ is, how long would he have to crash into walls randomnly before discovering it?"''
<div align="right">—Max Planker</div>
|-
|
|'''Snowball'''
|''"What if I tried to roll a snowball from the top of Mount Everest? How big would the snowball be by the time it reached the bottom and how long would it take?"''
<div align="right">—Michaeline Yates</div>
|It would remain about the same size, or it could cause an avalanche. Since the peak of {{w|Mount Everest}} is above the clouds, it is very dry there. For a snowball to grow, wet snow is required. The result would be similar to rolling a hamburger down.
|
|{{book|2|54}}
|
|-
|
|'''Walking Backward in Time'''
|''"What if you decided to walk from Austin, Texas, to New York City, but every step takes you back thirty days?"''
<div align="right">—Jojo Yawson</div>
| The sky would flicker at 50 Hz, and you would arrive around 300,000 years in the past.
|
|{{book|2|56}}
|
|-
|
|'''Ammonia Tube'''
|''"What would happen if you fed ammonia into your stomach through a tube? How fast must the flow rate be to burn your stomach from the heat released? What would the newly created chlorine gas do to your stomach?"''
<div align="right">—Becca</div>
|{{w|Ammonia}} is an {{w|EPA list of extremely hazardous substances|extremely hazardous substance}} and pumping it into your abdomen would result in a painful death due to ammonia toxicity. However, at the very least, some of it would be neutralized with your stomach acid.
|
|{{book|2|57}}
|
|-
|rowspan="7"|
|rowspan="7"|'''Short Answers #5'''
|''"Could life evolve in a constantly running microwave?"''
<div align="right">—Abby Doth</div>
|No.
|rowspan="7"|
|rowspan="7"{{book|2|58.5}} (S5)
|rowspan="7"|
|-
|''"Tonight at my work as an ER nurse in the emergency room, a patient (high on methamphetamine) asked for a cup of water. I returned with a paper cup of water, which the patient promptly threw at my head, missing me but hitting the wall in such an improbable way that the open top of the cup impacted the wall and the cup contained/diminished most of the subsequent splatter. It occurred to me that it might be possible to throw a cup of water hard enough that the container of water would go through the wall. Is this possible?"''
<div align="right">—Pete</div>
|Anything will go through a wall if you throw it hard enough
|-
|''"How slow would you have to chew in order to be able to infinitely consume breadsticks?"''
<div align="right">—Miller Broughton</div>
|You would have to divide each breadstick into 20 bites, chewing each bite 200 times at 1 chew per second.
|-
|''"If you were somehow to remove the white and yolk from inside an eggshell (chicken), and replace them with helium, would the eggshell float in the air?"''
<div align="right">—Elizabeth</div>
|No. An eggshell weighs more than the air it displaces.
|-
|''"What would stars smell like, if it were possible to smell them?"''
<div align="right">—Finn Ellis</div>
|Due to the free hydrogen molecules floating around in there, it would taste incredibly sour. It would also smell like burning rubber, as stars are made up of the same components.
|-
|''"What is the average size for every man-made object on the planet?"''
<div align="right">—Max Carver</div>
|Not too big, not too small. About average.
|-
|''"E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E"''
<div align="right">—Nate Yu</div>
|I feel you, Nate.
|-
|
|'''Dog Overload'''
|''"Assuming 1 out of every 4 people has a 5-year-old dog, and the dog reproduces once every year, with 5 puppies, and the puppies start reproducing at 5 and stop at 15 and die at 20, how long would it take for the Earth to be flooded with puppies, assuming we have all the food, water, and oxygen to sustain them?"''
<div align="right">—Griffin</div>
|This is unrealistic right from the start. This assumes the total dog population is 2 billion, which is well above current estimates. A timeline of major events and milestones is listed below.
*After one year, there are enough dogs for everyone to have at least one.
*After 5 years, every human has an average of 6 or 7 dogs.
*After 11 years, Disney releases ''101 Dalmations per Capita'', after there are 101 dogs per person
*After 15 years, the first dogs die, but the death is fully insignificant.
*After 20 years, dogs would only be about 1 meter apart on average.
*After 25-30 years, the dogs begin to stack.
*At about 40 years, the exponential growth is "stable". The population is multiplying by about 1.6578 each year.
*After 65 years, the population of dogs reaches 1 mol
*After 110 years, the dogs start to undergo relativistic collapse
*After 150 years, the dogs are bigger than the solar system.
*After 197 years, the expansion of the dog sphere surpasses 1''c''
*After 200 years, the dogs reach sirius.
*After 250 years, the dogs envelop the milky way.
*After 330 years, the dogs reach the edge of the observable universe.
*After 417 years, Disney releases ''10<sup>101</sup> Dalmations.''
|
|{{book|2|60}}
|
|-
|
|'''Sunscreen'''
|''"Assuming that SPF works as it purports, what SPF would you need for a 1-hour trip to the surface of the sun?"''
<div align="right">—Brian and Max Parker</div>
|You would need SPF 3,200,000 or a giant blob of sunscreen. Despite its name, sunscreen only protects against some types of radiation from the Sun. No amount is going to be adequate protection if you are right inside the Sun. Also, sunscreen, being a gel, would evaporate when exposed to vacuum. When exposed to the plasma of the coronal surface or the Sun's interior, it would quickly ionize along with anything inside it, becoming plasma like the rest of the Sun.
|
|{{book|2|62}}
|
|-
|
|'''Walking on the Sun'''
|''"After the Sun runs out of fuel, it will become a white dwarf and slowly cool. When will it be cool enough to touch?"''
<div align="right">—Jabari Garland</div>
|The Sun will cool to room temperature in about 20 billion years. However, survival would not be an option.
|
|{{book|2|63}}
|
|-
|
|'''Lemon Drops and Gumdrops'''
|''"What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?"''
<div align="right">—Shuo Peskoe-Yang</div>
|Human civilization would collapse, and we would all die.
|
|{{book|2|64}}
|
|-
|
|'''Bonus Chapter'''
|''"...but what if we tried even ''more'' power?"''
<div align="right">—Randall Munroe</div>
| This is a continuation of {{what if|13|13: Laser Pointer}}. Adding even more power than the end of that article would heat the air so much that the lasers would stop themselves long before reaching the Moon. Even if we managed to get them to hit the Moon, the plasma created would be so hot that it would stop anyway.
|
|{{book|3|70}}
|{{book|19|2024|12|03|jgafb8G7i4o|But what if we tried MORE power?}}
|-
|}<noinclude>

<span id="Editors"><big><big>'''Editors'''</big></big></span> ㅤ ''[[#Article index|(jump back to table)]]''

These templates are used in this table: {{tl|what if}}, {{tl|What If}}, {{tl|book}}, {{tl|blog}}.

<big>'''Add YouTube video'''</big>

<nowiki>{{book|YT-NUMBER|YYYY|MM|DD|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''<nowiki>HTTPS://LINK</nowiki>'''''</font>|VIDEO-TITLE}}
'''EXAMPLE:''' <nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''2'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''2022'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''12'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''31'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LSyNhb5Y'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''What if everyone pointed a laser at the moon?'''''</font>}}

<big>'''Add book chapter'''</big>

For the first [[What If? (book)|What If? book]]:
<nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''1'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''CHAPTER-NUMBER'''''</font>}}

For the second [[What If? 2]] book:
<nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''2'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''CHAPTER-NUMBER'''''</font>}}

'''EXAMPLE:'''<nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''2'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''69'''''</font>}}

If an article is available exclusively on the third book ([[What If? 10th Anniversary Edition]]) and not in the first two, use this:
<nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''3'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''CHAPTER-NUMBER'''''</font>}}
<big>'''Link to a ''what if?'' article'''</big>

On this wiki, an easy way to link to a given ''what if?'' article is by using the {{Template|what if}} template. Copy and paste the text below, correcting the number and title (highlighted in green) to get this result:

'''EXAMPLE:'''
See the <nowiki>''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen"><ins>'''''158'''''</ins></font>|<font color="SeaGreen"><ins>'''''Hot Banana'''''</ins></font>}}<nowiki>''</nowiki>.
'''RESULTS IN:'''
See the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|158|Hot Banana}}''.

NOTE: Since the blog releases are now random, please write a comment on [[{{LATESTCOMIC}}#Discussion|the newest comic's talk page]] to announce that a new ''what if?'' article is out.

<big>'''Add name of reader who asked the question.'''</big>

Here's how to add the name(s) to any question on the table. For example, this...
<nowiki>|''"What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?"''
|Human civilization would collapse, and we would all die.</nowiki>
... becomes this:
<nowiki>|''"What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?"''
<div align="right"></nowiki>'''—'''<font color="SeaGreen">'''''InsertNamesHere'''''</font><nowiki></div>
|Human civilization would collapse, and we would all die.</nowiki>
Copy the code and replace the green part! (NOTE: It uses the em-dash, not a normal hyphen, so don't replace the dash, or use <code>&mdash;</code>.) Transcribe it exactly as it is written on the website or book, including parenthesis and age, if given by Randall. '''Protip for desktop users:''' the text looks ALL CAPS on the site, but if you copy and paste it, it's in normal Sentence Case. You can simply copy and paste.

''[[#Article index|(jump back to table)]]''
<span id="bottom"></span>
{| style="border: 1px solid {{{border|gray}}}; background-color: {{{color|#fdffe7}}};"
|rowspan="2" style="vertical-align:middle;" | {{{{{|safesubst:}}}#ifeq:{{{2}}}|alt|[[File:What If Barnstar.jpeg|100px]]|[[File:What If Barnstar.jpeg|100px]]}}
|rowspan="2" |
|style="font-size: x-large; padding: 0; vertical-align: middle; height: 1.1em;" | '''The What If? Project Barnstar'''
|-
|style="vertical-align: middle; border-top: 1px solid gray;" | <div style="font-family: Cormorant Garamond"><span style="font-size:5pt;color:black">

* <span style="background-color:#9eff9e;"><span style="color:green; font-size:1.4em;">''' ✓'''</span><big> '''Added: '''</big></span> All ~140 book-exclusive articles, each color-coded by book; reader question and Randall's answer for almost all ~70 [[What If? 2]]-exclusive articles; EVERY YouTube video and its associated article; over new 130 thumbnails uploaded; new article from [[What If? 10th Anniversary Edition|the new book]] and the [[what if? (blog)#top|deleted article]].

* <span style="background-color:#9eff9e;"><span style="color:green; font-size:1.4em;">''' ✓'''</span><big> '''Changes: '''</big></span> Merged columns No., Release date, and Weeks since last release; every column now easily sortable; columns Blog, Book (new), and YouTube (new) now use {{template|blog}} and {{template|book}} and are color-coded; split ''Short-Answer Sections'' into different cells; title bold and question italics and quoted!

----

Great Job to everyone who helped out on this project! If you helped out explain the articles or build the table, feel free to sign here: '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#A9C6CA">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#516874">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 17:44, 14 February 2025 (UTC), [[User:WriterArtistCoder|WriterArtistCoder]]<sup>[[User talk:WriterArtistCoder|talk to me]]</sup> 21:56, 11 March 2025 (UTC), [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:53, 12 March 2025 (UTC) --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al |<span style="font-family:Atomic Age;font-size:12pt;color:red;">DollarStoreBa'al</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al |'''''Converse''''']]</sup>[[DSBContribs |'''''My life choices''''']] 23:30, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

[[Category:What If?| 9]]{{xkcdmeta}}

explain xkcd:Editor FAQ

2025-06-17T13:43:43Z

Cheesesentience: /* How do I behave on the talk page (discussion)? */

{{TOC}}This FAQ is a short description about editing pages at this wiki. If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to ask them in the [[explain xkcd:Community portal|Community portal]] or enter them into this FAQ's [[explain xkcd talk:Editor FAQ|talk page]]. For general questions about wikitext, please read first the MediaWiki help pages about [[mw:Help:Editing pages|Editing pages]] or look at the full overview here: [[mw:Help:Contents|Help Contents]]. You also can use your preferred search engine by entering "MediaWiki mytopic". Change mytopic to the theme you're searching for, i.e. "MediaWiki tables" will show you many useful sites about editing tables. Please always use the Preview button to verify your edit before finally pressing the Save button. This FAQ focuses only on topics related to this specific wiki.

==What is the general layout of a comic page?==
In general, you don't have to care about this because the pages are generated by a bot nearly immediately after a new comic is released. If the bot fails, please follow exactly the [[User:dgbrtBOT|instructions here]] to create the comic page.

The layout and order are structured as:
*Comic ''picture'' with the ''title text'' below
*''Explanation''
*''Transcript''
*''Trivia'' (optional)
*''Discussion'' (embedded Talk page)
*List of non-standard ''categories''

==What should I include in the explanation?==
Everything is welcome as long as it explains the content of the comic. Everybody can edit here and when others disagree about your contributions they may change it.
If the comic references a scientific concept, a brief description and a link to its Wikipedia page for further information should be given (see how to do this [[explain_xkcd:Editor_FAQ#How_do_I_enter_links_to_other_pages.3F|here]]).
The explanation should also explain the [[Title text|title text]] of the comic.
<span id="table"></span>
==Tables are so cool! Can I use them everywhere?==
In the transcript, tables should never be used. Even when there is a table in the comic image, it must be described using text if possible.

In the explanation, tables only make sense when the content is compact. When a single row contains more than a small item like a number, a small phrase, or something similar, a table isn't the proper layout because it's hard to read. Instead, it should be written in floating text chapters with distinct headers above (see next section below.)

Instead of using a two- or three-column table, such as "Number - Sentence from comic - Explanation", it is usually better to use a description list. Place a semicolon (<code>;</code>) at the beginning of the sentence to be explained and a colon (<code>:</code>) at the beginning of each paragraph of the explanation, like this (from [[1987: Python Environment#Explanation|1987: Python Environment]]):

; 1. Anaconda Python

: Anaconda is a Python distribution for data science and machine learning related applications.

: A second paragraph for the explanation.

Wikipedia's {{w|WP:WHENTABLE#Appropriate use|Manual of Style}} describes it best:
<blockquote>Often a list is best left as a list. Before reformatting a list into table form, consider whether the information will be more clearly conveyed by virtue of having rows and columns. If so, then a table is probably a good choice. If there is no obvious benefit to having rows and columns, then a table is probably not the best choice. </blockquote>

==What is the format of the transcript section?==
The transcript should describe the content (think about explaining the comic to a visually impaired person, or to someone on phone). It should do this in a compact manner, and cite all written words. Every line should begin with an indent (a simple <code>:</code> at the beginning), and every panel from the comic should be separated by a blank line. The transcript must not contain any links, nor rich math markup, which once again relies on visuals. Tables should generally be avoided, although not all transcripts comply with this. Furthermore, the title text is not included in the transcript. Checking the pages for the older comics will help understand this.

==What belongs to the trivia section?==
As implied by the section name, it's just trivia, consisting of unimportant odds-and-ends related to the comic. Since this wiki focuses on explaining this section is not part of the default layout. If a word has been misspelled in the comic or title text, or the image was originally broken at xkcd and reuploaded... basically, the things that don't belong in the explanation but should still be mentioned should be written in the trivia section. To learn how to create a trivia section when Randall updates a comic, [[#Randall updated a comic, how do I upload the new image here?|click here]].

==How do I behave on the talk page (discussion)?==
Everybody can add here any thoughts about the comic and more. Consider it as the comments section of a blog, because that’s how it has always been (see [[explain xkcd#History]]), just more flexible. Please follow the common etiquette and don't be rude. Unless you are replying to a previous comment, in which you should add a colon before your comment, you should add comments at the bottom. Every comment has to be signed at the end with <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> or just click the sign button [[File:Button sig.png]] at the top of the editor.

==What does the incomplete tag mean?==
There are two templates to indicate that an explanation or the transcript needs further rework, {{tl|incomplete}} and {{tl|incomplete transcript}}. Just enter <code>'''<nowiki>{{incomplete|YOUR REASON}}</nowiki>'''</code> or respectively <code>'''<nowiki>{{incomplete transcript|YOUR REASON}}</nowiki>'''</code> and don't forget to enter a proper reason to replace the filler text left by the bot, or if the reason said in the tag has been dealt with.
<span id="ref"></span>
==How do I add references?==
'''You don't.''' It is preferable to link the source you want to cite in the sentence that needs sourcing itself ([[#How do I enter links to other pages?|see this section to learn how]]).

==How do I enter links to other pages?==
The three most-used options are:
*an internal link like <code>'''<nowiki>[[Cueball]]</nowiki>'''</code> which renders like this: [[Cueball]]
*a link to the English Wikipedia should be formatted like this: <code>'''<nowiki>{{w|Page}}</nowiki>'''</code> links to the Wikipedia article called "Page" (is shown like this: {{w|Page}}), and <code>'''<nowiki>{{w|Page|Display}}</nowiki>'''</code> links to the same article but is shown like this: {{w|Page|Display}}
*an external link with text: <code>'''<nowiki>[https://example.com Example Homepage]</nowiki>'''</code> links to https://example.com and everything after the first space is shown: [http://www.example.com Example Homepage]

External links can also be done in other two ways:
*just write the URL with no formatting and it will be shown like this: http://www.example.com (Only use this if the specific website address is relevant.)
*put it into single brackets: <code>'''<nowiki>[http://www.example.com]</nowiki>'''</code> and it will be shown like this: [http://www.example.com] (Please avoid this.)

==Randall updated a comic, how do I upload the new image here?==
Sometimes the original comic found at [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] contains typos or other errors. In these cases, Randall often updates them after they are published, almost always to fix unintentional errors or appease fan complaints. When the mistake has been fixed and the updated image is live on [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com], follow these steps:
*The comic picture here should also be updated. Save the picture from [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] to your local PC, but be careful, there are two versions available. Here, we only use the larger version ''comic_name'''_2x'''.png'' and not the smaller one ''comic_name.png''. So, go to [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com], click the link under the comic, and then change <code>'''<nowiki>https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/picture.png</nowiki>'''</code> to <code>'''<nowiki>https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/picture'''_2x'''.png</nowiki>'''</code> in the address bar of your browser. To update it here, just click the image on the image on its explanation page ([[{{LATESTCOMIC}}|click here to go to the newest comic's explanation]]) and then click "Upload a new version of this file", below the file history. Please be patient, you won't see your upload immediately because it still comes from the cache at the server. If you see your upload in the file history, even if it's not the one you uploaded, it means it worked. Wait a few minutes for the newer image to appear.

*Now, since the comic was changed because of a mistake, you also need to create a Trivia section (if it doesn't already exist). Go to the same file history mentioned above. Hover over the original image (below the one you uploaded), right-click it, and choose "Copy link to image" on your browser's popup menu. Now, write the following to create the Trivia section, replacing "LINK TO ORIGINAL COMIC" with the link you just copied:
<nowiki>==Trivia==</nowiki>
<nowiki>In the [[</nowiki>'''LINK TO ORIGINAL COMIC'''|original version of the comic]], ...explain what changed

*Finally, add the comic to [[:Category:Comics edited after their publication]] by adding this to the very end of the page: <code>'''<nowiki>[[Category:Comics edited after their publication]]</nowiki>'''</code>
<span id="create"></span>
==Why can't I create my user page and upload images?==
Only registered and trusted users can create pages or upload images. After the registration, you have to wait at least three days and must have done a small number of edits. Then, you will be able to create pages, such as your user page, and upload images at will.
<span id="citation"></span><span id="cit"></span>
==When I see "{{Citation needed}}", does it mean the content needs citations?==
No, that notice has a different meaning here than on Wikipedia. '''That notice is just a joke''' that originated on Randall's [[what if? (blog)|''what if?'' blog]]. In fact, {{tl|Citation needed}} simply links to [[285: Wikipedian Protester|a comic from 2007]]. It looks like this:{{Citation needed}}. This template should only be placed when there is a deeper sense of humor and should not be overused. For statements that are unsourced and require actual reliable citations (such as sentences like "Randall has said he regrets making this comic."), use the {{tl|Actual citation needed}} template instead. It looks like this:{{Actual citation needed}}. When you see it, it means the content is unsourced and unreliable, like on Wikipedia.

==How do I embed images?==
This wiki isn't a picture book. Use this feature only sparingly and reduce the size as much as possible. An example can be seen here: [[1400: D.B. Cooper]]. The syntax in this case is <code><nowiki>[[File:DBCooper.jpg|thumb|150px|Cooper]]</nowiki></code> and the picture is taken from Commons, the main source for Wikipedia images. The full syntax can be found at [[mw:Help:Images|MediaWiki]].

You also can upload pictures directly to this wiki by using the [[Special:Upload]] link from the menu. But do not violate any copyright rules or it will be deleted. And when the picture is available at Commons there is no need to upload it here.

==How do I enter mathematical or chemical formulas?==
You can use the Math markup <code><nowiki><math>...</math></nowiki></code>. The other known code from Wikipedia <code><nowiki><chem>...</chem></nowiki></code> is ''not'' supported yet. It's based on LaTeX syntax and a general overview can be found at its {{w|Help:Displaying a formula|Wikipedia help page}}. Don't use it unless you actually understand what you are doing, though. If you can, you can attempt to use {{w|Mathematical operators and symbols in Unicode|Unicode math characters}}, along with <code><nowiki><sup>...</sup></nowiki></code> and <code><nowiki><sub>...</sub></nowiki></code>, to try and create the formulas yourself.

Furthermore, never use this markup at the ''transcript'' because that math code is rendered to a picture — in the transcript we try to describe the comic ''image'' by ''words''. A picture there wouldn't be helpful.

Please note that pages that use the Math module will ''not'' be able to load if you set your Math markup preferences to MathML, and will lead to parse errors with LaTeX rendering. The setting that should be selected is PNG images.

==What is the general layout of a xkcd character page?==
When creating a new character page, it's easier to just copy and paste the contents of an existing character page, such as [[Megan]] or [[Jill]], and change the information. The layout and order are structured as:
*{{tl|Infobox character}} template with an image of the character, caption, and first appearance.
*Brief description.
*Noting the different names given to the character in different comics under the "Name" section.
*Characteristics of the character under the "Characteristics" section, including cameos of the character under a proper name and different personalities
*Adding the [[:Category:Characters|Characters]] category.

==What is the proper layout for headers?==
For headlines, you have to use wiki-style code. The simplest way is a preceding semicolon at the beginning of the line which causes the entire line to be rendered in bold.

On large explanations, it can be handy to divide it into subsections. In this case the header is written like this: <code><nowiki>===Sub header===</nowiki></code>. But in most cases, the simple semicolon is just enough.

==One or two spaces after a period? And what about newlines?==
Two or more spaces are always rendered as only one, so multiple consecutive spaces can only be seen in the editor. This means it's usually best to only use one space after a period. Furthermore, a single newline is also just rendered as a space, as two newlines are required to form a paragraph.

[[Category:explain xkcd]]{{explainxkcdmeta}}

2669: Things You Should Not Do

2025-06-17T13:39:03Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2669
| date = September 7, 2022
| title = Things You Should Not Do
| image = things_you_should_not_do.png
| titletext = Now I'm tempted to start telling people that I secretly don't actually know how to do any physics calculations, and so all the answers in What If are based on me actually trying to do the thing and then reporting what happened, but phrased as if it's hypothetical.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Several table entries do not actually explain why things should not be done.}}

This comic references various questions submitted by people and used in the [[what if? (blog)|''what if?'' blog]], ''[[What If? (book)|What If?]]'' and ''[[What If? 2]]'' books. In particular, promoting [[Randall]]'s new book, ''What If? 2'' (released 6 days after the date of this comic publication). This comic has a list of things not to do, an extension of a previous list, and is purportedly things Randall discovered as he was doing research for his book. The page [[What If? chapters]] contains the titles, publishing date, thumbnail, question, and explanation for each article. Many of the acts described under the "new" section of the list are depicted in these thumbnails (see table below); others are references to examples or hypotheticals explored within the articles. The entries are all in order of their appearance in the book.

The title text says that Randall is tempted to tell people that all the things in the book were things that he actually tried to do, not that he calculated the solutions for their problems. Many of the questions and answers in his new book are borderline impossible and/or fatal to attempt in real life.{{Citation needed}}

===Table of things you should not do===
{| class="wikitable"
|-
!Number !! Entry !! ''What If? 2'' section referenced !! Explanation
|-
! colspan="4" | From existing list
|-
|156,812
|Eat Tide Pods
|N/A
|{{w|Consumption of Tide Pods|Tide Pod}}s are a brand of laundry detergent sold in small packets ("pods") of water-soluble gel. Many children have tried to eat them, thinking them to be candy, and have had to go to the hospital to treat poisoning. In 2017 and 2018, a satirical "challenge" originated around eating Tide Pods.
|-
|156,813
|Walk on stilts in a thunderstorm
|N/A
|Taller objects are more likely to be struck by lightning, so walking on stilts outdoors would increase the risk of death by electrocution. It would also presumably risk falling and injuring oneself that way, since the ground becomes wet in a rainstorm.
|-
|156,814
|Set off fireworks at a gas station
|N/A
|This has the risk of potentially causing an explosion in the gas station, from the sparks of the fireworks.
|-
|156,815
|Feed your cat treats that are the exact shape and texture of a human hand
|N/A
|This probably runs the risk of the cat learning that treats are in the shape of your hand, resulting in the cat attempting to eat your hand, instead of the cat treat.
|-
! colspan="4" | New!
|-
|156,816
|Lean over a geyser vent and try to look down into it
|Geyser
|Geysers shoot steam and hot water upward. If a person were to lean over the geyser and look down during an eruption, they would be struck in the face by this hot liquid and gas mixture and severely injured or killed.{{Actual citation needed}} This is a reference to the question from ''What-If? 2'' (called, appropriately enough, "Geyser"), in which it is asked what might happen to a person if they stood on top of the Old Faithful geyser as it erupted.
|-
|156,817
|Fly a hot-air balloon over a firing range
|''{{what if|81|Catch!}}''
|A hot air balloon could present an irresistible target to the people firing their weapons at the range. The balloon could be shot and you could fall to your death. Shooting bullets up and over the designated backstop and berm is also a public danger to anyone past downrange.
|-
|156,818
|Peel away the earth's crust
|Lose Weight the Slow and Incredibly Difficult Way
|Theoretically, because weight is dependent on gravity, peeling the Earth's crust away would reduce its mass and therefore your weight. However, this would not work because the Earth gets denser the farther you go down. It would also destroy the Earth.{{citation needed}}

An image of what it would look like is shown in [[2575: What If? 2]], where a potato peeler is used to remove the crust of the Earth. Several What If blog posts also result in massive damage to the earth's crust, including what happened to Texas {{what if|153|here}}.
|-
|156,819
|Try to paint the Sahara Desert by hand
|''{{what if|84|Paint the Earth}}''
|This would be difficult and require more paint than humanity has ever produced.
|-
|156,820
|Remove someone's bones without asking
|Short Answers #2
|A reference to a short answer question in ''What If? 2''.
|-
|156,821
|Spend 100% of your government's budget on mobile game in-app purchases
|''{{what if|108|Expensive Shoebox}}''
|A reference to one of the examples listed in the answer.
|-
|156,822
|Fill a lava lamp with actual lava
|''{{what if|122|Lava Lamp}}''
|A {{w|lava lamp}} is a glass lamp, which contains a wax mixture inside, and heats so that the wax rises and falls. Putting actual lava inside a regular lava lamp would most likely cause the lamp to melt and the glass to shatter, not to mention handling lava is very dangerous, [https://youtu.be/h5Zwg3Ag-bE?t=632 all of which has been proven to be true.] However, in this entry, Randall says it would be fairly easy to find a material that would be able to handle the heat of the lava and thus this would be rather anticlimactic.
|-
|156,823
|Drink the blood of someone with a viral hemorrhagic {{asic}} fever
|''{{what if|98|Blood Alcohol}}''
|Drinking someone else's blood is a bad idea unless you are a vampire bat/vampire, and even then it is not a very nutritious diet. If someone has a {{w|viral hemorrhagic fever}}, it is much worse, as they have a very serious and likely deadly disease which can be transmitted by sharing bodily fluids, such as blood. Drinking blood is the theme of this answer. Randall teaches us that drinking blood would induce vomiting, and would be a VERY bad idea.
|-
|156,824
|Eat meat from rabid animals
|Short Answers #4
|Eating meat from rabid animals could give you {{w|rabies}}, a virus which is nearly always fatal if not treated prior to the appearance of initial symptoms. Pathogen contamination in cooked foods can persist on the surface of ''e.g.'' tongs, chopsticks, or a fork used to grill, which is why the USDA doesn't generally allow kitchen utensils to touch raw or ready to eat foods at all. Exceptions for utensils which touch only raw or partially cooked foods, such as grill spatulas and the like, are often allowed and can be negotiated on a case-by-case basis when they would otherwise be prohibited. The rabies virus permeates essentially all nerve tissue before symptoms appear.
|-
|156,825
|Perform your own laser eye surgery
|Eyeball
|Refers to an answer in the book regarding seeing your own eyeball as well as the end of {{what if|82|this answer}}.
|-
|156,826
|Tell California poultry regulators that your farm is selling Pokémon eggs
|Read All the Laws
|While issuing false statements to government regulators is a violation of both California and Federal law, for which prison sentences can reach ten years and fines can reach ten thousand dollars plus any compensatory damages, as per [https://california.public.law/codes/ca_penal_code_section_132 California Penal Code § 132] and [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001 18 U.S. Code § 1001], there is some question about whether any competent regulatory authority would ever take such an assertion seriously, and whether they would be liable for greater damages for doing so than the potential liability of the original culprit involved. Actually doing this, even to county level regulators, could result in a series of events very disadvantageous to you, your farm, and your employees. However, declaring that you're producing Pokémon eggs to your local municipality is probably harmless, and likely to brighten the day of your local regulators.{{cn}} Furthermore, as mentioned in ''What If? 2'', [https://california.public.law/codes/ca_food_and_agric_code_section_27637 California Food and Agricultural Code § 27637] bars anyone from making false or misleading statements about eggs, and Poké Balls could be considered a type of egg.
|-
|156,827
|Funnel the entire flow of Niagara Falls into the open window of a physics lab
|''{{what if|147|Niagara Straw}}''
|An oblique reference to the image near the end of this answer.
|-
|156,828
|Pump ammonia into your abdomen
|Ammonia Tube
|{{w|Ammonia}} is an {{w|EPA list of extremely hazardous substances|extremely hazardous substance}} and pumping it into your abdomen would result in a painful death due to ammonia toxicity. As the book mentions, however, at the very least some of it would be neutralized with your stomach acid.
|-
|156,829
|Suspend yourself inside a 10-meter ball of sunscreen and fall into the Sun
|Sunscreen
|Despite its name, sunscreen only protects against some types of radiation from the sun. No amount is going to be adequate protection if you are right inside the sun.{{Actual citation needed}} Also, sunscreen, being a gel, would evaporate when exposed to vacuum. When exposed to the plasma of the coronal surface or the Sun's interior, it would quickly ionize along with anything inside it, becoming plasma like the rest of the Sun.
|}

==Transcript==

:[Caption:]
:Updates to my "Things You Should Not Do" list, based on what I learned writing ''What If? 2''
:(out 9/13, xkcd.com/whatif2)

:[The rest of the text appears in a box.]

:<big>Things You Should Not Do</big><br />
:(part 3647 of ????)

:[A numbered list, the first four items in a lighter grey]

:<nowiki>#156,812 Eat Tide pods</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,813 Walk on stilts in a thunderstorm</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,814 Set off fireworks at a gas station</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,815 Feed your cat treats that are the exact shape and texture of a human hand</nowiki>

:[A horizontal divider with the text "''New!''" in the middle in black. The remaining items on the list are also in black.]

:<nowiki>#156,816 Lean over a geyser vent and try to look down into it</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,817 Fly a hot air balloon over a firing range</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,818 Peel away the Earth's crust</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,819 Try to paint the Sahara Desert by hand</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,820 Remove someone's bones without asking</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,821 Spend 100% of your governments budget on mobile game in-app purchases</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,822 Fill a lava lamp with actual lava</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,823 Drink the blood of someone with a viral hemorraghic fever</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,824 Eat meat from rabid animals</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,825 Perform your own laser eye surgery</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,826 Tell California poultry regulators that your farm is selling Pokemon eggs</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,827 Funnel the entire flow of Niagara Falls into the open window of a physics lab</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,828 Pump ammonia into your abdomen</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,829 Suspend yourself inside a 10-meter ball of sunscreen and fall into the sun</nowiki>

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Book promotion]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Pokémon]]
[[Category:Cats]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:Stilts]]
[[Category:What If?]]

2669: Things You Should Not Do

2025-06-17T13:37:45Z

Cheesesentience: /* Table of things you should not do */

{{comic
| number = 2669
| date = September 7, 2022
| title = Things You Should Not Do
| image = things_you_should_not_do.png
| titletext = Now I'm tempted to start telling people that I secretly don't actually know how to do any physics calculations, and so all the answers in What If are based on me actually trying to do the thing and then reporting what happened, but phrased as if it's hypothetical.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic references various questions submitted by people and used in the [[what if? (blog)|''what if?'' blog]], ''[[What If? (book)|What If?]]'' and ''[[What If? 2]]'' books. In particular, promoting [[Randall]]'s new book, ''What If? 2'' (released 6 days after the date of this comic publication). This comic has a list of things not to do, an extension of a previous list, and is purportedly things Randall discovered as he was doing research for his book. The page [[What If? chapters]] contains the titles, publishing date, thumbnail, question, and explanation for each article. Many of the acts described under the "new" section of the list are depicted in these thumbnails (see table below); others are references to examples or hypotheticals explored within the articles. The entries are all in order of their appearance in the book.

The title text says that Randall is tempted to tell people that all the things in the book were things that he actually tried to do, not that he calculated the solutions for their problems. Many of the questions and answers in his new book are borderline impossible and/or fatal to attempt in real life.{{Citation needed}}

===Table of things you should not do===
{| class="wikitable"
|-
!Number !! Entry !! ''What If? 2'' section referenced !! Explanation
|-
! colspan="4" | From existing list
|-
|156,812
|Eat Tide Pods
|N/A
|{{w|Consumption of Tide Pods|Tide Pod}}s are a brand of laundry detergent sold in small packets ("pods") of water-soluble gel. Many children have tried to eat them, thinking them to be candy, and have had to go to the hospital to treat poisoning. In 2017 and 2018, a satirical "challenge" originated around eating Tide Pods.
|-
|156,813
|Walk on stilts in a thunderstorm
|N/A
|Taller objects are more likely to be struck by lightning, so walking on stilts outdoors would increase the risk of death by electrocution. It would also presumably risk falling and injuring oneself that way, since the ground becomes wet in a rainstorm.
|-
|156,814
|Set off fireworks at a gas station
|N/A
|This has the risk of potentially causing an explosion in the gas station, from the sparks of the fireworks.
|-
|156,815
|Feed your cat treats that are the exact shape and texture of a human hand
|N/A
|This probably runs the risk of the cat learning that treats are in the shape of your hand, resulting in the cat attempting to eat your hand, instead of the cat treat.
|-
! colspan="4" | New!
|-
|156,816
|Lean over a geyser vent and try to look down into it
|Geyser
|Geysers shoot steam and hot water upward. If a person were to lean over the geyser and look down during an eruption, they would be struck in the face by this hot liquid and gas mixture and severely injured or killed.{{Actual citation needed}} This is a reference to the question from ''What-If? 2'' (called, appropriately enough, "Geyser"), in which it is asked what might happen to a person if they stood on top of the Old Faithful geyser as it erupted.
|-
|156,817
|Fly a hot-air balloon over a firing range
|''{{what if|81|Catch!}}''
|A hot air balloon could present an irresistible target to the people firing their weapons at the range. The balloon could be shot and you could fall to your death. Shooting bullets up and over the designated backstop and berm is also a public danger to anyone past downrange.
|-
|156,818
|Peel away the earth's crust
|Lose Weight the Slow and Incredibly Difficult Way
|Theoretically, because weight is dependent on gravity, peeling the Earth's crust away would reduce its mass and therefore your weight. However, this would not work because the Earth gets denser the farther you go down. It would also destroy the Earth.{{citation needed}}

An image of what it would look like is shown in [[2575: What If? 2]], where a potato peeler is used to remove the crust of the Earth. Several What If blog posts also result in massive damage to the earth's crust, including what happened to Texas {{what if|153|here}}.
|-
|156,819
|Try to paint the Sahara Desert by hand
|''{{what if|84|Paint the Earth}}''
|This would be difficult and require more paint than humanity has ever produced.
|-
|156,820
|Remove someone's bones without asking
|Short Answers #2
|A reference to a short answer question in ''What If? 2''.
|-
|156,821
|Spend 100% of your government's budget on mobile game in-app purchases
|''{{what if|108|Expensive Shoebox}}''
|A reference to one of the examples listed in the answer.
|-
|156,822
|Fill a lava lamp with actual lava
|''{{what if|122|Lava Lamp}}''
|A {{w|lava lamp}} is a glass lamp, which contains a wax mixture inside, and heats so that the wax rises and falls. Putting actual lava inside a regular lava lamp would most likely cause the lamp to melt and the glass to shatter, not to mention handling lava is very dangerous, [https://youtu.be/h5Zwg3Ag-bE?t=632 all of which has been proven to be true.] However, in this entry, Randall says it would be fairly easy to find a material that would be able to handle the heat of the lava and thus this would be rather anticlimactic.
|-
|156,823
|Drink the blood of someone with a viral hemorrhagic {{asic}} fever
|''{{what if|98|Blood Alcohol}}''
|Drinking someone else's blood is a bad idea unless you are a vampire bat/vampire, and even then it is not a very nutritious diet. If someone has a {{w|viral hemorrhagic fever}}, it is much worse, as they have a very serious and likely deadly disease which can be transmitted by sharing bodily fluids, such as blood. Drinking blood is the theme of this answer. Randall teaches us that drinking blood would induce vomiting, and would be a VERY bad idea.
|-
|156,824
|Eat meat from rabid animals
|Short Answers #4
|Eating meat from rabid animals could give you {{w|rabies}}, a virus which is nearly always fatal if not treated prior to the appearance of initial symptoms. Pathogen contamination in cooked foods can persist on the surface of ''e.g.'' tongs, chopsticks, or a fork used to grill, which is why the USDA doesn't generally allow kitchen utensils to touch raw or ready to eat foods at all. Exceptions for utensils which touch only raw or partially cooked foods, such as grill spatulas and the like, are often allowed and can be negotiated on a case-by-case basis when they would otherwise be prohibited. The rabies virus permeates essentially all nerve tissue before symptoms appear.
|-
|156,825
|Perform your own laser eye surgery
|Eyeball
|Refers to an answer in the book regarding seeing your own eyeball as well as the end of {{what if|82|this answer}}.
|-
|156,826
|Tell California poultry regulators that your farm is selling Pokémon eggs
|Read All the Laws
|While issuing false statements to government regulators is a violation of both California and Federal law, for which prison sentences can reach ten years and fines can reach ten thousand dollars plus any compensatory damages, as per [https://california.public.law/codes/ca_penal_code_section_132 California Penal Code § 132] and [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001 18 U.S. Code § 1001], there is some question about whether any competent regulatory authority would ever take such an assertion seriously, and whether they would be liable for greater damages for doing so than the potential liability of the original culprit involved. Actually doing this, even to county level regulators, could result in a series of events very disadvantageous to you, your farm, and your employees. However, declaring that you're producing Pokémon eggs to your local municipality is probably harmless, and likely to brighten the day of your local regulators.{{cn}} Furthermore, as mentioned in ''What If? 2'', [https://california.public.law/codes/ca_food_and_agric_code_section_27637 California Food and Agricultural Code § 27637] bars anyone from making false or misleading statements about eggs, and Poké Balls could be considered a type of egg.
|-
|156,827
|Funnel the entire flow of Niagara Falls into the open window of a physics lab
|''{{what if|147|Niagara Straw}}''
|An oblique reference to the image near the end of this answer.
|-
|156,828
|Pump ammonia into your abdomen
|Ammonia Tube
|{{w|Ammonia}} is an {{w|EPA list of extremely hazardous substances|extremely hazardous substance}} and pumping it into your abdomen would result in a painful death due to ammonia toxicity. As the book mentions, however, at the very least some of it would be neutralized with your stomach acid.
|-
|156,829
|Suspend yourself inside a 10-meter ball of sunscreen and fall into the Sun
|Sunscreen
|Despite its name, sunscreen only protects against some types of radiation from the sun. No amount is going to be adequate protection if you are right inside the sun.{{Actual citation needed}} Also, sunscreen, being a gel, would evaporate when exposed to vacuum. When exposed to the plasma of the coronal surface or the Sun's interior, it would quickly ionize along with anything inside it, becoming plasma like the rest of the Sun.
|}

==Transcript==

:[Caption:]
:Updates to my "Things You Should Not Do" list, based on what I learned writing ''What If? 2''
:(out 9/13, xkcd.com/whatif2)

:[The rest of the text appears in a box.]

:<big>Things You Should Not Do</big><br />
:(part 3647 of ????)

:[A numbered list, the first four items in a lighter grey]

:<nowiki>#156,812 Eat Tide pods</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,813 Walk on stilts in a thunderstorm</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,814 Set off fireworks at a gas station</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,815 Feed your cat treats that are the exact shape and texture of a human hand</nowiki>

:[A horizontal divider with the text "''New!''" in the middle in black. The remaining items on the list are also in black.]

:<nowiki>#156,816 Lean over a geyser vent and try to look down into it</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,817 Fly a hot air balloon over a firing range</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,818 Peel away the Earth's crust</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,819 Try to paint the Sahara Desert by hand</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,820 Remove someone's bones without asking</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,821 Spend 100% of your governments budget on mobile game in-app purchases</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,822 Fill a lava lamp with actual lava</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,823 Drink the blood of someone with a viral hemorraghic fever</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,824 Eat meat from rabid animals</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,825 Perform your own laser eye surgery</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,826 Tell California poultry regulators that your farm is selling Pokemon eggs</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,827 Funnel the entire flow of Niagara Falls into the open window of a physics lab</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,828 Pump ammonia into your abdomen</nowiki>
:<nowiki>#156,829 Suspend yourself inside a 10-meter ball of sunscreen and fall into the sun</nowiki>

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Book promotion]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Pokémon]]
[[Category:Cats]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:Stilts]]
[[Category:What If?]]

2929: Good and Bad Ideas

2025-06-16T13:57:10Z

Cheesesentience: /* Table of the entries */

{{comic
| number = 2929
| date = May 6, 2024
| title = Good and Bad Ideas
| image = good_and_bad_ideas_2x.png
| imagesize = 595x522px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = While it seemed like a fun prank at the time, I realize my prank fire extinguishers full of leaded gasoline were a mistake.
}}

==Explanation==
This is a scatter plot comparing how good an idea sounds to how good the idea is. For example, leaded gasoline sounded like a good idea due to its anti-knocking effects, but is a bad idea due to lead toxicity. Fake prank fire extinguishers both sound bad and ''are'' bad, as they can make a dangerous situation worse. Putting mold on infections sounds like a bad idea, but some molds, like ones containing penicillin, have helpful antibiotic effects.

The title text combines leaded gasoline and a fake prank fire extinguisher into something worse than either. The fire extinguisher is fake and releases flammable material onto the fire, and there is additional lead toxicity.

===Table of the entries===
{| class="wikitable sortable"

|-
! Idea !! What it means !! How good it sounds !! How good it actually is !! Explanation
|-
|{{w|Leaded gasoline}}||Adding {{w|Tetraethyllead|tetraethyl lead}} as an antiknocking agent to allow for increased performance||data-sort-value="+65%"|65%||data-sort-value="-95%"|-95%||Leaded gasoline was introduced in the early 1920s to allow higher pressures and temperatures in an engine without causing {{w|Engine_knocking|detonation (knocking)}}, allowing for increased fuel efficiency and engine performance; it also works to prevent engine valve wear. In essence, it artificially raises the {{w|octane rating}} of the fuel, reducing the need for fuel refinement, thus reducing waste and/or expense. Lead, however, is both toxic and bioaccumulative, meaning that lead released into the air over decades built up to harmful levels in people (as well as other animals) and almost certainly contributed to a host of health issues. Some scientists even hypothesise that {{w|Lead–crime hypothesis|crime levels are influenced by lead exposure}}. (It should be noted that this only "[sounded] like a good idea" due to deliberate campaigns to obscure the known dangers).
|-
|{{w|Bloodletting}}||Releasing "bad blood" from the veins||data-sort-value="-90%"|-90%||data-sort-value="-100%"|-100%||You need (most of) your blood. Losing [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK542273/ more than 15%] of a person's total blood volume results in adverse effects. Bloodletting was performed as a medical procedure for at least 2000 years until the 19th century. The idea was to withdraw blood to balance the body's "humors". Despite this long history, the notion that bleeding someone is bad now seems like basic common sense, and it's now well-understood that blood-letting (outside of {{what if|98|certain rare and specific cases}}) does no good, causes significant harm and quite certainly causes many deaths.
|-
|{{w|Asbestos}}||Mineral which does not burn, tolerates extremely high temperatures and forms small fibers. These qualities make it excellent for insulation and fire protection||data-sort-value="+90%"|90%||data-sort-value="-80%"|-80%||Asbestos was used extensively in ships and buildings throughout most of the 20th century. Unfortunately, the microscopic fibers that make up asbestos greatly increase the risk of {{w|Asbestosis|lung disease}} and cancer when inhaled, causing its use to be banned in most countries.
|-
|Extension cords with prongs on both ends||allows easy connection between 2 female connectors||data-sort-value="+5%"|~0%||data-sort-value="-80%"|-80%||Prongs on both ends would make it easier to plug the extension cord in on either side. But once plugged into an outlet, the other end becomes a serious shock hazard, as seen in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L08LjkN1k70 this Backyard Scientist video]. Short circuits (both ends connected to outlets supplying power) would be much more likely, resulting in more sparks, fires and damage to wiring. Double-ended cords are also sometimes used as an especially dangerous way to feed power from a generator into an outlet, introducing a shock hazard to any utility workers attempting to restore power.
|-
|Stair kayaking||Riding down a flight of stairs in a {{w|kayak}}||data-sort-value="-60%"|-60%||data-sort-value="-75%"|-75%|| Stair kayaking is a stunt where a person positions a kayak at the top of a flight of stairs and then, using their paddle to push off, [https://youtu.be/46BjHAxgddU?t=154 rides the kayak down the stairs]. This poses significant easily foreseeable risks of injury or death, as well as being very bad for the kayak, which is designed to ride on {{w|Kayak|water}}, not stairs.{{Citation needed}}
|-
|Fake prank fire extinguishers||A “fake prank” fire extinguisher would be something that appears to be a prank fire extinguisher, but is actually a real fire extinguisher. However, Randall appears to mean using a fake fire extinguisher as a prank. Intentionally placing empty or otherwise non-functional {{w|fire extinguisher|fire extinguishers}} as a {{w|practical joke}}.||data-sort-value="-105%"|-100%||data-sort-value="-85%"|-85%|| The idea of placing fake fire extinguishers as a prank, presumably so that a person who thinks they are grabbing a real fire extinguisher will instead find a decoy, sounds, and indeed would be, very dangerous and potentially life-threatening for many people. In the United States, (and presumably most countries), this would also be a felony in most, if not all, jurisdictions. This exact scenario was depicted in the 2001/Season 3 Christmas episode of Family Guy, where Brian failed to put out a fire because the fire extinguisher shot fake snakes instead, acting as further fuel to the fire. An example of a similar situation, although not intended as a prank, can be found [https://twitter.com/ThatSamWinkler/status/1657154071051239424 here].
The title text expands this idea by having the prank fire extinguishers filled with (leaded) gasoline. This is literally adding fuel to the fire.
|-
|Always saying what you think||...regardless of the feelings of others or other considerations||data-sort-value="+65%"|65%||data-sort-value="-60%"|-60%||Openness and honesty are seen as positive character traits in people. Taking it to the extreme of ''always'' telling people what you think has been {{w|Radical_honesty|espoused by some}}, but can lead to awkward, unpleasant or dangerous situations. It may harm your relationship with the other person if they don't like what you think, or they may reply without concern for ''your'' feelings or other considerations. Keeping negative thoughts to yourself or telling "white lies" can be considered a better alternative in some situations.
Unrestrictively saying what you think to somebody in power (a boss, soldier, dictator, drunk) can negatively impact your earning potential, health or freedom, even if you have a point. Or else, on the offchance that your (first) thoughts are less correct, [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/ "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."]
|-
|Replying to spammers||Clicking on the "Reply" button from {{w|spam email}}s and writing (and sending) a reply (or worse, clicking on the links in these emails)||data-sort-value="-50%"|-50%||data-sort-value="-50%"|-50%||At best, you confirm your email address and identify yourself as someone likely to respond to such messages and so encourage the spammers to deluge you with more messages. At worst, the spammer may extract sensitive information about you, make you a victim of a scam or gain control of your computer.
|-
|{{w|Solar car}}s||Having {{w|Solar panel|solar panels}} on the car's surface (mostly hood and roof) for power generation||data-sort-value="+95%"|95%||data-sort-value="-35%"|-35%||Powering electric vehicles with solar panels seems like an excellent idea: it would provide power with no increased land use, and theoretically could allow a vehicle to operate indefinitely without being fueled or charged. However, such vehicles would require power storage (due to power requirements, weather conditions, shade from roadside features and nighttime driving), adding significant weight. Adding solar panels to a plug-in or hybrid vehicle would add cost, weight, manufacturing complexity and maintenance requirements. Solar panels on moving cars are less efficient than in stationary installations, where they can be aimed at the Sun, and subject to damage from both collisions and road debris; even without these problems, the size of automobiles relative to their power requirements would sharply limit the car's range (unless it was a normal electric vehicle with supplemental solar panels). Solar cars do exist (the {{w|World Solar Challenge}} is a competition for such cars), but as a practical form of transportation, the negatives likely outweigh the positives. See also [[1924: Solar Panels]].
|-
|{{w|Heelys|Heelies}}[sic]||Heelys are shoes with an inline skate wheel built in the sole, at the heel. ||data-sort-value="+25%"|25%||data-sort-value="-40%"|-40%||Heelys allow the wearer (usually children) to shift between normal walking and rolling like being on skates. This sounds like fun but [https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Exercise/story?id=3242181&page=1 has been suggested] to be a potentially significant injury risk.
|-
|{{w|Prequel|Prequels}}||A work of fiction (often a movie) telling the "story before the story" of another work.||data-sort-value="+75%"|75%||data-sort-value="-15%"|-15%||More of a good story sounds great on the surface, and audiences who are invested in a set of characters and/or a setting often love the idea of finding out what led up to certain events. But there are several pitfalls. Spin-offs of a popular property are often low-quality cash grabs. Prequels, specifically, are constrained by the fact that they have to lead to the story that's already been released, which can lead to contrived storytelling. There's less room for suspense, since the future of the storyline has already been established. There's a tendency to invent or fill in detailed backstories, which can undermine character arcs and/or destroy the mystery and nuance of certain characters. And, since they tend only to be made where the original is already well-received, regression to the mean tends to mean they are more likely than not to fail to live up to expectations. Prequels can be good, but there are a lot of ways they can go wrong.
|-
|Transitions® lenses||A brand name for {{w|Photochromic_lens|photochromic lenses}} in glasses or contacts, which get darker (like sunglasses) in bright light.||data-sort-value="+30%"|30%||data-sort-value="-20%"|-20%||Photochromic lenses are clear lenses that darken when exposed to UV light, then turn clear again when the UV is removed. The advantage is that wearers of glasses don't need to have separate (prescription) sunglasses or contacts. However, the process is relatively slow (about a minute) so not so useful when there is a quick succession of shade and bright light, as in a forest or when driving. If used in a car, the windscreen filters out UV light to some degree, which prevents the glasses from darkening as required. Finally, the process is temperature dependent, so in hot weather the glasses don't become as dark, and in cold weather they might stay dark for too long.

Additionally, the following should be considered. UV-conscious people protect their face against UV light, so the skin doesn't form wrinkles and ages slower. Sunscreen is difficult to apply around eyes without getting the substance on eyeballs (cosmetic substances should not get there{{Citation needed}}). One of the reasons behind wearing sunglasses may be to protect skin around eyes from forming so called crow's feet. Under UV-filtering sunglasses, UV-activated transitions contact lenses will not darken defeating their purpose. At the same time transitions contacts are typically at least twice as expensive as the regular ones.
|-
|Cutting pizza in squares||Cutting (a presumably round) pizza in squares||data-sort-value="-25%"|-25%||data-sort-value="-20%"|-20%||Most people cut pizza into wedges and hold it by the crust. Cutting it into squares could allow for more pieces to be shared, if the resulting wedges would be too thin to be practical. However, pieces near the center will have no crust to hold it by, getting cheese and sauce all over your fingers. Cuts around the edge will probably leave smaller leftover scraps which are mostly crust. While hardly a disaster like the other items in its quadrant, square pizza pieces are just not very useful and rather inefficient. Cutting a rectangular pizza into squares might not suffer from the problems above, but, unless the pizza itself is square and cut only into four squares, some people will end up with a higher crust-to-topping ratio than others. Cutting a round pizza into squares is popular in Chicago and is sometimes called tavern-style or party-cut and some<sup><nowiki>[</nowiki>''{{w|Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch#Unsupported_attributions|who?}}''<nowiki>]</nowiki></sup> [https://www.bonappetit.com/story/real-chicago-pizza-tavern-style consider it the real Chicago style pizza] [https://destinationeatdrink.com/the-real-chicago-style-pizza-isnt-deep-dish/ rather than deep dish pizza].{{Dubious}} St. Louis Style Pizza is also cut into squares.
|-
|{{w|Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)|Project Orion}}||Study by the U.S. government looking into nuclear pulse propulsion for spacecraft.||data-sort-value="-95%"|-95%||data-sort-value="-25%"|-25%||Using repeated nuclear explosions to generate motion sounds bad for both the spacecraft and everything else, especially with a ground launch, but there are ways to address a lot of the concerns, so it isn't as bad as it sounds. Project Orion's theorized specific impulse and thrust would also be far higher than anything chemical rockets can accomplish. The efficiency of Project Orion is extremely low, however, and the {{w|ablation}} issues are extremely difficult to overcome.

See also [[2423: Project Orion]].
|-
|{{w|Soup}}||Soup||data-sort-value="0%"|~0%||data-sort-value="0%"|~0%||Soup is probably one of the oldest foods created by prehistoric cooks. Many people enjoy it, though some consider many soups somewhat lacking as a meal on their own, or boring.
|-
|{{w|Washer-dryer|Combo washer dryers}}||A device that combines a washing machine and laundry dryer||data-sort-value="+80%"|80%||data-sort-value="+20%"|20%||Better at space efficiency, but worse at each task than separate devices and unable to do both tasks in parallel (useful when you have more than one batch of laundry).
|-
|Cutting sandwiches diagonally||Cutting sandwiches made with rectangular sliced bread diagonally||data-sort-value="+30%"|30%||data-sort-value="+20%"|20%||[https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a32690399/triangles-rectangles-best-way-cut-sandwich-math/ Generally] [https://www.npr.org/2009/11/28/120914097/rectangles-vs-triangles-the-great-sandwich-debate regarded] as the superior way to slice a sandwich, providing more aesthetically pleasing display of the contents, better support in the hand and fewer all-crust bites.
|-
|{{w|Diverging diamond interchange}}s||Road junction where the two (sets of) lanes cross over to switch sides (so if you normally drive on the right, now you drive on the left), then switch back to normal after the junction||data-sort-value="-30%"|-30%||data-sort-value="+15%"|15%||Highway engineers believe the shape improves safety and traffic flow through the interchange because switching to the other side facilitates merging to and from the other road in the junction. However, the shape appears to be insanity to an unfamiliar driver, who may assume that driver confusion would lead to increased accidents.
|-
|Toasting sandwiches||Making a sandwich first and then cooking it, as in a dedicated {{w|Pie_iron|sandwich toaster}}, a {{w|toaster oven|toaster oven}}, frying pan or under a grill.||data-sort-value="+45%"|45%||data-sort-value="+50%"|50%||The grilled cheese sandwich is a familiar form to most people, and many other sandwiches are improved by toasting as a final step. Doing so makes the sandwich warm, while also making the bread crisp and crunchy, while often melting or softening the fillings, which provides contrasting textures that many find pleasing. Other sandwiches, such as the {{w|western sandwich|Western}} or {{w|club sandwich|club}} are prepared using toast. The {{w|peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich|Elvis}} is a specific case of a sandwich that normally wouldn't be toasted, but is improved by it - peanut butter, bacon, banana and jelly, with the assembly lightly fried.
|-
|{{w|Crumple zone}}s||Areas of a car that are designed to deform in a controlled way in case of a crash. ||data-sort-value="-55%"|-55%||data-sort-value="+55%"|55%||Most people's intuition would be that stronger cars are safer, and intending parts of a vehicle to collapse ''by design'' might seem crazy. But engineered crumple zones are designed to gradually absorb the kinetic energy in a vehicle collision and protect the passenger cabin. The result is that the occupants experience less intense deceleration and ideally without the damage significantly compressing the shell around them. This significantly reduces the danger of injury or death from higher speed crashes.
|-
|{{w|Sliced bread}}||Bread, sliced by the baker before packaging for sale||data-sort-value="+95%"|95%||data-sort-value="+65%"|65%||It's far more convenient for making sandwiches or toast, but unfortunately pre-sliced bread will go stale faster and some applications may be better off thicker or thinner than the slices provided. Sliced bread is often used as a comparator for how good something is, using the phrase 'the best thing since sliced bread'.
|-
|{{w|Pizza}}||Pizza - a dish made by arranging ingredients on thin dough and cooking it, usually cut radially||data-sort-value="+55%"|55%||data-sort-value="+75%"|75%||Pizza is a widely popular dish throughout much of the world, uncontroversial {{w|Anchovies_as_food|except}} {{w|Pineapple|certain}} [https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/nutty-choc-pizza-fresh-berries/2c0220a4-8463-45ff-b2ba-ac7e5012a006 toppings].
|-
|Eating citrus fruit while at sea||Having a supply of {{w|citrus fruit}} on long sea journeys, especially during the {{w|Age of Sail}} ||data-sort-value="0%"|~0%||data-sort-value="+75%"|75%||For a long time, {{w|Scurvy|scurvy}} was a danger to sailors, who generally subsisted on a monotonous diet of shelf-stable foods with low vitamin content while on long voyages. Most citrus fruits are rich in vitamin C, which prevents scurvy. Eating orange or lemons doesn't seem like a significant activity one way or the other, but it's an easy way to prevent a disease that causes serious ill-health and possibly a painful death.
|-
|Putting mold on infections||Seemingly a reference to the ancient practice of pressing moldy bread against infected wounds||data-sort-value="-110%"|-100%||data-sort-value="+60%"|60%||While this sounds like a good way to get a fungal infection, with the correct mold this is a primitive way to obtain an antibiotic. Certain fungi naturally produce antibiotic substances, and this is where humans discovered {{w|penicillin}}.
|-
|Wheels on luggage||Some luggage bags have small wheels inset on their frame and a carrying handle.||data-sort-value="+100%"|100%||data-sort-value="+90%"|90%||A relatively simple fitting for rigid or semi-rigid luggage that substantially eases its transport over long distances on flat surfaces such as travel terminals.
|-
|{{w|Heat pump}}s||A technology that moves heat energy from a cold area to a warm area, most familiar as the technology that keeps a refrigerator cold. It can be used to heat a home interior in winter or cool it in summer.||data-sort-value="+55%"|55%||data-sort-value="+95%"|95%||Unlike traditional furnaces, heat pumps do not generate heat (beyond a small overhead). Instead, they move existing thermal energy from a coolable environment across to a warmable one. This allows a space to be heated with significantly less energy use than a furnace or resistance heater that generates heat directly from chemical or electrical energy. Because these units are usually operated by electricity, they can provide heating with renewable energy (potentially using {{w|thermal energy storage}} for load-shifting), reduce or eliminate the need for natural gas connections and prevent several risks that come with traditional furnaces (such a carbon monoxide leaks and fires). In addition, heat pumps can operate in the reverse direction as air conditioners, so a single unit can be designed to both heat and cool a building. It sounds like a good idea and works out better than expected in real life.
According to [https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/14/1068582/everything-you-need-to-know-about-heat-pumps/ MIT Technology review]:
<blockquote>Heat pumps today can reach 300% to 400% efficiency or even higher, meaning they’re putting out three to four times as much energy in the form of heat as they’re using in electricity. For a space heater, the theoretical maximum would be 100% efficiency, and the best models today reach around 95% efficiency.</blockquote>

See also [[2790: Heat Pump]].
|-
|{{w|Laser eye surgery}}||Surgical techniques using lasers for precision cutting in the eyeball.||data-sort-value="-60%"|-60%||data-sort-value="+90%"|90%||In the popular imagination, lasers are often thought of as something used for destroying their target. In fact, laser pointers commonly include warnings about how and when they should be used. Firing them into people's eyes, then, does not sound like a great idea.{{Citation needed}} However. this technology has substantially improved the eyesight of millions of people worldwide by allowing the treatment of eye problems otherwise only corrected by lenses or entirely untreatable. Randall has previously commented on laser eye surgery, amongst other ideas both good and bad, in [[1681: Laser Products]].
|-
|{{w|Fecal transplant}}s||Transfer of portions of the {{w|Gut microbiota|gut microbiome}} of a healthy person to the sterilized gut of an ill person.||data-sort-value="-110%"|-100%||data-sort-value="+95%"|95%||The gut microbiome is a collection of organisms that lives in our guts. It can influence our health. It is responsible for the last stages of digesting our food. It can also produce neurotransmitters that are carried by blood to our brain influencing our behavior, and play a role in disease immunity, among other systemic effects that are still not well understood. A healthy microbiome can be destroyed by bad eating habits, unhealthy lifestyles, infections or the use of antibiotics. Sometimes it may be beneficial to completely sterilize the gut and then take a sample of a healthy biome from another person. A sample is enough, as the organisms will multiply. As long as the patient eats correctly, the microbiome after transplant should develop correctly.

It sounds bad because we tend to think of our feces as something gross, to be discarded, and other people's bacteria as infectious. It is called fecal transplant as our feces contain about 50% of gut bacteria, but nowadays the sample usually takes the form of a coated pill that is applied rectally.
|-
|}

==Transcript==
:[Two axes with double arrows cross each other in the middle. At the end of each arrow, there are labels. Scattered over the chart are 28 entries. Below these entries are given for each of the four quadrants, plus three that are on the Y-axis. For each quadrant the entries are listed in reading order, top to bottom left to right.]

:[X axis from left to right:]
:Sounds like a good idea
:Sounds like a bad idea

:[Y axis from top to bottom:]
:Actually a bad idea
:Actually a good idea

:[Top left quadrant (sounds like a good idea, actually a bad idea):]
:Leaded gasoline
:Asbestos
:Always saying what you think
:Solar cars
:Heelies
:Prequels
:Transitions® lenses

:[Top middle (actually a bad idea):]
:Extension cords with prongs on both ends

:[Top right quadrant (sounds like a bad idea, actually a bad idea):]
:Bloodletting
:Fake prank fire extinguishers
:Stair kayaking
:Replying to spammers
:Cutting pizza in squares
:Project Orion

:[Center (neutral):]
:Soup

:[Bottom left quadrant (sounds like a good idea, actually a good idea):]
:Combo washer dryers
:Cutting sandwiches diagonally
:Toasting sandwiches
:Sliced bread
:Pizza
:Wheels on luggage
:Heat pumps

:[Bottom middle (actually a good idea):]
:Eating citrus fruit while at sea

:[Bottom right quadrant (sounds like a bad idea, actually a good idea):]
:Diverging diamond interchanges
:Crumple zones
:Putting mold on infections
:Laser eye surgery
:Fecal transplants

==Trivia==
*A much leaner version of this comic appeared in the first [[What If? (book) | "What If?" book]], chapter "Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #9".

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Scatter plots]]
[[Category:Rankings]]
[[Category:Food]]

279: Pickup Lines

2025-06-09T15:07:09Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 279
| date = June 20, 2007
| title = Pickup Lines
| image = pickup_lines.png
| titletext = That shirt looks good on you, but it would look even better stuffed onto the neck of a vodka bottle and flung burning through our office building's window. Let's fucking do it and never look back.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic adds strange twists to some classic abysmally cheesy {{w|pickup line}}s. Warning, terrible puns ahead:

*"If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put U and I together."
:[[Cueball]] is making a "your sister" joke. A different variation of this line is featured in [[1069: Alphabet]], and similar "your sister" jokes are made in [[49: Want]], [[273: Electromagnetic Spectrum]], [[317: That Lovin' Feelin']], and panel 20 of [[442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel]].
*"Is your father a thief? Because he stole all of the stars in the sky and put them in your eyes."([http://www.jokes4us.com/pickuplines/isyourdadpickuplines.html Is Your Dad Pick Up Lines])
:A {{w|Volkswagen Jetta|Jetta}} is a car, and Cueball is implying that the father is an actual thief.
*"You must be tired, 'cause you've been running through my mind all night."
:He adds the word "Screaming," to make the word "running" be literal instead of figurative.

This is yet another example of [[Beret Guy]]'s bartender job.

The title text refers to a pickup line like this: "That shirt looks good on you, but would look even better on my bedroom floor." But here the shirt is used as fuse for a {{w|Molotov cocktail}} thrown into their office.

==Transcript==
:[A bar. Beret Guy is the bartender, holding a can or mug. On the counter are a bottle and two mugs. In front of the counter are four barstools. Megan is to the left of the second barstool and Cueball is to the right, talking to her.]
:Cueball: If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put your sister and I together.

:[Another bar scene, shown from a different angle, with the bartender at left of panel and two barstools to the right. Cueball, standing, is talking to a different woman seated at the bar. Cueball points toward the front window of the bar.]
:Cueball: Is your father a thief? Because that's totally my Jetta you parked outside.

:[Another bar scene. A bar with one mug on it, and one barstool, are visible. Cueball stands talking to Ponytail.]
:Cueball: You must be tired, 'cause you've been running through my mind all night.
:Cueball: Screaming.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Your sister]]

3093: Drafting

2025-05-23T16:33:21Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3093
| date = May 23, 2025
| title = Drafting
| image = drafting_2x.png
| imagesize = 317x518px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = A 5% efficiency gain at the cost of a 99% efficiency loss
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently and is still a FIRST DRAFT. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

{{w|Drafting}} is an aerodynamic technique where one moving object follows another one closely to reduce drag by using the first objects {{w|splitstream}}. It is used in various sports, most prominently {{w|cycling}}.

The comic explores the idea of using drafting for rockets and states that while it theoretically works, it isn't really recommended. The title text gives more details on this, claiming that there is an efficiency gain of 5% through drafting via the general mechanism, it also comes with a 99% loss (which isn't explained in detail). Generally, this could be understood because land transportation is based on traction (pulling yourself along a surface via friction). At higher speeds (above 60km/h), the dominant force becomes wind drag. {{w|Energy-efficient driving}} at these higher speeds can be improved by drafting behind another vehicle. This doesn't apply to rockets because they do not move themselves via friction but rather via Newton's third law (throwing stuff backwards). This means that the front rocket would just push the back rocket against its own thrust.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Needs image description. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[A rocket with two boosters is launching. A smaller rocket is following the first rocket very close, inside its exhaust plume. The first rocket has a two-stage core, and two boosters. It produces 3 big flames. The second rocket does not have boosters. It produces 3 small flames.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Aerospace tip: Although the technique reduces atmospheric drag for many types of vehicles, you should ''never'' try to improve rocket launch efficiency through drafting.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Rockets]]
[[Category:Tips]]

1026: Compare and Contrast

2025-05-21T15:40:17Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1026
| date = March 7, 2012
| title = Compare and Contrast
| image = compare_and_contrast.png
| titletext = Frankly, I see no difference between thee and a summer's day. Only Ron Paul offers a TRUE alternative!
}}

==Explanation==

A reference to the most well-known {{w|sonnet}} in the English-speaking world: {{w|William Shakespeare|William Shakespeare's}} "{{w|Sonnet 18}}", the first line of which is: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?". In this comic [[Randall Munroe|Randall]] sets about this in a typically purposeful chart, as opposed to the rather more romantic poetry of the Bard. "Thee" is a form of the archaic second-person singular pronoun "thou". In Shakespeare's day, English had more second-person pronouns in common use, thou/thee (informal and singular, subjective/objective), and ye/you (plural, subjective/objective, or just "you" as the formal singulars). This is similar to second-person pronouns in many modern European languages, such as French. {{w|English personal pronouns#Full list of personal pronouns|Wikipedia}} has a nice chart for all of English's personal pronouns, current and archaic.

For both the chart and the original sonnet, whether or not the work is autobiographical is unknown. Also unknown is the identity of the person whom each work refers to. It is believed that Sonnet 18 is addressed to a {{w|Shakespeare's Sonnets#Fair Youth|young man}}.

# The first line is a reference to the sonnet itself, which reads: "Thou art more lovely and more temperate". He considers both thee and a summer's day to be "fair" (this is a pun; depending on context, "fair" can refer to complexion or weather) and "temperate" (meaning "warm", which again can describe a person or the weather).
# "Hot, sticky" also refers to both, in different ways. "Hot" can mean sexually attractive or simply that the temperature is high. "Sticky" refers to either a humid day (for summer day) or to be covered in sweat and other bodily fluids (mainly from ejaculation after sex for "thee").
# "Short" is another pun. "Thee" (the subject of the comparison with the summer's day) is not tall. Alternatively if “Thee” is male it could refer to their primary sexual organ. This is typically seen as a bad quality. In line 8 "Thee" is attributed another bad quality. A summer day is chronologically long (time from dawn to dusk.)
# "Harbinger of hurricane season" is technically accurate; hurricane season does follow the summer.
# "Required for a good beach party" is not a pun, although it is another example of a word with slightly different meanings. The party is required to be held on a summer's day and with "thee" present at the party. The party would not be held on "thee", although some of the other lines suggest that the writer might personally be on top of "thee" during the party.
# "Major cause of heat stroke in the elderly" does not contain any puns, but simply refers to the fact that summer is hot, and excessively high temperature can cause heat stroke, especially in children and the elderly. Obviously, "thee" cannot cause heat stroke.
# "Linked to higher rates of juvenile delinquency" refers to juveniles committing crimes. Apparently, "thee" is either a juvenile delinquent or inspires juvenile delinquency (or both). Summer is also linked to juvenile delinquency. This results, to some degree, from school not being in session, rather than simply as a direct result of the summer weather.
# "Sometimes too stifling" can refer to the weather - oppressive heat and humidity, or a person that is overly oppressive and constraining. It is also unusual in that it expresses a negative feeling about "thee", unlike the other entries which express what the author likes or admires about thee.
# "Arrested for releasing snakes in the library" is a fairly self-explanatory criterion. Apparently "thee" has been caught doing this. A summer's day, on the other hand, cannot be arrested at all,{{Citation needed}} much less for this. This is possibly inspired by the movie ''{{w|Snakes on a Plane}}''.
# The last line "difficult to focus on work while I'm in" is probably a sexual reference, on the "thee" side, not on the "summer's day" side. To be "in" someone refers to the penetrative part of sex, which would occupy a typical person's attention,{{Citation needed}} or that while they are around the house it can be difficult to focus on work. Summer can be distracting from work due to heat, excitement, or just the general feeling of the season.

The title text is a reference to [[Ron Paul]], a 2012 {{w|Republican Party (United States)|Republican}} candidate for {{w|President of the United States|President}} who was on top in the {{w|Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012|Republican Primary}} against a few other challengers for the nomination. Ron Paul was frequently represented on the internet using similar language to the title text (with Paul offering an alternative to typical Republican and Democratic candidates). Paul was seen by many as an alternative because of his {{w|Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian}} views.

==Transcript==
:[A checklist comparing "thee" to "a summer's day" for a number of properties, displayed as separate rows in a table with 3 columns. The properties are shown in the first column with no header label, and the second and third columns have a header label of "Thee" and "A Summer's Day" with a checkmark in one or both columns for each row.]

:[Row 1]
:Property: Fair, Temperate
:Thee: Checked
:A Summer's Day: Checked

:[Row 2]
:Property: Hot, Sticky
:Thee: Checked
:A Summer's Day: Checked

:[Row 3]
:Property: Short
:Thee: Checked
:A Summer's Day: Not Checked

:[Row 4]
:Property: Harbinger of Hurricane Season
:Thee: Not Checked
:A Summer's Day: Checked

:[Row 5]
:Property: Required for a Good Beach Party
:Thee: Checked
:A Summer's Day: Checked

:[Row 6]
:Property: Major Cause of Heat Stroke in the Elderly
:Thee: Not Checked
:A Summer's Day: Checked

:[Row 7]
:Property: Linked to Higher Rates of Juvenile Delinquency
:Thee: Checked
:A Summer's Day: Checked

:[Row 8]
:Property: Sometimes Too Stifling
:Thee: Checked
:A Summer's Day: Checked

:[Row 9]
:Property: Arrested for Releasing Snakes in Library
:Thee: Checked
:A Summer's Day: Not Checked

:[Row 10]
:Property: Difficult to Focus on Work While I'm In
:Thee: Checked
:A Summer's Day: Checked

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Ron Paul]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Sex]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Hurricanes]]
[[Category:Comics featuring politicians]]

1023: Late-Night PBS

2025-05-21T15:35:40Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1023
| date = February 29, 2012
| title = Late-Night PBS
| image = late night pbs.png
| titletext = Then it switched to these old black-and-white tapes of Bob Ross slumped against the wall of an empty room, painting the least happy trees you've ever seen. Either PBS needs to beef up studio security or I need to stop using Ambien to sleep.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic examines the way the world seems different for adults today compared with how we remember it as a child, due to complex subtext or naïvety, to a humorous extreme, and with a specific reference to {{w|television programs}} for children.

{{w|PBS}} is a US public television network known for {{w|highbrow}} and educational programming, and shows a high proportion of {{w|BBC}} programming. The show ''{{w|Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (game show)|Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego}}'' was a light-hearted educational game show that ran from 1991 to 1995. In the show players followed geography-based clues to find out where a master criminal, Carmen Sandiego, was going, and catch her. After catching (or failing to catch) Carmen Sandiego, a character called The Chief would congratulate or encourage the players. {{w|Rockapella}} was an {{w|a cappella}} band featured on the show that gave clues, punctuated the show with humor, and closed the show.

[[Megan]] recounts her surprise as to the nature of programming on late night PBS to [[Cueball]]. She claims to have fallen asleep after watching ''{{w|Downton Abbey}}'' and woken up to see that ''Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego'' is still making new episodes, but is significantly darker than she remembers it. The host has aged poorly (the show would have been off the air for 20 years) and developed a drinking problem; the locations the child contestants visit are traumatizing; and the children are clearly freaked out. In the end they find Carmen Sandiego hiding behind a Dutch bookcase, an allusion to ''{{w|The Diary of a Young Girl|The Diary of Anne Frank}}'', thus implying that instead of aiding legitimate law enforcement in finding thieves they have been aiding the Nazis in their search for Jews (and others) to murder. The Chief admonishes the children for their actions and Rockapella glares at the children disapprovingly until the children break down in tears.

After Megan concludes her story, Cueball remarks that he did not remember the show being that dark. In response Megan replies that as kids, they may not have been able to understand the darker subtext of the show. It is true that some programs intended for children often have subtle themes for adults who may be watching the show with their children that the children do not usually remember or pick up on. The joke is that although young viewers may not be able to pick up on everything, they would certainly have noticed if the show was as dark as Megan described.{{Citation needed}}

The title text describes the next program, an episode of ''{{w|The Joy of Painting}}'', in which a depressingly weary painter paints unhappy trees. This contrasts with the usual mood of the show where {{w|Bob Ross}} was upbeat and the components of his paintings were described as "happy little" objects. Megan then postulates that either people are breaking into the television station to produce horrible programming, or she is experiencing {{w|hallucinations}} due to her sleep aid {{w|Ambien}}. This gives hallucination as an alternate explanation for the main comic.

===Locations visited===
*{{w|Mogadishu}} is the battle-torn capital city of {{w|Somalia}}, where the "{{w|Battle of Mogadishu (1993)|Battle of Mogadishu}}" took place in 1993, which would coincide with the air dates of ''Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego''.

*The {{w|Killing Fields}} are a number of sites in {{w|Cambodia}} where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the {{w|Khmer Rouge}} regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, following the end of the {{w|Cambodian Civil War}} (1970-1975).

*"A bookshelf in a Dutch apartment" is a reference to {{w|Anne Frank}}, a Jewish girl who hid from the {{w|Nazi}}s with her family in a secret annex hidden behind a bookshelf in an apartment in {{w|Amsterdam}}. Her diary recounting her experiences was later published as the ''Diary of Anne Frank''.

===Carmen Sandiego===
''Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego'' was originally an educational {{w|video game}} released in 1985. {{w|Carmen Sandiego}} was a mysterious character that the player tracked around the globe, attempting to find clues as to where she was heading to next. The game helped players learn geography and facts about the world while having fun. The video game inspired the TV show ''Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?''.

The show was split into three rounds. In the first round, there were three child contestants, called “gumshoes” on the show, who scored points for every question they answered correctly. The top two scoring gumshoes moved onto the next round, where they had to play a game based on the card game {{w|Concentration (game)|Concentration}}, in which they had to find the thief, warrant, and loot in the correct order. Whichever gumshoe did so captured the thief, saved the loot, and moved onto the next round, where they had a chance to catch Carmen Sandiego herself. Success was not always guaranteed in this round, as contestants had to plant flags correct on seven different countries in a continent within a very short time. If successful, they captured Carmen and won the grand prize (a trip to a place of their choosing in the continental US). If not, Carmen would escape and the contestant would win a lesser prize (such as a computer).

The role of The Chief was played by {{w|Lynne Thigpen}}. She explained the mission to the contestants, and gave some clues to the thief's last whereabouts. When the mission was over The Chief would appear and congratulate them if successful or console them if Carmen got away.

The host of the TV show was an actor named {{w|Greg Lee (actor)|Greg Lee}}. His role was to ask the contestants questions, provide clues, and tell them which flags to plant on the map in the final round, as well as engage with The Chief and Rockapella to keep the show moving.

{{w|Rockapella}} was an {{w|A cappella|a cappella}} group (a group that sings without any instruments), which sang the theme song to ''Where in The World Is Carmen Sandiego.'' Rockapella also acted as a "house band", singing songs while the contestants transitioned between events, providing clues, and playing pranks on the host along with other gags. At the end of each show, the host and the episode's winning contestant would shout "Do it, Rockapella!" at which point the band would sing the show's theme song.

===Continuity issues===
The locations the contestants visit in the episode depicted in this comic seem to require traveling backwards in time (1993 for the Battle of Mogadishu, 1975-1979 for the Cambodian killing fields, and 1944 for the arrest of Anne Frank). Episodes of ''Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego'' did not deal with this, but its successor, ''{{w|Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? (game show)|Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?}}'', did.

==Transcript==
:[Megan with disheveled hair is rubbing sleep out of her eyes and talking to Cueball.]
:Megan: Have you ever watched PBS late at night?
:Megan: I fell asleep after ''Downton'' and woke up at like 3 AM.

:[The next panel is split in two. The upper portion, which is not in a frame, continues Megan's dialogue, while the lower part, in a frame, shows a drunk game-show host (indicated with two small bobbles and a third exploding next to his head). He has stubble and only little hair on his head. He is holding a bottle in one hand and the other hand is up over a TV monitor showing a black field filled with crosses, presumably graves, going out to the far off horizon. In front of him are three kids, who are contestants in the game. They stand behind three lecterns to the left. The first kid is a boy with thin black hair, who has turned away from the monitor. The middle kid is a girl with blonde hair in a ponytail who looks at the host, and the last kid looks like Cueball and he looks down at his lectern.]
:Megan (off-panel): ''Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego'' was back on, except the host hadn't aged well and he'd clearly been drinking.
:Megan (off-panel): Every question took them to some horrible place like Mogadishu or the Cambodian killing fields.

:[In a room with tiles on the floor, a bookshelf full of books has been moved away from the wall revealing that is was a door to be opened with a hidden room behind it. Megan continues to speak, her text is above the shelf but inside the frame this time.]
:Megan (off-panel): The kids were freaked out, but they kept playing. Eventually they were told they'd found Carmen Sandiego hiding behind a bookshelf in a Dutch apartment.

:[Megan has stopped rubbing her eyes but still talks to Cueball.]
:Megan: The Chief appeared and asked "Are you ''proud'' of what you've become?"
:Megan: Then Rockapella walked out and just glared at the kids until they started crying.
:Cueball: I, uh, don't remember the old show being that dark.
:Megan: Maybe we were too young to pick up on it.

==Trivia==
*This is the second comic posted on a Leap Day ({{w|February 29}}), it was a Wednesday in 2012.
**The previous leap day was the first after xkcd began, and that day fell on a Friday in 2008, and the first leap day comic [[390: Nightmares]] was released then.
**The leap day after this comic also fell on a Friday in 2016 and [[1649: Pipelines]] was released then.
**If the current M-W-F schedule continues, the next such comic will not happen before 2036 when the leap day again falls on a Friday.
**Interesting to note that the first three leap years after xkcd began (in just over 10 years) all fell on a release day, then followed by a break of 20 years. And three of these first four leap days all fell on a Friday.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Dreams]] 
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Kids]]

1002: Game AIs

2025-05-21T15:17:02Z

Cheesesentience: /* Humans Beat Computers */

{{comic
| number = 1002
| date = January 11, 2012
| title = Game AIs
| image = game_ais.png
| titletext = The top computer champion at Seven Minutes in Heaven is a Honda-built Realdoll, but to date it has been unable to outperform the human Seven Minutes in Heaven champion, Ken Jennings.
}}

==Explanation==
To understand the comic, you have to understand what the games are, so let's go (but first, the years in parenthesis in the comic are the year that the game was mastered by a computer):

===Solved===

: These games are considered "solved", meaning the ideal maneuver for each game state (Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect Four) or each of the limited starting positions (Checkers) has already been calculated. Computers aren't so much playing as they are recalculating the list of ideal maneuvers. The same could be said for the computer's human opponent, just at a slower pace.

*'''{{w|Tic-tac-toe}}''' or '''Noughts and Crosses''' in most of the rest of the British Commonwealth countries is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. This game nearly always ends in a tie, regardless of whether humans or computers play it because the total number of positions is small. Randall posted a complete guide to the winning tactics more than a year before as [[832: Tic-Tac-Toe]].

*'''{{w|Nim}}''' is a mathematical game of strategy in which two players take turns removing objects from distinct heaps. On each turn, a player must remove at least one object, and may remove any number of objects provided they all come from the same heap.

*'''{{w|Ghost (game)|Ghost}}''' is a spoken word game in which players take turns adding letters to a growing word fragment. The loser is the first person who completes a valid word or who creates a fragment that cannot be the start of a word. Randall himself has written a perfect solution to Ghost, [https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/12/31/ghost/ which he posted on his blog]. Depending on the dictionary used, either the first player can always force a win, or the second player can.

*'''{{w|Connect Four}}''' (or '''Captain's Mistress''', '''Four Up''', '''Plot Four''', '''Find Four''', '''Fourplay''', '''Four in a Row''', '''Four in a Line''') is a two-player game in which the players first choose a color and then take turns dropping their colored discs from the top into a seven-column, six-row vertically-suspended grid. Randall made a reference of this game at [[1767: US State Names]].

*'''{{w|Gomoku}}''' (or '''Gobang''', '''Five in a Row''') is an abstract strategy board game. It is traditionally played with go pieces (black and white stones) on a go board (19x19 intersections); however, because once placed, pieces are not moved or removed from the board, Gomoku may also be played as a paper and pencil game. This game is known in several countries under different names.
:Black plays first, and players alternate in placing a stone of their color on an empty intersection. The winner is the first player to get an unbroken row of five stones horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

*'''{{w|Draughts|Checkers}}''' (in the United States, or '''draughts''' in the United Kingdom) is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces.

===Computers Beat Humans===

:The below games have not been "solved". Some of them may be solved some day, but the large number of possible moves has so far prevented this from being done. Others cannot be "solved" due to the influence of randomness or the existence of multiple "ideal" maneuvers for each position. That said, a computer's faster reaction time, higher degree of consistency in making the right decision, and reduced risk of user error make the computer objectively better than the human opponent in nearly all situations.

*'''{{w|Scrabble}}''' is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a gameboard marked with a 15-by-15 grid.

*'''{{w|Counter-Strike|CounterStrike}}''' most likely refers to the popular multiplayer shooter video game series about terrorists and counter-terrorists. Counter-Strike is notorious for the large variety of cheating tools that have been made for it; a computer would have essentially perfect accuracy and reflexes, essentially making it the {{w|aimbot}} from hell. It is theoretically possible for a skilled player to beat such an AI, but it would be ''extremely'' difficult to do so. '''{{w|Counter-Strike:_Condition_Zero|Condition Zero}}''' has pre-set PvE scenarios called '''Deleted Scenes''', but the AI used for enemies isn't particularly skilled and can be beaten by an average player.

*'''{{w|Beer pong}}''' (or '''Beirut''') is a drinking game in which players throw a ping pong ball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in a cup of beer on the other end.
:[https://youtu.be/HkhMCCOHFmM?t=30s Here's the video] of the University of Illinois robot mentioned in the comic.

*'''{{w|Reversi}}''' (marketed by Pressman under the trade name '''Othello''') is a board game involving abstract strategy and played by two players on a board with 8 rows and 8 columns and a set of distinct pieces for each side. Pieces typically are disks with a light and a dark face, each face belonging to one player. The player's goal is to have a majority of their colored pieces showing at the end of the game, turning over as many of their opponent's pieces as possible.

*'''{{w|Chess}}''' is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. Each player begins the game with sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns, each of these types of pieces moving differently.
:The note mentions "the first game to be won by a chess-playing computer against a reigning world champion under normal chess tournament conditions", in the {{w|Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov}} match on February 10, 1996, and the [http://en.chessbase.com/post/bilbao-the-humans-strike-back Ponomariov vs Fritz] game in the Man vs Machine World Team Championship on November 21, 2005, considered the "last win by a human against top computer".

*'''{{w|Jeopardy!}}''' is an American quiz show featuring trivia in history, literature, the arts, pop culture, science, sports, geography, wordplay, and more. The show has a unique answer-and-question format in which contestants are presented with clues in the form of answers, and must phrase their responses in question form.
:Ken Jennings, mentioned in the title text, is a famous Jeopardy champion who was beaten by {{w|Watson (computer)|Watson}}, an IBM computer. This was [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/science/17jeopardy-watson.html an exhibition match] featuring Jennings, Brad Rutter, and Watson that took place in February 2011.

===Humans Beat Computers===
{{incomplete|The explanation for Arimaa is simply copy-pasted from Wikipedia, please fix it.}}
:The below games are incredibly difficult to "solve" due to the near-infinite number of possible positions. Computers built in the early 21st century would take years to calculate a single "ideal" move. Worse, the human opponent has the ability to "bluff"; that is, to make a bad move, thus baiting the computer into a trap. Complex algorithms have been devised to make moves in a reasonable timeframe, but so far they are all highly vulnerable to bluffing. As mentioned in the comic, focused research and development is working on refining these algorithms to play the games better.

*'''{{w|StarCraft}}''' is a military real-time strategy video game series. The game revolves around three species, Terran (humans), Zerg, and Protoss, fighting for dominance in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy known as the Koprulu Sector. Players must gather resources, build buildings and units, attack the opponent's base, and defend their base. While even average Starcraft players can defeat the AIs that originally shipped with the games, Starcraft has since been adopted as a standard benchmark for AI research, largely because of its excellent balance. Thanks to that attention, computers can now defeat at least 99.8% of all players, and the trend does not look promising for humans.

*'''{{w|Poker}}''' is a family of card games involving betting and individualistic play whereby the winner is determined by the ranks and combinations of their cards, some of which remain hidden until the end of the game. It is also, however, a game of deception and intimidation, the ubiquitous "poker face" being considered the most important part of the game.<br>
:*'''Update:''' In a 20-day poker tournament from January 11 to 31, 2017, the poker AI {{w|Libratus}} [https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/31/14451616/ai-libratus-beat-humans-poker-cmu-tournament won against four top-class human poker players]. Libratus only works for the Heads-Up (two-player) variant of poker, which is not the most commonly played variant, so humans are still ahead of computers for now.

*'''{{w|Arimaa}}''' is a two-player abstract strategy board game that can be played using the same equipment as chess. Arimaa was designed to be more difficult for artificial intelligences to play than chess. Arimaa was invented by Omar Syed, an Indian American computer engineer trained in artificial intelligence. Syed was inspired by Garry Kasparov's defeat at the hands of the chess computer Deep Blue to design a new game which could be played with a standard chess set, would be difficult for computers to play well, but would have rules simple enough for his then four-year-old son Aamir to understand.<br>
:*'''Update:''' on April 18, 2015, a computer won [http://arimaa.com/arimaa/challenge/ the "Arimaa Challenge"], so this comic is now out of date with respect to Arimaa; it should move above ''Starcraft'' or ''Jeopardy!''.

*'''{{w|Go (game)|Go}}''' is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago. The game is noted for being rich in strategy despite its relatively simple rules. The game is played by two players who alternately place black and white stones on the vacant intersections (called "points") of a grid of 19×19 lines (beginners often play on smaller 9×9 and 13×13 boards). The object of the game is to use one's stones to control a larger amount of territory of the board than the opponent. That computers would soon beat humans was the subject in [[1263: Reassuring]].<br>
'''Update:''' on March 15, 2016, Google's {{w|AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol|AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol}}, who was often seen as the dominant human player over the last decade, 4 games to 1 in a widely viewed match, and {{w|Computer Go}} was expected to become more dominant over time. In May 2017, Google's AI AlphaGo [http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/google-ai-becomes-world-s-top-ranking-go-player-1.3097756 defeated the world's top human Go player]. This was referenced three months later in [[1875: Computers vs Humans]].

===Computers cannot compete===

*'''{{w|Snakes and Ladders}}''' (or '''Chutes and Ladders''') is an ancient Indian {{w|race game}}, where the moves are decided entirely by die rolls or other random number generators. (However, any person or computer choosing the numbers needed directly is called "cheating".) A number of tiles are connected by pictures of ladders and snakes (or chutes) which makes the game piece jump forward or backward, respectively. Since the game is decided by pure chance, it occupies the limbo where a computer will always be ''exactly'' as likely to win as a human (indeed, Randall's arrow points at the dividing line between 'humans beat computers' and 'computers cannot compete').

*'''{{w|Mao (card game)|Mao}}''' is a card game similar to {{w|Crazy Eights}} or {{w|Uno}}, with the twist that new players aren't told any of the rules and have to deduce them by trial and error. (The rules are sometimes summarized as "The only rule I can tell you is this one"). The goal of the game is to be the first player to get rid of all the cards in their hand, at which point that player invents a new rule and adds it to the ones already in the game. Computers would have a difficult time integrating into Mao as they would need a complicated learning engine capable of deducing rules with no prior training, and would also need the ability to be able to invent rules itself.

*'''{{w|Seven minutes in heaven|Seven Minutes in Heaven}}''' is a teenagers' party game first recorded as being played in Cincinnati in the early 1950s. Two people are selected to go into a closet or other dark enclosed space and do whatever they like for seven minutes. Sexual activities are allowed; however kissing and making out are more common.
:Because this is not a competitive game, players cannot "outplay" or "lose to" each other, regardless of whether they are humans or computers. Additionally, as the game is focused on human interaction, there's not a whole lot a modern computer can ''do'' in the closet. It would need some kind of robotic body in order to interact with its human partner, and emotion engines that could feel pleasure and displeasure in order to make decisions. The title text claims that {{w|Honda|Honda Motor Company}} has invented a "{{w|RealDoll}}" (sex toy shaped like a mannequin) with rudimentary Seven Minutes in Heaven capabilities, but they pale in comparison to a human's (specifically, Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings).

And finally
*'''{{w|Calvin and Hobbes#Calvinball|Calvinball}}''' is a reference to the comic strip {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} by {{w|Bill Watterson}}.
:Calvinball is a game played by Calvin and Hobbes as a rebellion against organized team sports; according to Hobbes, "No sport is less organized than Calvinball!" Calvinball was first introduced to the readers at the end of a 1990 storyline involving Calvin reluctantly joining recess baseball. It quickly became a staple of the comic afterwards.
:The only hint at the true creation of the game ironically comes from the last Calvinball strip, in which a game of football quickly devolves into a game of Calvinball. Calvin remarks that "sooner or later, all our games turn into Calvinball," suggesting a similar scenario that directly led to the creation of the sport. Calvin and Hobbes usually play by themselves, although in one storyline Rosalyn (Calvin's baby-sitter) plays in return for Calvin doing his homework, and plays very well once she realizes that the rules are made up on the spot.
:The only consistent rules state that Calvinball may never be played with the same rules twice, and you need to wear a mask, no questions asked. Scoring is also arbitrary, with Hobbes at times reporting scores of "Q to 12" and "oogy to boogy." The only recognizable sports Calvinball resembles are the ones it emulates (i.e., a cross between croquet, polo, badminton, capture the flag, and volleyball.)
::Long story short, the game is a manifestation of pure chaos and the human imagination, far beyond the meager capabilities of silicon and circuitry, at least so far. The closest thing you could possibly get is having an AI automatically generate rules on the fly, similar to something like the currently-existent {{w|AI Dungeon}} or a similarly robust text algorithm; but even still, the computer would be unable to ''act'' upon these new rules in that state.

==Transcript==
:[A diagram with a caption above the diagram. The left column describes various levels of skill for the most capable computers in decreasing performance against humans. The right side lists games in each particular section, in increasing game difficulty. There are labels denoting the hard and easy ends of the diagram.]

:Caption: Difficulty of Various Games for Computers

:Top of Diagram: <big>Easy</big>

:;Solved <small>Computers can play perfectly</small>

::;Solved for all possible positions

:::Tic-tac-toe
:::Nim
:::Ghost <small>(1989)</small>
:::Connect Four <small>(1995)</small>

::;Solved for starting positions

:::Gomoku
:::Checkers <small>(2007)</small>

:;Computers can beat top humans

:::Scrabble
:::CounterStrike
:::Beer Pong <small>(UIUC robot)</small>
:::Reversi
:::Chess

:::* February 10, 1996: First win by computer against top human
:::* November 21, 2005: Last win by human against top computer

:::Jeopardy

:;Computers still lose to top humans <small>(but focused R&D could change this)</small>

:::StarCraft
:::Poker
:::Arimaa
:::Go

:;Computers may ''never'' outplay humans

:::Snakes and Ladders
:::Mao
:::Seven Minutes in Heaven
:::Calvinball

:Bottom of Diagram: <big>Hard</big>

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Board games]]
[[Category:Games]]
[[Category:Chess]]
[[Category:Calvin and Hobbes]]
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]

2671: Rotation

2025-05-20T16:59:11Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2671
| date = September 12, 2022
| title = Rotation
| image = rotation 2x.png
| imagesize = 380x756px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's okay, we can just feed the one-pixel image into an AI upscaler and recover the original image, or at least one that's just as cool.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|It seems someone intended to put an image in this explanation. Could someone either figure out what was intended or confirm that it is unnecessary?}}
This is another one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category:Tips|Tips]], this time a phone tip. This tip claims that rotating a phone and taking a screenshot too many times will cause an image to disappear into nothingness and warns the user against doing so. The camera and the display both have limited resolutions, so the detail of the original screenshot at the center of the image will be reduced as it approaches the range of a few pixels, hence the original image will be lost before it reaches the sub-pixel range. This is funny because the default resolution of contemporary camera phones can be too large to meet size requirements for e.g. mobile phone {{w|Multimedia Messaging Service}}, web file uploads, or email attachments, so one or two steps of this awkward procedure are sometimes necessary. Other comics such as [[878: Model Rail]] also use recursion as limits.

[[Image:World lines and world sheet.svg|thumb|200px|{{w|String theory}} describes the {{w|worldline}}s of point-like particles as {{w|worldsheet}}s of "closed strings," forming a topological foam.]]

For a fuller explanation of the concepts involved, including {{w|Planck units}}, often associated with the topological {{w|quantum foam}} of {{w|string theory}}, please see [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUF5esTscZI this CGP Grey video.] For an explanation of topological string theory, see [[2658: Coffee Cup Holes]]. Please see also [[1683: Digital Data]] for an analogous image processing concept.

The title text refers to producing photographically likely higher resolution images from lower resolutions, an active area of current research.[https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/ICCV2021/papers/Liang_Hierarchical_Conditional_Flow_A_Unified_Framework_for_Image_Super-Resolution_and_ICCV_2021_paper.pdf] Because reducing the resolution of an image is a lossy process, results obtained through such processes will not be able to perfectly recreate the original. Machine learning can be used to calculate how images of known photographic subjects (or e.g. anime-style art, in the case of {{w|waifu2x}}) behave under certain types of noise or reduction in size, so that images ''of those kinds'' can be upscaled in a way that, if not perfectly recreating the original, at least is a faithful representation, but when the image is scaled all the way down to one pixel, everything except a small amount of data about the image's overall color is lost, making reconstructing the original image impossible. Randall disclaims that, because the AI upscaling is based on ingesting a large corpus of human-made art (with subjects that we find 'interesting' or at least meaningful being predominantly represented), the AI will produce an image that is at least as cool as the original image was, and in fact some image generation AIs actually work on a similar principle — for example, "reverse diffusion" AIs are trained by teaching them to reconstruct images from noise, at which they can produce entirely new images by being fed ''actual'' noise. He could also be making a pun on {{w|color temperature}}, which the upscaler will be able to match to the original image. The "{{tvtropes|EnhanceButton|enhance button}}" for upscaling images is a common trope in movies and television, especially in crime and science fiction stories.

=== Mathematical corner ===

The scale reduction caused by a rotation can be approximated. If ''a'' is the width of the picture and ''b'' its height, the reduction is ''x=a/b'', the aspect ratio of the picture rectangle. As can be seen in the comic, the first rotation leaves two gray areas on each side of the picture that are roughly square. The width of the reduced picture is ''x*a'' = ''a''²/''b''. Each gray area is ''a'' (high) by (''b-x*a'')/2 (wide). This is roughly square, but will not be exactly square unless
: ''b'' = 2''a'' + ''x*a'' and since ''x=a/b'', dividing by ''b'' we obtain 1 = 2''x'' + x².
This is a quadratic equation, whose only positive solution is √2-1 ≈ 0.414

Returning to the general problem: the reduction is geometric, so that after nine rotations, the picture will be reduced by a factor of ''x''⁹. Since this is "smaller than a pixel", the original screen resolution is fewer than (1/''x'')⁹ pixels. It is not stated whether it is the width, height, or area of the original picture that have been reduced to "smaller than a pixel".

25 rotations reduces a lot further and logarithms are useful to compute that. Let ''L'' be log(''a''/''b''), a negative number since ''a''/''b'' is less than 1. If the original screen is 10cm wide, its reduced picture will be ''x''^25 times smaller in width. The comic tells us that the picture is now "smaller than an atom" (typically 10^-10m). If referring to the width, then 25''L'' is less than about -9.0 using base-10 logarithms.

After 101 rotations, the reduction will be ''x''^101, and the picture is now "smaller than the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length Planck length]". The log of the Planck length is about -34.8, so 101''L'' is less than -33.8.

Significantly we know that 100 rotations was ''not'' enough, so 100''L'' is greater than -33.8. If we split the difference and say that 100.5''L'' is equal to -33.8, we get an aspect ratio ''a''/''b'' just about 0.461. Multiple popular phone sizes are within the range, including the iPhone X or XS both with an aspect ratio of 1125/2436 ~ 0.4618.

==Transcript==
:[A phone in portrait orientation shows an image of Cueball standing. It is then rotated, showing the image smaller with bars in landscape orientation, then the next phone is in portrait showing the entire screen of the previous rotated sideways, shrinking it every time. An arrow points from each phone to the phone with the next smaller image, until the last one. The labels, at the 9th, 25th, and 101st rotation, show the decreasing size of the original image as it goes through successive rotations.]

:[Labels:]
:9 rotations: original image is smaller than a pixel.

:25 rotations: original image is smaller than an atom.

:101 rotations: original image is smaller than the Planck length, at which the concept of distance may break down.

:[Bottom caption:]
:Phone tip: don't rotate and screenshot an image too many times or it will become lost in the quantum foam of the universe.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Tips]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Physics]]

2844: Black Holes vs Regular Holes

2025-05-19T15:22:11Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2844
| date = October 20, 2023
| title = Black Holes vs Regular Holes
| image = black_holes_vs_regular_holes_2x.png
| imagesize = 525x743px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Created by the collapse of: [massive stars] [Florida limestone bedrock]
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a comparison between {{w|black hole}}s and regular, everyday {{w|hole}}s.

{| class="wikitable"
!
! scope="col"| Black hole
! scope="col"| Regular hole
! Scope="col"| Explanation
|-
! scope="row" | Usually formed by...
| Supernovas, colliding stars
| Shovels, small mammals
| When a sufficiently large star has consumed nearly all of its low-atomic-weight "fuel", it collapses. This triggers an explosion of what "fuel" remains, creating a supernova. If enough mass remains after the explosion, it becomes a black hole. A black hole can also be formed if enough mass in a small volume accumulates by two stars, especially neutron stars, colliding. On the contrary, regular holes are often created by a variety of natural and anthropogenic causes including, but not limited to: humans using shovels, small mammals such as moles or dogs, the shift or evaporation of underground water, volcanic processes, etc. Of course, this is by no means limited only to small mammals. Many animals, from elephants to ants, are also known to sometimes create this kind of hole.
|-
! scope="row" | Falling in is...
| Definitely fatal
| Sometimes fatal
| Falling into a black hole is almost always fatal, because of the shearing effect created by tidal forces and/or radiation from its {{w|accretion disk}}. If the black hole was extremely massive (on the order of many galaxies' worth of mass) and had a very large event horizon, the tidal forces at its event horizon would not be very strong, nor would there be a noticeable accretion disk (what you experience ''beyond'' that point is subject to serious conjecture). On the other hand, only if a regular hole is deep enough (or someone falls incorrectly), is it possible for someone to die by falling into it.
|-
! scope="row" | Created by the Big Bang
| Maybe
| No
| Like many other celestial objects, black holes may have been created by the {{w|Big Bang}}, especially given that black holes and a base singularity theoretically share many qualities. However ordinary holes were almost definitely not directly created this way. [[Technically]], though, because the entire universe started with the Big Bang, everything in it (including ordinary holes) could be argued to be indirectly "created" by it.
|-
! scope="row" | Created by children playing at the beach
| I '''''really''''' hope not
| Yes
| The creation of black holes may cause many unfortunate events to occur, and is very difficult to do. Hence, Randall really hopes that children are not accidentally, let alone [[Black Hat|intentionally]], creating black holes on the beach, as this would be cataclysmic for our planet. On the other hand, children commonly dig holes in sand at beaches, and this is a normal thing for them to do.
Alternatively, it could refer to some {{tvtropes|EldritchAbomination|Eldritch Abomination}} children playing at a {{what if|83|cosmic beach}}. In that case, "hopefully not" is also a good response.
|-
! scope="row" | Source of many precious metals
| Indirectly
| Yes
| Both the supernovae that create black holes and various events involving black holes, such as black hole/neutron star mergers, produce large quantities of heavy elements, including precious metals found on Earth, and hence are an indirect source. These metals are often underground, and are thus recovered by digging a regular, though very deep, hole called a mine.
|-
! scope="row" | Einstein imagined falling into one
| Yes
| Probably at least once
| The thought experiments of {{w|Albert Einstein}}, particularly in relation to {{w|general relativity}}, involve consideration of what happens when one falls through gravitationally-curved space, a general way in which black holes can be analysed (as black hole physics was very rudimentary in Einstein's time). Aside from this, almost everyone has had a reason to consider the possibility of falling into a normal hole, and thus includes Einstein as well.
|-
! scope="row" | A component of dark matter
| Maybe
| Probably not
| {{w|Dark matter}} is a theoretical part of the universe, a large amount of its total calculated mass which cannot (yet) be directly seen (or easily interacted with on a non-negligible level). It is considered possible that at least some of this 'missing mass' is in the form of black holes. It is not generally considered an option that ordinary holes have anything to do with this.
|-
! scope="row" | Created by the Large Hadron Collider
| No
| Yes
| There were concerns when the {{w|Large Hadron Collider}} (LHC), a particle super-collider, was put into operation that it would create a black hole and destroy the Earth. This obviously hasn't [https://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ happened yet], and is unlikely ever to happen at all. However, many regular holes were created by the LHC, primarily during its construction. This is because it is mostly underground, and holes are an efficient way to get underground. This provides additional humor of such an important and large device creating something so mundane.
|-
! scope="row" | Massive stars often collapse into them
| Yes
| No
| If a star is large enough, when the star dies, it may still have enough gravity to collapse back into itself, thus creating a black hole. Additionally, any star passing in range of a black hole, such as those near the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy, may also fall into it, where it would have collided with the 'original' massive star. Other things may collapse into regular holes in a different sense - for example, a house may collapse into a sink hole. However, most regular holes are not large enough for a star to collapse into in this way (unless one considers the near vacuum of space itself to be a 'hole').
|-
! scope="row" | Explored by humans in famous sci-fi stories
| Yes
| Yes
| Many sci-fi stories and movies explore black holes and regular holes alike. In particular, there's the eponymous classic ''{{w|The Black Hole}}'' and more recent films such as ''{{w|Interstellar (film)|Interstellar}}'', both about space missions that encounter a black hole. {{w|Journey to the Center of the Earth}} is a classic novel by {{w|Jules Verne}} (and made into {{w|Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959 film)|various}} {{w|Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008 theatrical film)|films}}) which involves going into a volcano tube (a kind of hole). H. P. Lovecraft's 1921 short story ''{{w|The Nameless City}}'' involves the explorer narrator venturing into an ancient tunnel (entered through a hole) dug by a pre-human civilization under the Arabian peninsula, and ''{{w|At the Mountains of Madness}}'' involves tunnels lost in the continent of Antarctica. 
|-
! scope="row" | Fatal to get a big one in your body
| Yes
| Yes
| If a black hole somehow appeared inside of a person's body (or even anywhere near it), they would almost definitely die instantly.{{citation needed}} The same goes for a regular hole - if you cut out a massive section of a human's body, they would likely bleed out. This also applies for the holes left by bullets and other high-speed projectiles.
|-
! scope="row" | Some of them are the mouths of wormholes
| Maybe
| Yes
| Black holes are commonly portrayed to be the entrances of {{w|wormhole}}s, especially in sci-fi stories. While wormholes remain purely theoretical, if they exist, some common models for them suggest one end would appear as a black hole, drawing matter in to be ejected from a 'white hole' elsewhere. On the other side, many species of worms live in shallow holes, with a "mouth" on the surface - the "mouth" of the "worm hole". This provides some additional humor by conflating the meanings of the word "wormhole". This could also be a reference to Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, when the Millennium Falcon spacecraft almost gets swallowed by a giant worm in an asteroid hole.
|-
! scope="row" | Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne argued that any information that falls into them is lost forever
| Yes
| No
| The {{w|Black hole information paradox}} is a paradox arising from a contradiction between two widely-accepted theories related to black holes. Scientist {{w|Stephen Hawking}}, famous for his research into black holes, said that black holes release their energy over time, eventually disappearing, through {{w|Hawking Radiation}}. According to this theory, if information was also to enter the black hole, it would be released alongside this radiation. On the other hand, the {{w|No-hair theorem}} (which was also explored in What If? 2 in Chapter 1: Soupiter), states that all black holes are completely identical outside of three key features: mass, spin, and electric charge. If information that fell into a black hole is released with Hawking radiation, then that means that there ''must'' be more than three properties of black holes. Issues also arise when considering the destruction of this information, which, according to the fundamental rules of physics, is impossible. The issue is that if black holes can only retain three features, with composition not being one of said features, then this rule would be violated, thus requiring a complete rethinking of the fundamental laws of the universe. Hawking and {{w|Kip Thorne}} famously made a {{w|Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet|bet}} with {{w|John Preskill}} over this paradox.
On the other hand, information that falls into a normal hole is not lost forever, and can likely still be reobtained, especially if the information is stored physically. The science of recovering information from regular holes is called {{w|archaeology}} (or possibly mail sorting).
|-
! scope="row" | Commonly inhabited by meerkats
| Undetermined
| Yes
|{{w|Meerkat}}s commonly live in holes underground, being an example of a small mammal. It is highly unlikely that Earth mammals live in black holes, but because it is impossible to know what lies beyond the event horizon it is [[technically]] impossible to falsify the postulate that there are meerkats there. Additionally, some physicists have entertained the hypothesis that our universe exists inside a black hole. If this were to be true, there would indeed be meerkats inside a black hole at this point in spacetime.
|-
! scope="row" | (title text) Created by the collapse of:
| Massive stars
| Florida limestone bedrock
| As mentioned before, Black holes are often created by the collapse of massive stars. On the other hand, many {{w|sinkhole}}s in Florida are caused due to most {{w|bedrock}} in the state being made of {{w|limestone}}, which is very slightly soluble in water (although that still makes it drastically more soluble than most rocks). When rainwater and groundwater come into contact with this bedrock, it begins to dissolve it, leaving cavities. Eventually, this can dissolve the bedrock so thin that the weight of the ground above it causes the bedrock to collapse. Sinkholes from dissolved limestone are generally entrances to [https://caves.org/ caves] that explore further limestone dissolving from underground waterways. Florida is known for its warm underwater caves [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-behind-floridas-sinkhole-epidemic-180969158/ and opening sinkholes].
|}

==Transcript==
:[A table comparing two main columns of relevence to various statements]
:[First column is headed:] Black Hole
:[Second column is headed:] Regular Hole
:[Respective statements cells placed to the left of both, below]

:[Statement:] Usually formed by...
:[Black hole:] Supernovas, colliding stars
:[Regular hole:] Shovels, small mammals

:[Statement:] Falling in is...
:[Black hole:] Definitely fatal
:[Regular hole:] Sometimes fatal

:[Statement:] Created by the Big Bang
:[Black hole:] Maybe
:[Regular hole:] No

:[Statement:] Created by children playing at the beach
:[Black hole:] I really hope not [with emphasis on "really"]
:[Regular hole:] Yes

:[Statement:] Source of many precious metals
:[Black hole:] Indirectly
:[Regular hole:] Yes

:[Statement:] Einstein imagined falling into one
:[Black hole:] Yes
:[Regular hole:] Probably at least once

:[Statement:] A component of dark matter
:[Black hole:] Maybe
:[Regular hole:] Probably not

:[Statement:] Created by the Large Hadron Collider
:[Black hole:] No
:[Regular hole:] Yes

:[Statement:] Massive stars often collapse into them
:[Black hole:] Yes
:[Regular hole:] No

:[Statement:] Explored by humans in famous sci-fi stories
:[Black hole:] Yes
:[Regular hole:] Yes

:[Statement:] Fatal to get a big one in your body
:[Black hole:] Yes
:[Regular hole:] Yes

:[Statement:] Some of them are the mouths of wormholes
:[Black hole:] Maybe
:[Regular hole:] Yes

:[Statement:] Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne argued that any information that falls into them is lost forever
:[Black hole:] Yes
:[Regular hole:] No

:[Statement:] Commonly inhabited by meerkats
:[Black hole:] Undetermined
:[Regular hole:] Yes

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

301: Limerick

2025-05-12T17:50:23Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 301
| date = August 10, 2007
| title = Limerick
| image = limerick.png
| titletext = Fun game: try to post a YouTube comment so stupid that people realize you must be joking. (Hint: this is impossible)
}}

==Explanation==

A {{w|limerick (poetry)|limerick}} is a well-known type of poem that is usually humorous or bawdy. Technically, a limerick is primarily [http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/meter.html anapestic trimeter]: each line contains three "feet," each foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. The rhyme scheme is AABBA: the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme, as do the shorter third and fourth lines. Almost anyone can instantly recognize a limerick after hearing the first line.

{{w|Slashdot}} is a venerable techie site. On many sites, the user base can vote comments "up" or "down," but at Slashdot, only moderators (these are randomly drawn from the pool of registered users) may up or down vote comments, and the moderator may select a reason for their up or down vote. Instead of a simple +1, a comment may be voted +1 (Funny). Similarly, instead of -1, a comment may be voted -1 (Off-topic). +5 is the maximum positive score. A comment rated +5 (Insightful) has been upvoted at least 5 times, and has a plurality of "Insightful" votes.

[[Cueball]]'s limerick says that he does not like Slashdot anymore, because his sarcastic comments are being treated as "insightful" by the very people he's being sarcastic to.

The title text refers to the notoriously [[202|awful comments on YouTube]], many of which are so idiotic that they're interpreted as jokes.

In both cases, [[Randall]] is invoking {{w|Poe's Law}}. Both sites have become so full of extremes that you can no longer mock the extremists without looking like a sincere extremist yourself.

301, the number of this comic, is also a number often associated with YouTube. At the time this comic was published, view counts on YouTube videos would often freeze at 301, as YouTube would switch between view-counting algorithms when the number of views exceeded 300. Therefore, the comic number itself may be a reference to the title text.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sits at a computer, typing.]
:Cueball (typing): I used to find slashdot delightful,
:Cueball (typing): but my feelings of late are more spiteful;
:Cueball (typing): my comments sarcastic
:Cueball (typing): the iconoclastic
:Cueball (typing): keep modding to plus five (Insightful).

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

1179: ISO 8601

2025-05-12T17:17:00Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1179
| date = February 27, 2013
| title = ISO 8601
| image = iso_8601.png
| titletext = ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|A table is not needed here, use a list instead. See how at [[explain xkcd:Editor FAQ#table]].}}
When abbreviating the date into numerical form, {{w|Date format by country|various areas of the world}} tend to list the year, month, and day in different orders (as well as with different delimiting symbols), which can cause confusion particularly when the day value is 12 or lower allowing it to be easily interpreted as the month and vice versa. As a {{w|public service announcement}}, this comic states that there is in fact one international standard for writing numeric dates, set by the {{w|International Organization for Standardization}} in its {{w|ISO 8601}} standard: YYYY-MM-DD.

The comic then proceeds to list several discouraged ways of writing out the date of the comic's publication, as they do not match the standard. It begins with several commonly used ones in countries around the world but then begins to list increasingly uncommon ways, ranging from strange (Roman numerals) to quirky (binary, Unix time) to essentially impossible (painting the numbers onto a black cat).

The title text provides a perfect example of the kind of ambiguity that can arise when non-standard formats are used. The ISO standard was in fact published on 1988-06-05 and amended on 2004-12-01. This is mentioned in the title text in MM/DD/YY format; however, there is no way to naturally figure this out, particularly with the second date.

With the year truncated to two digits and all three numbers at 12 or lower, the date referring to December 1, 2004 (the digits pairs 12, 01 and 04) has a number of misinterpretations. Usually 12<sup>th</sup> Jan '04 (if written as US-style but read as European, or vice-versa) but with ISO-influenced "YY MM DD" ordering as one side or other of the misunderstanding it can easily become the 12<sup>th</sup> day of April 2001, the 4<sup>th</sup> day of December 2001 and the 4<sup>th</sup> of January 2012. It takes two such communication errors to 'become' the 1<sup>st</sup> day of April 2012.

Date formats were again the subject in [[1340: Unique Date]] and [[2562: Formatting Meeting]].

The other mentioned formats are:

{| class=wikitable
! Date !! Explanation
|-
| 02/27/2013
| MM/DD/YYYY, used mostly in the [https://www.trustedtranslations.com/blog/how-are-dates-written-in-different-countries United States, Belize, and Micronesia].
|-
| 02/27/13
| MM/DD/YY, same as above but with the year shortened to two digits.
|-
| 27/02/2013
| DD/MM/YYYY, used variously in South America, Canada ({{w|Date_and_time_notation_in_Canada|officially uses ISO 8601}}), Australia, New Zealand, and much of Europe.
|-
| 27/02/13
| DD/MM/YY, same as above but with the year shortened to two digits.
|-
| 20130227
| YYYYMMDD, same as ISO 8601 without delimiting punctuation. Allowed by the standard. Technically not ambiguous but is hard to read as a date at first glance.
|-
| 2013.02.27
| YYYY.MM.DD, used in Japan, South Korea, and Hungary. Same as ISO 8601 except with different punctuation.
|-
| 27.02.13
| DD.MM.YY, used in Germany, Russia, and others.
|-
| 27-02-13
| DD-MM-YY, used in Denmark, Netherlands, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and others.
|-
| 27.2.13
| D.M.YY. It is common in several areas to drop a leading zero in the month and day slots when possible.
|-
| 2013. II. 27.
| YYYY. MM. DD., with month as {{w|Roman numerals}}, used in Hungary. In this format, February and November are prone to be confused with each other: "II" vs. "11".<br/>Similar formats with the opposite ordering (27. II. 2013) existed historically in various European countries like France, Germany, and Italy.
|-
| <sup>27</sup>⁄<sub>2</sub>-13
| <sup>D</sup>⁄<sub>M</sub>-YY, traditional format in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden
|-
| 2013.158904109
| Year and decimal fraction of year. 0.158904109 is a decimal approximation of 58/365, with February 27 being the 58th day of the year. This format may be easier to read for computers/programs in some contexts, but is difficult for humans to interpret.
|-
| MMXIII-II-XXVII
| The ISO 8601 standard but written in Roman numerals. Never used as a traditional standard anywhere as it is hard to read, parse, and interpret for no benefit.
|-
| MMXIII <sup>LVII</sup>⁄<sub>CCCLXV</sub>
| Year followed by its partial fraction 57/365, all in Roman numerals. Equally useless as the above. As a note, apparently this 'standard' is different from the decimal fraction two rows above, as the decimal fraction notation uses the ''end'' of the day (first day of the year is 1/365 while the last is 365/365), while this uses the ''beginning'' (first day is 0/365 and last is 364/365).
|-
| 1330300800
| {{w|Unix time|UNIX Timestamp}}, a standard method of storing absolute time in many computer systems and defined as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 on 1970-01-01 (UTC). The Unix time listed here appears to mistakenly be for '''2012'''-02-27, which is also mentioned by [[Randall]] in the original transcript. The Unix Timestamp for 2013-02-27 would be 1361923200.
|-
| ((3+3)×(111+1)-1)×3/3-1/3<sup>3</sup>
| A useless format where the numbers 2013, 2, and 27 written as needlessly long arithmetic expressions using just the digits 1 and 3. For additional confusion, the values are delimited by slashes, enabling confusion with the fraction bar. (If evaluated literally, the entire expression evaluates to 670.963, or 671 minus one twenty-seventh.)
|-
| <span style="position:absolute;">   2</span><span style="position:absolute;">  27</span>2013
| A nearly impossible to read date "format" that can be considered a parody "compromise" between different formats: rather than argue about the order in which the year, month, and day should be, they are simply all written on top of each other. As a "bonus", there is also no arguing over which separator character to use.
|-
| 10/11011/1101
| The US MM/DD/YY format in {{w|Binary number|binary}}, corresponding to 2/27/13. Never used for obvious reasons.
|-
| 02/27/20/13
| MM/DD/CC/YY, where CC stands for century. This format is never used. Note that while months and days count starting from 1, centuries and years in this format count from 0 for extra confusion. But the CC value is widely used on many operating systems to distinguish between the 20th and 21st century, represented by the values "19" and "20" because 1950 belongs to the 20th century.
|-
| <table style="display: inline-table; line-height: 0.6em; align: middle; text-size-adjust: none;"><tr style="font-size:7pt; text-align: center"><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td></td></tr><tr style="text-align: center"><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>7</td></tr><tr style="font-size:7pt; text-align: center"><td>5</td><td></td><td>67</td><td></td><td>8</td></tr></table>
| An obfuscated format where the small numbers indicate the positions where the respective large digits should be placed. In this reading, 0 is used at positions 2 and 5, 1 is used on position 3, etc. Coincidentally or not, positions 1 to 4 (the year) being all placed above their digits and 5 to 8 (month and day) below; the result being 20130227
|-
| [A hissing black cat with "2-27-13" painted on it]
| In Western cultures, black cats and the number 13 are associated with bad luck. The cat might also just be angry that someone covered them in paint. Or maybe this is really the correct way.
|}

==Transcript==
:Public Service Announcement:

:Our different ways of writing dates as numbers can lead to online confusion. That's why in 1988 ISO set a global standard numeric date format. This is '''''the''''' correct way to write numeric dates:

::2013-02-27

:The following formats are therefore discouraged:
:*02/27/2013
:*02/27/13
:*27/02/2013
:*27/02/13
:*20130227
:*2013.02.27
:*27.02.13
:*27-02-13
:*27.2.13
:*2013. II. 27.
:*<sup>27</sup>⁄<sub>2</sub>-13
:*2013.158904109
:*MMXIII-II-XXVII
:*MMXIII <sup>LVII</sup>⁄<sub>CCCLXV</sub>
:*1330300800
:*((3+3)×(111+1)-1)×3/3-1/3<sup>3</sup>
:*<span style="position:absolute;">   2</span><span style="position:absolute;">  27</span>2013 [the numbers 2013, 02, and 27 written overlapping each other]
:*10/11011/1101
:*02/27/20/13
:*<sup><sup>2</sup></sup>0<sub><sub>5</sub></sub><sup><sup>3</sup></sup>1<sup><sup>1</sup></sup>2<sub><sub>67</sub></sub><sup><sup>4</sup></sup>37<sub><sub>8</sub></sub>
:*[A black cat with 2-27-13 scrawled across their body in dripping white paint.]
:**Cat: ''Hissss''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Calendar]]
[[Category:Binary]]
[[Category:Public service announcement]]

1179: ISO 8601

2025-05-12T17:14:06Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1179
| date = February 27, 2013
| title = ISO 8601
| image = iso_8601.png
| titletext = ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|A table is not needed here, use a list instead. See how at [[explain xkcd:Editor FAQ#table]].}}
When abbreviating the date into numerical form, {{w|Date format by country|various areas of the world}} tend to list the year, month, and day in different orders (as well as with different delimiting symbols), which can cause confusion particularly when the day value is 12 or lower allowing it to be easily interpreted as the month and vice versa. As a {{w|public service announcement}}, this comic states that there is in fact one international standard for writing numeric dates, set by the {{w|International Organization for Standardization}} in its {{w|ISO 8601}} standard: YYYY-MM-DD.

The comic then proceeds to list several discouraged ways of writing out the date of the comic's publication, as they do not match the standard. It begins with several commonly used ones in countries around the world but then begins to list increasingly uncommon ways, ranging from strange (Roman numerals) to quirky (binary, Unix time) to essentially impossible (painting the numbers onto a black cat).

The title text provides a perfect example of the kind of ambiguity that can arise when non-standard formats are used. The ISO standard was in fact published on 1988-06-05 and amended on 2004-12-01. This is mentioned in the title text in MM/DD/YY format; however, there is no way to naturally figure this out, particularly with the second date.

With the year truncated to two digits and all three numbers at 12 or lower, the date referring to December 1, 2004 (the digits pairs 12, 01 and 04) has a number of misinterpretations. Usually 12<sup>th</sup> Jan '04 (if written as US-style but read as European, or vice-versa) but with ISO-influenced "YY MM DD" ordering as one side or other of the misunderstanding it can easily become the 12<sup>th</sup> day of April 2001, the 4<sup>th</sup> day of December 2001 and the 4<sup>th</sup> of January 2012. It takes two such communication errors to 'become' the 1<sup>st</sup> day of April 2012.

Date formats were again the subject in [[1340: Unique Date]] and [[2562: Formatting Meeting]].

The other mentioned formats are:

{| class=wikitable
! Date !! Explanation
|-
| 02/27/2013
| MM/DD/YYYY, used mostly in the [https://www.trustedtranslations.com/blog/how-are-dates-written-in-different-countries United States, Belize, and Micronesia].
|-
| 02/27/13
| MM/DD/YY, same as above but with the year shortened to two digits.
|-
| 27/02/2013
| DD/MM/YYYY, used variously in South America, Canada ({{w|Date_and_time_notation_in_Canada|officially uses ISO 8601}}), Australia, New Zealand, and much of Europe.
|-
| 27/02/13
| DD/MM/YY, same as above but with the year shortened to two digits.
|-
| 20130227
| YYYYMMDD, same as ISO 8601 without delimiting punctuation. Allowed by the standard. Technically not ambiguous but is hard to read as a date at first glance.
|-
| 2013.02.27
| YYYY.MM.DD, used in Japan, South Korea, and Hungary. Same as ISO 8601 except with different punctuation.
|-
| 27.02.13
| DD.MM.YY, used in Germany, Russia, and others.
|-
| 27-02-13
| DD-MM-YY, used in Denmark, Netherlands, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and others.
|-
| 27.2.13
| D.M.YY. It is common in several areas to drop a leading zero in the month and day slots when possible.
|-
| 2013. II. 27.
| YYYY. MM. DD., with month as {{w|Roman numerals}}, used in Hungary. In this format, February and November are prone to be confused with each other: "II" vs. "11".<br/>Similar formats with the opposite ordering (27. II. 2013) existed historically in various European countries like France, Germany, and Italy.
|-
| <sup>27</sup>⁄<sub>2</sub>-13
| <sup>D</sup>⁄<sub>M</sub>-YY, traditional format in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden
|-
| 2013.158904109
| Year and decimal fraction of year. 0.158904109 is a decimal approximation of 58/365, with February 27 being the 58th day of the year. This format may be easier to read for computers/programs in some contexts, but is difficult for humans to interpret.
|-
| MMXIII-II-XXVII
| The ISO 8601 standard but written in Roman numerals. Never used as a traditional standard anywhere as it is hard to read, parse, and interpret for no benefit.
|-
| MMXIII <sup>LVII</sup>⁄<sub>CCCLXV</sub>
| Year followed by its partial fraction 57/365, all in Roman numerals. Equally useless as the above. As a note, apparently this 'standard' is different from the decimal fraction two rows above, as the decimal fraction notation uses the ''end'' of the day (first day of the year is 1/365 while the last is 365/365), while this uses the ''beginning'' (first day is 0/365 and last is 364/365).
|-
| 1330300800
| {{w|Unix time|UNIX Timestamp}}, a standard method of storing absolute time in many computer systems and defined as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 on 1970-01-01 (UTC). The Unix time listed here appears to mistakenly be for '''2012'''-02-27, which is also mentioned by [[Randall]] in the original transcript. The Unix Timestamp for 2013-02-27 would be 1361923200.
|-
| ((3+3)×(111+1)-1)×3/3-1/3<sup>3</sup>
| A useless format where the numbers 2013, 2, and 27 written as needlessly long arithmetic expressions using just the digits 1 and 3. For additional confusion, the values are delimited by slashes, enabling confusion with the fraction bar. (If evaluated literally, the entire expression evaluates to 670.963, or 671 minus one twenty-seventh.)
|-
| <span style="position:absolute;">   2</span><span style="position:absolute;">  27</span>2013
| A nearly impossible to read date "format" that can be considered a parody "compromise" between different formats: rather than argue about the order in which the year, month, and day should be, they are simply all written on top of each other. As a "bonus", there is also no arguing over which separator character to use.
|-
| 10/11011/1101
| The US mm/dd/yy format in {{w|Binary number|binary}}, corresponding to 2/27/13. Never used for obvious reasons.
|-
| 02/27/20/13
| MM/DD/CC/YY, where CC stands for century. This format is never used. Note that while months and days count starting from 1, centuries and years in this format count from 0 for extra confusion. But the CC value is widely used on many operating systems to distinguish between the 20th and 21st century, represented by the values "19" and "20" because 1950 belongs to the 20th century.
|-
| <table style="display: inline-table; line-height: 0.6em; align: middle; text-size-adjust: none;"><tr style="font-size:7pt; text-align: center"><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td></td></tr><tr style="text-align: center"><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>7</td></tr><tr style="font-size:7pt; text-align: center"><td>5</td><td></td><td>67</td><td></td><td>8</td></tr></table>
| An obfuscated format where the small numbers indicate the positions where the respective large digits should be placed. In this reading, 0 is used at positions 2 and 5, 1 is used on position 3, etc. Coincidentally or not, positions 1 to 4 (the year) being all placed above their digits and 5 to 8 (month and day) below; the result being 20130227
|-
| [A hissing black cat with "2-27-13" painted on it]
| In Western cultures, black cats and the number 13 are associated with bad luck. The cat might also just be angry that someone covered them in paint. Or maybe this is really the correct way.
|}

==Transcript==
:Public Service Announcement:

:Our different ways of writing dates as numbers can lead to online confusion. That's why in 1988 ISO set a global standard numeric date format. This is '''''the''''' correct way to write numeric dates:

::2013-02-27

:The following formats are therefore discouraged:
:*02/27/2013
:*02/27/13
:*27/02/2013
:*27/02/13
:*20130227
:*2013.02.27
:*27.02.13
:*27-02-13
:*27.2.13
:*2013. II. 27.
:*<sup>27</sup>⁄<sub>2</sub>-13
:*2013.158904109
:*MMXIII-II-XXVII
:*MMXIII <sup>LVII</sup>⁄<sub>CCCLXV</sub>
:*1330300800
:*((3+3)×(111+1)-1)×3/3-1/3<sup>3</sup>
:*<span style="position:absolute;">   2</span><span style="position:absolute;">  27</span>2013 [the numbers 2013, 02, and 27 written overlapping each other]
:*10/11011/1101
:*02/27/20/13
:*<sup><sup>2</sup></sup>0<sub><sub>5</sub></sub><sup><sup>3</sup></sup>1<sup><sup>1</sup></sup>2<sub><sub>67</sub></sub><sup><sup>4</sup></sup>37<sub><sub>8</sub></sub>
:*[A black cat with 2-27-13 scrawled across their body in dripping white paint.]
:**Cat: ''Hissss''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Calendar]]
[[Category:Binary]]
[[Category:Public service announcement]]

1625: Substitutions 2

2025-04-28T15:22:27Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1625
| date = January 4, 2016
| title = Substitutions 2
| image = substitutions_2.png
| titletext = Within a few minutes, our roads will be full of uncontrollably-swerving cars and our skies full of Amazon delivery dogs.
}}

==Explanation==
This is the second comic in the [[:Category:Substitution series|Substitution series]] where [[Randall]] has suggested substitutions that will make reading the news more fun. But there have been several [[:Category:Substitutions|comics using substitutions]] both before and after these ones.

This is the full series:
*[[1288: Substitutions]]
*[[1625: Substitutions 2]]
*[[1679: Substitutions 3]]

In this table, [[Randall]] suggests substituting several common phrases in generic news with similar or related phrases that mean something different for comical effect. Some of the replacements are {{w|synonyms}}, some are {{w|antonyms}} and some are plain different concepts; and, even though they would (most of the time) make a grammatically correct sentence, the resulting idea would, however, often sound absurd or bizarre.

Some of the examples might, also, mock the fact that many news contradict the actual facts or obvious results of a situation. For example, "[influential person] vows to do good to the world" would be replaced with a more usual fact "[influential person] probably won't do good to the world" - see [[#Example of sentences|example]] below with North Korean leader.

The title text is an example of how the closing sentence of a given article or report might sound after using the substitutions in the comic.
:Before substitutions: Within a few '''years''', our roads will be full of '''self-driving''' cars and our skies full of Amazon delivery '''drones'''.
:After substitutions: Within a few '''minutes''', our roads will be full of '''uncontrollably-swerving''' cars and our skies full of Amazon delivery '''dogs'''.
The flying dogs could be a reference to [[1614: Kites]]. Was the first of two in a row where Amazon is mentioned in the title text (next [[1626: Judgment Day]]).

===Table of substitutions===
*In this table the difference between the original and the substituted word (and the change to the sentences) will be explained.
**[[#Example of sentences|Example of sentences]] are given below.
:{| class="wikitable"
! Original
! Substitution
! Explanation
|-
| {{w|Debate}}
| [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dance-off Dance-off]
| A 'debate' is often used between political candidates, to give the voters a chance to decide who they will vote for. One of the candidates is often called the winner of such a debate by some degree or other of consensus. Randall is indicating that they could just as well have performed a 'dance-off' where they would dance until one of them danced better than the other, as adjudged by the viewing crowd or a panel of judges. Such a dance-off is often seen in [http://gameshows.wikia.com/wiki/Family_Dance_Off TV-shows] or [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3024964/combined films] etc.
|-
| {{w|Autonomous car|Self driving}}
| Uncontrollably [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/swerving swerving]
| 'Self driving' cars were also mentioned in [[1623: 2016 Conversation Guide]], just two comics before this one where it he incorrectly predicted they would become mass-market surprisingly soon ("within a few minutes", according to the title text here). Randall pokes fun with the mental image of self-driving cars running completely out of control and swerving dangerously out of their lanes. By definition, a self-driving car does turn out of an occupant's control. Self-driving cars are a [[:Category:Self-driving cars|recurring topic]] on xkcd.
|-
| {{w|Poll}}
| {{w|Psychic reading}}
| A 'poll', especially regarding political issues, refers to {{w|opinion poll|opinion}} or {{w|exit poll|exit}} polls. These tend to ask a carefully selected sample (for either balance or an intended ''inbalance'', depending on the poll's neutrality) their opinions in order to extrapolate the global consensus, e.g. the future result of an {{w|election}}. This substitution is Randall's way of saying that they could just as well have used a {{w|psychic}} person to predict the result. This would likely be viewed as a mockery by the skeptic xkcd readership, with psychics having a reputation of either responding with vague guesses or providing an answer that pleases those asking the question. Randall may believe polls are like that.
|-
| {{w|Candidate}}
| {{w|Airbender}}
| A 'candidate' usually refers to a political person who represents a certain political party in an election. He would then be that party's candidate, for instance for a presidential election. 'Airbender' refers to the show {{w|Avatar: The Last Airbender}}, where there are magical martial-artists mostly identified as waterbenders, earthbenders, firebenders and airbenders, depending upon which 'element' their abilities have power over.
|-
| {{w|Unmanned aerial vehicle|Drone}}
| {{w|Dog}}
| Could refer to {{w|Drone (bee)|male bees}} or {{w|Drone (sound)|drone music}}, but as used in the title text it refers to unmanned aerial vehicles. {{w|Amazon.com|Amazon}} was hoping to use small drones to deliver parcels, and Randall has referred to these before (see [[1523: Microdrones]]). In the 2010s, drones were popularized as toys and professional camera platform, but the term also became closely associated with military drones that observe (and, more recently, kill) enemy forces without risking any military personnel. Replacing this word with "dog" might make reports of drone implementations more pleasant and cute.
|-
| {{w|Vows}} to
| [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/probably Probably] won't
| Vowing to do something means that you really promise to do this. But when politicians vow something, for instance, it seems to often end up becoming a forgotten promise. Hence the antonym substitution which means the opposite. From ''really will'' to ''probably won't''.
|-
| {{w|Fugitive#Terminology|At large}} (or {{w|At-large}})
| Very [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/large large]
| A criminal that is on the run is said to be at large (no hyphen). At-large (with hyphen) is a political designation for members of a governing body who are elected or appointed to represent the whole membership of the body, rather than a subset of that membership. Neither of these have anything to do with the physical size or "largeness" of the subject.
|-
| [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/successfully Successfully]
| [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suddenly Suddenly]
| The two words have nothing much to do with each other except that they both begin with ''su'' and they are both adverbs. This change would make entrepreneurial endeavours, military victories and record achievements sound like unintended, spontaneous surprises.
|-
| [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/expand Expands]
| [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/physical Physically] expands
| 'Expands' can refer to a physical expansion, or inflation, but in news reports it is often used more abstractly to refer to the growth of political power, project reach, budgets, etc. It often makes little sense to physically expand these abstract things, but it can sometimes produce an amusing visual. Incidentally, if iterated, this substitution would result in an infinite string of of "physically"s prior to any "expand."
|-
| {{w|First degree|First }} /{{w|second degree|second }} /{{w|third degree|third-degree}}
| [http://da.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Friggin Friggin'] awful
| First, second and third-degree can be used in many context. {{w|Burn}}s {{w|Burn#Signs_and_symptoms|range from first to fourth degree}}, where higher is worse. {{w|Murder}} charges also range in from first to third degree in the US; here first-degree murder is the worst. Regardless, all these things are "friggin' awful" to experience, ''frigging'' being a {{w|minced oath}} on ''fucking'' (see [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/frigging#English Wiktionary]). First and second degree are also used in the context of {{w|undergraduate degree}}s, which is less bad.{{cn}}
|-
| An [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unknown unknown] number
| Like {{w|100 (number)|hundreds}}
| In the news, an unknown number mostly means 'probably not zero.' It is often used in phrases like "an unknown number of assailants broke into a house in Munroe Heights," or "an unknown number of people are missing" after a calamity of some sort. "Like hundreds" does give a different flavor.
|-
| {{w|Front-runner |Front runner}}
| {{w|Blade Runner}}
| In American politics, a 'front-runner' is a leader in an electoral race. It can also mean the front-runner in athletic events (the namesake of the political concept). Here it is generally clear who the front-runner is, whilst the political front-runner is sometimes less clear or a more subjective viewpoint. A 'blade runner' is a person who retires (kills) rogue cyborgs in the movie Blade Runner, where {{w|Harrison Ford}} plays the lead Blade Runner.
|-
| {{w|Globe|Global}}
| {{w|Spherical}}
| ''Global'' typically refers to events or processes relevant to the entire planet Earth, such as {{w|global warming}} or {{w|World war|global warfare}}. Since a globe is any spherical object, this substitution makes more sense than most, although talking about "the effect of spherical warming" would probably not get {{w|Greenpeace}} into action. Reports of a spherical virus outbreak might be confusing.
|-
| {{w|Years}}
| {{w|Minute|Minutes}}
| Changing the units drastically from years to minutes would make many sentences silly, as there are 525,600 minutes in the typical year. Prisoners could be convicted to 10 minutes in jail, and major climate goals will be reached (or breached) in 20 minutes.
|-
| {{w|Minute|Minutes}}
| {{w|Years}}
| Same as above but reversed: a racecar might make a trip around a track in just 7 years. One lesson at school lasted 50 years.
|-
| No {{w|Indication| indication}}
| Lots of {{w|Sign (disambiguation)|signs}}
| In science, a verdict of there being "no indication" that a hypothesis is correct does not disprove that hypothesis, it merely does not support it. This is often seized upon by those trying to promote a pseudoscience, in that their chosen idea "has not been proven to be wrong." Meanwhile, hearsay and bad experimental practices are often cited as "proof". A crackpot idea may thus be unsupported by valid science (there is "no indication" of its truth) and yet its supporters insist upon there being "lots of signs" that it is true, selectively using only ambiguous results that (to them) lend credence to it being a fact. The substitution of "no indication" with "lots of signs" thus automatically converts the expected conservative and cautious stance on some disputed issue or other into the weasel-words phrasing that the issue's supporters may start using in their own propaganda.
|-
| [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/urge Urged]{{w|Self-control|restraint}} by
| {{w|Alcohol intoxication|Drunkenly}} [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/egg_on egged on]
| If someone urges someone else to restrain themselves, then they are trying to make them exercise self-control and discourage them from starting or continuing a possibly foolish act. In this substitution we have the exact opposite, as to egg someone on to do something is actively encourage an act to happen, or continue. Urging restraint can sometimes have an encouraging effect, be it when an adolescent want to prove their courage, or when an organization loathes a government.
|-
| {{w|Horsepower}}
| {{w|Ton|Tons}} of {{w|horsemeat}}
| Cars power is measured in horsepower (hp), a typical family car having like hundred hp, being derived from the nominal amount of power that a suitably-harnessed horse could have provided. In cars, this has nothing to do with horse meat, of any quantity, but here a mechanical (or electrical) engine is envisaged as a literally horse-powered device.
|}

===Example of sentences===
*Here follows some real examples with links to the news/text:
**Words from the list, and the replacement words, are highlighted with '''bold''' font.
**All words are included at least once, and the list is sort of sorted after the order the words appear in the comic, but most sentences have more than one word from the list, on purpose!

*[http://observer.com/2015/12/fifth-republican-debate-where-each-candidate-excelled-and-faltered/ Original sentence]: Fifth Republican '''debate''': where each '''candidate''' excelled and faltered
:Modified sentence: Fifth Republican '''dance-off''': where each '''airbender''' excelled and faltered

*[http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1101667_1000-horsepower-self-driving-electric-faraday-future-concept-leaked Original sentence]: 1,000-'''Horsepower''' '''Self-Driving''' Electric Faraday Future Concept Leaked?
:Modified sentence: 1,000-'''Tons of Horsemeat''' '''Uncontrollably Swerving''' Electric Faraday Future Concept Leaked?

*[http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/18/poll-donald-trump-remains-clear-gop-frontrunner-cnn-debate/ Original sentence]: A new Morning Consult '''poll''' shows real estate mogul Donald Trump remains on top as the GOP '''frontrunner''' following Tuesday’s '''debate'''.
:Modified sentence: A new Morning Consult '''psychic reading''' shows real estate mogul Donald Trump remains on top as the GOP '''blade runner''' following Tuesday’s '''dance-off'''.

*[http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/01/asia-pacific/new-years-address-north-koreas-kim-vows-raise-living-standards/#.VouQZvnhBlZ Original sentence]: North Korea’s Kim '''vows to''' raise living standards
:Modified sentence: North Korea’s Kim '''probably won't''' raise living standards

*[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3180163/Murderers-rapists-1-153-criminals-large-recalled-prison-30-years.html Original sentence]: Murderers and rapists among 1,153 criminals still '''at large''' after being recalled to prison over the last 30 '''years'''
:Modified sentence: Murderers and rapists among 1,153 criminals still '''very large''' after being recalled to prison over the last 30 '''minutes'''

*[http://www.dawn.com/news/1169341 Original sentence]: Pakistan '''successfully''' tests first indigenous armed '''drone'''
:Modified sentence: Pakistan '''suddenly''' tests first indigenous armed '''dog'''

*[http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-expands-gun-controls-in-executive-moves-1452012973 Original sentence]: Obama '''Expands''' Gun Controls in Executive Moves
:Modified sentence: Obama '''Physically Expands''' Gun Controls in Executive Moves

*[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3578054/ Original sentence]: There was '''no indication''' of '''first degree''' familial relationships in the analyzed dataset.
:Modified sentence: There was '''lots of signs''' of '''friggin' awful''' familial relationships in the analyzed dataset
*[http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/2003/06/22/stories/2003062202101200.htm Original sentence]: …rescue crews continued to collect bodies and interview survivors, including '''an unknown number''' of wounded languishing in homes and hospitals with '''third degree''' burns
:Modified sentence: …rescue crews continued to collect bodies and interview survivors, including '''like hundreds''' of wounded languishing in homes and hospitals with '''friggin' awful''' burns

*[http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/09/politics/azealia-banks-donald-trump-idiot/ Original sentence]: The Republican presidential '''front-runner''' faces a '''global''' firestorm
:Modified sentence: The Republican presidential '''blade runner''' faces a '''spherical''' firestorm

*[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-georgia-ossetia-obama-idUSWBT00953020080808 Original sentence]: U.S. presidential '''candidate''' Barack Obama on Friday '''urged restraint by''' both Russia and Georgia in the conflict over the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia.
:Modified sentence: U.S. presidential '''airbender''' Barack Obama on Friday '''drunkenly egged on''' both Russia and Georgia in the conflict over the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia.

*[http://phors.locost7.info/phors06.htm Original sentence]: Video: 52-'''Horsepower''' Citroen AX Laps Nurburgring In Under 10 '''Minutes'''
:Modified sentence: Video: 52-'''Tons of horsemeat''' Citroen AX Laps Nurburgring In Under 10 '''Years'''

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:More
:'''Substitutions'''
:That make reading the news more fun

:[A table of words/sentences on the left that change in to those on the left. Between each set of words there is a gray arrow pointing from right.]
:{|
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Debate
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Dance-off
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Self driving
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Uncontrollably swerving
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Poll
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Psychic reading
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Candidate
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Airbender
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Drone
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Dog
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Vows to
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Probably won't
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | At large
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Very large
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Successfully
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Suddenly
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Expands
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Physically expands
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | First/second/third-degree
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Friggin' awful
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | An unknown number
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Like hundreds
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Front runner
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Blade runner
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Global
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Spherical
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Years
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Minutes
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Minutes
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Years
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | No indication
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Lots of signs
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Urged restraint by
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Drunkenly egged on
|-
| style="text-align:right;" | Horsepower
| <font color="gray">➜</font>
| Tons of horsemeat
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Substitution series]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Substitutions]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Self-driving cars]]

1079: United Shapes

2025-03-24T17:40:43Z

Cheesesentience: /* Objects */

{{comic
| number = 1079
| date = July 9, 2012
| title = United Shapes
| image = united_shapes.png
| imagesize = 800px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = That eggplant is in something of a flaccid state.
}}
A larger version of this comic is available [http://xkcd.com/1079/large/ here].

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Need to finish explaining all the states in [[#Objects]]. Some are missing an explanation.}}In this comic, each state of the United States of America has been filled-in with an object of similar shape. Several years later Randall made a new map of the US mainland [[1653: United States Map]], where he shuffled the positions of the states but filled out the outline. Also in this map Michigan has been split into two separate parts. (Here it is the mitten and the eagle). This comic could also be a reference to {{w|Giuseppe Arcimboldo}}'s portraits, which were composed of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, books, and fish.

Very few, if any, of the shapes used are stereotypes of the state; they are merely objects that look like the state. Some of the objects are those which the states are widely known to resemble. For example, Michigan is represented by a mitten and an eagle, and a pot with handle takes the place of Oklahoma (with the panhandle region of the state filled with a literal handle). Others, however, are more creative. Few would have likely pictured Texas as a dog or Alaska as a bear with a jet pack and laser gun. There are several incredibly simple objects filling some states. Kentucky is filled by a cloud, which conceivably could have been used for any state, and Wyoming, one of the nearly rectangular states, is simply an envelope. There are three pairs of states that are related. Georgia and Missouri each contain an image of the other, drawing attention to their similar shapes, North and South Dakota are the top and bottom halves of a {{w|guitar amplifier}} {{w|speaker cabinet}}, and Alabama and Mississippi are {{w|moai}} facing in opposite directions.

Colorado contains what looks like a Wikipedia article. [http://xkcd.com/1079/colorado/ A close-up of the fake article is provided.] The following references are made in the Colorado article:

*The pronunciation is not that for Colorado, but for {{w|Eyjafjallajökull}}, a volcano in Iceland that erupted in April 2010. There is a missing [[859#Trivia|close parenthesis]].
*The way it has a demilitarized zone towards Wyoming resembles {{W|North Korea}} and {{W|South Korea}}.
*Eleven dimensions refers to {{w|string theory}}.
*A {{w|wormhole}} is a theoretical relative of the {{w|black hole}}. This is a reference to the television series {{w|Stargate SG-1}} where a device capable of creating wormholes is located in the {{w|Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker}} in Colorado.
*A {{w|Horcrux}} is a type of magical object in the world of {{W|Harry Potter}} that prevents the creator of it from passing on. They may die, but their soul remains to be resurrected by another wizard
*The radiation zones around Longmont are caused by {{w|Radioactive contamination from the Rocky Flats Plant|radioactive contamination from the Rocky Flats Plant}}.
*The fake motto ''Si parare possis, vivere septem'' can be roughly translated as "With preparation, survival is possible for over a week."

New Mexico, according to [https://xkcd.com/1079/info.0.json official transcript], is "A liquid container labeled for something of unusual and silly danger". The labeling is upside down and it refers to the nuclear testing facility White Sands Missile Range located in New Mexico for the nuclear bomb. The joke is that it presents the white sand itself as extremely hazardous. The phrase "contains chemicals known only to the state of Nevada" may be a reference to the nuclear weapons testing that occurred in Nevada (although in that case, it's not really the ''state'' of Nevada that knows those chemicals, but rather the {{w|Nevada Test Site}}, home of Area 51 ''et al''), and is also a reference to California's {{w|1986 California Proposition 65|Proposition 65}} warning label, "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm."
:This end up
:Property of White Sands Missile Range
:??? [Followed by a {{w|NFPA 704}} Diamond with all divisions at severe risk, and a radiation symbol in the special notice division]
:Contains White Sand
:FLAMMABLE
:Warning:
:This product contains chemicals known
:only to the state of Nevada.
:Contents under pressure from parents
:If swallowed, induce labor
:56 fluid ounces
:and 14 other ounces

The title text makes fun of Florida which is sometimes called "The penis of America". Obviously, this penis is somewhat flaccid (not erect). The use of the word "state" is a pun, as it means some particular condition (flaccid state) as well as a political entity (The State of Florida).

==Objects==
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!State!!Contained Picture!!Explanation
|-
|Alabama
|A moai head facing east.
|{{w|Moai}} are Easter Island stone statues.
|-
|Alaska
|A bear with a jet pack and a ray gun.
|The ray gun and {{w|jet pack}} are fixtures of science fiction during the Cold War era, and the Russian Bear is an often-used personification of the country Russia in political cartoonage; the "teddy bear" image may be related to Alaska's former Russian heritage. The USA acquired Alaska from Russia in the Alaska Purchase of 1867 and it became a state in 1959, during the Cold War. The Cold War often featured baseless worries of a potential Russian invasion of Alaska due to their geographical proximity across the Bering Sea and Bering Strait, which persisted through the 1980s; Alaska was the location of a large number of interceptor missiles as part of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars Defense Initiative" intended to shoot down missiles that might be launched from the USSR. The ray gun is pointed across the Bering Strait at Russia, consistent with Alaska's often being described as the "first line of defense" against Russian aggression. The teddy bear is similar in appearance to {{w|Winnie the Pooh}}.
|-
|Arizona
|A refrigerated shelf containing milk, bread, and pastries.
|
|-
|Arkansas
|A measuring cup.
|
|-
|California
|A vacuum.
|An old-fashioned upright vacuum cleaner (lying down to the right), green with a yellow bag.
|-
|Colorado
|The Wikipedia article on Colorado.
|A fake Wikipedia article on Colorado. Below the text as seen in the provided close up:
:[web address:]
::en.wikipedia.org/wiki/colorado
:[Headers]
::Wikipedia
::Article Talk
::Colorado
:[Main article {note that Randall {{859|forgot the closing parentheses}} ')' after the pronunciation}]
::Colorado (Pronounced [ˈeːijaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl̥] is a US State encompassing portions of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains. The region has been inhabited since at least 11,000 BCE, and some archaeological evidence suggest the state – with roughly its current borders – has literally always existed. Colorado is separated from Wyoming by a 28-mile demilitarized zone, and has at times exercised substantial regional power via the installation of puppet governments in neighboring states. Geographically, Colorado is eleven-dimensional, though seven of those dimensions are tightly compacted and difficult to detect in most areas of the state. Colorado is home to the nation's oldest continually-operated wormhole and two of President Lincoln's horcruxes. The wildlife in Colorado is commonly characterized as "erratic", particularly in the radiation zones around Longmont. The State's timber wolf population is largely bipedal; the Park Service has expressed "concern" at their attempts to enroll in
::[Fact box with correct (though black instead of blue) state flag and emblem and fake motto:]
::State of Colorado
::Motto:
::"Si parare possis, vivere septem."
::(With preparation, survival is possible for over a week.)

The Demilitarized Zone is the official name of the border between North Korea and South Korea. It is impossible for the state to have always existed, as that would require the existence of the United States, which was only founded in 1776.

The Motto may be a reference to the very harsh conditions located on especially tall mountains, as the Rocky Mountains run directly through the state. Alternatively, danger may have been introduced via the 'erratic' wildlife and the presence of a wormhole within the state, which would make Colorado nearly uninhabitable.{{cn}}
|-
|Connecticut
|A train conductor's hat.
|
|-
|Delaware
|A meerkat.
|
|-
|Florida
|An eggplant.
|The title text mentions the eggplant being in a flaccid state, which might be a reference to the sexual use of the eggplant emoji.
|-
|Georgia
|Missouri.
|The outline of the state of Missouri, with the {{w|Gateway Arch}} in St. Louis.
|-
|Hawaii
|The island of Hawaii is a snowball. The smaller islands are small bits of snow.
| This may be an ironic reference to the fact that Hawaii is located near the equator and generally receives temperatures far too high to create snow.
|-
|Idaho
|A garden gnome, sitting down.
|
|-
|Illinois
|A gangster with a guitar case, upside down.
|
|-
|Indiana
|The brush of a paintbrush.
|
|-
|Iowa
|A tomato, lettuce, cold cut and cheese sandwich.
|
|-
|Kansas
|A {{w|spinet}} piano.
|
|-
|Kentucky
|A cloud.
|
|-
|Louisiana
|A boot with some gum stuck to the bottom of it.
| In grade schools, Louisiana is often remembered via it's shape, being very similar to a boot.
|-
|Maine
|A Vulcan salute.
|Maine's camp sunshine has had Star Trek related events in the past, including the opportunity to appear in a film.
|-
|Maryland
|A wolf howling to the moon, upside down.
|
|-
|Massachusetts
|An elephant, being ridden by a man, carrying tea.
|Might be a reference to the Boston Tea Party, which occurred in Massachusetts, and the Republican political party. The man seems to be wearing a tricorn hat.
|-
|Michigan
|A mitten for the lower portion, an eagle for the {{w|Upper Peninsula of Michigan}}.
| In grade schools, Michigan is often remembered via it's shape, being very similar to a glove.
|-
|Minnesota
|$160 in $20 USD bills, tied together.
|
|-
|Mississippi
|A moai head facing west.
| This is a mirrored image of Alabama, referencing the fact that the two states appear symmetrical at a glance.
|-
|Missouri
|Georgia.
|The outline of the state of Georgia, with a pair of {{w|Georgia Peach|Georgia peaches}}.
|-
|Montana
|One half of a muffin, sideways.
|
|-
|Nebraska
|A blue VW type 2 with mattresses sticking out the back.
|
|-
|Nevada
|A clothes iron.
|
|-
|New Hampshire
|A tall brick factory building.
| There are many brick mill buildings in Manchester, the largest city in the state.
|-
|New Jersey
|A bent-over old person. He is carrying a cane.
|
|-
|New Mexico
|A liquid container labeled for something of unusual and silly danger.
|A yellow liquid container with upside-down labeling.
::This end up!!
::Property of White Sands Missile Range
::Contains White Sand
:[Written inside a hazardous-materials {{w|NFPA 704|NFPA diamond}} with the ? very large, and the three '4' in the three top part of a diamond shape divided in four these three sections being blue(health), red(flammability), and yellow(instability). The lower part has a radioactive sign on the same grey background as the large rectangle.]
::??? 4 4 4
::Flammable
::Warning
::This product contains chemicals known
::Only to the State of Nevada.
::Contents under pressure from parents
::If swallowed, induce labor
::56 fluid ounces
::and 14 other ounces
::NB - There are several chemicals such as {{w|Pentaborane(9)}}(reacts with water) and {{w|tert-Butyl hydroperoxide|''tert''-Butyl hydroperoxide}}(explosive) which have a 4-4-4 rating, however, a substance that is both 4-4-4 and radioactive is unlikely to be handled in bulk.
This may be a reference to the many nuclear tests conducted In New Mexico during the {{w|Cold War}}.
|-
|New York
|A hybrid transmission with standard manual-style gears and a torque converter sliced in half.
|
|-
|North Carolina
|A bouquet of flowers. They appear similar to {{w|Galium Palustre|marsh bedstraws}}.
|
|-
|North Dakota
|The top half of a guitar amplifier speaker cabinet.
| Possibly a {{w|Randall Amplifiers|Randall}} [https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-49c12/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/12694/26126/apihqruad__00850.1479879391.jpg RD412A] angled 4x12" cabinet, which is similar in appearance and bears [[Randall]]'s name.
|-
|Ohio
|Underwear (Briefs).
|Possibly a reference to ''{{w|Captain Underpants}}'', which takes place in Ohio.
|-
|Oklahoma
|A covered pot, dripping with boil-over.
|Western Oklahoma is often called "{{w|Oklahoma Panhandle|the panhandle}}"; sure enough, this is where the boiling pot's handle fits.
|-
|Oregon
|A locomotive.
|
|-
|Pennsylvania
|A very thick book with a bookmark.
|
|-
|Rhode Island
|The bow half of a boat's hull.
| This is relevant as the state of Rhode Island is known for it's boating industry. An anchor is also located on the {{Flag of Rhode Island|state flag of Rhode Island}}.
|-
|South Carolina
|A slice of pizza.
|
|-
|South Dakota
|The bottom half of guitar amplifier speaker cabinet.
| Possibly a {{w|Randall Amplifiers|Randall}} [https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-49c12/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/12694/26126/apihqruad__00850.1479879391.jpg RD412A] angled 4x12" cabinet, which is similar in appearance and bears [[Randall]]'s name.
|-
|Tennessee
|A number of children's books, placed in a slightly askew pile.
| Possibly a reference to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. The books are {{w|Where's Waldo?}}, {{w|The Wreck of the Zephyr}}, {{w|The Way Things Work}}, Free Fall, {{w|Paddle-to-the-Sea}}, What It Feels Like to Be a Building, and {{w|The Crab with the Golden Claws}}.
|-
|Texas
|A dog sitting in a bowl.
|
|-
|Utah
|An oven.
|
|-
|Vermont
|A microscope, upside down.
|
|-
|Virginia
|A {{w|stegosaurus}}.
|
|-
|Washington
|A whale.
| The Puget Sound is well known for whale watching
|-
|Washington DC
|A star.
|On most maps, capitals are shown as stars. Washington DC is the capital of the United States.
|-
|West Virginia
|A {{w|frog}}.
|
|-
|Wisconsin
|A skull.
|
|-
|Wyoming
|The back side of a white envelope, sealed with red wax, with a black heart next to a signature (lower left corner).

|
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|tables are not welcome here}}
:The '''United Shapes'''
:A map of things states are shaped like
:[Each state has some item wedged to stay inside its borders]

{| class=wikitable
! State
! Official Transcript
! Text
|-
|WA
|whale
|
|-
|MT
|half muffin
|
|-
|ND and SD
|top and bottom halves of an amp
|
|-
|MN
|$160 in $20 USD bills
|
|-
|WI
|skull
|
|-
|MI
|mitten for the lower portion, eagle for the {{w|Upper Peninsula of Michigan}}
|
|-
|NY
|hybrid transmission with standard manual-style gears and a torque converter sliced in half
|
|-
|VT
|microscope, upside down
|
|-
|NH
|tall brick factory building
|
|-
|ME
|Vulcan salute
|
|-
|MA
|elephant, being ridden by a man, carrying tea
|
|-
|CT
|train conductor's hat
|
|-
|RI
|bow half of a boat's hull
|
|-
|OR
|locomotive
|
|-
|ID
|garden gnome, sitting down
|
|-
|WY
|envelope.
|The envelope is marked with a signature, possibly Randall's
|-
|NE
|blue VW type 2 with mattresses sticking out the back
|
|-
|IA
|tomato, lettuce, cold cut and cheese sandwich
|
|-
|IL
|gangster with a guitar case, upside down
|
|-
|IN
|brush of a paintbrush
|
|-
|OH
|underwear (Briefs)
|
|-
|PA
|very thick book with a bookmark
|
|-
|NJ
|bent-over old person
|
|-
|NV
|clothes iron
|
|-
|UT
|oven
|
|-
|CO
|Wikipedia article on Colorado
|See Link Above
|-
|KS
|stand-up piano
|
|-
|MO
|Georgia
|Georgia
|-
|KY
|cloud
|
|-
|WV
|{{w|frog}}
|
|-
|VA
|{{w|stegosaurus}}
|
|-
|DC
|star.
|
|-
|MD
|wolf howling to the moon, upside down
|
|-
|DE
|meerkat
|
|-
|CA
|vacuum cleaner
|
|-
|AZ
|refrigerated shelf containing milk, bread, and pastries
|
|-
|NM
|liquid container with warning label
|This end up!!
Property of White Sands Missile Range

Contains White Sand

???

FLAMMABLE

Warning: This product contains chemicals known Only to the state of Nevada.

Contents under pressure from parents.

If swallowed, induce labor.

56 Fluid Ounces and 14 other ounces.
|-
|OK
|covered pot, dripping with boil-over
|
|-
|AR
|measuring cup
|
|-
|TN
|children's books, placed in a slightly askew pile
|Handford / WHERE'S WALDO / or wally

The Wreck of the Zephyr / Chris Van Allsburg

The Way Things Work / DAVID MACAULRY

Weisner / FREE FALL

PADDLE-TO-THE-SEA / HCH(?)

WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE A BUILDING / Wilson

TINTIN / The Crab with the Golden Claws / Hergé
|-
|NC
|flower bouquet
|
|-
|AK
|teddy bear with a jet pack and a ray gun
|
|-
|HI
|snowball
|
|-
|TX
|dog sitting in a bowl
|
|-
|LA
|boot with some gum stuck to the bottom
|
|-
|MS
|moai head facing west
|
|-
|AL
|moai head facing east
|
|-
|GA
|Missouri.
|Missouri
|-
|SC
|pizza slice
|
|-
|FL
|eggplant
|
|}

==Trivia==
This comic used to be [https://web.archive.org/web/20220125014714/https://store.xkcd.com/products/united-shapes-poster available as a poster] in the xkcd store before it was [[Store|shut down]].

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:US maps]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Dogs]]
[[Category:Dinosaurs]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Star Trek]]
[[Category:Harry Potter]] 
[[Category:Volcanoes]] 
[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]
[[Category:Music]]

3054: Scream Cipher

2025-03-24T17:32:48Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3054
| date = February 21, 2025
| title = Scream Cipher
| image = scream_cipher_2x.png
| imagesize = 287x416px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = AAAAAA A ÃA̧AȂA̦ ǍÅÂÃĀÁȂ AAAAAAA!
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|Cipher}} is a method of encryption, where characters, or sometimes words, are substituted for other characters in a set pattern, allowing for arbitrary strings to be enciphered using it. The complexity and strength of ciphers varies, from {{w|one-time pads}} and (historically) {{w|enigma machine|Enigma}} as stronger and more complex, to {{w|substitution ciphers}} as some of the weakest and least complex, where each character is simply given a set different symbol to represent it in the cipher.

This comic uses a substitution cipher, where all the letters of the English Alphabet are represented using the letter "A", with different {{w|diacritical marks}} to define the differences. See details about the 25 marks in the [[#Trivia|Trivia section]] below. This kind of cipher is often used on a recreational basis by children or casual enthusiasts, the similarity of the letters increasing the obscurity of the content and the skill or technology required for use, but there is also significant impracticality, as not only are substitution ciphers the easiest to break, but also the similarities in the letters do make the cipher hard to read and easy to misread, and the detail in the diacritical marks makes it easy to draw the "A"s incorrectly or ambiguously, potentially leading to [[3003: Sandwich Helix|part of the message being lost]]. This was our experience in the comments section of this very article, where one person implemented translator functions alongside another person crafting a message that failed to translate. However, the logic behind the code is mostly visual similarity, and if attentive to connecting concepts between the Latin and scream cipher alphabet, it could be quickly learned and translated in a glance.

It's named "Scream Cipher" (as a pun on {{w|stream cipher}}s, commonly used in computing) because the written form of a scream is often a long string of As, possibly with some other characters at the beginning or the end (and often an exclamation point for emphasis), such as "Yyaaaaaww!” or “Aaaaaah!" or "Aaaaaaagh!". The name may or may not be a reference to IBM's {{w|Scream_(cipher)|Scream cipher}} published in 2002.

In the comic, [[Cueball]] texts the ciphered version for the plaintext "HELLO", and [[Megan]] responds with that for "HI". The title text deciphers to "AAAAAA A SCARY MONSTER AAAAAAA!"

Another recent comic featuring all "A"s was [[2957: A Crossword Puzzle]].

Diacritics was also the main theme in [[1647: Diacritics]]{{citation needed}} and was previously also mentioned in [[1209: Encoding]] and in [[1857: Emoji Movie]] where they have an important part of the pun, and is mentioned in one point of the list in [[1957: 2018 CVE List]].

==Worked example==

Say we want to encode "Scream" in the Scream Cipher. First we would need to split out word into the letters, so S, C, R, E, A, M.

The first letter is S, so if we go to S in the table S is shown to become to Ã, C similarly becomes A̧, R becomes Ȃ, E corresponds to Á, A is the main letter so A is unchanged to A, and M becomes Ǎ. If we then write them again in order, we find SCREAM becomes ÃA̧ȂÁAǍ.

To turn cipher text back into normal text, the process is repeated in reverse. To translate A̧ẢA̯A̰ÁȂ, we go to A̧ in the table and find A̧ becomes C. Ả similarly becomes I, A̯ becomes P, A̰ becomes H, Á becomes E, and Ȃ becomes R. If we write the letters in order, we see that A̧ẢA̯A̰ÁȂ becomes CIPHER.

Text can be automatically translated using any of the following community implimentations:
* The first known translator hosted on [https://github.com/Reginald-Gillespie/ScreamCipher GitHub Pages].
* A more bare-bones [https://github.com/matthewpwatkins/scream-cipher/ implementation] hosted on netlify.
* A terminal [https://github.com/klanderfri/ScreamCipher/ implementation].

==Transcript==
:[The top of the panel has the 26 letters of the alphabet written, each followed by a hyphen and the letter "A" with a unique diacritical mark for each. "A - A" is the only letter in the top row, and the only one where that A on the right side doesn't have a diacritic. The next 25 is sorted in a 5 by 5 grid, with the first five letters after A in the first column, then the next 5 in the second column and so on:]
:{|
|A - A
|-
|B - Ȧ
|G - A̋
|L - Ă
|Q - A̤
|V - À
|-
|C - A̧
|H - A̰
|M - Ǎ
|R - Ȃ
|W - Ȁ
|-
|D - A̱
|I - Ả
|N - Â
|S - Ã
|X - A̽
|-
|E - Á
|J - A̓
|O - Å
|T - Ā
|Y - A̦
|-
|F - A̮
|K - Ạ
|P - A̯
|U - Ä
|Z - Ⱥ
|}
:[Beneath these letters we see Cueball and Megan typing on their phones, Cueball with two hands and Megan with one hand, small lines indicating the movement of their hands. Cueball and Megan is turned towards each other but with more separation than if they were engaged in normal discussion. They both look down at their phones not towards each other. The text they type is shown above their phone with a line starting in a starburst at the top of their phones going up the to the text.]
:Cueball's phone: A̰ÁĂĂÅ
:Megan's phone: A̰Ả

:[Caption below the panel:]
:In the '''''Scream Cipher''''', messages consist of all As, with different letters distinguished using diacritics.

==Trivia==
The {{w|Unicode}} names of the characters in the cipher are as follows:

{|class="wikitable"
! colspan=2 | Input !! colspan=3 | Substitution
|-
! Plain !! Unicode description !! Cipher !! Unicode description(s) !! Notes
|-
| A || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A || {{w|A}} || '''U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A || Unadorned base character
|-
| B || U+0042 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B || {{w|Ȧ}} || '''U+0226 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH {{w|Dot (diacritic)|DOT}} ABOVE || A with one dot over it, which can indicate a single change in math and science. Phonetic symbol for low central vowel.
|-
| C || U+0043 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C || A̧ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+0327 {{w|Combining Diacritical Marks|COMBINING}} {{w|Cedilla|CEDILLA}}''' || Cedilla is often attached to a 'c', as in "français", as well as starting with 'c' itself. Appears similar to Ą (U+0104, A with ogonek) used in many language to denote a nasal a sound and in Polish to denote a nasal o sound, however the two can be distinguished by the direction of the diacritic.
|-
| D || U+0044 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D || A̱ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+0331 COMBINING MACRON BELOW''' || Some see the lower bar as similar to the lower edge of the D.
|-
| E || U+0045 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E || {{w|Á}} || '''U+00C1 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH ACUTE || Many words have an acute e, as in "fiancé".
|-
| F || U+0046 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F || A̮ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+032E COMBINING BREVE BELOW''' || The breve adds a second line to the A, much like how an F has two lines.
|-
| G || U+0047 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER G || A̋ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+030B COMBINING {{w|Double acute accent|DOUBLE ACUTE}} ACCENT''' || Adds two acutes to a letter.
|-
| H || U+0048 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H || A̰ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+0330 COMBINING TILDE BELOW''' || The low tilde has horizontal ink in the middle that moves vertical toward the sides, like an H.
|-
| I || U+0049 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I || {{w|Ả}} || '''U+1EA2 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH HOOK ABOVE || The hook almost looks like half of a circle, and the lowercase letter I (i) has a circular shape (known as a tittle) above it.
|-
| J || U+004A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER J || A̓ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+0313 COMBINING COMMA ABOVE''' || The comma symbol looks like a small letter 'J' in some fonts
|-
| K || U+004B LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K || Ạ || '''U+1EA0 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DOT BELOW || 
|-
| L || U+004C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L || {{w|Ă}} || '''U+0102 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH {{w|Breve|BREVE}} ||
|-
| M || U+004D LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M || Ǎ || '''U+01CD LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH {{w|caron|CARON}} || The top-centered caron is the same shape as the top center of the M.
|-
| N || U+004E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N || {{w|Â}} || '''U+00C2 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX || The lowercase letter 'n' also looks like a circumflex in some scripts. The circumflex peak mirrors the peak at the top left of the N.
|-
| O || U+004F LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O || {{w|Å}} || '''U+00C5 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE || The symbol contains the letter 'O'. In Scandinavian languages like Swedish, this combination of 'O' and 'A' is a letter unto itself, mostly used in words where a long 'a' sound has acquired a more 'o'-like sound.
|-
| P || U+0050 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P || A̯ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+032F COMBINING INVERTED BREVE BELOW''' || Refer to R: P also has a curve at the top center, but is encoded with one below.
|-
| Q || U+0051 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Q || A̤ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+0324 COMBINING DIAERESIS BELOW''' || The two dots below the baseline reflect the two times Randall's Q touch the baseline. In the Orthographies of Spanish, Catalan, French and Galician, the grapheme 'qu' normally represents a single sound, before vowels 'e' and 'i'. In the few exceptions where the 'u' is pronounced, a diaeresis is added to it.
|-
| R || U+0052 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R || Ȃ || '''U+0202 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH {{w|Inverted breve|INVERTED BREVE}} ||
The inverted centered top curve mirrors the curve at the top center of an R.
|-
| S || U+0053 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S || {{w|Ã}} || '''U+00C3 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH TILDE || Tilde looks like a sideways 'S'.
|-
| T || U+0054 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T || {{w|Ā}} || '''U+0100 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH {{w|Macron (diacritic)|MACRON}} || The macron looks like the top horizontal line in the letter 'T'
|-
| U || U+0055 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U || {{w|Ä}} || '''U+00C4 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS || The {{wiktionary|trema#Noun|two dot mark}} is used in many words in languages like German, Finnish and Swedish, with 'Ä' used as in "{{w|Die_Ärzte|Ärzte}}". As a true {{wiktionary|diaeresis#Usage notes|diaresis}}, it often indicates a vowel that is distinct from neighbouring vowels, rather than part of a {{w|Digraph (orthography)|digraph}} or longer phoneme. As a modifier of the vowel itself, as with the germanic/nordic languages, it is more properly called an 'umlaut' and may change a back vowel into a front vowel, though the two terms are often used interchangably.
|-
| V || U+0056 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER V || {{w|À}} || '''U+00C0 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE || Grave has the letter 'V' in it, as well as being half of its shape.
|-
| W || U+0057 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER W || Ȁ || '''U+0200 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH {{w|Double grave accent|DOUBLE GRAVE}} || The letter 'W' is visually two copies of the letter 'V'
|-
| X || U+0058 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER X || A̽ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+033D COMBINING X ABOVE''' || The symbol contains the letter 'X'.
|-
| Y || U+0059 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Y || A̦ || U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, '''U+0326 COMBINING COMMA BELOW''' || The comma mimics the vertical "tail" of the Y.
|-
| Z || U+005A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z || {{w|Saanich_dialect#Writing_system|Ⱥ}} || '''U+023A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH STROKE || The stroke through the letter A resembles the diagonal stroke of a capital "Z"
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Cryptography]]
[[Category:Unicode]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]

1529: Bracket

2025-03-24T17:25:00Z

Cheesesentience: /* Trivia */

{{comic
| number = 1529
| date = May 25, 2015
| title = Bracket
| image = bracket.png
| titletext = I'm staring at the "doctor" section, and I can't help but feel like I've forgotten someone.
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|Bracket (tournament)|tournament bracket}} shows the planned series of matchups in a tournament. In this comic [[Randall]] has shown a plan for a tournament between a wide range of cultural icons, both real and fictional, based mostly on similarities in their names. Various Internet groups have speculated on who would win in a fight between characters from different films. It may be relevant that the film {{w|Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice}} was soon to be released at the time the comic was made where the two eponymous {{w|superheroes}}, {{w|Batman}} and {{w|Superman}}, fight against each other.

The individual starting pairings are generally based on common or similar given names or surnames. Some adjacent brackets are "segued" by someone like Jeff Daniels, who segues from a bracket of "Jeff"s into a bracket of "Daniels"es. The bracket itself is fairly arbitrary. Most initial matchups are pairs, although several are trios and there's a quadruplet in the Russels group, while a single entry, {{w|Beyoncé}}, is given a first- and second-round {{w|bye (sports)|bye}}. Most of the participants in the tournament are people, with a few exceptions. {{w|Shallots}} (small onions), {{w|scallops}} (bivalve mollusks), and {{w|scallions}} (green onions) are similar sounding foods, therefore may be confusing for some individuals (perhaps including [[Randall]]). The final grouping on the lower right of the bracket features several retail stores and a film.

The title text may be a reference to {{w|Dr. Dre}}'s 2001 song "{{w|Forgot About Dre}}" or could simply be a reference to the large number of pop culture personas that include the word "Doctor", such as {{w|Gregory House|Doctor House}}, {{w|Mehmet Oz|Dr. Oz}}, {{w|Doctor Eggman|Dr. Eggman}}, {{w|Phil McGraw|Dr. Phil}}, {{w|Dr. Watson}}, {{w|Emmett Brown|"Doc" Brown}}, {{w|Dr. Seuss}}, {{w|Dr Pepper}}, {{w|Doctor Doom}}, {{w|Zoidberg|Dr. Zoidberg}}, {{w|Dr. Horrible}}'s Sing-Along Blog and {{w|List of fictional doctors|many others}}. A simpler explanation is that it would cause the reader to question "Doctor Who?" answering their own question, although this answer would be incorrect because The Doctor is already present. It could also be a reference to the dual meaning of "The Doctor," either he meant to include Time Lord from Doctor Who and forgot about the EMH from Voyager, or he remembered the EMH and forgot the Time Lord.

The incentive for the comic may have been the {{w|2015 French Open|French Open 2015}}, which started on the day of the publication. The comic inspired several groups to play out versions of the bracket. One user-voting based match-up on twitter, [https://twitter.com/xkcdbracket XKCD Bracket], was featured by Randall on the xkcd home page, with a link at the top of the website, although he didn't create the account. (The link was part of a "news" flash, the other was regarding his book based on [[1133: Up Goer Five]]. See more on this news in that comics explanation.) In the final match on July 29, Neil Armstrong defeated Mister Spock (see the [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLKJUpFWIAAlDnW.png:orig complete bracket]). The link was removed sometimes before Monday, 10 August 2015, within two weeks of the final result being revealed.

Later, Randall has made one smaller but similar bracket in [[1819: Sweet 16]], and then an interactive [[:Category:April fools' comics|April fools' comics]] in 2019, with an even larger bracket for determining the best emoji in [[2131: Emojidome]]. The bracket for this comic was shown with links from the comic during the matches. Shallots, scallops, and scallions were also mentioned together in [[2372: Dialect Quiz]]. Randall would later release another comic that juxtaposed similar-looking names, [[1970: Name Dominoes]].

===Table of the bracket===
The names and other entries in the bracket are given here below, sorted to explain why the individual entries have been grouped as they are. The first-round matchups are grouped by shading.

{| class="wikitable"
!Grouping
!Subgrouping
!Person/Entry
!Known as
!Winning probability
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Armstrong
|{{w|Louis Armstrong}}
|Jazz-musician
| rowspan="4" |1/32
|-
|{{w|Neil Armstrong}}
|First human on the moon
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Lance Armstrong}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Cyclist
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Stretch Armstrong}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Action figure
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Jeff *
|{{w|Jeff Gordon}}
|Retired race car driver
| rowspan="9" |1/64
|-
|{{w|Jeff Bridges}}
|Actor in ''King Kong'', ''The Big Lebowski'', ''Iron Man'', ''Tron: Legacy''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Jeff Daniels}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Dumb and Dumber''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|J* Daniels
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jack Daniel's|Jack Daniels}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Alcoholic beverages
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>Well<nowiki>*</nowiki>
|{{w|Orson Welles}}
|Director of ''{{w|Citizen Kane}}'' and known for his {{w|The War of the Worlds (radio drama)|radio-play}} of {{w|H. G. Wells}}' ''{{w|The War of the Worlds}}''
|-
|{{w|H.G. Wells}}
|Author, known for ''The War of the Worlds'' and ''{{w|The Time Machine}}''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|George Orwell}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Author of ''{{w|Nineteen Eighty-Four}}'' and ''{{w|Animal Farm}}''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Wells Fargo}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Bank and stage coach company
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Russell *
|{{w|Kurt Russell}}
|Actor in ''John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.'', ''The Thing'', ''Big Trouble in Little China'', ''Stargate'', ''Fast & Furious 7''
| rowspan="5" |1/128
|-
|{{w|Russell Brand}}
|Comedian
|-
|{{w|Russell Crowe}}
|Actor in ''Gladiator'', ''A Beautiful Mind'', ''Les Misérables'', ''Noah''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Russell Simmons}}
|rowspan="2"|Rapper
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Simmons
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Richard Simmons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Host of exercise programs
| rowspan="3" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Gene Simmons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Musician, known from ''KISS''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Gene <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Gene Hackman}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Superman''
|rowspan="5" |1/96
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ckman
|-
|{{w|Hugh Jackman}}
|Actor in the ''{{w|X-Men}}'' franchise as {{w|Wolverine (character)|Wolverine}}
|rowspan="3"|Alan <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Alan Rickman}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Die Hard'', ''Harry Potter'' franchise, ''The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Alan Becker}}
|rowspan="2"|Flash Animator
|-
|rowspan="2"|Alan Par*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Alan Parsons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Musician
|rowspan="7" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Alan Partridge}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Fictional radio character
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> McCarthy
|{{w|Jenny McCarthy}}
|Anti-vaccination activist
|-
|{{w|Joseph McCarthy}}
|American Senator known for anti-communist policies.
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Eugene McCarthy}}
|rowspan="2"|Senator and Presidential candidate
|-
|rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>gene<nowiki>*</nowiki>
|rowspan="2"|Eugene <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|{{w|Eugene V. Debs}}
|Labor leader
|-
|rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Wilde*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Gene Wilder}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Young Frankenstein'', ''Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory''
| rowspan="4" |1/96
|-
|rowspan="2"|
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Olivia Wilde}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress in ''Tron: Legacy'', ''Her'', ''House M.D.''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Oscar Wilde}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Writer
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Oscar *
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Oscar De La Renta}}
|rowspan="2"|Fashion Designer
|rowspan="3"|1/32
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Oscar De La *
|-
|{{w|Oscar De La Hoya}}
|Boxer
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Jack Nic*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jack Nicklaus}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Golf player
| rowspan="9" |1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Jack Nicholson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'', ''The Shining'', ''Batman'', ''Witches of Eastwick'', ''The Bucketlist''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ichol* / *ickel* / *ickle*
|-
|{{w|Phil Mickelson}}
|Golf player
|-
|{{w|Nicholas Nickleby}}
|Charles Dickens protagonist in the novel by the same name
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ryan Adams
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Ryan Adams}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Bryan Adams}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Singers with Stage Names Referencing Weight/Games
|{{w|Chubby Checker}}
|Singer famous for "The Twist"
|-
|{{w|Fats Domino}}
|Rock and Roll Singer
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Colin F*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Colin Firth}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Pride and Prejudice'', ''Love Actually''
| rowspan="5" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Colin Farrell}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Daredevil'', ''In Bruges'', ''Total Recall''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|F*rell*
|-
|{{w|Will Ferrell}}
|Comic actor, ''Anchorman'' and ''The Other Guys''
|-
|{{w|The Farrelly Brothers}}
|Comedy film-makers
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|J<nowiki>*</nowiki> * *evitt/*ewitt (three names)
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Joseph Gordon-Levitt}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Third Rock from the Sun'', ''Dark Knight Rises''
| rowspan="2" |1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jennifer Love Hewitt}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress in ''Garfield: The Movie'' 
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|D* Glover
|{{w|Danny Glover}}
|Actor, ''Lethal Weapon'' series
| rowspan="7" |1/64
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Donald Glover}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor, ''Community'', also a rapper, aka ''Childish Gambino''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Don*
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Donnie Wahlberg}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Singer, ''{{w|New Kids on the Block}}'', actor, ''Blue Bloods''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Wahlberg
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Mark Wahlberg}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''The Departed'', ''The Other Guys'', and former hip-hop singer for ''Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Mark *
|-
|{{w|Mark Ruffalo}}
|Actor, known for his role as {{w|Hulk (comics)|the Hulk}} in the film ''{{w|The Avengers (2012 film)|The Avengers}}''
| rowspan="2" |1/32
|-
|{{w|Mark Shuttleworth}}
|Entrepreneur, founder of {{w|Ubuntu (operating system)|Ubuntu}}
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Pullman
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Philip Pullman}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Author, ''His Dark Materials'' and ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ''
|rowspan="4"|1/48
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Bill Pullman}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Spaceballs'', and ''Independence Day''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Bill *
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Bill Paxton}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Apollo 13'', ''Aliens''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Bill Murray}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Ghostbusters'', ''Groundhog Day''
|rowspan="3"|1/32
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Ghostbusters/SNL alumni
|-
|{{w|Dan Aykroyd}}
|Actor in ''Ghostbusters'', ''The Blues Brothers''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Rogers
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Ginger Rogers}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress known for dancing with {{w|Fred Astaire}}
|rowspan="2"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Confusing reference to {{w|Fred Rogers}} (host of children's show, popularly known as "Mister Rogers") and to {{w|Fred Astaire}} (Dancer, actor, and singer)
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Spock
|{{w|Mister Spock}}
|Character on ''Star Trek'' portrayed by {{w|Leonard Nimoy}}
|rowspan="10"|1/96
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Doctor Spock}}
|rowspan="2"|Author of book on childcare
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="8"|Doctors
|-
|{{w|Doctor Octopus}}
|Villain in Spider-Man comic books
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Manhattan}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Character in Alan Moore's Watchmen
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Strangelove}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Character in a movie about nuclear war by {{w|Stanley Kubrick}}
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Strange}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Sorceror Supreme in Marvel Comics
|-
|{{w|Julius No|Dr. No}}
|Main villain in the {{w|Dr. No (film)|first James Bond movie}}
|-
|The Doctor
|Ambiguous reference to either the {{w|The Doctor (Doctor Who)|main protagonist}} of the science fiction series ''{{w|Doctor Who}}'' or the {{w|Doctor (Star Trek: Voyager)|emergency medical hologram}} in ''{{w|Star Trek: Voyager}}''.
|-
|[[Cory Doctorow]]
|He is a real person and has been in [[:Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow|many xkcd comics]]
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|J* Lewis
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jerry Lee Lewis}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Rock and Roll singer
|rowspan="9"|1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jerry Lewis}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Comedian and former chairman of charitable organization
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Jenny Lewis}}
|rowspan="2"|Indie singer-songwriter
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Sounds like *"enny"
|-
|{{w|Xeni Jardin}}
|Digital commentator, Boing Boing co-editor
|-
|rowspan="4"|Chris *
|rowspan="2"|Chris * (Avengers actors)
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Chris Evans (actor)|Chris Evans}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Captain America''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Chris Hemsworth}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Thor''
|-
|rowspan="2"|Chris P*
|{{w|Chris Pine}}
|Actor, ''Star Trek'', ''Wonder Woman''
|-
|{{w|Chris Pratt}}
|Actor, ''Guardians of the Galaxy''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|S*all*o*s Foods
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Shallots}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Small onions (although the word 'shallot' can also refer to green onions in some dialects)
|rowspan="3"|1/96
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Scallops}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Bivalve mollusks
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Scallions}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Green onions.
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Suz* (Similar phonetics)
|{{w|Siouxie Sioux}}
|Rock singer
|rowspan="2"|1/64
|-
|{{w|Suzanne Vega}}
|Folk rock singer-songwriter
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Arnold *
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Tom Arnold (actor)|Tom Arnold}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor; ex-husband of {{w|Roseanne Barr}}
|rowspan="4"|1/48
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Arnold Palmer}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Golf player
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|A* Palmer
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Amanda Palmer}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer/songwriter
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Wes *
|{{w|Wes Craven}}
|Film maker
|rowspan="10"|1/64
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Wes Anderson}}
|rowspan="2"|Movie Director
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|* Anderson
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Paul Thomas Anderson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Film maker
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|P*ul Anderson
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Poul Anderson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Science fiction author
|-
|rowspan="3"|Sirs
|rowspan="2"|Sir Walter *
|{{w|Sir Walter Scott}}
|Scottish poet and writer
|-
|{{w|Sir Walter Raleigh}}
|British explorer of Virginia
|-

|rowspan="2"|Fran* Drake
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Sir Francis Drake}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|British explorer, 2nd to circumnavigate the Earth
|-
|
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Frank Drake}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Astrophysicist, SETI pioneer
|-
|rowspan="5"|"Van"
|rowspan="3"|Van *
|{{w|Van Halen}}
|Rock band
|rowspan="3"|1/96
|-
|{{w|Van Morrison}}
|Singer/songwriter
|-
|{{w|Van Wilder}}
|Comedy film
|-

|rowspan="2"|R* Van Winkle
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Robert Van Winkle}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|AKA Vanilla Ice, rapper
|rowspan="3"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Rip Van Winkle}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Fictional character
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Rip/Torn
|-
|{{w|Rip Torn}}
|Elmore Rual "Rip" Torn, actor on ''Cross Creek'', ''Larry Sanders Show''
|rowspan="2"|1/32
|-
|{{w|Natalie Imbruglia}}
|Singer of "Torn"
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Businesses with the word "Body" in their name
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|The Body Shop}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Shop
|rowspan="6"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Bath and Body Works}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Shop
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Businesses with the word "Bath" in their name
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Bed Bath and Beyond}}
|rowspan="2"|Shop
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Beyon*
|-
|{{w|Beyond Thunderdome}}
|Motion picture
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Beyoncé}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|1/16

|}

==Transcript==
:[A tournament bracket. With the names listed in groups on the left-hand side and right-hand side as shown below. Within individual groups the names are ordered in match-ups, two, three or even four in the first match. The last name on the right, Beyoncé, is not even matched for first round. The winners goes on to the next match, but there are many that skips some of the matches up until the quarterfinals, so some need to win 5 matches to reach the quarterfinals, others only need to win 4 of 3, and Beyoncé only 2. After the first level, the match-ups are always between two names. The two sides join up in a final in the middle, where the winner of the left side has a place for the name below and the winner of the right a place for the name above a central rectangular frame with place for the winners name. Below the pairing in the first round matches are mentioned above each of the clear groupings of the bracket.]
:{| class="wikitable" style="background:transparent;border:none;width:100%;"
| style="background:transparent;border:none;"|
<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Louis Armstrong
<br/>Neil Armstrong
<br/>Lance Armstrong
<br/>Stretch Armstrong

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jeff Gordan
<br/>Jeff Bridges
<br/>Jeff Daniels
<br/>Jack Daniels

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Orson Welles
<br/>H.G. Wells
<br/>George Orwell
<br/>Wells Fargo

<br/>[The first four, two, three and two are paired.]
<br/>Kurt Russell
<br/>Russell Brand
<br/>Russell Crowe
<br/>Russell Simmons
<br/>Richard Simmons
<br/>Gene Simmons
<br/>Gene Hackman
<br/>Hugh Jackman
<br/>Alan Rickman
<br/>Alan Parsons
<br/>Alan Partridge

<br/>[The first four, three and two are paired.]
<br/>Jenny McCarthy
<br/>Joseph McCarthy
<br/>Eugene McCarthy
<br/>Eugene V. Debs
<br/>Gene Wilder
<br/>Olivia Wilde
<br/>Oscar Wilde
<br/>Oscar De La Renta
<br/>Oscar De La Hoya

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jack Nicklaus
<br/>Jack Nicholson
<br/>Phil Mickelson
<br/>Nicholas Nickelby

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Ryan Adams
<br/>Bryan Adams

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Chubby Checker
<br/>Fats Domino

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Colin Firth
<br/>Colin Farrell
<br/>Will Ferrell
<br/>The Farrelly Brothers

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Joseph Gordon-Levitt
<br/>Jennifer Love Hewitt

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Danny Glover
<br/>Donald Glover
<br/>Donnie Wahlberg
<br/>Mark Wahlberg
<br/>Mark Ruffalo
<br/>Mark Shuttleworth

| style="background:transparent;border:none;"|
<br/>[The first three and two are paired.]
<br/>Philip Pullman
<br/>Bill Pullman
<br/>Bill Paxton
<br/>Bill Murray
<br/>Dan Aykroyd

<br/>[The first two, and then three times three are paired.]
<br/>Ginger Rogers
<br/>Fred Rogers|Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers
<br/>Mister Spock
<br/>Doctor Spock
<br/>Doctor Octopus
<br/>Doctor Manhattan
<br/>Doctor Strangelove
<br/>Doctor Strange
<br/>Dr. No
<br/>The Doctor
<br/>Cory Doctorow

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jerry Lee Lewis
<br/>Jerry Lewis
<br/>Jenny Lewis
<br/>Xeni Jardin

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Chris Evans
<br/>Chris Hemsworth
<br/>Chris Pine
<br/>Chris Pratt

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Shallots
<br/>Scallops
<br/>Scallions

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Siouxie Sioux
<br/>Suzanne Vega

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Tom Arnold
<br/>Arnold Palmer
<br/>Amanda Palmer

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Wes Craven
<br/>Wes Anderson
<br/>Paul Thomas Anderson
<br/>Poul Anderson

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Sir Walter Scott
<br/>Sir Walter Raleigh
<br/>Sir Francis Drake
<br/>Frank Drake

<br/>[The first three, two and two are paired.]
<br/>Van Halen
<br/>Van Morrison
<br/>Van Wilder
<br/>Robert Van Winkle
<br/>Rip Van Winkle
<br/>Rip Torn
<br/>Natalie Imbruglia

<br/>[The first four are paired two and two the last is the only one not paired.]
<br/>The Body Shop
<br/>Bath and Body Works
<br/>Bed Bath and Beyond
<br/>Beyond Thunderdome
<br/>Beyoncé
|}

==Trivia==
*In the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/8/8d/20250307171024%21bracket.png original version of the comic], Gordon was misspelled as Gordan. This was later fixed.
**There are no other differences between the original and current versions.
*The "Chris" group (Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt) would later be referenced in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGurtL83zhY Chris Pine's opening monologue for SNL], though without an explicit reference to this comic.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]
[[Category:Doctor Who]]
[[Category:Star Trek]]
[[Category:Tournament bracket]]

1529: Bracket

2025-03-24T17:23:57Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 1529
| date = May 25, 2015
| title = Bracket
| image = bracket.png
| titletext = I'm staring at the "doctor" section, and I can't help but feel like I've forgotten someone.
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|Bracket (tournament)|tournament bracket}} shows the planned series of matchups in a tournament. In this comic [[Randall]] has shown a plan for a tournament between a wide range of cultural icons, both real and fictional, based mostly on similarities in their names. Various Internet groups have speculated on who would win in a fight between characters from different films. It may be relevant that the film {{w|Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice}} was soon to be released at the time the comic was made where the two eponymous {{w|superheroes}}, {{w|Batman}} and {{w|Superman}}, fight against each other.

The individual starting pairings are generally based on common or similar given names or surnames. Some adjacent brackets are "segued" by someone like Jeff Daniels, who segues from a bracket of "Jeff"s into a bracket of "Daniels"es. The bracket itself is fairly arbitrary. Most initial matchups are pairs, although several are trios and there's a quadruplet in the Russels group, while a single entry, {{w|Beyoncé}}, is given a first- and second-round {{w|bye (sports)|bye}}. Most of the participants in the tournament are people, with a few exceptions. {{w|Shallots}} (small onions), {{w|scallops}} (bivalve mollusks), and {{w|scallions}} (green onions) are similar sounding foods, therefore may be confusing for some individuals (perhaps including [[Randall]]). The final grouping on the lower right of the bracket features several retail stores and a film.

The title text may be a reference to {{w|Dr. Dre}}'s 2001 song "{{w|Forgot About Dre}}" or could simply be a reference to the large number of pop culture personas that include the word "Doctor", such as {{w|Gregory House|Doctor House}}, {{w|Mehmet Oz|Dr. Oz}}, {{w|Doctor Eggman|Dr. Eggman}}, {{w|Phil McGraw|Dr. Phil}}, {{w|Dr. Watson}}, {{w|Emmett Brown|"Doc" Brown}}, {{w|Dr. Seuss}}, {{w|Dr Pepper}}, {{w|Doctor Doom}}, {{w|Zoidberg|Dr. Zoidberg}}, {{w|Dr. Horrible}}'s Sing-Along Blog and {{w|List of fictional doctors|many others}}. A simpler explanation is that it would cause the reader to question "Doctor Who?" answering their own question, although this answer would be incorrect because The Doctor is already present. It could also be a reference to the dual meaning of "The Doctor," either he meant to include Time Lord from Doctor Who and forgot about the EMH from Voyager, or he remembered the EMH and forgot the Time Lord.

The incentive for the comic may have been the {{w|2015 French Open|French Open 2015}}, which started on the day of the publication. The comic inspired several groups to play out versions of the bracket. One user-voting based match-up on twitter, [https://twitter.com/xkcdbracket XKCD Bracket], was featured by Randall on the xkcd home page, with a link at the top of the website, although he didn't create the account. (The link was part of a "news" flash, the other was regarding his book based on [[1133: Up Goer Five]]. See more on this news in that comics explanation.) In the final match on July 29, Neil Armstrong defeated Mister Spock (see the [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLKJUpFWIAAlDnW.png:orig complete bracket]). The link was removed sometimes before Monday, 10 August 2015, within two weeks of the final result being revealed.

Later, Randall has made one smaller but similar bracket in [[1819: Sweet 16]], and then an interactive [[:Category:April fools' comics|April fools' comics]] in 2019, with an even larger bracket for determining the best emoji in [[2131: Emojidome]]. The bracket for this comic was shown with links from the comic during the matches. Shallots, scallops, and scallions were also mentioned together in [[2372: Dialect Quiz]]. Randall would later release another comic that juxtaposed similar-looking names, [[1970: Name Dominoes]].

===Table of the bracket===
The names and other entries in the bracket are given here below, sorted to explain why the individual entries have been grouped as they are. The first-round matchups are grouped by shading.

{| class="wikitable"
!Grouping
!Subgrouping
!Person/Entry
!Known as
!Winning probability
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Armstrong
|{{w|Louis Armstrong}}
|Jazz-musician
| rowspan="4" |1/32
|-
|{{w|Neil Armstrong}}
|First human on the moon
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Lance Armstrong}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Cyclist
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Stretch Armstrong}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Action figure
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Jeff *
|{{w|Jeff Gordon}}
|Retired race car driver
| rowspan="9" |1/64
|-
|{{w|Jeff Bridges}}
|Actor in ''King Kong'', ''The Big Lebowski'', ''Iron Man'', ''Tron: Legacy''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Jeff Daniels}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Dumb and Dumber''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|J* Daniels
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jack Daniel's|Jack Daniels}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Alcoholic beverages
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>Well<nowiki>*</nowiki>
|{{w|Orson Welles}}
|Director of ''{{w|Citizen Kane}}'' and known for his {{w|The War of the Worlds (radio drama)|radio-play}} of {{w|H. G. Wells}}' ''{{w|The War of the Worlds}}''
|-
|{{w|H.G. Wells}}
|Author, known for ''The War of the Worlds'' and ''{{w|The Time Machine}}''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|George Orwell}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Author of ''{{w|Nineteen Eighty-Four}}'' and ''{{w|Animal Farm}}''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Wells Fargo}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Bank and stage coach company
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Russell *
|{{w|Kurt Russell}}
|Actor in ''John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.'', ''The Thing'', ''Big Trouble in Little China'', ''Stargate'', ''Fast & Furious 7''
| rowspan="5" |1/128
|-
|{{w|Russell Brand}}
|Comedian
|-
|{{w|Russell Crowe}}
|Actor in ''Gladiator'', ''A Beautiful Mind'', ''Les Misérables'', ''Noah''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Russell Simmons}}
|rowspan="2"|Rapper
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Simmons
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Richard Simmons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Host of exercise programs
| rowspan="3" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Gene Simmons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Musician, known from ''KISS''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Gene <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Gene Hackman}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Superman''
|rowspan="5" |1/96
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ckman
|-
|{{w|Hugh Jackman}}
|Actor in the ''{{w|X-Men}}'' franchise as {{w|Wolverine (character)|Wolverine}}
|rowspan="3"|Alan <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Alan Rickman}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Die Hard'', ''Harry Potter'' franchise, ''The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Alan Becker}}
|rowspan="2"|Flash Animator
|-
|rowspan="2"|Alan Par*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Alan Parsons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Musician
|rowspan="7" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Alan Partridge}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Fictional radio character
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> McCarthy
|{{w|Jenny McCarthy}}
|Anti-vaccination activist
|-
|{{w|Joseph McCarthy}}
|American Senator known for anti-communist policies.
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Eugene McCarthy}}
|rowspan="2"|Senator and Presidential candidate
|-
|rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>gene<nowiki>*</nowiki>
|rowspan="2"|Eugene <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|{{w|Eugene V. Debs}}
|Labor leader
|-
|rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Wilde*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Gene Wilder}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Young Frankenstein'', ''Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory''
| rowspan="4" |1/96
|-
|rowspan="2"|
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Olivia Wilde}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress in ''Tron: Legacy'', ''Her'', ''House M.D.''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Oscar Wilde}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Writer
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Oscar *
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Oscar De La Renta}}
|rowspan="2"|Fashion Designer
|rowspan="3"|1/32
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Oscar De La *
|-
|{{w|Oscar De La Hoya}}
|Boxer
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Jack Nic*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jack Nicklaus}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Golf player
| rowspan="9" |1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Jack Nicholson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'', ''The Shining'', ''Batman'', ''Witches of Eastwick'', ''The Bucketlist''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ichol* / *ickel* / *ickle*
|-
|{{w|Phil Mickelson}}
|Golf player
|-
|{{w|Nicholas Nickleby}}
|Charles Dickens protagonist in the novel by the same name
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ryan Adams
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Ryan Adams}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Bryan Adams}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Singers with Stage Names Referencing Weight/Games
|{{w|Chubby Checker}}
|Singer famous for "The Twist"
|-
|{{w|Fats Domino}}
|Rock and Roll Singer
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Colin F*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Colin Firth}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Pride and Prejudice'', ''Love Actually''
| rowspan="5" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Colin Farrell}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Daredevil'', ''In Bruges'', ''Total Recall''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|F*rell*
|-
|{{w|Will Ferrell}}
|Comic actor, ''Anchorman'' and ''The Other Guys''
|-
|{{w|The Farrelly Brothers}}
|Comedy film-makers
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|J<nowiki>*</nowiki> * *evitt/*ewitt (three names)
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Joseph Gordon-Levitt}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Third Rock from the Sun'', ''Dark Knight Rises''
| rowspan="2" |1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jennifer Love Hewitt}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress in ''Garfield: The Movie'' 
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|D* Glover
|{{w|Danny Glover}}
|Actor, ''Lethal Weapon'' series
| rowspan="7" |1/64
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Donald Glover}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor, ''Community'', also a rapper, aka ''Childish Gambino''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Don*
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Donnie Wahlberg}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Singer, ''{{w|New Kids on the Block}}'', actor, ''Blue Bloods''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Wahlberg
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Mark Wahlberg}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''The Departed'', ''The Other Guys'', and former hip-hop singer for ''Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Mark *
|-
|{{w|Mark Ruffalo}}
|Actor, known for his role as {{w|Hulk (comics)|the Hulk}} in the film ''{{w|The Avengers (2012 film)|The Avengers}}''
| rowspan="2" |1/32
|-
|{{w|Mark Shuttleworth}}
|Entrepreneur, founder of {{w|Ubuntu (operating system)|Ubuntu}}
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Pullman
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Philip Pullman}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Author, ''His Dark Materials'' and ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ''
|rowspan="4"|1/48
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Bill Pullman}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Spaceballs'', and ''Independence Day''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Bill *
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Bill Paxton}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Apollo 13'', ''Aliens''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Bill Murray}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Ghostbusters'', ''Groundhog Day''
|rowspan="3"|1/32
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Ghostbusters/SNL alumni
|-
|{{w|Dan Aykroyd}}
|Actor in ''Ghostbusters'', ''The Blues Brothers''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Rogers
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Ginger Rogers}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress known for dancing with {{w|Fred Astaire}}
|rowspan="2"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Confusing reference to {{w|Fred Rogers}} (host of children's show, popularly known as "Mister Rogers") and to {{w|Fred Astaire}} (Dancer, actor, and singer)
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Spock
|{{w|Mister Spock}}
|Character on ''Star Trek'' portrayed by {{w|Leonard Nimoy}}
|rowspan="10"|1/96
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Doctor Spock}}
|rowspan="2"|Author of book on childcare
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="8"|Doctors
|-
|{{w|Doctor Octopus}}
|Villain in Spider-Man comic books
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Manhattan}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Character in Alan Moore's Watchmen
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Strangelove}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Character in a movie about nuclear war by {{w|Stanley Kubrick}}
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Strange}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Sorceror Supreme in Marvel Comics
|-
|{{w|Julius No|Dr. No}}
|Main villain in the {{w|Dr. No (film)|first James Bond movie}}
|-
|The Doctor
|Ambiguous reference to either the {{w|The Doctor (Doctor Who)|main protagonist}} of the science fiction series ''{{w|Doctor Who}}'' or the {{w|Doctor (Star Trek: Voyager)|emergency medical hologram}} in ''{{w|Star Trek: Voyager}}''.
|-
|[[Cory Doctorow]]
|He is a real person and has been in [[:Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow|many xkcd comics]]
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|J* Lewis
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jerry Lee Lewis}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Rock and Roll singer
|rowspan="9"|1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jerry Lewis}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Comedian and former chairman of charitable organization
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Jenny Lewis}}
|rowspan="2"|Indie singer-songwriter
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Sounds like *"enny"
|-
|{{w|Xeni Jardin}}
|Digital commentator, Boing Boing co-editor
|-
|rowspan="4"|Chris *
|rowspan="2"|Chris * (Avengers actors)
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Chris Evans (actor)|Chris Evans}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Captain America''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Chris Hemsworth}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Thor''
|-
|rowspan="2"|Chris P*
|{{w|Chris Pine}}
|Actor, ''Star Trek'', ''Wonder Woman''
|-
|{{w|Chris Pratt}}
|Actor, ''Guardians of the Galaxy''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|S*all*o*s Foods
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Shallots}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Small onions (although the word 'shallot' can also refer to green onions in some dialects)
|rowspan="3"|1/96
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Scallops}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Bivalve mollusks
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Scallions}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Green onions.
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Suz* (Similar phonetics)
|{{w|Siouxie Sioux}}
|Rock singer
|rowspan="2"|1/64
|-
|{{w|Suzanne Vega}}
|Folk rock singer-songwriter
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Arnold *
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Tom Arnold (actor)|Tom Arnold}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor; ex-husband of {{w|Roseanne Barr}}
|rowspan="4"|1/48
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Arnold Palmer}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Golf player
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|A* Palmer
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Amanda Palmer}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer/songwriter
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Wes *
|{{w|Wes Craven}}
|Film maker
|rowspan="10"|1/64
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Wes Anderson}}
|rowspan="2"|Movie Director
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|* Anderson
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Paul Thomas Anderson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Film maker
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|P*ul Anderson
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Poul Anderson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Science fiction author
|-
|rowspan="3"|Sirs
|rowspan="2"|Sir Walter *
|{{w|Sir Walter Scott}}
|Scottish poet and writer
|-
|{{w|Sir Walter Raleigh}}
|British explorer of Virginia
|-

|rowspan="2"|Fran* Drake
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Sir Francis Drake}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|British explorer, 2nd to circumnavigate the Earth
|-
|
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Frank Drake}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Astrophysicist, SETI pioneer
|-
|rowspan="5"|"Van"
|rowspan="3"|Van *
|{{w|Van Halen}}
|Rock band
|rowspan="3"|1/96
|-
|{{w|Van Morrison}}
|Singer/songwriter
|-
|{{w|Van Wilder}}
|Comedy film
|-

|rowspan="2"|R* Van Winkle
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Robert Van Winkle}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|AKA Vanilla Ice, rapper
|rowspan="3"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Rip Van Winkle}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Fictional character
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Rip/Torn
|-
|{{w|Rip Torn}}
|Elmore Rual "Rip" Torn, actor on ''Cross Creek'', ''Larry Sanders Show''
|rowspan="2"|1/32
|-
|{{w|Natalie Imbruglia}}
|Singer of "Torn"
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Businesses with the word "Body" in their name
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|The Body Shop}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Shop
|rowspan="6"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Bath and Body Works}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Shop
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Businesses with the word "Bath" in their name
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Bed Bath and Beyond}}
|rowspan="2"|Shop
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Beyon*
|-
|{{w|Beyond Thunderdome}}
|Motion picture
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Beyoncé}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|1/16

|}

==Transcript==
:[A tournament bracket. With the names listed in groups on the left-hand side and right-hand side as shown below. Within individual groups the names are ordered in match-ups, two, three or even four in the first match. The last name on the right, Beyoncé, is not even matched for first round. The winners goes on to the next match, but there are many that skips some of the matches up until the quarterfinals, so some need to win 5 matches to reach the quarterfinals, others only need to win 4 of 3, and Beyoncé only 2. After the first level, the match-ups are always between two names. The two sides join up in a final in the middle, where the winner of the left side has a place for the name below and the winner of the right a place for the name above a central rectangular frame with place for the winners name. Below the pairing in the first round matches are mentioned above each of the clear groupings of the bracket.]
:{| class="wikitable" style="background:transparent;border:none;width:100%;"
| style="background:transparent;border:none;"|
<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Louis Armstrong
<br/>Neil Armstrong
<br/>Lance Armstrong
<br/>Stretch Armstrong

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jeff Gordan
<br/>Jeff Bridges
<br/>Jeff Daniels
<br/>Jack Daniels

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Orson Welles
<br/>H.G. Wells
<br/>George Orwell
<br/>Wells Fargo

<br/>[The first four, two, three and two are paired.]
<br/>Kurt Russell
<br/>Russell Brand
<br/>Russell Crowe
<br/>Russell Simmons
<br/>Richard Simmons
<br/>Gene Simmons
<br/>Gene Hackman
<br/>Hugh Jackman
<br/>Alan Rickman
<br/>Alan Parsons
<br/>Alan Partridge

<br/>[The first four, three and two are paired.]
<br/>Jenny McCarthy
<br/>Joseph McCarthy
<br/>Eugene McCarthy
<br/>Eugene V. Debs
<br/>Gene Wilder
<br/>Olivia Wilde
<br/>Oscar Wilde
<br/>Oscar De La Renta
<br/>Oscar De La Hoya

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jack Nicklaus
<br/>Jack Nicholson
<br/>Phil Mickelson
<br/>Nicholas Nickelby

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Ryan Adams
<br/>Bryan Adams

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Chubby Checker
<br/>Fats Domino

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Colin Firth
<br/>Colin Farrell
<br/>Will Ferrell
<br/>The Farrelly Brothers

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Joseph Gordon-Levitt
<br/>Jennifer Love Hewitt

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Danny Glover
<br/>Donald Glover
<br/>Donnie Wahlberg
<br/>Mark Wahlberg
<br/>Mark Ruffalo
<br/>Mark Shuttleworth

| style="background:transparent;border:none;"|
<br/>[The first three and two are paired.]
<br/>Philip Pullman
<br/>Bill Pullman
<br/>Bill Paxton
<br/>Bill Murray
<br/>Dan Aykroyd

<br/>[The first two, and then three times three are paired.]
<br/>Ginger Rogers
<br/>Fred Rogers|Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers
<br/>Mister Spock
<br/>Doctor Spock
<br/>Doctor Octopus
<br/>Doctor Manhattan
<br/>Doctor Strangelove
<br/>Doctor Strange
<br/>Dr. No
<br/>The Doctor
<br/>Cory Doctorow

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jerry Lee Lewis
<br/>Jerry Lewis
<br/>Jenny Lewis
<br/>Xeni Jardin

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Chris Evans
<br/>Chris Hemsworth
<br/>Chris Pine
<br/>Chris Pratt

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Shallots
<br/>Scallops
<br/>Scallions

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Siouxie Sioux
<br/>Suzanne Vega

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Tom Arnold
<br/>Arnold Palmer
<br/>Amanda Palmer

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Wes Craven
<br/>Wes Anderson
<br/>Paul Thomas Anderson
<br/>Poul Anderson

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Sir Walter Scott
<br/>Sir Walter Raleigh
<br/>Sir Francis Drake
<br/>Frank Drake

<br/>[The first three, two and two are paired.]
<br/>Van Halen
<br/>Van Morrison
<br/>Van Wilder
<br/>Robert Van Winkle
<br/>Rip Van Winkle
<br/>Rip Torn
<br/>Natalie Imbruglia

<br/>[The first four are paired two and two the last is the only one not paired.]
<br/>The Body Shop
<br/>Bath and Body Works
<br/>Bed Bath and Beyond
<br/>Beyond Thunderdome
<br/>Beyoncé
|}

==Trivia==
*In the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/8/8d/20250307171024%21bracket.png original version of the comic], Gordon was misspelled as Gordan. This was later fixed.
*The "Chris" group (Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt) would later be referenced in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGurtL83zhY Chris Pine's opening monologue for SNL], though without an explicit reference to this comic.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]
[[Category:Doctor Who]]
[[Category:Star Trek]]
[[Category:Tournament bracket]]

641: Free

2025-03-24T17:17:11Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 641
| date = September 25, 2009
| title = Free
| image = free.png
| titletext = Asbestos is bad; definitely get the one on the right. Wait -- this one over here has no swine flu! Now I can't decide.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Asbestos}} is a fibrous material most commonly known and used for its heat-resistant properties. It was commonly used in housing insulation until its astonishingly destructive effects on human lungs were discovered. The use of asbestos in housing is now banned, but asbestos is still quite common in laboratory hot pads, as well as in concrete industrial buildings where the risk of it getting into the air is minimal.

The comic depicts a common advertising trick taken to an absurd extreme; asbestos would not be encountered nor added to cereal and thus it is considered obvious that all cereal is free from asbestos. However, here one brand of cereal is advertising this fact, implying that it is not the norm and the other cereals contain asbestos. Note that in some countries, like Germany for example, this practice is actually not allowed, since it counts as "misleading advertising".

While the suggestive implication might be that competitive products do not declare as asbestos free because they cannot truthfully say this, the irony may be that the "asbestos-free" disclaimer could also cause a customer to ''distrust'' the product on the grounds of {{w|Damning with faint praise|damning by faint praise}}—if the best thing they can say about a product is that it doesn't contain a toxic building material, do we really want to know what actually ''is'' in this stuff?

The claim in the title text—that a rival product has no {{w|swine flu}}—is equally superfluous, as any food product containing disease-causing viruses would be subject to recalls, severe fines, and quite a few people losing their jobs; the fact that the product is actually on a supermarket shelf implies that it already has a stellar reputation for not causing serious illness.{{Citation needed}} The use of it here could also be a reference to [[574: Swine Flu]].

The competing claims, however, sets up the ''hopefully'' false risks involved in whether to choose the one with definitely no asbestos (but possibly contains swine flu) or the other that definitely has no swine flu (but may include asbestos).

* GenCo probably stands for {{w|Generic brand|Generic}} or General Company and may be a reference to {{w|General Mills}}

* [http://ghostbusters.wikia.com/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallows Stay Puft] is also the company that produces marshmallows in the movie franchise [[wikipedia:Ghostbusters_%28franchise%29| Ghostbusters]].

* Redfarm is likely referring to cereal companies that advertise their "farm freshness", maybe a reference to Pepperidge Farm. It is also a [http://redfarmnyc.com/ Chinese Restaurant] in NYC, although this is most likely a coincidence.

Misleading advertising is also the subject of the previous comic [[624: Branding]], and of subsequent comics [[870: Advertising]] and [[993: Brand Identity]].

==Trivia==

* This comic is the TropeNamer of a {{tvtropes|AsbestosFreeCereal|documented trope}}, as well as being the page image for that trope's entry.

==Transcript==
:[A shelf holds 3 boxes of cereal. Each box shows a bowl of cereal.]
:GenCo Ⓞat Cereal
:StayPuft Oat Cereal
:RedFarm Oat Cereal (with additional text in a star) Asbestos-free!
:I hate whatever marketer first realized you could do this.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Ghostbusters]]

641: Free

2025-03-24T17:17:01Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 641
| date = September 25, 2009
| title = Free
| image = free.png
| titletext = Asbestos is bad; definitely get the one on the right. Wait -- this one over here has no swine flu! Now I can't decide.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Need explanation for other cereals. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
{{w|Asbestos}} is a fibrous material most commonly known and used for its heat-resistant properties. It was commonly used in housing insulation until its astonishingly destructive effects on human lungs were discovered. The use of asbestos in housing is now banned, but asbestos is still quite common in laboratory hot pads, as well as in concrete industrial buildings where the risk of it getting into the air is minimal.

The comic depicts a common advertising trick taken to an absurd extreme; asbestos would not be encountered nor added to cereal and thus it is considered obvious that all cereal is free from asbestos. However, here one brand of cereal is advertising this fact, implying that it is not the norm and the other cereals contain asbestos. Note that in some countries, like Germany for example, this practice is actually not allowed, since it counts as "misleading advertising".

While the suggestive implication might be that competitive products do not declare as asbestos free because they cannot truthfully say this, the irony may be that the "asbestos-free" disclaimer could also cause a customer to ''distrust'' the product on the grounds of {{w|Damning with faint praise|damning by faint praise}}—if the best thing they can say about a product is that it doesn't contain a toxic building material, do we really want to know what actually ''is'' in this stuff?

The claim in the title text—that a rival product has no {{w|swine flu}}—is equally superfluous, as any food product containing disease-causing viruses would be subject to recalls, severe fines, and quite a few people losing their jobs; the fact that the product is actually on a supermarket shelf implies that it already has a stellar reputation for not causing serious illness.{{Citation needed}} The use of it here could also be a reference to [[574: Swine Flu]].

The competing claims, however, sets up the ''hopefully'' false risks involved in whether to choose the one with definitely no asbestos (but possibly contains swine flu) or the other that definitely has no swine flu (but may include asbestos).

* GenCo probably stands for {{w|Generic brand|Generic}} or General Company and may be a reference to {{w|General Mills}}

* [http://ghostbusters.wikia.com/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallows Stay Puft] is also the company that produces marshmallows in the movie franchise [[wikipedia:Ghostbusters_%28franchise%29| Ghostbusters]].

* Redfarm is likely referring to cereal companies that advertise their "farm freshness", maybe a reference to Pepperidge Farm. It is also a [http://redfarmnyc.com/ Chinese Restaurant] in NYC, although this is most likely a coincidence.

Misleading advertising is also the subject of the previous comic [[624: Branding]], and of subsequent comics [[870: Advertising]] and [[993: Brand Identity]].

==Trivia==

* This comic is the TropeNamer of a {{tvtropes|AsbestosFreeCereal|documented trope}}, as well as being the page image for that trope's entry.

==Transcript==
:[A shelf holds 3 boxes of cereal. Each box shows a bowl of cereal.]
:GenCo Ⓞat Cereal
:StayPuft Oat Cereal
:RedFarm Oat Cereal (with additional text in a star) Asbestos-free!
:I hate whatever marketer first realized you could do this.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Ghostbusters]]

1508: Operating Systems

2025-03-24T17:13:36Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 1508
| date = April 6, 2015
| title = Operating Systems
| image = operating systems.png
| titletext = One of the survivors, poking around in the ruins with the point of a spear, uncovers a singed photo of Richard Stallman. They stare in silence. "This," one of them finally says, "This is a man who BELIEVED in something."
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, [[Randall]] gives an {{w|Gantt chart|overview}} of the past, present and (speculatively) future of the {{w|operating system}}s running in his house at any given time. Notably, because Randall is fascinated by technology, he has had more than one OS running in his household since the mid '90's. The timeline tracks how Operating Systems have come and gone over the years, and the gradual shift from desktop Operating Systems to mobile can be observed. Beyond the present day, we see some of Randall's humorous predictions as to which technologies and companies will dominate the Operating System landscape in the future.

It may be that the OS that is closest to the time-line is also the one he mainly uses during these extended periods. Previous and current systems:

*{{w|MS-DOS}} (Microsoft Disk Operating System): The default, command-line-based OS on most IBM PC-compatible computers. Early versions of {{w|Microsoft Windows}} operated as shells on top of MS-DOS rather than stand-alone OSes in their own right, which may explain part of the overlap in those two bars.

*Apple's {{w|Mac OS}} (Macintosh Operating System): The OS of Apple's Macintosh line of computers. Randall's bar indicates that he stopped using Macs in 2001, after Mac OS had been superseded by the new and then-buggy {{w|Mac OS X}}.

*{{w|Windows}}

*{{w|Linux}}: A [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html free software] Unix-like kernel often used with the GNU system to produce GNU/Linux (commonly but erroneously referred to as simply Linux). Randall's bar indicates that he likely used it on one or two PCs starting from 1999 while still using Windows on other PCs, or perhaps was dual-booting one or more PCs with Windows, until abandoning Windows in 2007 to use (GNU/)Linux full-time. This timing coincides with the release of Microsoft's controversial {{w|Windows Vista}} and the advent of more user-friendly Linux distributions.

*{{w|OS X}} (Macintosh Operating System v10): The successor OS of Apple's Macintosh line of computers. Although it was sometimes marketed as merely the 10th version of the earlier Mac OS, it was largely a new product. The bar indicates Randall's renewed use of Macintosh computers in 2009 after the OS had matured and Macs had transitioned to Intel processors.

*{{w|Android (operating system)|Android}}: The upper layers of the OS running on Android phones and tablets, above the Linux {{w|Kernel (operating system)|kernel}}. Randall is indicating that he has at least one of these devices.

*Apple's {{w|iOS}}: The OS of {{w|iPhone}}, {{w|iPad}}, {{w|iPod Touch}} and the basis of the OS run by the {{w|Apple TV}} and {{w|Apple Watch}}. Randall is indicating that he also has at least one of these devices.

His predictions for the future include:
*2018: That {{w|OS X}} (now called macOS) and {{w|iOS}} will merge. There is frequent speculation on technology blogs as to whether or not this merging will come to pass in the future. The two OSes have a common origin, share a lot of software, and are maintained by the same company that would benefit from the efficiency of maintaining a single unified OS. Opposing this is the fact that interaction patterns are very different between traditional computers and tablets/phones and a one-size-fits-both solution may not be feasible (as proven by {{w|Windows 8|Microsoft's disastrous attempt at such}}), and the fact that Apple spends some time in each of its recent keynotes mocking computers like the Microsoft Surface Pro which use both standard computer and touch control. However, just two months after this comic was posted, [https://youtu.be/DOYikXbC6Fs Apple asserted that they would not merge the two.] (That being said, Macs are getting closer to iOS devices now that they use the same type of processor, as well as copying some of the software design and features of iOS.)
*2019: That an operating system designed with and for {{w|JavaScript}} will become attractive, perhaps along the lines of [http://node-os.com/ NodeOS] and/or [http://runtimejs.org/ Runtime.js].
*2022: That there'll be an OS based on the {{w|Tinder (application)|Tinder}} dating app.
*2024: That there'll be an OS from {{w|Nest Labs}}, presumably oriented towards home automation and the {{w|Internet of things}}.
*2029: That [[Elon Musk]] will come up with an operating system.
*2030: That {{w|Disk operating system|DOS}} would make a comeback, but only in an ironic fashion (maybe because there would be no more disks left for it to operate from).
*2034: That Randall will be deploying an [http://geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/07/genetically-engineered-red-blood-cells-could-be-drug-delivery-drones/ autonomous drug-delivery drone] in his body.
*2042: Human civilization comes to a fiery end, maybe due to some unholy combination of the above innovations. Another possible explanation is that human civilization will be wiped out by an artificial super-intelligence, superior to human intelligence, as Elon Musk, Ray Kurzweil, Bill Gates and many tech pundits foresee that 2045 will be the year to see such technology becoming real, and as Elon Musk, Bill Gates and many other tech pundits fear that it will be the extinction of all life on earth, as explained [http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html on this page].
*2059: At this time his operating system will be {{w|GNU}}/{{w|Hurd}}. This infamously and perennially late [http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html GNU/Hurd] OS will finally make it in to Randall's home after human civilization has been wiped out. The joke is that GNU/Hurd began to be developed in 1990, and while it was expected to be released in a relatively short time, even now only unstable builds have been released. So Randall is saying that he will finally run it in his house a decade or two after the end of civilization. GNU/Hurd will presumably have an advantage as humanity rebuilds civilization due to the widespread availability of its code and development tools, and perhaps also because of Stallman's depth of belief, based on the title text. Alternatively, GNU/Hurd might be finished by the same force that finished humankind, for instance {{w|Skynet (Terminator)|Skynet}}, in case of {{w|Cybernetic revolt|AI Apocalypse}}. (Interestingly, although still far from completion, [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/hurd.git/commit/?id=b8ffab7c38f3ede424b8a07553d6ee6b16abb85b a new version of GNU/Hurd] was released less than a week after this comic.)

The title text refers to [[Richard Stallman]], the founder of the {{w|Free Software movement}} and the GNU and Hurd projects. A survivor of the fire that ended the human civilization has uncovered a slightly burned ({{w|Singe|singed}}) picture of him. Those gathered can see, either directly from the picture or because they already know of Stallman, that this was a man that really believed in something. In this case it was ''free software''. Inspired by his image, they rebuild their lost civilization and finish Hurd development. The GNU/Hurd reference might also be a pun, as in a "herd" of {{w|Wildebeest|Gnus}} "running" in his living room, as wild animals reclaim the Earth after the end of human civilization.

GNU is a collection of free software utilities, particularly the system utilities used with the Linux Kernel to form the GNU/Linux operating system (often erroneously called just Linux). Hurd is an operating system kernel designed as part of GNU project that could be used in place of the Linux kernel to produce a complete GNU operating system. Hurd has a microkernel architecture, which has many perceived advantages over Linux's monolithic kernel, and is thought by many to be technically superior, despite its low adoption rate compared to the Linux kernel. As of 2023, it is still in development as version 0.9. Randall has made several comics about free software and also [[:Category:Comics featuring Richard Stallman|about Stallman]].

==Transcript==
:[All text is in capitals. At the top of the panel:]
::'''Operating Systems'''
::running in my house

:[At the bottom there is time-line that runs from 1990 to 2066. It has small indicators for every year, larger for every 5 years and largest for every 10 years. Below the 10 year indicators are written the years. Also the year 2015 is marked:]
:1990 2000 2010 Now 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060

:[Bars above the time-line in four levels are labeled with operating system names, representing the time period for that OS. Below is a list of the bars on the time-line in order of first appearance (with approximate year ranges given). Also the level from 1-4 is indicated, with level 1 just above the time-line and level 4 the highest level above the line:]

:[Level 1 from 1988 to 1998 (extends a little left past the beginning of the time-line but not off panel):]
::MS DOS
:[Level 2 from 1993 to 2007:]
::Windows
:[Level 3 from 1994 to 2001:]
::Mac OS
:[Level 1 from 1999 to 2018:]
::Linux
:[Level 2 from 2009 to 2023. On the way the bar merges with iOS around 2018 thru 2022:]
::OS X
:[Level 3 from 2009 to 2016:]
::Android
:[Level 4 from 2013 to 2022. On the way to 2022 the bar moves down past Android to merge with OS X after 2018:]
::iOS
:[Level 1 from 2018 to 2028. The text is written in square brackets:]
::[Something].js
:[Level 3 from 2022 to 2029:]
::TinderOS
:[Level 2 from 2023 to 2032:]
::Nest
:[Level 1 from 2028 to 2041:]
::Elon Musk Project:
:[Level 3 from 2030 to 2036:]
::DOS, but ironically
:[Level 2 from 2034 to 2041:]
::Blood Drone
:[This is not a bar, but the text (in three lines) is in a double bar-height (level 1-2) square bracket. The bracket extends from 2042 to 2051:]
::[Human civilization ends in fire]
:[Level 1 from 2059 going past the end of the panel past 2066:]
::GNU/Hurd

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Timelines]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:iOS]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Richard Stallman]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Elon Musk]]

what if? articles

2025-03-24T16:46:15Z

Cheesesentience: /* Article index */

<noinclude>{{DISPLAYTITLE:''What If?'' chapters}}:''For other instances of this title, see [[What If (disambiguation)]].</noinclude>
==Article index==
<big>'''The ''what if?'' index has been completely rewritten and rebuilt, thanks to a TON of work by [[Talk:What If? chapters|so many people]]!''' </big>''[[What If? chapters#bottom|(Jump to a summary of the improvements)]]''<br><big>But we still need to finish a few things! </big> --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:14, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

<span style="background-color:#ffc7c7;"><span style="color:red; font-size:1.4em;">''' '''</span><big> '''Things left to do: '''</big></span>  ''(If you need help editing the table, check out the ''[[What If? chapters#Editors|Editors section]]''! It includes a simple summary of the templates' documentations.)''

*We mostly only need to work on the explanations now! Add them for the articles that don't have one and improve the existing ones (they should be a summary of the answer, not just 1-2 sentences).
*Need to summarise the exclusive chapters in the first [[What If? (book)|''What If?'' book]]! See about second half of the table.
*Randall has released the new "''[[What If? 10th Anniversary Edition|10th Anniversary Edition]]''" of the books. [[What If? 10th Anniversary Edition|'''Add info''']] about the new book and [[:Category:Books|update the old book pages]]!

This is an index of all articles featured in Randall Munroe's ''what if?'' [[what if? (blog)|blog]] and [[:Category:Books|book series]]. For each article, the original question and a summary of Randall's answer are provided. If an article is available on the blog, you can click the title to read it in full. You can use the columns to sort the table alphabetically, by release date on the blog or YouTube, or by chapter in the books. The thumbnail is only available for articles published on the blog. If the title of a blog article differs from the one in the book, the latter will be provided in the Book column. A much simpler list that doesn't include book-exclusive articles can be found in the [https://what-if.xkcd.com/archive archive section] of the blog.<noinclude>[[Category:Incomplete explanations| ]]{{notice|The incomplete answers below will look like this.<br>There are about '''85''' incomplete explanations below!<br>}}
</noinclude>
{| class="sortable wikitable"
! rowspan="2" scope="col" class="unsortable" | Thumbnail
! rowspan="2" scope="col" data-sort-type=text| Title
! rowspan="2" scope="col" data-sort-type=text| Reader's question
! rowspan="2" scope="col" class="unsortable" | Randall's answer
! colspan="3"| Article available in... <noinclude></noinclude> ''(click to sort)'' <noinclude></noinclude>
|-
! scope="col" data-sort-type=number | Blog
! scope="col" data-sort-type=number | Books
! scope="col" data-sort-type=number | YouTube
|-
|[[File:Relativistic Baseball.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|1|Relativistic Baseball}}'''
|''"What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?"''
<div align="right">—Ellen McManis</div>
|The ball would create plasma and reach home plate by about 70 nanoseconds. The result would be some kind of nuclear explosion, destroying everything about a mile from the field. A ruling of "{{w|hit by pitch}}" could be interpreted in this situation.
|{{blog|1|2012|07|10}}
|{{book|1|2}}
|{{book|5|2024|02|06|3EI08o-IGYk|What if you threw a baseball at nearly light speed?}}
|-
|[[File:SAT Guessing.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|2|SAT Guessing}}'''
|''"What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? How many perfect scores would there be?"''
<div align="right">—Rob Balder</div>
|No one would get a perfect score. The odds of guessing correctly on every question would be less than the odds of every ex-living president at that time and the main cast of [[:Category:Firefly|Firefly]] getting struck by lightning on the same day.
|{{blog|2|2012|07|10|7d early}}
|{{book|1|66}}
|
|-
|[[File:Yoda.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|3|Yoda}}'''
|''"How much Force power can Yoda output?"''
<div align="right">—Ryan Finnie</div>
|Yoda can output about 19.2 kilowatts, or 25 horsepower. "Yoda power" would cost about $2/hour.
|{{blog|3|2012|07|17}}
|{{book|1|32}}
|
|-
|[[File:A Moles of Moles.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|4|A Mole of Moles}}'''
|''"What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place?"''
<div align="right">—Sean Rice</div>
|A {{w|mole (unit)|mole}} is a number that equals approximately 6.022 × 10<sup>23</sup>. If this many moles were put in space, they would form a sphere a little bit larger than our Moon with about the same gravity as Pluto. The surface would freeze and trap the interior warmth, causing geysers of hot meat and methane.
|{{blog|4|2012|07|24}}
|{{book|1|10}}
|
|-
|[[File:Robot Apocalypse.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|5|Robot Apocalypse}}'''
|''"What if there was a robot apocalypse? How long would humanity last?"''
<div align="right">—Rob Lombino</div>
|Humanity would most likely survive. Most robots can easily be subdued because technology hasn’t been developed enough to allow them to walk, evade being destroyed, and kill us efficiently. They could decide to use our nuclear weapons, but that would hurt them more than us.
|{{blog|5|2012|07|31}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Glass Half Empty.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|6|Glass Half Empty}}'''
|''"What if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty?"''
<div align="right">—Vittorio Iacovella</div>
|If the vacuum were on the bottom half, it would explode, but if it were on the top half, the air rushes in and it becomes normal water.
|{{blog|6|2012|08|07}}
|{{book|1|26}}
|{{book|16|2024|09|24|0EytSWiKrFg|What if a glass of water were LITERALLY half empty?}}
|-
|[[File:Everybody Out.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|7|Everybody Out}}'''
|''"Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet?"''
<div align="right">—Adam</div>
|No, at least not without starving to death quickly and leaving our pets, belongings, and everything else behind. The best way to do it is either with a space tether or to ride the shockwave of a nuclear bomb, but the former lacks a good material and the latter is literally ''riding the shockwave of a nuclear bomb''. In any case, highly impractical.
|{{blog|7|2012|08|14}}
|{{book|1|35}}
|
|-
|[[File:Everybody Jump.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|8|Everybody Jump}}'''
|''"What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?"''
<div align="right">—Thomas Bennett (and many others)</div>
|Earth would be unaffected, but almost all humans would probably be wiped out due to everyone trying to get home at the same time.
|{{blog|8|2012|08|21}}
|{{book|1|9}}
|{{book|9|2024|04|16|p2M8Y0z9Rl0|What if everyone jumped at once?}}
|-
|[[File:Soul Mates.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|9|Soul Mates}}'''
|''"What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world?"''
<div align="right">—Benjamin Staffin</div>
|Almost nobody would find their soul mate, so most people would probably fake love, due to the difficult nature of finding true love and staying with someone.
|{{blog|9|2012|08|28}}
|{{book|1|6}}
|
|-
|[[File:Cassini.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|10|Cassini}}'''
|''"What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now - only rotated by an angle of 90 degrees?"''
<div align="right">—Socke</div>
|Hard to tell with any sort of certainty, but North America remains the same (just flipped, so Canada is tropical), South America becomes more like Europe before this question, Asia is flipped just like North America was, Europe becomes more like southeast Asia, Africa's climate is essentially rotated 90 degrees and East Africa gets a lot more tornadoes, Australia is colder and wetter, and Antarctica becomes a tropical rainforest. Of course, the biosphere collapses due to the shuffling and the ice caps (prematurely) melt, while also making certain wildlife appear elsewhere than normal.
|{{blog|10|2012|09|04}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Droppings.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|11|Droppings}}'''
|''"If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it?"''
<div align="right">—Adrienne Olson</div>
|Assuming you are in an area with a reasonable number of birds, you'd have to wait about 195 years.
|{{blog|11|2012|09|11}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Raindrop.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|12|Raindrop}}'''
|''"What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop?"''
<div align="right">—Michael McNeill</div>
|The surrounding area would be obliterated via the violent rush of crushing water, causing flash flooding in the surrounding area. There would be mass confusion for many following years.
|{{blog|12|2012|09|18}}
|{{book|1|65}}
|
|-
|[[File:Laser Pointer.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|13|Laser Pointer}}'''
|''"If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?"''
<div align="right">—Peter Lipowicz</div>
|It would take lots of power, but yes, assuming you want to drain the Earth's oil and cover Asia in megawatt lasers. Going even further in power level fries the Earth and launches the Moon into the solar system.
|{{blog|13|2012|09|25}}
|{{book|1|7}}
|{{book|18|2024|11|05|JqFSGkFPipM|What if everyone pointed a laser at the moon?}}
|-
| rowspan="7" |[[File:Short Answer Section.png|100px]]
| rowspan="7" |'''{{what if|14|Short Answer Section}}'''
|''"How long would the Sun last if a giant water hose were focused upon it?"''
<div align="right">—Austin Dickey</div>
|The Sun would actually burn brighter due to water being mostly hydrogen (main fusion fuel of stars) and eventually become a black hole with all the mass of the water.
| rowspan="7"{{blog|14|2012|10|02}}
| rowspan="7" |
| rowspan="7" |
|-
|''"What if you shined a flashlight (or a laser) into a sphere made of one-way mirror glass?"''
<div align="right">—Chase Montgomery</div>
|One-way glass does not exist. The light shines through just like normal glass.
|-
|''"If Michael Phelps could hold his breath indefinitely, how long would it take for him to reach the lowest point in the ocean and back if he swam straight down and then straight back up?"''
<div align="right">—Jimmy Morey</div>
|Michael Phelps would die somewhere between 100 and 400 meters of depth. If he were immune to pressure, then it would take 3 hours to swim to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and back.
|-
|''"In the first Superman movie, Superman flies around Earth so fast that it begins turning in the opposite direction. This somehow turns back time [... ] How much energy would someone flying around the Earth have to exert in order to reverse the Earth's rotation?"''
<div align="right">—Aidan Blake</div>
|Superman wasn't pushing the Earth. He was flying {{w|Superluminal motion|superluminally}} and was thus travelling back through time.
|-
|''"How fast would you have to go in your car to run a red light claiming that it appeared green to you due to the Doppler Effect?"''
<div align="right">—Yitzi Turniansky</div>
|The {{w|Doppler Effect}} is when waves (such as light or sound) change based on movement or position. You would need to go about one sixth of the {{w|speed of light}}.
|-
|''"What would happen if you opened a portal between Boston (sea level) and Mexico City (elev. 8000+ feet)?"''
<div align="right">—Jake G.</div>
|There would be winds of 440 mph (708 km/h) sucking Boston into Mexico City.
|-
|''"When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. Her kitchen had something called Bauhaus chairs, which are full of holes, approx 5-6 millimeters in diameter in both back and seat. During this lovely dinner I was forced to liberate a small portion of wind and was relieved that I managed to do so very discretely. Only to find that the chair I sat on converted the successful silence into a perfect, and loud, flute note. We were both (luckily) amazed and surprised and I have often wondered what the odds are for something like that happening. We kept the chairs for five years but despite laborious attempts it couldn't be reproduced."''
<div align="right">—R. D.</div>
|This... isn’t actually a question, but thank you for sharing!
|-
|[[File:Mariana Trench Explosion.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|15|Mariana Trench Explosion}}'''
|''"What if you exploded a nuclear bomb (say, the Tsar Bomba) at the bottom of the Marianas Trench?"''
<div align="right">—Evin Sellin</div>
|It would warm a small patch of the ocean and not do much. With a bigger bomb, it could destroy the world.
|{{blog|15|2012|10|09}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="6" |[[File:Today's topic- Lightning.png|100px]]
| rowspan="6" |'''{{what if|16|Today's topic: Lightning}}'''
|''"How dangerous is it to be in a pool during a thunderstorm?"''
<div align="right">—Jay Gengelbach</div>
|Pretty dangerous, as if the pool was hit, 20,000 amps of electricity from the lightning bolt would spread across the surface and shock you. Randall recommends that one should stay at least 12 meters away from a pool during a thunderstorm.
| rowspan="6"{{blog|16|2012|10|16}}
| rowspan="6"{{book|1|19|Lightning}}
| rowspan="6" |
|-
|''"What would happen if you were taking a shower or standing under a waterfall when you were struck by lightning?"''
<div align="right">—Same3Chords</div>
|The droplets of water wouldn’t be dangerous, but a tub of water or any puddle you stand in ''will'' be dangerous.
|-
|''"What would happen if you were in a boat, plane or a submarine that got hit by lightning?"''
<div align="right">—Soobnauce</div>
|A boat would be as safe as a car if it had a cabin and lightning protection, while a submarine would be completely safe. The plane was not mentioned.
|-
|''"What if you were changing the light at the top of a radio tower and lightning struck? Or what if you were doing a backflip? Or standing in a graphite field? Or looking straight up at the bolt?"''
<div align="right">—Danny Wedul</div>
|You would get shocked normally if you were on a radio tower, doing a backflip, or looking straight up. These all don’t matter much. Randall doesn’t know what a graphite field is and chose not to answer that part of the question.
|-
|''"What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair?"''
<div align="right">—Timothy Campbell</div>
|The bullet might be heated a little bit, but it’s travelling too fast to have any impact.
|-
|''"What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning?"''
<div align="right">—NJSG</div>
|It would bring you to “Microsoft BOB®”, “Gateway 2000 Edition”.
|-
|[[File:Green Cows.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|17|Green Cows}}'''
|''"If cows could photosynthesize, how much less food would they need?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|They would need 4% less food. There simply isn't enough area on the cow for photosynthesis to provide all its energy requirements. Plus, it’d still need food for nutrients just like real plants.
|{{blog|17|2012|10|23}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:BB Gun.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|18|BB Gun}}'''
|''"In Armageddon, a NASA guy comments that a plan to shoot a laser at the asteroid is like “shooting a b.b. gun at a freight train.” What would it take to stop an out-of-control freight train using only b.b. guns?"''
<div align="right">—Charles James O'Keefe</div>
|100,000 shooters distributed over 2 kilometers of track, each firing a few dozen rounds as the train comes near them.
|{{blog|18|2012|10|30}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Tie Vote.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|19|Tie Vote}}'''
|''"What if there's LITERALLY a tie?"''
<div align="right">—Nate Silver (<span class="plainlinks">[https://twitter.com/fivethirtyeight/status/154434288287363072 '''Twitter, January 4th, 2012''']</span>)</div>
|In the case of each candidate getting the exact same amount of votes on Election Day, most states would randomly pick one, whether it be through tossing a coin, drawing a name or straws. The chances of this happening in 9 battleground states would be about equal to the elector drawing a name from a hat, then being smashed by a bale of cocaine by drug smugglers and obliterated by a meteorite impact while being swept away in a tornado.
|{{blog|19|2012|11|06}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Diamond.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|20|Diamond}}'''
|''"If a meteor made out of diamond and 100 feet in diameter was traveling at the speed of light and hit the earth, what would happen to it?"''
<div align="right">—Aidan Smith, Age 8, via his father Jeff</div>
|Nothing made of matter can travel at the speed of light, but at the closest speed observed (99.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light, the speed of the {{w|Oh-My-God particle}}), the Earth would explode with enough force to obliterate the entire Solar System.
|{{blog|20|2012|11|13}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Machine Gun Jetpack.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|21|Machine Gun Jetpack}}'''
|''"Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns?"''
<div align="right">—Rob B</div>
|You'd need a Russian 30 mm rotary cannon to do it optimally, and the excessive force would definitely hurt you. If you braced the rider, created an aerodynamic craft strong enough to survive the acceleration, and cooled the craft, you'd be able to jump mountains.
|{{blog|21|2012|11|20}}
|{{book|1|14|Machine-Gun Jetpack}}
|
|-
|[[File:Cost of Pennies.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|22|Cost of Pennies}}'''
|''"If you carry a penny in your coin tray, how long would it take for that penny to cost you more than a cent in extra gas?"''
<div align="right">—Leto Atreides</div>
|140,000 miles if gas was the only cost involved. The exercise of picking up the penny can prolong your lifespan, but you've wasted valuable seconds reading this article.
|{{blog|22|2012|11|27}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="7" |[[File:Short Answer Section II.png|100px]]
| rowspan="7" |'''{{what if|23|Short Answer Section II}}'''
|''"If my printer could literally print out money, would it have that big an effect on the world?"''
<div align="right">—Derek O’Brien</div>
| You'd make 200 million dollars a year, so no.
| rowspan="7"{{blog|23|2012|12|04}}
| rowspan="7"{{book|1|18|Short-Answer Section}}
| rowspan="7" |
|-
|''"What would happen if you exploded a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane? Would the storm cell be immediately vaporized?"''
<div align="right">—Rupert Bainbridge (and hundreds of others)</div>
|No. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has [https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd-faq/#hurricane-mitigation:~:text=Stop%20a%20Hurricane%3F-,Nuclear%20Weapons,-Adding%20Hygroscopic%20Particles has published a response] explaining why it wouldn't work.
|-
|''"If everyone put little turbine generators on the downspouts of their houses and businesses, how much power would we generate? Would we ever generate enough power to offset the cost of the generators?"''
<div align="right">—Damien</div>
|If it's very rainy, it would generate 800 watts of power, which isn't enough to offset the cost of the generators.
|-
|''"Using only pronounceable letter combinations, how long would names have to be to give each star in the universe a unique one word name?"''
<div align="right">—Seamus Johnson</div>
|About 24 characters.
|-
|''"I bike to class sometimes. It's annoying biking in the wintertime, because it's so cold. How fast would I have to bike for my skin to warm up the way a spacecraft heats up during reentry?"''
<div align="right">—David Nai</div>
|You'd have to bike at 200 m/s, but you'd fry alive from overexerting your body.
|-
|''"How much physical space does the internet take up?"''
<div align="right">—Max L</div>
|Using humanity's total produced storage space from the last few years as an upper bound, and assuming 3.5" drives, the Internet is less than the size of an oil tank.
|-
|''"What if you strapped C4 to a boomerang? Could this be an effective weapon, or would it be as stupid as it sounds?"''
<div align="right">—Chad Macziewski</div>
|Aerodynamics aside, you'd have a bomb that comes back if you miss.
|-
|[[File:Model Rockets.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|24|Model Rockets}}'''
|''"How many model rocket engines would it take to launch a real rocket into space?"''
<div align="right">—Greg Schock, PA</div>
|It would take about 65,000, but they’d have to be layered in a cone shape with about 30 stages so the vehicle has thrust for long enough. It could carry 60 kg, much of that spent on all the parts of the rocket that aren't the engine.
|{{blog|24|2012|12|11}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Three Wise Men.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|25|Three Wise Men}}'''
|''"The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? What path would you trace on the Earth? Does it converge to a fixed cycle?"''
<div align="right">—N. Murdoch</div>
|No, but it would make some really cool patterns due to various factors such as the Earth’s rotation and its position changing in its orbit around the Sun.
|{{blog|25|2012|12|18}}
|
|{{book|22|2025|03|04|YL2VNtus4xk|What if the wise men kept walking after Jesus’s birth?}}
|-
|[[File:Leap Seconds.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|26|Leap Seconds}}'''
|''"Every now and then we have to insert a leap second because the Earth’s rotation is slowing down. Could we speed up Earth’s rotation, so that we do not need Leap Seconds?"''
<div align="right">—Anton (Berlin, Germany)</div>
|The only real way to do this is by hitting Earth with asteroids; all other ideas would be too difficult or wouldn’t work. With 50,000 planets B-612 hitting the Earth each second and a few assumptions, we could stop worrying about leap seconds (mostly because it would deliver the energy of about one dinosaur-killer asteroid every couple days, wiping out life on Earth quite quickly)
|{{blog|26|2012|12|31|6d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Death Rates.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|27|Death Rates}}'''
|''"If one randomly chosen extra person were to die each second somewhere on Earth, what impact would it have on the world population?"''
<div align="right">—Guy Petzall</div>
|The world population would continue to grow, though 40% more slowly. Pilots, drivers, and surgeons would die en route and mid-operation, but these would be comparable to usual accident rates and handled fairly easily.
|{{blog|27|2013|01|08|1d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Steak Drop.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|28|Steak Drop}}'''
|''"From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?"''
<div align="right">—Alex Lahey</div>
|From the very edge of the atmosphere, but even in that case it might not be fully cooked, as the steak will have to pass through parts of the atmosphere that are freezing cold and the parts of the fall where heat is being applied are more likely to char and disintegrate the steak than cook it.
|{{blog|28|2013|01|15}}
|{{book|1|23}}
|
|-
|[[File:Spent Fuel Pool.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|29|Spent Fuel Pool}}'''
|''"What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface?"''
<div align="right">—Jonathan Bastien-Filiatrault</div>
|As long as you don't touch strange things and you don't swim too close to the fuel rods, it would be just like a regular pool. Except for the fact you would never make it to the pool, as the guards would notice and shoot you to death.
|{{blog|29|2013|01|22}}
|{{book|1|3}}
|{{book|8|2024|04|02|EFRUL7vKdU8|What if you swam in a nuclear storage pool?}}
|-
|[[File:Interplanetary Cessna.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|30|Interplanetary Cessna}}'''
|''"What would happen if you tried to fly a normal Earth airplane above different Solar System bodies?"''
<div align="right">—Glen Chiacchieri</div>
|It would be difficult to fly on Mars, so you would crash. The gas giants also have this problem, and you would freeze and tumble. Titan and Venus are the best bets, but Titan is cold and Venus is full of sulfuric acid.
|{{blog|30|2013|01|29}}
|{{book|1|30}}
|
|-
|[[File:FedEx Bandwidth.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|31|FedEx Bandwidth}}'''
|''"When - if ever - will the bandwidth of the Internet surpass that of FedEx?"''
<div align="right">—Johan Öbrink</div>
|Probably never, unless the Internet's transfer rate grows faster than storage rates, the Internet won't surpass an army of FedEx trucks. However, the ping times would be ''absurd''.
|{{blog|31|2013|02|05}}
|{{book|1|44}}
|
|-
|[[File:Hubble.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|32|Hubble}}'''
|''"If the Hubble telescope were aimed at the Earth, how detailed would the images be?"''
<div align="right">—Kyle Rankin</div>
|Very blurry because Hubble isn't able to rotate fast enough to track it on the surface of the Earth. Hubble is the wrong tool for the job, you're thinking of a spy satellite.
|{{blog|32|2013|02|12}}
|
|{{book|1|2023|11|29|2LSyizrk8-0|What if we aimed the Hubble Telescope at Earth?}}
|-
|[[File:Ships.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|33|Ships}}'''
|''"How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Toje</div>
|The sea level would fall by about 6 microns, slightly more than the diameter of a strand of spider silk. However, since the oceans are currently rising at about 3.3 millimeters per year due to global warming, the water would be back up to its original average level in 16 hours.
|{{blog|33|2013|02|19}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:what if? Twitter.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|34|Twitter}}'''
|''"How many unique English tweets are possible? How long would it take for the population of the world to read them all out loud?"''
<div align="right">—Eric H., Hopatcong, NJ</div>
|Since there are 2 * 10^46 meaningful English tweets, reading them all would take 10,000 "eternal years", with an eternal day being the length of time needed to wear down a mountain if a bird scraped 1 grain every thousand years.
|{{blog|34|2013|02|26}}
|{{book|1|50}}
|
|-
|[[File:Hair Dryer.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|35|Hair Dryer}}'''
|''"What would happen if a hair dryer with continuous power was turned on and put in an airtight 1x1x1 meter box?"''
<div align="right">—Nathan Terrell</div>
|The box would heat until the ground starts melting, and going further, it would eventually create updrafts and bounce around everywhere. Turning it off and on again would launch it out of the sky in glowing fury.
|{{blog|35|2013|03|05}}
|{{book|1|11}}
|
|-
|[[File:Cornstarch.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|36|Cornstarch}}'''
|''"How much cornstarch can I rinse down the drain before unpleasant things start to happen?"''
<div align="right">—Anna R., Fort Wayne, IN</div>
|It depends what you consider unpleasant. Your sink will clog and your house will flood with oobleck, but if you really really like cornstarch then nothing unpleasant will happen.
|{{blog|36|2013|03|12}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Supersonic Stereo.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|37|Supersonic Stereo}}'''
|''"What if you somehow managed to make a stereo travel at twice the speed of sound, would it sound backwards to someone who was just casually sitting somewhere as it flies by?"''
<div align="right">—Tim Currie</div>
|Assuming the stereo is indestructible, yes. Although you’d only get it supersonic for less than a second, and the music would be heavily compressed after the sonic boom.
|{{blog|37|2013|03|19}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:what if? Voyager.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|38|Voyager}}'''
|''"With today's technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I?"''
<div align="right">—Elliot Bennett</div>
|We could possibly spend a ton of money and resources to get a probe to Voyager. Getting it back is another story.
|{{blog|38|2013|03|26}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Hockey Puck.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|39|Hockey Puck}}'''
|''"How hard would a puck have to be shot to be able to knock the goalie himself backwards into the net?"''
<div align="right">—Tom</div>
|It doesn’t really work like that: at high enough speeds to knock the goalie back they’d both just splatter.
|{{blog|39|2013|04|02}}
|{{book|1|24}}
|
|-
|[[File:Pressure Cooker.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|40|Pressure Cooker}}'''
|''"Am I right to be afraid of pressure cookers? What's the worst thing that can happen if you misuse a pressure cooker in an ordinary kitchen?"''
<div align="right">—Delphine Lourtau</div>
|Ordinarily, the worst that can happen is the lid blowing off and superheated liquid spraying everywhere, but you can use one to make {{w|Dioxygen difluoride}}, which is much worse.
|{{blog|40|2013|04|9}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Go West.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|41|Go West}}'''
|''"If everybody in the US drove west, could we temporarily halt continental drift?"''
<div align="right">—Derek</div>
|Not even by a bit, because the North American plate is just too heavy for people to make an impact in its movement.
|{{blog|41|2013|04|16}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Longest Sunset.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|42|Longest Sunset}}'''
|''"What is the longest possible sunset you can experience while driving, assuming we are obeying the speed limit and driving on paved roads?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Berg</div>
|95 minutes on certain Norewgian and Finnish highways. (A similar concept has been explored in comic [[162: Angular Momentum]].)
|{{blog|42|201304|23}}
|{{book|1|52}}
|
|-
|[[File:Train Loop.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|43|Train Loop}}'''
|''"Could a high-speed train run through a vertical loop, like a rollercoaster, with the passengers staying comfortable?"''
<div align="right">—Gero Walter</div>
|No, not even if we change the requirements to just the passengers staying alive.
|{{blog|43|2013|04|30}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:High Throw.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|44|High Throw}}'''
|''"How high can a human throw something?"''
<div align="right">—Irish Dave on the Isle of Man</div>
|Aroldis Chapman could throw a golf ball to a height of sixteen giraffes.
|{{blog|44|2013|05|07}}
|{{book|1|38}}
|
|-
|[[File:ISS Music Video.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|45|ISS Music Video}}'''
|''"Is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo '''this'''] the most expensive music video ever?"''
<div align="right">—Various Youtube commenters</div>
|No. If the construction cost of the setpiece is how this is measured, then it would be U2's "Last Night on Earth" on a section of Interstate Highway. If not, then it doesn't even come close to Thriller.
|{{blog|45|2013|05|14}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Bowling Ball.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|46|Bowling Ball}}'''
|''"I've been told that if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a bowling ball, it would be smoother than said bowling ball. My question is, what would a bowling ball look like if it were blown up to the size of the Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Seth C.</div>
|The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen.
|{{blog|46|2013|05|21}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Alien Astronomers.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|47|Alien Astronomers}}'''
|''"Let's assume there's life on the the nearest habitable exoplanet and that they have technology comparable to ours. If they looked at our star right now, what would they see?"''
<div align="right">—Chuck H.</div>
|They would see pretty much nothing with regular telescopes. The detection could be possible with radio technology.
|{{blog|47|2013|05|28}}
|{{book|1|28}}
|
|-
|[[File:Sunset on the British Empire.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|48|Sunset on the British Empire}}'''
|''"When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire?"''
<div align="right">—Kurt Amundson</div>
|If the British Empire kept the borders it had when the question was written, it would continue to experience eternal sunshine for many thousands of years until a total eclipse hits the Pitcairn Islands at the right time. However, after the publication of this article, it has been announced that [https://www.mondayeconomist.com/p/british-empire#:~:text=On%20March%2021st%2C%202025%2C%20a,part%20of%20the%20British%20Empire the British Indian Ocean Territory will become part of Mauritus] in March 2025, allowing the Sun to finally set on the British Empire.
|{{blog|48|2013|06|04}}
|{{book|1|60}}
|
|-
|[[File:Sunless Earth.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|49|Sunless Earth}}'''
|''"What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off?"''
<div align="right">—Many, many readers</div>
|We would see a variety of benefits across our lives such as the elimination of time zones, more reliable satellites, easier astronomy, and safer wild parsnip, but the downside is we would all freeze and die.
|{{blog|49|2013|06|11}}
|{{book|1|57}}
|
|-
|[[File:Extreme Boating.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|50|Extreme Boating}}'''
|''"What would it be like to navigate a rowboat through a lake of mercury? What about bromine? Liquid gallium? Liquid tungsten? Liquid nitrogen? Liquid helium?"''
<div align="right">—Nicholas Aron</div>
|It would be difficult to row the boat on mercury because it's very dense. Bromine smells terrible and is highly toxic. Gallium would dissolve an aluminium boat. Liquid tungsten would incinerate you instantly. Liquid nitrogen would kill you either by suffocation or hypothermia. Liquid helium's superfluid properties would sink your boat, but at least you'd hear the “third sound” as you die.
|{{blog|50|2013|06|18}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Free Fall.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|51|Free Fall}}'''
|''"What place on Earth would allow you to freefall the longest by jumping off it? What about using a squirrel suit?"''
<div align="right">—Dhash Shrivathsa</div>
|It takes 26 seconds to fall from the top of {{w|Mount Thor}} into a pit of cotton candy at the bottom of the cliff. The record for the longest wingsuit glide is enough time for Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi to eat 45 hot dogs.
|{{blog|51|2013|06|25}}
|{{book|1|45}}
|
|-
|[[File:Bouncy Balls.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|52|Bouncy Balls}}'''
|''"What if one were to drop 3,000 bouncy balls from a seven story parking structure onto a person walking on the sidewalk below? Should the person survive, what would be the number of bouncy balls needed to kill them? What injuries would occur and what would the associated crimes be?"''
<div align="right">—Ginger Bread</div>
|Around 3,000,000 balls. Death would occur and you would be charged with manslaughter or murder.
|{{blog|52|2013|07|02}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Drain the Oceans.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|53|Drain the Oceans}}'''
|''"How quickly would the ocean's drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space was created at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean? How would the Earth change as the water is being drained?"''
<div align="right">—Ted M.</div>
|Hundreds of thousands of years, so you'll need a bigger portal. As their basins are cut off, many shallow seas and a few deep trenches remain, leaving much of Earth still covered with water. Massive, unpredictable environmental changes would probably wipe out mankind. If they didn't, the Dutch would take over the world, no longer preoccupied with preventing their lands from flooding as they are now.
|{{blog|53|2013|07|09}}
|{{book|1|48}}
|{{book|12|2024|06|18|Jpy55EgMQgY|What if you drained the oceans?}}
|-
|[[File:Drain the Oceans Part II.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|54|Drain the Oceans: Part II}}'''
|''"Supposing you did '''{{what if|53|Drain the Oceans}}''', and dumped the water on top of the Curiosity rover, how would Mars change as the water accumulated?"''
<div align="right">—Iain</div>
|The water would fill the {{w|Valles Marineris}}, eventually leaving only {{w|Olympus Mons}} and some other small islands. The sea would ultimately freeze over, become covered in dust, and migrate to permafrost at the poles. In the meantime, the Netherlands would colonize Mars through the portal. The video additionally mentions that the greenhouse gas effects caused by all the new water might keep Mars's oceans liquid.
|{{blog|54|2013|07|16}}
|{{book|1|49}}
|{{book|14|2024|08|13|FkUNHhVbQ1Q|What if we teleported the oceans to Mars?}}
|-
|[[File:Random Sneeze Call.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|55|Random Sneeze Call}}'''
|''"If you call a random phone number and say "God bless you", what are the chances that the person who answers just sneezed? On average, not just in spring or fall."''
<div align="right">—Mimi</div>
|The chances are 1 in 40000, but you might want to be careful, as there's also a 1 in a billion chance that the person you called just murdered someone.
|{{blog|55|2013|07|23}}
|{{book|1|53}}
|
|-
|[[File:Restraining an Airplane.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|56|Restraining an Airplane}}'''
|''"If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn't be able to take off, what would the rope have to be made out of?"''
<div align="right">—Connor Childerhose</div>
|A steel cable an inch thick, the lines of an army of fishermen, or the hair of 20 people. Hair has the highest tensile strength of any material in your body.
|{{blog|56|2013|07|30}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Dropping a Mountain.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|57|Dropping a Mountain}}'''
|''"What if a huge mountain—Denali, say—had the bottom inch of its base disappear? What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? What about 1 foot? What if the mountain's base were raised to the present height of the summit, and then the whole thing were allowed to drop to the earth?"''
<div align="right">—John-Clark Levin</div>
|An inch or a foot wouldn't do much, it would only feel like a 3.5 magnitude earthquake. Dropped from its own height, Denali would cause a magnitude 7 earthquake and crush coal to diamonds. Dropped from space, that's just a large asteroid and it would cause an impact winter.
|{{blog|57|2013|08|06}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="3" |[[File:Orbital Speed.png|100px]]
| rowspan="3" |'''{{what if|58|Orbital Speed}}'''
|''"What if a spacecraft slowed down on re-entry to just a few miles per hour using rocket boosters like the Mars-sky-crane? Would it negate the need for a heat shield?"''
<div align="right">—Brian</div>
| rowspan="3" |No, because you need to go 8 km/s to stay in orbit, and it would take impossible amounts of fuel to slow down.
| rowspan="3"{{blog|58|2013|08|12|1d early}}
| rowspan="3"{{book|1|43}}
| rowspan="3" |
|-
|''"Is it possible for a spacecraft to control its reentry in such a way that it avoids the atmospheric compression and thus would not require the expensive (and relatively fragile) heat shield on the outside?"''
<div align="right">—Christopher Mallow</div>
|-
|''"Could a (small) rocket (with payload) be lifted to a high point in the atmosphere where it would only need a small rocket to get to escape velocity?"''
<div align="right">—Kenny Van de Maele</div>
|-
|[[File:Updating a Printed Wikipedia.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|59|Updating a Printed Wikipedia}}'''
|''"If you had a printed version of the whole of (say, the English) Wikipedia, how many printers would you need in order to keep up with the changes made to the live version?"''
<div align="right">—Susanne Könings</div>
|You'd need six printers, but if using an ink printer, costs would rack up to $500,000 a month, dwarfing paper and maintenance costs. You'd need to file away past versions in case they were reverted (restored), which would be a nightmare.
|{{blog|59|2013|08|20|1d late}}
|{{book|1|58}}
|{{book|13|2024|7|9|RgBYohJ7mIk|What if you tried to print Wikipedia?}}
|-
|[[File:Signs of Life.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|60|Signs of Life}}'''
|''"If you could teleport to a random place of the surface of the Earth, what are the odds that you'll see signs of intelligent life?"''
<div align="right">—Borislav Stanimirov</div>
|70% of the time you would end up in the ocean, while most of the rest will be somewhere uninhabited. But if it’s night, you can see satellites just by looking up.
|{{blog|60|2013|08|27}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Speed Bump.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|61|Speed Bump}}'''
|''"How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?"''
<div align="right">—Myrlin Barber</div>
|At highway speeds, you could wreck your tires and suspension. Around 150-300 mph, the aerodynamics of a typical sedan will cause it to flip and crash before even reaching the speed bump. At 90% the speed of light, you could face a billion-dollar speeding ticket.
|{{blog|61|2013|09|03}}
|{{book|1|41}}
|
|-
|[[File:Falling With Helium.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|62|Falling With Helium}}'''
|''"What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? Then, while falling, I release the helium and fill the balloon. How long of a fall would I need in order for the balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely?"''
<div align="right">—Colin Rowe</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}About 16,000 feet. You would use about ten tanks, or 2500 ft<sup>3</sup>, of helium. A larger balloon could just be used as a parachute, no helium needed.
|{{blog|62|2013|09|10}}
|{{book|1|34}}
|
|-
|[[File:Google's Datacenters on Punch Cards.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|63|Google's Datacenters on Punch Cards}}'''
|''"If all digital data were stored on punch cards, how big would Google's data warehouse be?"''
<div align="right">—James Zetlin</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}A 4.5 km thick layer of punch cards would bury the Earth, or triple the height ice sheets reached during the last ice age.
|{{blog|63|2013|09|17}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Rising Steadily.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|64|Rising Steadily}}'''
|''"If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? Would you freeze or suffocate first? Or something else?"''
<div align="right">—Rebecca B</div>
|A nudist would survive for five hours, then succumb to the cold. With a good coat, one would survive for seven, even plausibly eight, until reaching the low-oxygen {{w|death zone}} and suffocating. However, your corpse would outlast the Earth as it was swallowed by the Sun.
|{{blog|64|2013|09|24}}
|{{book|1|15}}
|
|-
|[[File:Twitter Timeline Height.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|65|Twitter Timeline Height}}'''
|''"If our Twitter timelines (tweets by the people we follow) actually extended off the screen in both directions, how tall would they be?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|{{notice|Too short + needs rephrasing}}As of October 2013, the bottom of the timeline would be eight million kilometers tall, and a prediction that Twitter activity might start to die down in about five years.
|{{blog|65|2013|10|01}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:500 MPH.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|66|500 MPH}}'''
|''"If winds reached 500 mph, would it pick up a human?"''
<div align="right">—Grey Flynn, age 7, Stoneham, MA</div>
|500 mph winds are more than fast enough to pick up a person and propel them through the air. In fact, 500 mph winds are so fast that they only occur on Earth in extreme situations like the immediate vicinity of an erupting volcano or the aftermath of a major asteroid impact at which point wind speed would only be one of many dangers to human survival.
|{{blog|66|2013|10|08}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Expanding Earth.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|67|Expanding Earth}}'''
|''"How long would it take for people to notice their weight gain if the mean radius of the world expanded by 1cm every second? (Assuming the average composition of rock were maintained.)"''
<div align="right">—Dennis O’Donnell</div>
|After a month, the gain would be measurable but within the normal variation of gravity. After a year, it would be more prominent at 5%. Humans could survive with difficulty for a decade, but even in specially-built environments, they would succumb within a century as air itself became toxic from atmospheric pressure. After a few centuries, the Moon would fall into the Roche limit and crumble into rings.
|{{blog|67|2013|10|15}}
|{{book|1|55}}
|{{book|17|2024|10|15|-1-ldW4kpLM|What if Earth grew 1cm every second?}}
|-
|[[File:Little Planet.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|68|Little Planet}}'''
|''"If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince?"''
<div align="right">—Samantha Harper</div>
|{{notice|Too short, give context}}Yes, but gravity would vary wildly in different parts of your body, and if you were sprinting, you could accidentally tumble into a nauseous, swinging orbit or even outer space.
|{{blog|68|2013|10|22}}
|{{book|1|22}}
|
|-
|[[File:Facebook of the Dead.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|69|Facebook of the Dead}}'''
|''"When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?"''
<div align="right">—Emily Dunham</div>
|This depends on if Facebook stays popular or declines in popularity over time. In the former case, the dead would only outnumber the living well into the 2100s; while in the latter, this happens around 2060. Facebook can afford to keep all our data indefinitely, but there are ethical questions.
|{{blog|69|2013|10|29}}
|{{book|1|59}}
|
|-
|[[File:The Constant Groundskeeper.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|70|The Constant Groundskeeper}}'''
|''"How big of a lawn would you have to have so that when you finished mowing you'd need to start over because the grass has grown?"''
<div align="right">—Nick Nelson</div>
|{{notice|Unclear, needs rephrasing (also, too short)}}With a normal mower ten hours a day, about a quarter of a square kilometer. The world's fastest lawnmower at top speed 24/7 could mow an adult male cougar's home range.
|{{blog|70|2013|11|05}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Stirring Tea.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|71|Stirring Tea}}'''
|''"I was absentmindedly stirring a cup of hot tea, when I got to thinking, "aren't I actually adding kinetic energy into this cup?" I know that stirring does help to cool down the tea, but what if I were to stir it faster? Would I be able to boil a cup of water by stirring?"''
<div align="right">—Will Evans</div>
|No, not really, It would take at least 1 horsepower (a lot for a person stirring), and reducing the power would just make it cool faster. Stirring faster and faster would cause a vacuum to form and stirring to become ineffective.
|{{blog|71|2013|11|12}}
|{{book|1|61}}
|
|-
|[[File:Loneliest Human.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|72|Loneliest Human}}'''
|''"What is the furthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? Were they lonely?"''
<div align="right">—Bryan J. McCarter</div>
|The most well-document candidates are six Apollo astronauts who ventured behind the dark side of the Moon. Antarctic explorers and pre-colonialism Polynesian explorers have a shot, but there's no good evidence of specific people who beat the Apollo record. Astronauts Mike Collins and Al Worden said they were not at all lonely, the latter even enjoying his soltitude.
|{{blog|72|2013|11|19}}
|{{book|1|63}}
|
|-
|[[File:Lethal Neutrinos.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|73|Lethal Neutrinos}}'''
|''"How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation?"''
<div align="right">—(Overheard in a physics department)</div>
|Neutrinos are subatomic particles that barely interact with the universe at all, so it's hard to imagine a scenario where they could harm you, even in a supernova. But at about 2.3 AU, or a little farther than Mars is from the Sun, even the neutrinos would be dense enough to kill you.
|{{blog|73|2013|11|26}}
|{{book|1|39}}
|
|-
|[[File:Soda Planet.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|74|Soda Planet}}'''
|''"How much of the Earth's currently-existing water has ever been turned into a soft drink at some point in its history?"''
<div align="right">—Brian Roelofs</div>
|{{notice|Why is that? Also, needs rephrasing}}0.0000005%. Additionally, most water molecules you drink have never been drunk by another human in history, but almost all have been drunk by a dinosaur.
|{{blog|74|2013|12|03}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Phone Keypad.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|75|Phone Keypad}}'''
|''"I use one of those old phones where you type with numbers—for example, to type "Y", you press 9 three times. Some words have consecutive letters on the same number. When they do, you have to pause between letters, making those words annoying to type. What English word has the most consecutive letters on the same key?"''
<div align="right">—Stewart Bishop</div>
|The English word with the most consecutive letters on the same key is "Nonmonogamous".
|{{blog|75|2013|12|10}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Reading Every Book.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|76|Reading Every Book}}'''
|''"At what point in human history were there too many (English) books to be able to read them all in one lifetime?"''
<div align="right">—Gregory Willmot</div>
|About the 1500s, as the population of active English writers reached a few hundred, meaning you would never be able to catch up (using the average word count for a few famous authors as a baseline). You might not want to read them, anyways.
|{{blog|76|2013|12|17}}
|{{book|2|10}}
|
|-
|[[File:Growth Rate.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|77|Growth Rate}}'''
|''"What height would humans reach if we kept growing through our whole development period (i.e. till late teens/early twenties) at the same pace as we do during our first month?"''
<div align="right">—Maria</div>
|{{notice|Too short. Explain why this tall, at what age, why it's impossible, etc.}}10 to 12 meters.
|{{blog|77|2013|12|31|7d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:T-rex Calories.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|78|T-rex Calories}}'''
|''"If a T-rex were released in New York City, how many humans/day would it need to consume to get its needed calorie intake?"''
<div align="right">—Tony Schmitz</div>
|One large-sized one or two small-sized ones per day.
|{{blog|78|2014|01|07}}
|{{book|2|7|T. Rex Calories}}
|
|-
|[[File:Lake Tea.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|79|Lake Tea}}'''
|''"What if we were to dump all the tea in the world into the Great Lakes? How strong, compared to a regular cup of tea, would the lake tea be?"''
<div align="right">—Alex Burman</div>
|{{notice|Too short. Also, explain the joke.}}It would be 1/100,000 as strong as a proper cup of tea. However, New Zealanders could make themselves tea in Frying Pan Lake.
|{{blog|79|2014|01|14}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Pile of Viruses.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|80|Pile of Viruses}}'''
|''"What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? How much volume would they take up and what would they look like?"''
<div align="right">—Dave</div>
|''Human'' viruses would fill about ten oil drums. ''All'' viruses would form a wet heap the size of a small mountain, with a texture resembling pus or meat slurry.
|{{blog|80|2014|01|21}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Catch!.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|81|Catch!}}'''
|''"Is there any way to fire a gun so that the bullet flies through the air and can then be safely caught by hand? e.g. shooter is at sea level and catcher is up a mountain at the extreme range of the gun."''
<div align="right">—Ed Hui, London</div>
|{{notice|Explain the second-to last sentence and the bullet spinning.}}It would be pretty difficult, but with a high enough hot air balloon (or cliff) you could do it. The main issue would be aiming.
|{{blog|81|2014|01|28}}
|{{book|2|12}}
|
|-
|[[File:Hitting a comet.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|82|Hitting a comet}}'''
|''"Astrophysicists are always saying things like "This mission to this comet is equivalent to throwing a baseball from New York and hitting a particular window in San Francisco." Are they really equivalent?"''
<div align="right">—Tom Foster</div>
|{{notice|Elaborate on the laser surgery thing?}}The baseball thing is much harder. You'd have to hit it out of the atmosphere, and a baseball is too small to do that. In terms of precision, it depends on what comparison you use.
|{{blog|82|2014|02|05|1d late}}
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|-
|[[File:Star Sand.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|83|Star Sand}}'''
|''"If you made a beach using grains the proportionate size of the stars in the Milky Way, what would that beach look like?"''
<div align="right">—Jeff Wartes</div>
|Although red giants aren't as common as Sun-like stars or red dwarfs, they would form a stretch of gravel that went on for miles due to their large relative volume. 99% of all stars would form a small patch of sand.
|{{blog|83|2014|02|11|1d early}}
|{{book|2|16}}
|
|-
|[[File:Paint the Earth.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|84|Paint the Earth}}'''
|''"Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire land area of the Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Josh (Bolton, MA)</div>
|That there isn't enough paint to go around. The total estimated amount of produced paint, a trillion litres, is only enough to paint as much as the land area of Russia.
|{{blog|84|2014|02|18}}
|{{book|2|14}}
|
|-
|[[File:Rocket Golf.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|85|Rocket Golf}}'''
|''"Assuming that you have a spaceship in orbit around the Earth, could you propel your ship to speeds exceeding escape velocity by hitting golf balls in the other direction? If so, how many golf balls would be required to reach the Moon?"''
<div align="right">—Dan (Kanata, Ontario)</div>
|{{notice|Awkward phrasing, include the rocket thing?}}Not with normal human swings. If you cheat using a potato cannon, a bag a little smaller than the Moon. Meanwhile, you'd hit a hole in one at every golf course in the world.
|{{blog|85|2014|02|25}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Far-Traveling Objects.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|86|Far-Traveling Objects}}'''
|''"In terms of human-made objects, has Voyager 1 travelled the farthest distance? It's certainly the farthest from Earth we know about. But what about the edge of ultracentrifuges, or generator turbines that have been running for years, for example?"''
<div align="right">—Matt Russell</div>
|There are a few different frames of reference you can look at, but in normal terms Mariner 10 has traveled much farther than Voyager 1. It's travelled a couple of light-days around the Sun, while the Voyager probes have only travelled a dozen light-hours.
|{{blog|86|2014|03|04}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Enforced by Radar.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|87|Enforced by Radar}}'''
|''"I've occasionally seen "radar enforced" on speed limit signs, and I can't help but ask: How intense would radio waves have to be to stop a car from going over the speed limit, and what would happen if this were attempted?"''
<div align="right">—Joausc</div>
|Intense enough to cause a medium sized nuclear explosion. Better to just carry a sign.
|{{blog|87|2014|03|11}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Soda Sequestration.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|88|Soda Sequestration}}'''
|''"How much CO2 is contained in the world's stock of bottled fizzy drinks? How much soda would be needed to bring atmospheric CO2 back to preindustrial levels?"''
<div align="right">—Brandon Seah</div>
|Enough soda to cover Earth with ten layers of cans.
|{{blog|88|2014|03|18}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Tungsten Countertop.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|89|Tungsten Countertop}}'''
|''"How far would a tungsten countertop descend if I dropped it into the Sun?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Leuchtenburg</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}It would be vapourized before it got close to the Sun.
|{{blog|89|2014|03|25}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Great Tree, Great Axe.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|90|Great Tree, Great Axe}}'''
|''"If all the seas were one sea,''
''What a great sea that would be!''
''If all the trees were one tree,''
''What a great tree that would be!''
''If all the men were one man,''
''What a great man that would be!''
''If all the axes were one axe,''
''What a great axe that would be!''
''And if the great man took the great axe,''
''And cut down the great tree,''
''And let if fall into the great sea,''
''What a great splish-splash that would be!''

''... How great would all of these things be?"''
<div align="right">—John Eifert (quoting a ''Mother Goose'' rhyme)</div>
|The seas would be a little bigger than the Pacific Ocean. Trees can't grow taller than about 130 meters naturally, and would physically crush itself if above a few kilometers tall. Ignoring these restraints, the tree would be about 75 km tall with trunk diameter of 2 km. Ignoring human size restraints, the person would be close to 3 km tall. The axe would be about 500 meters long and relatively the size of a flimsy hatchet. It may take a few weeks to chop down the tree and the impact would create a tsunami that probably wouldn't wipe out the human race, but would be likely the deadliest single disaster in our history.
|{{blog|90|2014|04|03|2d late}}
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|[[File:Faucet Power.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|91|Faucet Power}}'''
|''"I just moved into a new apartment. It includes hot water but I have to pay the electric bill. So being a person on a budget ... what's the best way to use my free faucet to generate electricity?"''
<div align="right">—David Axel Kurtz</div>
|Small hydroelectric dam in the bathtub would yield about $0.25 per month of electricity, but the best option would probably be to bottle and sell your tap water, yielding about $38 million per year at $1.50 per bottle.
|{{blog|91|2014|04|08|2d early}}
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|[[File:One-Second Day.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|92|One-Second Day}}'''
|''"What would happen if the Earth's rotation were sped up until a day only lasted one second?"''
<div align="right">—Dylan</div>
|Everything on Earth would die, but if it happened when the Moon crosses the plane of the Earth, then everything in the Solar System will die (whether there is a difference is debatable).
|{{blog|92|2014|04|15}}
|{{book|2|21}}
|
|-
|[[File:Windshield Raindrops.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|93|Windshield Raindrops}}'''
|''"At what speed would you have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield?"''
<div align="right">—Daniel Butler</div>
|Fast enough so you would need a speedometer in scientific notation.
|{{blog|93|2014|04|22}}
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|-
|[[File:Billion-Story Building.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|94|Billion-Story Building}}'''
|''"My daughter — age 4.5 — maintains she wants a billion-story building. It turns out not only is that hard to help her appreciate this size, I am not at all able to explain all of the other difficulties you'd have to overcome."''
<div align="right">—Keira, via Steve Brodovicz, Media, PA </div>
|{{notice|Too short}}First of all, it would not stand under its own weight. Also, it would be many times the distance the Earth is from the Moon.
|{{blog|94|2014|04|29}}
|{{book|2|22}}
|{{book|21|2025|02|11|Z_xJ40QXu7Q|What if you built a billion-story building?}}
|-
|[[File:Pyramid Energy.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|95|Pyramid Energy}}'''
|''"What took more energy, the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Apollo Mission? If we could convert the energy to build the Great Pyramid, would it be enough to send a rocket to the Moon and back?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Marmol</div>
|
|{{blog|95|2014|05|06}}
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|[[File:$2 Undecillion Lawsuit.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|96|$2 Undecillion Lawsuit}}'''
|''"What if Au Bon Pain lost '''[http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/05/2-undecillion-dollar-demand.html this lawsuit]''' and had to pay the plaintiff $2 undecillion?"''
<div align="right">—Kevin Underhill</div>
|{{notice|Needs rephrasing.}}They would not be able to pay off the debt, even if they forced humanity to work as slaves from now until the stars die. None of the most valuable things on Earth, even in huge quantities, could've paid off the debt.
|{{blog|96|2014|05|14|1d late}}
|{{book|2|23}}
|
|-
|[[File:Burning Pollen.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|97|Burning Pollen}}'''
|''"What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have?"''
<div align="right">—Jessica Thornburg</div>
|It would just warm up the air by a very tiny bit, but only because it's so thinly spread. Gathering all of it from a large enough region into one pile could equal a nuclear weapon.
|{{blog|97|2014|05|20|1d early}}
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|-
|[[File:Blood Alcohol.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|98|Blood Alcohol}}'''
|''"Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood?"''
<div align="right">—Fiona Byrne</div>
|Drinking all of the blood (5 liters) of a very drunk person (BAC 0.40) would cause you to both ingest about as much ethanol as a pint of beer and commit murder. Drinking blood is unpleasant and can make you very sick.
|{{blog|98|2014|05|27}}
|{{book|2|42}}
|
|-
|[[File:Starlings.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|99|Starlings}}'''
|''"I was watching '''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY this video]''' and was wondering: How many birds there would need to be for gravity to take over and force them into a gargantuan ball of birds?"''
<div align="right">—Justin Basinger</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}Enough to make a black hole.
|{{blog|99|2014|06|03}}
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|-
|[[File:WWII Films.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|100|WWII Films}}'''
|''"Did WWII last longer than the total length of movies about WWII? For that matter, which war has the highest movie time:war time ratio?"''
<div align="right">—Becky</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}World War II was longer than the movies. The two most likely candidates for highest movie:war ratio are the Indo-Pakistani war and the Anglo-Zanzibar war.
|{{blog|100|2014|06|11|1d late}}
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|-
|[[File:Plastic Dinosaurs.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|101|Plastic Dinosaurs}}'''
|''"As plastic is made from oil and oil is made from dead dinosaurs, how much actual real dinosaur is there in a plastic dinosaur?"''
<div align="right">—Steve Lydford</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}Depending on where the oil was sourced, a plastic dinosaur may contain no dinosaur to some, but is still mostly composed of plants.
|{{blog|101|2014|06|18}}
|{{book|2|26}}
|
|-
|[[File:Keyboard Power.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|102|Keyboard Power}}'''
|''"As a writer, I'm wondering what would be the cumulative energy of the hundreds of thousands of keystrokes required to write a novel."''
<div align="right">—Nicholas Dickner</div>
|Writing one full novel would provide enough energy to run a laptop for 15 seconds. If each novel takes you six months, this would save a fraction of a penny of electricity. To keep a laptop, you'd need to write a novel every ten seconds, and to run a microwave would require one novel per second.
|{{blog|102|2014|06|25}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Vanishing Water.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|103|Vanishing Water}}'''
|''"What would happen if all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared?"''
<div align="right">—Joanna Xu</div>
|{{notice|Too short, be a little more specific}}Rain would stop, forests would die and catch fire, and the end of the water cycle would lead to CO2 buildup and global warming. Everyone would die.
|{{blog|103|2014|07|02}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Global Snow.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|104|Global Snow}}'''
|''"From my seven-year-old son: How many snowflakes would it take to cover the entire world in six feet of snow? (I don't know why six feet...but that's what he asked.)"''
<div align="right">—Jed Scott</div>
|{{notice|Mention that rain takes up less space, etc.}}It would take approximately one mole of snowflakes to cover the Earth in 6 feet of snow.
|{{blog|104|2014|07|09}}
|{{book|2|59}}
|
|-
|[[File:Cannibalism.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|105|Cannibalism}}'''
|''"How long could the human race survive on only cannibalism?"''
<div align="right">—Quinn Shaffer</div>
|{{notice|Too snarky. Explain the article.}}Depends, if you’re the only one trying out this new diet, maybe a week before you get caught. If the entire world brooms in, about 32 months.
|{{blog|105|2014|07|16}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Ink Molecules.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|106|Ink Molecules}}'''
|''"Suppose you were to print, in 12 point text, the numeral 1 using a common cheap ink-jet printer. How many molecules of the ink would be used? At what numerical value would the number printed approximately equal the number of ink molecules used?"''
<div align="right">—David Pelkey</div>
|You'd use about 100,000,000,000,000,000 molecules.
|{{blog|106|2014|07|23}}
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|-
|[[File:Letter to Mom.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|107|Letter to Mom}}'''
|''"What’s the fastest way to get a hand-written letter from my place in Chicago to my mother in New Jersey?"''
<div align="right">—Tim</div>
|{{notice|Too short, mention the other options}}An ICBM would take 12-15 minutes to cross the distance.
|{{blog|107|2014|07|30}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Expensive Shoebox.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|108|Expensive Shoebox}}'''
|''"What would be the most expensive way to fill a size 11 shoebox (e.g. with 64 GB MicroSD cards all full of legally purchased music)?"''
<div align="right">—Rick Lewis</div>
|{{notice|A little too vague.}}There are many options (precious materials, hard drugs, physical file storage, etc.), but they all cap out at ~$2,000,000,000.
|{{blog|108|2014|08|13|7d late}}
|{{book|2|31}}
|
|-
|[[File:Into the Blue.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|109|Into the Blue}}'''
|''"If I shot an infinitely strong laser beam into the sky at a random point, how much damage would it do?"''
<div align="right">—Garrett D.</div>
|{{notice|Too short. Why? Also, explain last sentence of the article}}Most of the time it would not hit anything.
|{{blog|109|2014|08|20}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Walking New York.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|110|Walking New York}}'''
|''"Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? (including inside apartments)"''
<div align="right">—Asif Shamir</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}Yes, in around 30 years, but you'd end up in prison.
|{{blog|110|2014|08|27}}
|
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|-
|[[File:All the Money.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|111|All the Money}}'''
|''"People sometimes say "If I had all the money in the world ..." in order to discuss what they would do if they had no financial constraints. I'm curious, though, what would happen if one person had all of the world's money?"''
<div align="right">—Daniel Pino</div>
|The only thing to do would be to make a swimming pool, as it is unlikely anybody else would agree with your claims to all the money and property.
|{{blog|111|2014|09|02|1d early}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Balloon Car.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|112|Balloon Car}}'''
|''"My 12-year-old daughter is proposing an interesting project. She is planning to attach a number of helium balloons to a chair, which in turn would be tethered by means of a rope to a Ferrari. Her 13-year-old friend would then drive the Ferrari around, while she sits in the chair enjoying uninterrupted views of the countryside. Leaving aside the legal and insurance difficulties, my daughter is keen to know the maximum speed that she could expect to attain, and how many helium balloons would be required."''
<div align="right">—Phil Rodgers, Cambridge, UK</div>
|A balloon just big enough to lift you would be pushed down by the wind, and a balloon big enough to counteract that would lift up the car along with you. The way to achieve this result is [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=parasailing parasailing].
|{{blog|112|2014|09|17|8d late}}
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|[[File:Visit Every State.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|113|Visit Every State}}'''
|''"How fast could you visit all 50 states?"''
<div align="right">—as discussed by Stephen Von Worley <span class="plainlinks">on [http://www.datapointed.net/2012/08/fastest-route-to-visit-all-fifty-united-states/ '''''Data Pointed''''']</span>
|{{notice|Need to add the other ways you can do it}}In just over 6 hours, in 5 satellite orbits.
|{{blog|113|2014|09|24}}
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|-
|[[File:Antimatter.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|114|Antimatter}}'''
|''"What if everything was antimatter, EXCEPT Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Sean Gallagher</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}Our existence would end, but much slower than in most other situations, from outer-space gas and meteorites.
|{{blog|114|2014|10|01}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Into the Sun.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|115|Into the Sun}}'''
|''"When I was about 8 years old, shoveling snow on a freezing day in Colorado, I wished that I could be instantly transported to the surface of the Sun, just for a nanosecond, then instantly transported back. I figured this would be long enough to warm me up but not long enough to harm me. What would actually happen?"''
<div align="right">—AJ, Kansas City</div>
|You would not be warmed if you went to the surface, as the energy received by your skin would be minimal. You would maybe see a bright flash of light. The core, on the other hand, would vaporize you, as the energy delivered there would be able to give you a second-degree burn after 1 femtosecond (1 millionth of a nanosecond) in the core.
|{{blog|115|2014|10|08}}
|{{book|2|61}}
|{{book|15|2024|09|03|UXA-Af-JeCE|Could you survive a nanosecond on the Sun?}}
|-
|[[File:No-Rules NASCAR.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|116|No-Rules NASCAR}}'''
|''"If you stripped away all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible, what strategy would win? Let's say the racer has to survive."''
<div align="right">—Hunter Freyer</div>
|If the rider has to survive, 90 minutes is the limit based on human G-force tolerances. If survival is not a priority, you'd build a particle accelerator.
|{{blog|116|2014|10|15}}
|{{book|2|35}}
|{{book|3|2023|12|19|JcXpCyPc2Xw|What if NASCAR had no rules?}}
|-
|[[File:Distant Death.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|117|Distant Death}}'''
|''"What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died?"''
<div align="right">—Amy from NZ</div>
|The farthest that any human has died is about 167 kilometers. In terms of any living thing, however, bacterial spores on Voyager 1 are dying every few months, setting a new record each time.
|{{blog|117|2014|10|23|1d late}}
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|[[File:Physical Salary.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|118|Physical Salary}}'''
|''"What if people's incomes appeared around them as cash in real time? How much would you need to make to be in real trouble?"''
<div align="right">—Julia Anderson, Albuquerque, NM</div>
|{{notice|This is obvious. Explain every scenario.}}A normal person would not get buried. A CEO, on the other hand, would be in trouble.
|{{blog|118|2014|10|30}}
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|-
|[[File:Laser Umbrella.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|119|Laser Umbrella}}'''
|''"Stopping rain from falling on something with an umbrella or a tent is boring. What if you tried to stop rain with a laser that targeted and vaporized each incoming droplet before it could come within ten feet of the ground?"''
<div align="right">—Zach Wheeler</div>
|{{notice|This is obvious. Explain why and the main issues.}}It would be very complicated, not worth it, and would probably make everything around you catch fire.
|{{blog|119|2014|11|13|7d late}}
|{{book|2|37}}
|{{book|6|2024|02|20|zgBTwtg7H8E|Could you make an umbrella out of lasers?}}
|-
|[[File:Alternate Universe What Ifs.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|120|Alternate Universe What Ifs}}'''
|''"Dispatches from a horrifying alternate universe"''
|
|{{blog|120|2014|11|20}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Frozen Rivers.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|121|Frozen Rivers}}'''
|''"What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer?"''
<div align="right">—Zoe Cutler</div>
|Anywhere with rain or snowmelt would be horrifically flooded, and ice would break, then dam up rivers, forming huge lakes. Humanity would be worse for the wear, but all in all fine.
|{{blog|121|2014|12|11}} 14d late)
|
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|-
|[[File:Lava Lamp.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|122|Lava Lamp}}'''
|''"What if I made a lava lamp out of real lava? What could I use as a clear medium? How close could I stand to watch it?"''
<div align="right">—Kathy Johnstone, 6th Grade Teacher (via a student)</div>
|The container would glow opaque from the heat, making it impossible to see the lava, which would solidify after a minute.
|{{blog|122|2014|12|18}}
|{{book|2|40}}
|
|-
|[[File:Fairy Demographics.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|123|Fairy Demographics}}'''
|''"How many fairies would fly around, if each fairy is born from the first laugh of a child and fairies were immortal?"''
<div align="right">—Mira Kühn, Germany</div>
|They would have the same birth rate as humans, and they would become a major part of the ecosystem.
|{{blog|123|2015|01|01|7d late}}
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|[[File:Lunar Swimming.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|124|Lunar Swimming}}'''
|''"What if there was a lake on the Moon? What would it be like to swim in it? Presuming that it is sheltered in a regular atmosphere, in some giant dome or something."''
<div align="right">—Kim Holder</div>
|It would be super-cool, given that lower gravity would increase the size of splashes and the height of jumps.
|{{blog|124|2015|01|08}}
|
|{{book|20|2024|12|24|aIIBBj6KR-Y|What if we put a pool on the moon?}}
|-
|[[File:Bowling Ball 2.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|125|Bowling Ball}}'''
|''"You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom?"''
<div align="right">—Doug Carter</div>
|It would take two hours and 20 minutes.
|{{blog|125|2015|01|15}}
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|[[File:Stairs (What If?).png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|126|Stairs}}'''
|''"If you made an elevator that would go to space (like the one you mentioned in the '''{{what if|94|billion-story building}}''') and built a staircase up (assuming regulated air pressure) about how long would it take to climb to the top?"''
<div align="right">—Ethan Annas</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}A week or two for a professional stair-climber. Half a day by motorcycle.
|{{blog|126|2015|01|22}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Tug of War.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|127|Tug of War}}'''
|''"Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? How big would the teams have to be?"''
<div align="right">—Markus Andersen</div>
|{{notice|Too short, summarise the rest of the article.}}Two teams of 25 people each would be able to rip a half-inch iron bar apart.
|{{blog|127|2015|01|28|1d early}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Zippo Phone.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|128|Zippo Phone}}'''
|''"What in my pocket actually contains more energy, my Zippo or my smartphone? What would be the best way of getting the energy from one to the other? And since I am already feeling like Bilbo in this one, is there anything else in my pocket that would have unexpected amounts of stored energy?"''
<div align="right">—Ian Cummings</div>
|The Zippo has more energy than your phone battery, but your hand would have even more, when burned as fuel.
|{{blog|128|2015|02|05|1d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Black Hole Moon.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|129|Black Hole Moon}}'''
|''"What would happen if the Moon were replaced with an equivalently-massed black hole? If it's possible, what would a lunar ("holar"?) eclipse look like?"''
<div align="right">—Matt</div>
|{{notice|What if it did happen in space age? Too short.}}It would not have a big impact unless it happened during the space age.
|{{blog|129|2015|02|12}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Snow Removal.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|130|Snow Removal}}'''
|''"I've long thought about putting a flamethrower on the front of a car to melt snow and ice before you drive across it. Now I've realized that a flamethrower is impractical, but what about a high-powered microwave emitter?"''
<div align="right">—Matt Van Opens</div>
|The flamethrower is more practical because microwaves don't heat ice very well. The microwave beam would require the power output of three aircraft carriers, and the flamethrower would have a gas mileage of 17 feet per gallon.
|{{blog|130|2015|02|19}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Microwaves.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|131|Microwaves}}'''
|''"I have had a particular problem for as long as I can remember. Any time I attempt to heat left over Chinese food in a microwave, it fails to heat completely through somewhere. Usually the center but not always and usually rice, but often it will be a small section of meat. It's baffling and has made me automatically adjust heating times to over 2 minutes. In most cases this tends to heat the bowl or plate more than the food. So I suppose the question is what is the optimal time to heat left over Chinese food in the microwave, how about an 800 watt microwave?"''
<div align="right">—James</div>
|{{notice|A bit too short, explain more.}}Use a lower power level, stir your food partway through microwaving, and let it sit for a few minutes before you eat it.
|{{blog|131|2015|02|27|1d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Hotter than Average.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|132|Hotter than Average}}'''
|''"I saw a sign at a hot springs tub saying "Caution: Water is hotter than average" with water at about 39°C. Although they were presumably trying to say "hotter than the average swimming pool," this got me wondering: What is the average temperature of all water on the Earth’s surface, and how does that temperature compare to 39°C?"''
<div align="right">—Graham Ward</div>
|{{notice|Explain, what's a water average?}}There is a water average. Give the signmakers some credit.
|{{blog|132|2015|03|07|1d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Flagpole.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|133|Flagpole}}'''
|''"So, you're falling from a height above the tallest building in your town, and you don't have a parachute. But wait! Partway down the side of that skyscraper there's a flagpole sticking out, sans flag! You angle your descent and grab the pole just long enough to swing around so that when you let go you're now heading back up toward the sky. As gravity slows you and brings you to a halt, you reach the top of the skyscraper, where you reach out and pull yourself to safety. What's the likelihood this could happen?"''
<div align="right">—Rex Ungericht</div>
|It would be impossible, even a gymnast's arms would be ripped off from the force.
|{{blog|133|2015|03|17|3d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Space Burial.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|134|Space Burial}}'''
|''"I've often joked I'd like to have my remains put into orbit. Not in a "scatter my ashes" sense, but, like, "throw my naked corpse out the airlock" sense. Honestly, my main motivation is to baffle someone in the distant future, but it's an interesting scientific question: what would happen to my body in orbit over the course of years, decades or centuries?"''
<div align="right">—Tim in Fremont</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}In low orbit, your body would fall to Earth and be burned from atmospheric re-entry. In a higher orbit, it would be destroyed from space debris. In high orbit, you could last for a few centuries.
|{{blog|134|2015|03|28|4d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Digging Downward.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|135|Digging Downward}}'''
|''"What would happen if I dug straight down, at a speed of 1 foot per second? What would kill me first?"''
<div align="right">—Jack Kaunis</div>
|{{notice|Mention the part about removing the dirt from your hole}}You could survive for one to two hours, as oxygen becomes toxic at depths higher than 5 kilometers.
|{{blog|135|2015|04|05|1d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Spiders vs. the Sun.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|136|Spiders vs. the Sun}}'''
|''"Which has a greater gravitational pull on me: the Sun, or spiders? Granted, the Sun is much bigger, but it is also much further away, and as I learned in high school physics, the gravitational force is proportional to the square of the distance."''
<div align="right">—Marina Fleming</div>
|{{notice|Maybe too short? Explain why.}}The Sun. But spiders are a lot more scary.
|{{blog|136|2015|04|12}}
|{{book|2|44}}
|
|-
|[[File:New Horizons.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|137|New Horizons}}'''
|''"What if New Horizons hits my car?"''
<div align="right">—Robin Sheat</div>
|
|{{blog|137|2015|07|14|2m 25d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Jupiter Submarine.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|138|Jupiter Submarine}}'''
|''"What if you released a submarine into Jupiter's atmosphere? Would it eventually reach a point where it would float? Could it navigate?"''
<div align="right">—KTH</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}No. The submarine would be crushed by high pressure, and the materials composing it would be transformed into completely different ones.
|{{blog|138|2015|07|28|7d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Jupiter Descending.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|139|Jupiter Descending}}'''
|''"If you did '''{{what if|138|fall into Jupiter's atmosphere in a submarine}}''', what would it actually look like? What would you see before you melted or burned up?"''
<div align="right">—Ada Munroe</div>
|
|{{blog|139|2015|08|04}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Proton Earth, Electron Moon.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|140|Proton Earth, Electron Moon}}'''
|''"What if the Earth were made entirely of protons, and the Moon were made entirely of electrons?"''
<div align="right">—Noah Williams</div>
|{{notice|Why?}}It would create a type of black hole called a "naked singularity" that would expand outwards at the speed of light.
|{{blog|140|2015|09|18|1m 7d late}}
|{{book|2|48}}
|
|-
|[[File:Sunbeam.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|141|Sunbeam}}'''
|''"What if all of the sun's output of visible light were bundled up into a laser-like beam that had a diameter of around 1m once it reaches Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Max Schäfer</div>
|{{notice|Too short, missing the last 2 paragraphs}}Parts of the atmosphere would be heated to millions of degrees. The light reflected off the moon would be hot enough to burn you to death.
|{{blog|141|2016|01|12|3m 18d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Space Jetta.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|142|Space Jetta}}'''
|''"What if I tried to re-enter the atmosphere in my car? (a 2000 VW Jetta TDI). Would it do more environmental damage than it is already apparently doing?"''
<div align="right">—Casey Berg</div>
|{{notice|Why??}}Actually, it would be more clean than it is currently!
|{{blog|142|2016|01|20|1d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Europa Water Siphon.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|143|Europa Water Siphon}}'''
|''"What if you built a siphon from the oceans on Europa to Earth? Would it flow once it's set up? (We have an idea for selling bottled Europa water.)"''
<div align="right">—A group of Google Search SREs</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}No, at least not with a siphon.
|{{blog|143|2016|01|26|1d early}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Saliva Pool.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|144|Saliva Pool}}'''
|''"How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva?"''
<div align="right">—Mary Griffin, 9th grade</div>
|For an Olympic pool, it would take you 8,345 years. In order to finish by the present day, you'd need to start during the invention of agriculture.
|{{blog|144|2016|02|02}}
|{{book|2|53}}
|
|-
|[[File:Fire From Moonlight.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|145|Fire From Moonlight}}'''
|''"Can you use a magnifying glass and moonlight to light a fire?"''
<div align="right">—Rogier Spoor</div>
|{{notice|Too short, explain if you were surrounded by the Sun}}No. Because of the law of conservation of étendue, the light would only be as hot as the surface of the moon.
|{{blog|145|2016|02|09}}
|{{book|2|51}}
|
|-
|[[File:Stop Jupiter.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|146|Stop Jupiter}}'''
|''"I understand that the ''New Horizons'' craft used gravity assist from Jupiter to increase its speed on the way to Pluto. I also understand that by doing this, Jupiter slowed down very slightly. How many flyby runs would it take to stop Jupiter completely?"''
<div align="right">—Dillon</div>
|{{notice|Why?}}This can never happen, even if we were to throw Earth at Jupiter.
|{{blog|146|2016|02|16}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Niagara Straw.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|147|Niagara Straw}}'''
|''"What would happen if one tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw?"''
<div align="right">—David Gwizdala</div>
|{{notice|Too short, last part.}}The International Niagara Committee, the International Niagara Board of Control, the International Joint Commission, the International Niagara Board Working Committee, and probably the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Adaptive Management Committee would get angry. The Earth would also be destroyed.
|{{blog|147|2016|02|26}} 3d late)
|{{book|2|55}}
|
|-
|[[File:Eat the Sun.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|148|Eat the Sun}}'''
|''"What percentage of the Sun's heat (per day) does the population of Earth eat in calories per year? What changes could be made to our diets for the amount of calories to equal the energy of the Sun?"''
<div align="right">—James Mitchell</div>
|{{notice|Too short.}}0.000000000065%.
|{{blog|148|2016|03|12|8d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Pizza Bird.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|149|Pizza Bird}}'''
|''"My boyfriend recently took a flight on a plane with wifi, and while he was up there, wistfully asked if I could send him a pizza. I jokingly sent him a photo of a parrot holding a pizza slice in its beak. Obviously, my boyfriend had to go without pizza until he landed at JFK. But this raised the question: could a bird deliver a standard 20" New York-style cheese pizza in a box? And if so, what kind of bird would it take?"''
<div align="right">—Tina Nguyen</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}An eagle could deliver a pizza.
|{{blog|149|2016|03|26|7d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Tatooine Rainbow.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|150|Tatooine Rainbow}}'''
|''"Since rainbows are caused by the refraction of the sunlight by tiny droplets of rainwater, what would rainbow look like on Earth if we had two suns like Tatooine?"''
<div align="right">—Raga</div>
|{{notice|Why? Too short.}}A planet with two suns would have two rainbows. A solar system arranged like Tatooine would always have overlapping rainbows.
|{{blog|150|2016|05|23|1m 21d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Sun Bug.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|151|Sun Bug}}'''
|''"How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness of the Sun?"''
<div align="right">—Luke Doty</div>
|{{notice|Too short.}}30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 fireflies.
|{{blog|151|2016|07|21|1m 23d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Flood Death Valley.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|152|Flood Death Valley}}'''
|''"Since Death Valley is below sea level could we dig a hole to the ocean and fill it up with water?"''
<div align="right">—Nick Traeden</div>
|
|{{blog|152|2016|10|18|2m 21d late}}
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|-
|''The thumbnail for this blog article wasn't archived.''
|'''<span class="plainlinks">[https://web.archive.org/web/20161205191559/http://what-if.xkcd.com/153 Peptides]</span>'''
|''"What is the longest English word you can spell using the one letter abbreviations of the 20 genetic amino acids? What about the three letter abbreviations? What would the resultant peptides look like?"''
<div align="right">—Kira (Lysine-Isoleucine-Arginine-Alanine) Guth</div>
|For any peptides, 19 letters is the highest possible, that being the word "interdepartmentally". For naturally existing peptides in the human body, 8 letters is the highest known. Examples of 8 letters are: GRISETTE, DATELESS, REVERSAL.
|{{blog|153|2016|12|05|notAvailable=Published by accident and deleted: [[what if? (blog)#top|learn more]]}}
|
|
|-
|[[File:Hide the Atmosphere.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|153|Hide the Atmosphere}}'''
|''"Earth’s atmosphere is really thin compared to the radius of the Earth. How big a hole do I need to dig before people suffocate?"''
<div align="right">—Sam Burke</div>
|The hole would need to be very big. Under the right circumstances, a five-mile hole over the entire state of Texas might suffice.
|{{blog|153|2017|01|30|3m 5d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Coast-to-Coast Coasting.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|154|Coast-to-Coast Coasting}}'''
|''"What if the entire continental US was on a decreasing slope from West to East. How steep would the slope have to be to sustain the momentum needed to ride a bicycle the entire distance without pedaling?"''
<div align="right">—Brandon Rooks</div>
|The ramp would need to be five miles high (eight kilometres) to make this possible, and that would be at a speed slower than walking. You would also need oxygen for the first third of the way down.
|{{blog|154|2017|02|08|9d late}}
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|-
|[[File:Toaster vs. Freezer.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|155|Toaster vs. Freezer}}'''
|''"Would a toaster still work in a freezer?"''
<div align="right">—<span class="plainlinks">[https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/my-brother-my-brother-and-me/ '''My Brother, My Brother, and Me'''], [https://maximumfun.org/episodes/my-brother-my-brother-and-me/mbmbam-343-sauce-doctors-blessing/ '''Episode 343'''], discussing a </span>Yahoo Answers question</div>
|
|{{blog|155|2017|02|28|13d late}}
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|-
|[[File:Electrofishing for Whales.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|156|Electrofishing for Whales}}'''
|''"I used to work on a fisheries crew where we would use an electro-fisher backpack to momentarily stun small fish (30 - 100 mm length) so we could scoop them up with nets to identify and measure them. The larger fish tended to be stunned for slightly longer because of their larger surface area but I don't imagine this relationship would be maintained for very large animals. Could you electrofish for a blue whale? At what voltage would you have have to set the e-fisher?"''
<div align="right">—Madeline Cooper</div>
|Electrofishing has long-term effects on fish and especially dolphins. Larger animals, especially mammals, are likely to die rather than just get stunned. But it is also harder to get any effect in saltwater, which explains why electrofishing is mainly done in rivers and lakes, compared to fresh water. This means it wouldn't work on blue whales.
|{{blog|156|2017|03|09|2d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Earth-Moon Fire Pole.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|157|Earth-Moon Fire Pole}}'''
|''"My son (5y) asked me today: If there were a kind of a fireman's pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Ramon Schönborn, Germany</div>
|This set-up would face many challenges, but these would be the different domains of the slowest extreme sport: climbing out of the Moon's gravity, accelerating through the middle transfer phase, and then decelerating to your supersonic arrival on Earth.
|{{blog|157|2018|03|21|1y 2m 5d late}}
|{{book|2|58}}
|
|-
|[[File:Hot Banana.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|158|Hot Banana}}'''
|''"I heard that bananas are radioactive. If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. How many bananas would you need to power a house?"''
<div align="right">—Kang Ji</div>
|Bananas are not very radioactive, so it would take an absurdly large number. However, gathering that many bananas in one place would have negative consequences. New York no longer exists.
|{{blog|158|2022|05|04|3y 11m 7d late}}
|
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|-
|[[File:Hailstones.png|100px]]
|'''{{what if|159|Hailstones}}'''
|''"My 4 year old son and I were wondering about soccer ball sized hail today. How much damage would a hail storm with size 5 soccer ball sized hail do?"''
<div align="right">—Michael Grill</div>
|{{notice|Too short. Explain air resistance as Randall does.}}There's no real chance of producing that big hail stones, but if they could be lethal even if staying indoors.
|{{blog|159|2022|07|05|1m 30d late}}
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|-
|''This blog article doesn't have a thumbnail.''
|'''{{what if|160|Transatlantic Car Rental}}'''
|''"My daughter recently received her driver's permit in the US, and aspires to visit mainland Europe someday. She has learned enough about the rules of the road to know never to drive into the ocean; however, she jokingly suggested that given a sufficient quantity of rental cars, she could eventually get to Europe by driving east repeatedly. The question is, how many vehicles would it take to build a car-bridge across the Atlantic?"''
<div align="right">—Eric Munson</div>
|In addition to destroying global ocean circulation and creating an illegal naval blockade, this is definitely a violation of her rental car agreement. Also, organizing a fleet of a trillion rental cars would be difficult.
|{{blog|160|2022|09|06|1m 26d late}}
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|-
|''This blog article doesn't have a thumbnail.''
|'''{{what if|161|Star Ownership}}'''
|''"If every country's airspace extended up forever, which country would own the largest percentage of the galaxy at any given time?"''
<div align="right">—Reuven Lazarus</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}Australia owns most of the galaxy at certain points in time.
|{{blog|161|2022|11|01|1m 19d late}}
|{{book|2|24}}
|
|-
|''This blog article doesn't have a thumbnail.''
|'''{{what if|162|Comet Ice}}'''
|''"Could I cool down the Earth by capturing a comet and dropping it in the ocean, like an ice cube in a glass of water?"''
<div align="right">—Daniel Becker</div>
|{{notice|Too short}}The comet either burns up in the atmosphere or speeds up global warming.
|{{blog|162|2022|12|06|29d late}}
|
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|-
|
|'''Global Windstorm'''
|''"What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity?"''
<div align="right">—Andrew Brown</div>
|<big><big>{{notice2|'''Most of these explanations are missing!'''}}</big></big>
|
|{{book|1|1}}
|{{book|4|2024|01|09|gp5G1QG6cXc|What if Earth suddenly stopped spinning?}}
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #1'''
|<big><big><big><big>'''I'll format these into cells in a few days, don't worry!'''</big></big></big></big>

''"Would it be possible to get your teeth to such a cold temperature that they would shatter upon drinking a hot cup of coffee?"''
<div align="right">—Shelby Hebert</div>
''"How many houses are burned down in the United States every year? What would be the easiest way to increase that number by a significant amount (say, at least 15%)?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>

|<big><big>{{notice|'''If you own the first book, please help us by summarising these chapters!'''}}</big></big>
|
|{{book|1|4}}
|
|-
|
|'''New York–Style Time Machine'''
|''"I assume when you travel back in time you end up at the same spot on the Earth’s surface. At least, that’s how it worked in the Back to the Future movies. If so, what would it be like if you traveled back in time, starting in Times Square, New York, 1000 years? 10,000 years? 100,000 years? 1,000,000 years? 1,000,000,000 years? What about foward in time 1,000,000 years?"''
<div align="right">—Mark Dettling</div>
|
*1,000 years back, you'd see many chestnut trees, wolves, and passenger pigeons.
*10,000 years back, the ground would be mostly bedrock, with large chunks of ice and dropped boulders, called glacial erratics.
*100,000 years back, several islands were pushed upwards by the ice. You would see many now-extinct species, such as Canis dirus, Smilodon fatalis, and Arctodus.
*1,000,000 years back, you'd see relatives of hyenas called Chasmaporthetes.
*1,000,000 years back would be no plants or animals, only single-celled organisms in the ocean.
|
|{{book|1|5}}
|
|-
|
|'''Periodic Wall of the Elements'''
|''"What would happen if you made a periodic table out of cube-shaped bricks, where each brick was made of the corresponding element?"''
<div align="right">—Andy Connolly</div>
|The top two rows wouldn't be too dangerous to build, but the rest of the periodic table would seriously injure or kill you. In the sixth row, elements with short half-lives would destroy the room you were in as well as causing nuclear fallout to fall nearby. Past the sixth row, the entire city you were in would be destroyed.
|
|{{book|1|8}}
|
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #2'''
|''"Would dumping anti-matter into the Chernobyl reactor when it was melting down stop the meltdown?"''
<div align="right">—AJ</div>
''"Is it possible to cry so much you dehydrate yourself?"''
<div align="right">—Karl Wildermuth</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|12}}
|
|-
|
|'''The Last Human Light'''
|''"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?"''
<div align="right">—Alan</div>
|Radioactive waste that was mixed with glass will glow for centuries.
|
|{{book|1|13}}
|{{book|11|2024|05|28|8fADp43wJwU|If all humans died, when would the last light go out?}}
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #3'''
|''"Given humanity’s current knowledge and capabilities, is it possible to build a new star?"''
<div align="right">—Jeff Gordon</div>
''"What sort of logistic anomalies would you encounter in trying to raise an army of apes?"''
<div align="right">—Kevin</div>
''"If people had wheels and could fly, how would we differentiate them from airplanes?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|16}}
|
|-
|
|'''Orbital Submarine'''
|''"How long would a nuclear submarine last in orbit?"''
<div align="right">—Jason Lathbury</div>
|The submarine could last as long as it was in space.
|
|{{book|1|17}}
|{{book|7|2024|03|05|EsUBRd1O2dU|Would a Submarine Work as a Spaceship?}}
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #4'''
|''"Would it be possible to stop a volcano eruption by placing a bomb (thermobaric or nuclear) underneath the surface?"''
<div align="right">—Tomasz Gruszka</div>
''"A friend of mine is convinced that there is sound in space. There isn’t, right?"''
<div align="right">—Aaron Smith</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|20}}
|
|-
|
|'''Human Computer'''
|''"How much computing power could we achieve if the entire world population stopped whatever we are doing right now and started doing calculations? How would it compare to a modern-day computer or smartphone?"''
<div align="right">—Mateusz Knorps</div>
|The combined computing power of all devices surpassed the power of all humans in 1977.
|
|{{book|1|21}}
|
|-
|
|'''Common Cold'''
|''"If everyone on the planet stayed away from each other for a couple of weeks, wouldn't the common cold virus be wiped out?"''
<div align="right">—Sarah Ewart</div>
|No, because immunocompromised individuals can harbor rhinoviruses for a long time. Only a few hosts are needed for the virus to spread again.
|
|{{book|1|25}}
|
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #5'''
|''" If global warming puts us in danger through temperature rise, and super-volcanos put us into danger of global cooling, shouldn’t those two dangers balance each other out?"''
<div align="right">—Florian Seidl-Schulz</div>
''"How fast would a human have to run in order to be cut in half at the bellybutton by a cheese-cutting wire?"''
<div align="right">—Jon Merrill</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|27}}
|
|-
|
|'''No More DNA'''
|''"This may be a bit gruesome, but... if someone's DNA suddenly vanished, how long would that person last?"''
<div align="right">—Nina Charest</div>
|You could live for several hours or days before succumbing to infection or systemwide organ failure.
|
|{{book|1|29}}
|
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #6'''
|''"What is the total nutritional value (calories, fat, vitamins, minerals, etc.) of the average human body?"''
<div align="right">—Justin Risner</div>
''"What temperature would a chainsaw (or other cutting implement) need to be at to instantly cauterize any injuries inflicted with it?"''
<div align="right">—Sylvia Gallagher</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|31}}
|
|-
|
|'''Flyover States'''
|''"Which US state is actually flown over the most?"''
<div align="right">—Jesse Ruderman</div>
|Virgina, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America.
|
|{{book|1|33}}
|
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #7'''
|''"In Thor the main character is at one point spinning his hammer so fast that he creates a strong tornado. Would this be possible in real
life?"''
<div align="right">—Davor</div>
''"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?"''
<div align="right">—Jonatan Lindström</div>
''"How many nuclear missiles would have to be launched at the United States to turn it into a complete wasteland?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|36}}
|
|-
|
|'''Self-Fertilization'''
|''"I read about some researchers who were trying to produce sperm from bone marrow stem cells. If a woman were to have sperm cells made from her own stem cells and impregnate herself, what would be her relationship to her daughter?"''
<div align="right">—R Scott LaMorte</div>
|The resulting child would have many genetic defects, effectively being inbred.
|
|{{book|1|37}}
|
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #8'''
|''"A toxin blocks the ability of the nephron tubule reabsorption but does not affect filtration. What are the possible short-term effects of this toxin?"''
<div align="right">—Mary</div>
''"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?"''
<div align="right">—Jonathan Wang</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|40}}
|
|-
|
|'''Lost Immortals'''
|''"If two immortal people were placed on opposite sides of an uninhabited Earthlike planet, how long would it take them to find each other? 100,000 years? 1,000,000 years? 100,000,000,000 years?"''
<div align="right">—Ethan Lake</div>
|Depending on strategy and terrain, a few years to a few decades.
|
|{{book|1|42}}
|
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #9'''
|''"Could you survive a tidal wave by submerging yourself in an in-ground pool?"''
<div align="right">—Chris Muska</div>
''"If you are in free fall and your parachute fails, but you have a Slinky with extremely convenient mass, tension, etc., would it be
possible to save yourself by throwing the Slinky upward while holding on to one end of it?"''
<div align="right">—Varadarajan Srinivasan</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|46}}
|
|-
|
|'''Sparta'''
|''"In the movie 300 they shoot arrows up into the sky and they seemingly blot out the sun. Is this possible, and how many arrows would it take?"''
<div align="right">—Anna Newell</div>
|300 arrows per second with densely packed archers could blot out 99% of the sun's light. If the sun were low in the horizon, you could more effectively block sunlight with less arrows.
|
|{{book|1|47}}
|
|-
|
|'''Lego Bridge'''
|''"How many Lego bricks would it take to build a bridge capable of carrying traffic from London to New York? Have that many Lego bricks been manufactured?"''
<div align="right">—Jerry Petersen</div>
|Enough bricks have been manufactured to connect London and New York, but the bridge would not be structurally sound enough to stay together for very long.
|
|{{book|1|51}}
|
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #10'''
|''"What is the probability that if I am stabbed by a knife in my torso that it won’t hit anything vital and I’ll live?"''
<div align="right">—Thomas</div>
''"If I were on a motorbike and do a jump off a quarter pipe ramp, how fast would I need to be moving to safely deploy and land using the parachute?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
''"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?"''
<div align="right">—Kenneth</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|54}}
|
|-
|
|'''Weightless Arrow'''
|''"Assuming a zero-gravity environment with an atmosphere identical to Earth's, how long would it take the friction of air to stop an arrow fired from a bow? Would it eventually come to a standstill and hover in midair?"''
<div align="right">—Mark Estano</div>
|It would stop at about 5 to 10 kilometers.
|
|{{book|1|56}}
|
|-
|
|'''All the Lightning'''
|''"If all the lightning strikes happening in the world on any given day all happened in the same place at once, what would happen to that place?"''
<div align="right">—Trevor Jones</div>
|It would create a crater the size of a basketball court.
|
|{{book|1|62}}
|{{book|10|2024|05|07|fs28lEq9smw|What if all the lightning on Earth struck the same place at once?}}
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #11'''
|''"What if everyone in Great Britain went to one of the coasts and started paddling? Could they move the island at all?"''
<div align="right">—Ellen Eubanks</div>
''" Are fire tornadoes possible?"''
<div align="right">—Seth Wishman</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|64}}
|
|-
|
|'''Neutron Bullet'''
|''"If a bullet with the density of a neutron star were fired from a handgun (ignoring the how) at the Earth's surface, would the Earth be destroyed?"''
<div align="right">—Charlotte Ainsworth</div>
|No. The bullet would fall through the ground and stop in the center of the Earth.
|
|{{book|1|67}}
|
|-
|
|'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #12'''
|''"What if I swallow a tick that has Lyme disease? Will my stomach acid kill the tick and the borreliosis, or would I get Lyme disease from the inside out?"''
<div align="right">—Christopher Vogel</div>
''"Assuming a relatively uniform resonant frequency in a passenger jet, how many cats, meowing at what resonant frequency of said jet,
would be required to “bring it down”?"''
<div align="right">—Brittany</div>
|
|
|{{book|1|68}}
|
|-
|
|'''Richter 15'''
|''"What if a Richter magnitude 15 earthquake were to hit America at, let's say, New York City? What about a Richter 20? 25?"''
<div align="right">—Alec Farid</div>
|A magnitude 15 earthquake would destroy the Earth.
|
|{{book|1|69}}
|{{book|2|2023|12|05|e3uk7jU3RHo|What would a magnitude 15 earthquake be like?}}
|-
|
|'''Soupiter'''
|''"What would happen if the Solar System was filled with soup out to Jupiter?"''
<div align="right">—Amelia</div>
|The soup would collapse into a black hole and devour the Milky Way, though we would feel mostly fine for the first 10 to 15 minutes.
|
|{{book|2|1}}
|
|-
|
|'''Helicopter Ride'''
|''"What if you were hanging on a helicopter blade by your hands and then someone turned it on?"''
<div align="right">—Corban Blanset</div>
|Without any grip assistance, you'd fall off before it completed its first revolution. With handholds, your body would instead fall off of your arms.
|
|{{book|2|2}}
|
|-
|
|'''Dangerously Cold'''
|''"Would there be any danger from standing next to a large object that was 0 Kelvin?"''
<div align="right">—Christopher</div>
|There wouldn't be a lot of direct danger from the cube itself, though it would make you feel cold. The bigger danger would be from liquid oxygen condensing and igniting flammable objects. It would take a while to reheat the cube
|
|{{book|2|3}}
|
|-
|
|'''Ironic Vaporization'''
|''"What if we somehow evaporated a solid block of iron on {{asic|ear|th''}}''?"''
<div align="right">—Cooper C.</div>
|The cube would ignite whatever is near it and deposit large quantities of iron flakes downwind. However, it wouldn't make a huge impact on the total amount of atmospheric iron.
|
|{{book|2|4}}
|
|-
|
|'''Cosmic Road Trip'''
|''"If the universe stopped expanding right now, how long would it take for a human to drive a car all the way to the edge of the universe?"''
<div align="right">—Sam H-H</div>
|<big><big>{{notice2|'''All of these are too short!'''}}</big></big>
|
|{{book|2|5}}
|
|-
|
|'''Pigeon Chair'''
|''"How many pigeons would it require in order to lift the average person and launch a chair to the height of Australia's Q1 skyscraper?"''
<div align="right">—Nick Evans</div>
|<big><big>{{notice|'''If you own the second book, please help us by explaining more!'''}}</big></big>
|
|{{book|2|6}}
|
|-
|rowspan="11"|
|rowspan="11"|'''Short Answers #1'''
|''"What if your blood became liquid uranium? Would you die from radiation, lack of oxygen, or something else?"''
<div align="right">—Thomas Chattaway</div>
|You would die of Jeff's Disease.
|rowspan="11"|
|rowspan="11"{{book|2|6.5}} (S1)
|rowspan="11"|
|-
|''"Could someone have an anime-style attack where they created a sword out of air? I'm not talking about an air blade, but something like cooling the air enough so that you had solid air to attack people."''
<div align="right">—Emma</div>
|Theoretically yes, but it would be extremely impractical.
|-
|''"How much water do you have to drink to become 99 percent water?"''
<div align="right">—LyraxH</div>
|About 500 gallons of water.
|-
|''"What would we see if we attached a lightweight camera to a balloon and let it fly away?"''
<div align="right">—Raymond Peng</div>
|We should have attached a transmitter as well.
|-
|''"How many calories does Mario burn a day?"''
<div align="right">—Daniel and Xavier Hovley</div>
|Mario starved to death in late 1985.
|-
|''"If a snake unhinged its jaw and swallowed a balloon whole, could/would the balloon carry the snake up?"''
<div align="right">—Freezachu</div>
|No.
|-
|''"If you were to jump out of an airplane that was traveling at Mach 880980 that was 100,00 feet above ground in New York City, with skydiving gear, could you survive?"''
<div align="right">—Jack Catten</div>
|rowspan="2"|No, you would die.
|-
|''"If there was no water on Earth, would we all live?"''
<div align="right">—Karen</div>
|-
|''"Is it possible to make a homemade jetpack?"''
<div align="right">—Azhari Zadil</div>
|It's very easy to make one that works once; much harder to make it work more.
|-
|''"I was wondering whether there's a way to use my welder as a defibrillator? (The specific model I own is an Impax IM-ARC140 arc welder.)"''
<div align="right">—Łukasz Grabowski</div>
|No, and you probably shouldn't be allowed to use it as an arc welder either.
|-
|''"What if all atoms on Earth were expanded to the size of a grape? Would we survive?
|I don't know how to answer this with science, but now I want grapes.
|-
|
|'''Geyser'''
|''"If one were to stand on top of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park, at what speed would they be launched upwards and what injuries would they likely sustain?"''
<div align="right">—Catherine McGrath</div>
|If you positioned yourself in just the right way, and used an umbrella to catch as much lift as possible, you could be launched hundreds of feet in the air. Unsurprisingly, you'd receive severe burns and almost certainly die. Surprisingly, however, you would be far from the first person to get severe burns from the geysers.
|
|{{book|2|8}}
|
|-
|
|'''Pew, Pew, Pew'''
|''"If you shot a ridiculously powerful gun/{{asic|la|zer''}}'' would it go off the edge of the world in a straight line or curve around the world?"''
<div align="right">—Maelor</div>
|The beam would go off the edge of the world, except under certain circumstances.
|
|{{book|2|9}}
|
|-
|rowspan="4"|
|rowspan="4"|'''Weird & Worrying #1'''
|colspan="2"|''"Can bees or other animals go to hell? Or can they murder other bees without consequences?"''
<div align="right">—Sadie Kim</div>
|rowspan="4"|
|rowspan="4"{{book|2|10.5}} (W1)
|rowspan="4"|
|-
|colspan="2"|''"How many mirrors reflecting (sun)light would it take to kill, or at least, injure somebody?"''
<div align="right">—Eli Collinge</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"If you had to remove the tonsils of a giant, what would be the safest way for you to do it? The surgeon is a normal human."''
<div align="right">—Tirzah</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"What would it take to defeat Air Force One with a drone???"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|-
|
|'''Banana Church'''
|''"Can all the world's bananas fit inside of all of the world's churches? My friends have had this argument for a little over 10 years now."''
<div align="right">—Jonas</div>
|Yes. They would likely only fill the churches to 6 inches deep.
|
|{{book|2|11}}
|
|-
|
|'''Lose Weight the Slow and Incredibly Difficult Way'''
|''"I want to lose 20 pounds. How much of the Earth's mass would I have to "relocate" to space in order to achieve my goal?"''
<div align="right">—Ryan Murphy</div>
|You would have to remove 85% of the Earth's mass.
|
|{{book|2|13}}
|
|-
|
|'''Jupiter Comes to Town'''
|''"Dear Randall, what would happen if you shrunk Jupiter down to the size of a house and placed in a neighborhood, say, replacing a house?"''
<div align="right">—Zachary</div>
|Assuming density stayed the same when you shrunk Jupiter down, the biggest issue would be that the gravity that keeps its hot interior together would no longer exist, essentially creating a giant fireball that would turn into a mushroom cloud, and eventually spread out into a big cool cloud.
|
|{{book|2|15}}
|
|-
|
|'''Swing Set'''
|''"How tall can a swing set be while still being powered by a human pumping their legs? Is it possible to build a swing set tall enough to launch the rider into space if they jump at the right time? (Assuming the human has enough energy, which my 5-year-old seems to have.)"''
<div align="right">—Joe Coyle</div>
|This wouldn't happen.
|
|{{book|2|17}}
|
|-
|
|'''Airliner Catapult'''
|''"My friend is a commercial airline pilot. She says that a significant amount of fuel is spent on takeoff. To save fuel, why couldn't we launch airplanes using catapult systems like on aircraft carriers (calibrated to normal human accelerations)? Could significant amounts of fossil fuels be saved if the catapults could be run by some other clean energy? I'm imagining a rope ... one end tied to the airplane, the other tied to a large boulder at the edge of a cliff. Just push the boulder off the cliff!"''
<div align="right">—Brady Barkey</div>
|It's not a completely ridiculous idea, but the most practical issue is that you'd have to extend the roughly mile-long runway several times more to take full advantage of it. Using the proposed rope-and-cliff system, you'd need to use a thousand ton weight dropped at the height of a super tall skyscraper - of course, if you used something heavier, like the 80,000-ton Washington Monument, you wouldn't need to drop it as far.
|
|{{book|2|18}}
|
|-
|rowspan="14"|
|rowspan="14"|'''Short Answers #2'''
|''"Billy the Clown is running out of cash, so in order to raise money, he devises his newest trick: He will inflate, by mouth, a standard-size party balloon until the material (some form of indestructible rubber) is just one atom thick. How large would the inflated party balloon be?"''
<div align="right">—Alan Fong</div>
|It's a total mystery why Billy is running out of cash.
|rowspan="14"|
|rowspan="14"{{book|2|18.5}} (S2)
|rowspan="14"|
|-
|''"How many leaf blowers would it take to move a standard SUV"''
<div align="right">—Ashley H.</div>
|One or two dozen heavy-duty leaf blowers on level ground; more if you don't want to be honked at.
|-
|''"If you put a vacuum at extremely high suction and aimed it at a normal BMW sedan, what would happen?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|Nothing.
|-
|''"On a warm summer evening, when you sit outside with a light on, you can be sure that bugs will be attracted to the light. Then why is it that these same bugs don't fly toward the biggest and strongest lamp of them all, namely the Sun, during the day?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|Those that would would die and not be able to produce offspring with the same traits.
|-
|''"If you collected all of the guns in the world and put them on one side of the Earth, then shot the all simultaneously, would it move the Earth?"''
<div align="right">—Nathan</div>
|It would not move the Earth, but it would make the other side a nicer place to live.
|-
|''"What would happen if you microwaved a small microwave, while the smaller one was on as well?"''
<div align="right">—Micheal</div>
|You would no longer be welcome in that IKEA.
|-
|''"If you're jumping on a trampoline, how fast would your body have to be going to:<br>'''A.''' Break all bones on impact<br>'''B.''' Make your body go though the tiny holes of the mesh."''
<div align="right">—Micah Lane</div>
|<ol style="list-style-type: upper-alpha">
<li>Breaking all of the bones in your body would be hard because a lot of them are very small, but it would be fast enough that the trampoline wouldn't make much of a difference.</li>
<li>This can't happen, no matter how fast you're going.</li>
</ol>
|-
|''"I have a Nothing Grenade™. When detonated, it instantly replaces itself with a sphere of perfect vacuum 2 meters across. What would actually happen when it went off?"''
<div align="right">—Dave H.</div>
|You would have a device functionally similar to a regular grenade.
|-
|''"Is space hot or cold?"''
<div align="right">—Isaac</div>
|Space is the hottest place you can freeze to death in.
|-
|''"How many bones can you remove from the human body while allowing the human to continue living? Asking for a friend."''
<div align="right">—Chris Rakeman</div>
|That person is not your friend.
|-
|''"What would happen if you put a human under a g-force of 417 Gs for twenty seconds?"''
<div align="right">—Nythill</div>
|You would be arrested for murder.
|-
|''"Where or how can one commit a murder and not be prosecuted for it?"''
<div align="right">—Kunai Dhawan</div>
|Theoretically, in a section of Yellowstone National Park, where {{w|Zone of Death (Yellowstone)|a jury would have to be formed from a non-existent population}}. In practice, you'd definitely still be prosecuted for committing a murder there.
|-
|''"I read today that insects make at least $57 billion a year for the US economy. If we were to pay every single insect in the United States equally for their economic contribution, how much would each insect get?"''
<div align="right">—Hannah McDonald</div>
|Each insect would get $0.0000029.
Broken down:
*$18 billion to flies, including mosquitoes
*$16 billion to bees, wasps, and ants
*$10 billion to beetles
*$7 billion to thrips
*$1 billion to butterflies and moths
*$1 billion to true bugs
*$4 billion to all other insects
|-
|''"What, in today's world and yesterday's world, does it mean to be human, in all social and biological factors?"''
<div align="right">—Seth Carrol</div>
|You meant to submit this to ''Why If?: Deeply Ungrammatical Answers to Unanswerable Philosophical Questions''.
|-
|
|'''Slow Dinosaur Apocalypse'''
|''"What if an object like the Chicxulub impactor hit earth with a relatively low relative speed of (let's say) 3 mph"''
<div align="right">—Beni von Alemann</div>
|
|
|{{book|2|19}}
|
|-
|
|'''Elemental Worlds'''
|''"What if Mercury (the planet) were entirely made of mercury (the element)? What if Ceres was made of cerium? Uranus made of uranium? Neptune made of neptunium? What about Pluto made of plutonium?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|
|
|{{book|2|20}}
| 
|-
|
|'''Tire Rubber'''
|''"Rubber tires on millions of cars and trucks start with about ½" tread and end up bald. Rubber should be everywhere, or at least our highways should be made thicker. Where's the rubber?"''
<div align="right">—Fred</div>
|
|
|{{book|2|25}}
|
|-
|rowspan="10"|
|rowspan="10"|'''Short Answers #3'''
|''"How long do you think two people would have to kiss continuously before they had no lips left?"''
<div align="right">—Asli</div>
|That's not how lips work
|rowspan="10"|
|rowspan="10"{{book|2|26.5}} (S3)
|rowspan="10"|
|-
|''"My college friend and I have had this debate for years now: If you put a million hungry ants in a glass cube with one human, who's more likely to walk out alive?"''
<div align="right">—Eric Bowman</div>
|Both the human and the ants would go after the person who put them in the glass box.
|-
|''"What if all of humanity set all of their differences aside and work together to level out the Earth into a perfect sphere?"''
<div align="right">—Erik Andersen</div>
|This would quickly create new differences.
|-
|''"People talk a lot about a space elevator or a building that would reach into low orbit to save time and resources getting things into space. This is going to sound incredibly stupid, but why has no one proposed building a road into space? Since orbit is generally considered to be 62 miles out, would it be possible to build a 62-mile-high mountain somewhere in the United States? Colorado would be my suggestion, since it has a low population density and is about a mile above sea level already."''
<div align="right">—Brian</div>
|Where are you going to get the materials to build the mountain?
|-
|''"If I shot a rocket and a bullet through Jupiter's center, would they come out the other side?"''
<div align="right">—James Wilson</div>
|No. Jupiter is bulletproof.
|-
|''"What if Mount Everest magically turned into pure lava? What would happen to life; would we all die?"''
<div align="right">—Ian</div>
|We would mostly be okay.
|-
|''"Can you fall down into the Mariana Trench, or would you just swim over it?"''
<div align="right">—Rodolfo Estrella</div>
|You can do both of those things
|-
|''"I play Dungeons & Dragons, and my DM doesn't want to let us use the Gust of Wind spell to push wind into the sails of a ship and make it move. Her argument is that you can't use this spell to move a ship because someone on a sailboat can't aim a fan at the sail to propel the boat. We argue that since the spell doesn't push you backward when you use it, then we should be able to use it to make the ship sail. She says she'll allow it only if you say so."''
<div align="right">—Georgia Paterson and Allison Adams</div>
|Since the spell doesn't push you backwards, it should work. If the spell pushed you backwards, you would just have to aim the spell backwards.
|-
|''"What if I struck a match on Titan? Would it light if there's no oxygen?"''
<div align="right">—Ethan Fitzgibbon</div>
|It would spark and then fizzle out.
|-
|''"I posted a question on social media asking what would be the smallest change that would create the biggest disaster. One of the responses I got said "if every atom gained 1 proton." So my question for you is, what would happen if every atom gained 1 proton?"''
<div align="right">—Olivia Caputo</div>
|That would not be a small change.
|-
|
|'''Suction Aquarium'''
|''"When I was a child, I discovered that if I took a container into the swimming pool, i could fill it with water and then bring the container (open-end down) to the surface of the water, and the water level in my container was higher than the water level in the pool. What would happen if you tried to do this with a giant container and the ocean? Could you create a giant aquarium on top of the water that the animals could swim in and out of freely? Maybe an irregularly shaped container that you would walk around on to get closer to the fish?"''
<div align="right">—Caroline Collett</div>
|
|
|{{book|2|27}}
|
|-
|
|'''Earth Eye'''
|''"If the Earth were a massive eye, how far would it see?"''
<div align="right">—Alasdir</div>
|
|
|{{book|2|28}}
|
|-
|
|'''Build Rome in a Day'''
|''"How many people would it take to build Rome in a day?"''
<div align="right">—Lauren</div>
| It would take anywhere between 15 minutes and 150 minutes with the whole Earth working.
|
|{{book|2|29}}
|
|-
|
|'''Mariana Trench Tube'''
|''"If I put an indestructible 20-meter-wide glass tube in the ocean that goes all the way down to the deepest part of the ocean, what would it be like to stand at the bottom? Assuming the sun goes directly overhead."''
<div align="right">—Zoki Čulo</div>
|
|
|{{book|2|30}}
|
|-
|
|'''MRI Compass'''
|''"Why don't compasses point toward the nearest hospital because of the magnetic fields created by MRI machines?"''
<div align="right">—D. Hughes</div>
|They actually do, but only within ~10 meters.
|
|{{book|2|32}}
|
|-
|
|'''Ancestor Fraction'''
|''"I noticed recently that the number of people within a family tree increases exponentially with each generation: I have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, and so on. Which got me thinking—are most people descended from the majority of Homo sapiens who have ever lived? If not, what fraction of all the people that have ever lived am I descended from?"''
<div align="right">—Seamus</div>
|Likely between 2-3 twenty-fourths of all humans who have ever lived.
|
|{{book|2|33}}
|
|-
|
|'''Bird Car'''
|''"I'm a lowly college student stuck in a car without AC. As such, the windows are down most of the time when I'm driving, and I started thinking: If a bird happens to match my speed and direction perfectly, and I swerve to catch the bird in my car ... what happens next, other than an angry bird? Does the bird stay right where it was? Fly into the windshield? Drop into the seat? My roommate and I disagree. Any help settling this would really make all our lives easier."''
<div align="right">—Hunter W.</div>
| The bird would fall onto the seat at an angle, and then would fly out of the window (hopefully).
|
|{{book|2|34}}
|
|-
|rowspan="4"|
|rowspan="4"|'''Weird & Worrying #2'''
|colspan="2"|''"What would happen if you put the end of a vacuum hose up to your eye and turned on the vacuum?"''
<div align="right">—Kitty Greer</div>
|rowspan="4"|
|rowspan="4"{{book|2|35.5}} (W2)
|rowspan="4"|
|-
|colspan="2"|''"Is it possible to hold your arm straight out of a car window and punch a mailbox clean off its pole? Could you do it without breaking your hand?"''
<div align="right">—Ty Gwennap</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"If people's teeth kept growing, but when they were fully grown they come off and are swallowed, how long would it take before it causes any problems?"''
<div align="right">—Valen M.</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"In a defensive situation, how much epinephrine (in a EpiPen) would it take to subdue a possible attacker?"''
<div align="right">—Henry M.</div>
|-
|
|'''Vacuum Tube Smartphone'''
|''"What if my phone was based on vacuum tubes? How big would it be?"''
<div align="right">—Johnny</div>
| The phone would be about the size of one to five city blocks, and would melt its way through the Earth's crust. Conversely, the UNIVAC constructed with modern electrical components would be smaller than a grain of salt.
|
|{{book|2|36}}
|
|-
|
|'''Eat a Cloud'''
|''"Could a person eat a whole cloud?"''
<div align="right">—Tak</div>
|Not unless you can squeeze the air out first. If you don't you will burp out more cloud than you ate.
|
|{{book|2|38}}
|
|-
|
|'''Tall Sunsets'''
|''"Let's say that two people of different heights (159 cm and 206 cm) stand beside each other while looking at the sunset. How much longer will the taller person be able to see the sun than the shorter one?"''
<div align="right">—Rasmus Bunde Nielson</div>
|Over a second longer.
|
|{{book|2|39}}
|
|-
|
|'''Sisyphean Refrigerators'''
|''"Suppose everyone with a fridge or a freezer opened them at the same time, outdoors. Would that amount of cooling be able to noticeably change the temperature? If not, how many fridges would it take to lower the temperature, say, 5 degrees F? What about even lower?"''
<div align="right">—Nicholas Mittica</div>
|Refrigerators don't work like that, and would likely increase global temperatures by 0.3 degrees celsius. The infinite spite of Hades is surprisingly green.
|
|{{book|2|41}}
|
|-
|
|'''Basketball Earth'''
|''"You know how when you spin a basketball on your finger you hit the side to make it go faster and balance it? If a meteor passes close enough to the earth, can it make the Earth spin faster like your hand does the basketball?"''
<div align="right">—Zayne Freshley</div>
|Yes.
|
|{{book|2|43}}
|
|- 
|
|'''Inhale a Person'''
|''"If house dust comprises up to 80 percent dead skin, how many people worth of skin does a person consume/inhale in a lifetime?"''
<div align="right">—Greg</div>
|You could inhale at most 3 gallons of human skin in a lifetime, and dust is not mostly dead skin. Instead it is a cursed salad of soil, pollen, cotton fibers, crumbs, powdered sugar, glitter, pet hair and dander, plastic, soot, human or animal hair, flour, glass, smoke, mites, and various miscellaneous gunk.
|
|{{book|2|45}}
|
|-
|
|'''Candy Crush Lightning'''
|''"How many Wint-O-Green Life Savers would it take to create a life-size lightning bolt if you crushed them"''
<div align="right">—Violet M.</div>
|Billions
|
|{{book|2|46}}
|
|-
|rowspan="13"|
|rowspan="13"|'''Short Answers #4'''
|''"Can humans safely eat rabid creatures?"''
<div align="right">—Winston</div>
|No.
|rowspan="13"|
|rowspan="13"{{book|2|46.5}} (S4)
|rowspan="13"|
|-
|''"What if the Earth's core suddenly stopped producing heat?"''
<div align="right">—Laura</div>
|We would be mostly fine.
|-
|''"Could humanity, with our current technology, destroy the Moon?"''
<div align="right">—Tyler</div>
|No.
|-
|''"Can global warming cause the Earth's magnetic fields to weaken?"''
<div align="right">—Pavaki</div>
|No.
|-
|''"If you used a laser, would you be able to bake something?"''
<div align="right">—Andrew Liu</div>
|Yes.
|-
|''"What if Earth was sliced in half, like an apple? Where should you be such that you have the best chance of survival?"''
<div align="right">—Anonymous</div>
|You should be holding the object that's slicing the Earth.
|-
|''"What would happen if a person dropped into a pool full of jellyfish?"''
<div align="right">—Lorenzo Belotti</div>
|It depends on the species.
|-
|''"Would it be possible to make a house floor into a massive air hockey table, so you could move heavy furniture across the room?"''
<div align="right">—Jacob Wood</div>
|Yes, and now I know what my next home improvement project will be.
|-
|''"My 7-year-old son asked us over dinner recently at which point potatoes melt (I assume in a vacuum). Please advise."''
<div align="right">—Steffen</div>
|Potatoes don't really melt at any temperature.
|-
|''"Would a pigeon be able to make it to space if it was not affected by gravity?"''
<div align="right">—Nick Evans</div>
|No. The air in the upper atmosphere is too thin to breathe and too cold
|-
|''"If you were flying blind through the Milky Way what would be the odds of hitting a star or planet?"''
<div align="right">—David</div>
|If you flew edge-on, it would be about 1 in 10 billion.
|-
|''"On various bodies in our Solar System (feel free to group any that are equivalent), roughly how long could you survive on the surface (for gas giants, assume you are on a magical platform at some point in the atmosphere that you could reasonably treat as the surface) with nothing but an infinite air supply and warm winter clothing? That is, no helmet, no pressure suit, just a nose-and-mouth air mask attached to a magic air generator, and clothing that would be suitable for, say, Chicago in winter. (No cute tricks like using the magic air supply to generate heat or whatever.)"''
<div align="right">—Melissa Trible</div>
|
*Earth: 100-ish years
*Venus: Weeks to months
*Everywhere else: Minutes to hours
Venus would be great if it weren't for the sulfuric acid.
|-
|''"What would happen if someone dropped an anvil on you from space?"''
<div align="right">—Sam Stiehl</div>
|About the same as if someone dropped an anvil on you from a building.
|-
|
|'''Toasty Warm'''
|''"What if I want to heat my house using toasters. How many do I need?"''
<div align="right">—Peter Ahlström</div>
|Not many, because the house would quickly catch on fire.
|
|{{book|2|47}}
|
|-
|
|'''Eyeball'''
|''"If I pulled out my eyeball and aimed it so that it was looking into my other eyeball, what would I see (assuming the nerves and veins remain undamaged)"''
<div align="right">—Lenka</div>
|You would see an eye superimposed with your head and the background of the room overlapping.
|
|{{book|2|49}}
|
|-
|
|'''Japan Runs an Errand'''
|''"If ALL of Japan's islands disappear, would it affect Earth's natural phenomena (plates, oceans, hurricanes, climate, and so on)?"''
<div align="right">—Miyu Uchida</div>
|It could shift the Earth's center of mass and axis of rotation by a foot. Sea level could also rise by up to a foot and a half in some areas. Ocean circulation in the Pacific could also be impacted.
|
|{{book|2|50}}
|
|-
|
|'''Read All the Laws'''
|''"If a person wanted to read all of the governing documents that apply to them—from the federal and state constitutions, treaties, agency-issued regulations, federal and state laws, local ordinances, etc.—how many pages would they have to read?"''
<div align="right">—Keith Yearman</div>
|Between 145000 and 12.3 million pages.
|
|{{book|2|52}}
|
|-
|rowspan="3"|
|rowspan="3"|'''Weird & Worrying #3'''
|colspan="2"|''"If I were to jump into a container of liquid nitrogen (or dispose of a body that way), how deep would it have to be for me/them to shatter into frozen pieces at the bottom?"''
<div align="right">—Stella Wohnig</div>
|rowspan="3"|
|rowspan="3"{{book|2|52.5}} (W3)
|rowspan="3"|
|-
|colspan="2"|''"What would happen to you if a colony of ants suddenly appeared in you bloodstream all at once?"''
<div align="right">—Matt, on behalf of Declan</div>
|-
|colspan="2"|''"If Harry Potter forgets where the invisible entrance to Platform 9¾ is, how long would he have to crash into walls randomnly before discovering it?"''
<div align="right">—Max Planker</div>
|-
|
|'''Snowball'''
|''"What if I tried to roll a snowball from the top of Mount Everest? How big would the snowball be by the time it reached the bottom and how long would it take?"''
<div align="right">—Michaeline Yates</div>
|It would remain about the same size, or it could cause an avalanche.
|
|{{book|2|54}}
|
|-
|
|'''Walking Backward in Time'''
|''"What if you decided to walk from Austin, Texas, to New York City, but every step takes you back thirty days?"''
<div align="right">—Jojo Yawson</div>
| The sky would flicker at 50 Hz, and you would arrive around 300,000 years in the past.
|
|{{book|2|56}}
|
|-
|
|'''Ammonia Tube'''
|''"What would happen if you fed ammonia into your stomach through a tube? How fast must the flow rate be to burn your stomach from the heat released? What would the newly created chlorine gas do to your stomach?"''
<div align="right">—Becca</div>
|There would be direct tissue damage, and other horrifying effects.
|
|{{book|2|57}}
|
|-
|rowspan="7"|
|rowspan="7"|'''Short Answers #5'''
|''"Could life evolve in a constantly running microwave?"''
<div align="right">—Abby Doth</div>
|No.
|rowspan="7"|
|rowspan="7"{{book|2|58.5}} (S5)
|rowspan="7"|
|-
|''"Tonight at my work as an ER nurse in the emergency room, a patient (high on methamphetamine) asked for a cup of water. I returned with a paper cup of water, which the patient promptly threw at my head, missing me but hitting the wall in such an improbable way that the open top of the cup impacted the wall and the cup contained/diminished most of the subsequent splatter. It occurred to me that it might be possible to throw a cup of water hard enough that the container of water would go through the wall. Is this possible?"''
<div align="right">—Pete</div>
|Anything will go through a wall if you throw it hard enough
|-
|''"How slow would you have to chew in order to be able to infinitely consume breadsticks?"''
<div align="right">—Miller Broughton</div>
|You would have to divide each breadstick into 20 bites, chewing each bite 200 times at 1 chew per second.
|-
|''"If you were somehow to remove the white and yolk from inside an eggshell (chicken), and replace them with helium, would the eggshell float in the air?"''
<div align="right">—Elizabeth</div>
|No. An eggshell weighs more than the air it displaces.
|-
|''"What would stars smell like, if it were possible to smell them?"''
<div align="right">—Finn Ellis</div>
|It would smell like bleach or burning rubber, and would taste sour.
|-
|''"What is the average size for every man-made object on the planet?"''
<div align="right">—Max Carver</div>
|Not too big, not too small. About average.
|-
|''"E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E<wbr>E"''
<div align="right">—Nate Yu</div>
|I feel you, Nate.
|-
|
|'''Dog Overload'''
|''"Assuming 1 out of every 4 people has a 5-year-old dog, and the dog reproduces once every year, with 5 puppies, and the puppies start reproducing at 5 and stop at 15 and die at 20, how long would it take for the Earth to be flooded with puppies, assuming we have all the food, water, and oxygen to sustain them?"''
<div align="right">—Griffin</div>
|
|
|{{book|2|60}}
|
|-
|
|'''Sunscreen'''
|''"Assuming that SPF works as it purports, what SPF would you need for a 1-hour trip to the surface of the sun?"''
<div align="right">—Brian and Max Parker</div>
|You would need SPF 3,200,000 or a giant blob of sunscreen.
|
|{{book|2|62}}
|
|-
|
|'''Walking on the Sun'''
|''"After the Sun runs out of fuel, it will become a white dwarf and slowly cool. When will it be cool enough to touch?"''
<div align="right">—Jabari Garland</div>
|in about 20 billion years, but you won't be able to physically touch it and survive.
|
|{{book|2|63}}
|
|-
|
|'''Lemon Drops and Gumdrops'''
|''"What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?"''
<div align="right">—Shuo Peskoe-Yang</div>
|Human civilization would collapse, and we would all die.
|
|{{book|2|64}}
|
|-
|
|'''Bonus Chapter'''
|''"...but what if we tried even ''more'' power?"''
<div align="right">—Randall Munroe</div>
|
|
|{{book|3|70}}
|{{book|19|2024|12|03|jgafb8G7i4o|But what if we tried MORE power?}}
|-
|}

<span id="Editors"><big><big>'''Editors'''</big></big></span>
''[[#Article index|(jump back to table)]]''

<big>'''Add name of reader who asked the question.'''</big>

Here's how to add the name(s) to any question on the table. For example, this...
<nowiki>|''"What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?"''
|Human civilization would collapse, and we would all die.</nowiki>
... becomes this:
<nowiki>|''"What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?"''
<div align="right"></nowiki>'''—'''<font color="SeaGreen">'''''InsertNamesHere'''''</font><nowiki></div>
|Human civilization would collapse, and we would all die.</nowiki>
Copy the code and replace the green part! (NOTE: It uses the em-dash, not a normal hyphen, so don't replace the dash, or use <code>&mdash;</code>.) Transcribe it exactly as it is written on the website or book, including parenthesis and age, if given by Randall. '''Protip for desktop users:''' the text looks ALL CAPS on the site, but if you copy and paste it, it's in normal Sentence Case. You can simply copy and paste.

<big>'''Add YouTube video'''</big>

<nowiki>{{book|YT-NUMBER|YYYY|MM|DD|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''<nowiki>HTTPS://LINK</nowiki>'''''</font>|VIDEO-TITLE}}
'''EXAMPLE:''' <nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''2'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''2022'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''12'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''31'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LSyNhb5Y'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''What if everyone pointed a laser at the moon?'''''</font>}}

<big>'''Add book chapter'''</big>

For the first [[What If? (book)|What If? book]]:
<nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''1'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''CHAPTER-NUMBER'''''</font>}}

For the second [[What If? 2]] book:
<nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''2'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''CHAPTER-NUMBER'''''</font>}}

'''EXAMPLE:'''<nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''2'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''69'''''</font>}}

If an article is available exclusively on the third book ([[What If? 10th Anniversary Edition]]) and not in the first two, use this:
<nowiki>{{book|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen">'''''3'''''</font>|<font color="SeaGreen">'''''CHAPTER-NUMBER'''''</font>}}<noinclude>

<big>'''Link to a ''what if?'' article'''</big>

On this wiki, an easy way to link to a given ''what if?'' article is by using the {{Template|what if}} template. Copy and paste the text below, correcting the number and title (highlighted in green) to get this result:

'''EXAMPLE:'''
See the <nowiki>''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|</nowiki><font color="SeaGreen"><ins>'''''158'''''</ins></font>|<font color="SeaGreen"><ins>'''''Hot Banana'''''</ins></font>}}<nowiki>''</nowiki>.
'''RESULTS IN:'''
See the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|158|Hot Banana}}''.

NOTE: Since the blog releases are now random, please write a comment on [[{{LATESTCOMIC}}#Discussion|the newest comic's talk page]] to announce that a new ''what if?'' article is out.

''[[#Article index|(jump back to table)]]''
<noinclude>
<span id="bottom"></span>
{| style="border: 1px solid {{{border|gray}}}; background-color: {{{color|#fdffe7}}};"
|rowspan="2" style="vertical-align:middle;" | {{{{{|safesubst:}}}#ifeq:{{{2}}}|alt|[[File:What If Barnstar.jpeg|100px]]|[[File:What If Barnstar.jpeg|100px]]}}
|rowspan="2" |
|style="font-size: x-large; padding: 0; vertical-align: middle; height: 1.1em;" | '''The What If? Project Barnstar'''
|-
|style="vertical-align: middle; border-top: 1px solid gray;" | <div style="font-family: Cormorant Garamond"><span style="font-size:5pt;color:black">

* <span style="background-color:#9eff9e;"><span style="color:green; font-size:1.4em;">''' ✓'''</span><big> '''Added: '''</big></span> All ~140 book-exclusive articles, each color-coded by book; reader question and Randall's answer for almost all ~70 [[What If? 2]]-exclusive articles; EVERY YouTube video and its associated article; over new 130 thumbnails uploaded; new article from [[What If? 10th Anniversary Edition|the new book]] and the [[what if? (blog)#top|deleted article]].

* <span style="background-color:#9eff9e;"><span style="color:green; font-size:1.4em;">''' ✓'''</span><big> '''Changes: '''</big></span> Merged columns No., Release date, and Weeks since last release; every column now easily sortable; columns Blog, Book (new), and YouTube (new) now use {{template|blog}} and {{template|book}} and are color-coded; split ''Short-Answer Sections'' into different cells; title bold and question italics and quoted!

----

Great Job to everyone who helped out on this project! If you helped out explain the articles or build the table, feel free to sign here: '''[[User:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:9pt;color:#A9C6CA">42.book.addict</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:42.book.addict|<span style="font-family:Cormorant Garamond;font-size:6pt;color:#516874">Talk to me!</span>]]</sup>''' 17:44, 14 February 2025 (UTC), [[User:WriterArtistCoder|WriterArtistCoder]]<sup>[[User talk:WriterArtistCoder|talk to me]]</sup> 21:56, 11 March 2025 (UTC), [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:53, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

[[Category:What If?| 9]]{{xkcdmeta}}

3067: SawStart

2025-03-24T15:05:58Z

Cheesesentience: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3067
| date = March 24, 2025
| title = SawStart
| image = sawstart.png
| imagesize = 290x313px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Unfortunately, SawStart is one-use-only. Once started, the blade cannot be stopped, and must be replaced with a fresh blade while the running one is carefully disposed of.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SawBOT who is hungry for hotdog fingers - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{w|SawStop}} is an American {{w|table saw}} manufacturer whose product is designed to increase safety. Table saws can be highly dangerous if not used properly, because they feature a rapidly spinning {{w|circular saw}} protruding from the surface. If any part of someone's body come into contact with the blade while it's spinning, it can cause severe injury or death. SawStop products feature an automatic brake, designed to detect when flesh comes into contact with the blade. According to manufacturer claims, the brake will stop the blade within 5 milliseconds of detecting contact, and cause the blade to retract into the table. This is intended to prevent major injuries in the event of contact.

Black Hat here takes the notion of a product designed to increase safety, and changes the design to do [[2876|the opposite]], making it much more dangerous. Like the SawStop design, his product ostensibly detects contact with skin and reacts within milliseconds, but rather than stopping the blade, his product uses an explosive charge to ''start'' a stationary blade. It's unknown whether the blade would be faster than normal, and actually make it more dangerous (ordinary speeds of a table saw are more than capable of destroying living tissue), but setting of an explosive charge while in contact with such a blade is probably not a particularly good idea. It is not wise, in general, to touch even a normal stopped blade (without being absolutely certain that the power cannot be turned on, or even just through the stationary sharpness), but in this case it specifically is designed to make one that theoretically could be touched run up to significantly damaging speeds the moment it is. There is no benefit to such a system, and it exists solely to be malicious (which is likely why it's "less popular").

The title text refers to the fact that the braking feature on the SawStop is single use. Because of the very fast response time, both the braking cartridge and the saw blade will be badly damaged in the process, and both with need to be replaced (this being considered preferable to the kinds of permanent injuries that can result from a spinning blade). The SawStart is also single use, but in its case, it somehow makes the blade impossible to stop, violating the second law of thermodynamics and probably several other laws{{Citation needed}}. Hence, the SawStart blade must also be replaced, but this apparently has to be done while the blade is spinning. To attempt to remove a spinning blade is obviously incredibly dangerous{{Citation needed}}, and this simply adds to the unnecessary harm this product could do.

==Transcript==

:[Black Hat gestures to a table saw called SawStart, facing Megan and Cueball. The SawStart label depicts a circular saw blade behind the word Saw]:
:Black Hat: When the saw detects contact with skin, an explosive charge starts the blade spinning at full speed within a few milliseconds.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:SawStop's less-popular competitor

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]

3065: Square Units

2025-03-24T12:12:35Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 3065
| date = March 19, 2025
| title = Square Units
| image = square_units_2x.png
| imagesize = 545x678px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The biggest I've seen in a published source in the wild is an 80-fold error in a reported distance, which I think came from a series of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.
}}

==Explanation==

In this comic, [[Megan]] is using her phone to read about an insect species that consumes (hyperbolically described as 'devours') one square inch of grass per day. As it is relayed through a chain of conversations, this measurement gets misinterpreted up to 12 times until [[Hairbun]] tells other people that it devours an area of grass equal to two times the land area of Australia per day, which is clearly impossible by one insect.{{citation needed}} This is similar to the premise of [[2585: Rounding]].

This gross error is the result of repeatedly misinterpreting the number of square units as the side length of a square, thus increasing the described area by the power of two. The chain also involves converting between {{w|imperial units}} and {{w|International System of Units|SI}} units, thus introducing smaller rounding errors, and frequently switching which measurement is "a single square with sides of a certain distance" and which is "the number of squares that are each of unit length". The upshot is that, while each statement has two (or more) roughly similar measurements of area, the chain of misunderstanding ends up escalating to ever larger relative expanses. The later participants in this chain also clearly forget to sanity-check their figures, blithely informing others that an individual insect is effectively consuming impossibly huge quantities of food, and traveling enormous linear distances every day to do so. In fact, assuming the insect could continuously eat a 1cm strip of grass, it would need to travel at (2,500 miles)<sup>2</sup> / 1cm / 24 hours = 1.87×10<sup>7</sup> km/s, which is about 62 times the speed of light.

In the final frame, [[Blondie]] further misinterprets the comparative 'area of Australia' to mean the ''actual'' land mass of Australia, with the notional insect entirely defoliating the country twice a day, presumably of whatever had managed to grow within each 12 hour cycle. This would quickly kill off a large proportion of the vegetation, leading to a decreasing food supply for the insect.

The title text tells us that [[Randall]] once found an 80-fold error in a reported distance in a published source. However, it is left as an exercise for the reader to figure out which one. In imperial units, a mile is equal to 80 {{w|chain (unit)|chain}}s, but the 80-fold error was likely due to a different chain of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.

===Table of conversions===

Dark red to light red shows a decrease in size due to inaccurate conversion, dark green to light green shows an increase in size.
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Step !! Multiplier !! Total multiplier !! Square inch !! Square cm !! Square foot !! Acre !! Square meters !! Square kilometers !! Square miles
|-
! 1
| N/A || 100% ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 1||style="background-color:red;"| 6.4516 || 0.006945 || 1.594e-7 || 0.0006451 || 6.451e-10 || 2.490e-10
|-
! 2
| 0.93 || 0.93 || 0.93 ||style="background-color:pink;"| 6 || 0.006458 || 1.482e-7 || 0.0006 || 6e-10 || 2.316e-10
|-
! 3
| 6.00 || 5.58 || 5.58 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 36 (6<sup>2</sup>)||0.03875 || 8.895e-7 || 0.0036 || 3.6e-9 || 1.39e-9
|-
! 4
| 36.00 || 200.90 || 200.9 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"|1,296 (36<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:red;"|1.395 || 3.202e-5 || 0.1296 || 1.296e-7 || 5.004e-8
|-
! 5
| 0.72 || 144.00 || 144 || style="background-color:red;"|929.03 || style="background-color:pink;"|1 || 2.296e-5 || 0.09290 || 9.290e-8 || 3.587e-8
|-
! 6
| 0.97 || 139.50 || 139.5 || style="background-color:pink;"|900|| 0.9688 || 2.224e-5 || 0.09 ||9e-8 || 3.475e-8
|-
! 7
| 90,000.00 || 125,550.25 || 125,550.25 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>)|| style="background-color:green;"|871.9||0.02002 || 81||8.1e-5 || 3.127e-5
|-
! 8
| 1.032 || 129,600 || 129,600 || 836,127||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 900 (30<sup>2</sup>) ||0.02066|| 83.61||8.361e-5 || 3.228e-5
|-
! 9
| 90,000.00 || 1.1,66e+8 || 1.166e+8 || 7.525e+8 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:green;"|18.59|| 7.525e+4 || 0.07525 || 0.02905
|-
! 10
| 1.076 || 1.255e+8 || 1.255e+8 || 8.094e+8|| 871,200||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 20|| style="background-color:green;"|8.093e+4 || 0.08093 || 0.03125
|-
! 11
| 7,91e+6 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 6.4e+9 (80,000<sup>2</sup>) || 6,400 ||2,471
|-
! 12
| 1.00 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || 6.4e+9 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6,400 (80<sup>2</sup>) ||style="background-color:green;"|2,471
|-
! 13
| 253,128 || 2.509e+16 || 2.509e+16|| 1.618e+17 || 1.7424e+14|| 4.000e12 || 1.619e+13 || 1.618e+7 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6.250e+6 (2,500<sup>2</sup>)
|-
|}
The total area of Australia is 7,688,287 km² or 2,968,464 mi², making it the 6th largest country on Earth by area. A 2,500-mile square would actually be about 2.1 times greater than the land area of Australia, once again having a rounding error.

==Transcript==
:[Arrows point to each consecutive panel.]

:[Megan is looking at her phone, with Cueball standing next to her.]
:Megan: This newly-described insect can devour up to a square inch of grass per day.
:Cueball: Oh, neat.

:[Cueball is speaking to Ponytail.]
:Cueball: ...it eats a square inch, or 6 cm², of grass per day...

:[Ponytail is speaking to Hairy.]
:Ponytail: ...a 6-centimeter (2½ inch) square of grass, or 36 cm²...

:[Arrows now point to each consecutive conversion.]
:Written out of panel: ...a 36 centimeter square, or over a square foot...
:Written out of panel: ...a square foot, or 900 cm²...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 cm (30 foot) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a 30 foot square of grass (900 square feet)...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 foot square, or almost 20 acres...
:Written out of panel: ...20 acres (8 hectares, or 80,000 square meters)...
:Written out of panel: ...an 80,000 meter (80 km) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a square 80 km wide, or roughly 2,500 square miles...
:Written out of panel: ...a 2,500-mile square, or twice the land area of Australia, per day...

:[An arrow points from the last conversion to the last panel.]
:[Hairbun is looking at her phone, with White Hat, Danish and Blondie standing next to her.]
:Hairbun: Did you hear about this insect that defoliates the entire land area of Australia twice a day?
:White Hat: Gosh!
:Danish: Wow.
:Blondie: I hope at least it's contained there...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]

3065: Square Units

2025-03-24T12:12:05Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 3065
| date = March 19, 2025
| title = Square Units
| image = square_units_2x.png
| imagesize = 545x678px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The biggest I've seen in a published source in the wild is an 80-fold error in a reported distance, which I think came from a series of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.
}}

==Explanation==

In this comic, [[Megan]] is using her phone to read about an insect species that consumes (hyperbolically described as 'devours') one square inch of grass per day. As it is relayed through a chain of conversations, this measurement gets misinterpreted up to 12 times until [[Hairbun]] tells other people that it devours an area of grass equal to two times the land area of Australia per day, which is clearly impossible by one insect.{{citation needed}} This is similar to the premise of [[2585: Rounding]].

This gross error is the result of repeatedly misinterpreting the number of square units as the side length of a square, thus increasing the described area by the power of two. The chain also involves converting between {{w|imperial units}} and {{w|International System of Units|SI}} units, thus introducing smaller rounding errors, and frequently switching which measurement is "a single square with sides of a certain distance" and which is "the number of squares that are each of unit length". The upshot is that, while each statement has two (or more) roughly similar measurements of area, the chain of misunderstanding ends up escalating to ever larger relative expanses. The later participants in this chain also clearly forget to sanity-check their figures, blithely informing others that an individual insect is effectively consuming impossibly huge quantities of food, and traveling enormous linear distances every day to do so. In fact, assuming the insect could continuously eat a 1cm strip of grass, it would need to travel at (2,500 miles)<sup>2</sup> / 1cm / 24 hours = 1.87×10<sup>7</sup> km/s, which is about 62 times the speed of light.

In the final frame, [[Blondie]] further misinterprets the comparative 'area of Australia' to mean the ''actual'' land mass of Australia, with the notional insect entirely defoliating the country twice a day, presumably of whatever had managed to grow within each 12 hour cycle. This would quickly kill off a large proportion of the vegetation, leading to a decreasing food supply for the insect.

The title text tells us that [[Randall]] once found an 80-fold error in a reported distance in a published source. However, it is left as an exercise for the reader to figure out which one. In imperial units, a mile is equal to 80 {{w|chain (unit)|chain}}s, but the 80-fold error was likely due to a different chain of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.

===Table of conversions===

Dark red to light red shows a decrease in size due to inaccurate conversion, dark green to light green shows an increase in size.
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Step !! Multiplier !! Total multiplier !! Square inch !! Square cm !! Square foot !! Acre !! Square meters !! Square kilometers !! Square miles
|-
! 1
| N/A || 100% ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 1||style="background-color:red;"| 6.4516 || 0.006945 || 1.594e-7 || 0.0006451 || 6.451e-10 || 2.490e-10
|-
! 2
| 0.93 || 0.93 || 0.93 ||style="background-color:pink;"| 6 || 0.006458 || 1.482e-7 || 0.0006 || 6e-10 || 2.316e-10
|-
! 3
| 6.00 || 5.58 || 5.58 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 36 (6<sup>2</sup>)||0.03875 || 8.895e-7 || 0.0036 || 3.6e-9 || 1.39e-9
|-
! 4
| 36.00 || 200.90 || 200.9 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"|1,296 (36<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:red;"|1.395 || 3.202e-5 || 0.1296 || 1.296e-7 || 5.004e-8
|-
! 5
| 0.72 || 144.00 || 144 || style="background-color:red;"|929.03 || style="background-color:pink;"|1 || 2.296e-5 || 0.09290 || 9.290e-8 || 3.587e-8
|-
! 6
| 0.97 || 139.50 || 139.5 || style="background-color:pink;"|900|| 0.9688 || 2.224e-5 || 0.09 ||9e-8 || 3.475e-8
|-
! 7
| 90,000.00 || 125,550.25 || 125,550.25 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>)|| style="background-color:green;"|871.9||0.02002 || 81||8.1e-5 || 3.127e-5
|-
! 8
| 1.032 || 129,600 || 129,600 || 836,127||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 900 (30<sup>2</sup>) ||0.02066|| 83.61||8.361e-5 || 3.228e-5
|-
! 9
| 90,000.00 || 1.1,66e+8 || 1.166e+8 || 7.525e+8 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:green;"|18.59|| 7.525e+4 || 0.07525 || 0.02905
|-
! 10
| 1.076 || 1.255e+8 || 1.255e+8 || 8.094e+8|| 871,200||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 20|| style="background-color:green;"|8.093e+4 || 0.08093 || 0.03125
|-
! 11
| 7,91e+6 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 6.4e+9 (80,000<sup>2</sup>) || 6,400 ||2,471
|-
! 12
| 1.00 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || 6.4e+9 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6,400 (80<sup>2</sup>) ||style="background-color:green;"|2,471
|-
! 13
| 253,128 || 2.509e+16 || 2.509e+16|| 1.618e+17 || 1.7424e+14|| 4.000e12 || 1.619e+13 || 1.618e+7 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6.250e+6 (2,500<sup>2</sup>)
|-
|}
The total area of Australia is 7,688,287 km² or 2,968,464 mi², making it the 6th largest country on Earth by area. A 2,500-mile square would actually be about 2.1 times greater than the land area of Australia, once again having a rounding error.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Arrows point to each consecutive panel.]

:[Megan is looking at her phone, with Cueball standing next to her.]
:Megan: This newly-described insect can devour up to a square inch of grass per day.
:Cueball: Oh, neat.

:[Cueball is speaking to Ponytail.]
:Cueball: ...it eats a square inch, or 6 cm², of grass per day...

:[Ponytail is speaking to Hairy.]
:Ponytail: ...a 6-centimeter (2½ inch) square of grass, or 36 cm²...

:[Arrows now point to each consecutive conversion.]
:Written out of panel: ...a 36 centimeter square, or over a square foot...
:Written out of panel: ...a square foot, or 900 cm²...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 cm (30 foot) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a 30 foot square of grass (900 square feet)...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 foot square, or almost 20 acres...
:Written out of panel: ...20 acres (8 hectares, or 80,000 square meters)...
:Written out of panel: ...an 80,000 meter (80 km) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a square 80 km wide, or roughly 2,500 square miles...
:Written out of panel: ...a 2,500-mile square, or twice the land area of Australia, per day...

:[An arrow points from the last conversion to the last panel.]
:[Hairbun is looking at her phone, with White Hat, Danish and Blondie standing next to her.]
:Hairbun: Did you hear about this insect that defoliates the entire land area of Australia twice a day?
:White Hat: Gosh!
:Danish: Wow.
:Blondie: I hope at least it's contained there...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]

3065: Square Units

2025-03-21T12:34:58Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 3065
| date = March 19, 2025
| title = Square Units
| image = square_units_2x.png
| imagesize = 545x678px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The biggest I've seen in a published source in the wild is an 80-fold error in a reported distance, which I think came from a series of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.
}}

==Explanation==

In this comic, [[Megan]] is using her phone to read about an insect species that consumes (hyperbolically described as 'devours') one square inch of grass per day. As it is relayed through a chain of conversations, this measurement gets misinterpreted up to 12 times until [[Hairbun]] tells other people that it devours an area of grass equal to two times the land area of Australia per day, which is clearly impossible by one insect.{{citation needed}} This is similar to the premise of [[2585: Rounding]].

This gross error is the result of repeatedly misinterpreting the number of square units as the side length of a square, thus increasing the described area by the power of two. The chain also involves converting between {{w|imperial units}} and {{w|International System of Units|SI}} units, thus introducing smaller rounding errors, and frequently switching which measurement is "a single square with sides of a certain distance" and which is "the number of squares that are each of unit length". The upshot is that, while each statement has two (or more) roughly similar measurements of area, the chain of misunderstanding ends up escalating to ever larger relative expanses. The later participants in this chain also clearly forget to sanity-check their figures, blithely informing others that an individual insect is effectively consuming impossibly huge quantities of food, and travelling enormous linear distances every day to do so. In fact, assuming the insect can eat a 1 cm strip of grass per second, it would need to travel at (2,500 miles)<sup>2</sup> / 1cm / 24 hours = 1.87×10<sup>7</sup> km/s, which is about 62 times the speed of light.

In the final frame, [[Blondie]] further misinterprets the comparative 'area of Australia' to mean the ''actual'' land mass of Australia, with the notional insect entirely defoliating the country twice a day, presumably of whatever had managed to grow within each 12 hour cycle. This would quickly kill off a large proportion of the vegetation, leading to a decreasing food supply for the insect.

The title text tells us that [[Randall]] once found an 80-fold error in a reported distance in a published source. However, it is left as an exercise for the reader to figure out which one.

===Table of conversions===
{{incomplete|Explain the meanings behind the different colors.}}
{| class="wikitable"
! Step !! Multiplier !! Total multiplier !! Square inch !! Square cm !! Square foot !! Acre !! Square meters !! Square kilometers !! Square miles
|-
! 1
| N/A || 100% ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 1||style="background-color:red;"| 6.4516 || 0.006945 || 1.594e-7 || 0.0006451 || 6.451e-10 || 2.490e-10
|-
! 2
| 0.93 || 0.93 || 0.93 ||style="background-color:pink;"| 6 || 0.006458 || 1.482e-7 || 0.0006 || 6e-10 || 2.316e-10
|-
! 3
| 6.00 || 5.58 || 5.58 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 36 (6<sup>2</sup>)||0.03875 || 8.895e-7 || 0.0036 || 3.6e-9 || 1.39e-9
|-
! 4
| 36.00 || 200.90 || 200.9 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"|1,296 (36<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:red;"|1.395 || 3.202e-5 || 0.1296 || 1.296e-7 || 5.004e-8
|-
! 5
| 0.72 || 144.00 || 144 || style="background-color:red;"|929.03 || style="background-color:pink;"|1 || 2.296e-5 || 0.09290 || 9.290e-8 || 3.587e-8
|-
! 6
| 0.97 || 139.50 || 139.5 || style="background-color:pink;"|900|| 0.9688 || 2.224e-5 || 0.09 ||9e-8 || 3.475e-8
|-
! 7
| 90,000.00 || 125,550.25 || 125,550.25 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>)|| style="background-color:green;"|871.9||0.02002 || 81||8.1e-5 || 3.127e-5
|-
! 8
| 1.032 || 129,600 || 129,600 || 836,127||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 900 (30<sup>2</sup>) ||0.02066|| 83.61||8.361e-5 || 3.228e-5
|-
! 9
| 90,000.00 || 1.1,66e+8 || 1.166e+8 || 7.525e+8 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:green;"|18.59|| 7.525e+4 || 0.07525 || 0.02905
|-
! 10
| 1.076 || 1.255e+8 || 1.255e+8 || 8.094e+8|| 871,200||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 20|| style="background-color:green;"|8.093e+5 || 0.08093 || 0.03125
|-
! 11
| 7,91e+6 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 6.4e+9 (80,000<sup>2</sup>) || 6,400 ||2,471
|-
! 12
| 1.00 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || 6.4e+9 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6,400 (80<sup>2</sup>) ||style="background-color:green;"|2,471
|-
! 13
| 253,128 || 2.509e+16 || 2.509e+16|| 1.618e+17 || 1.7424e+14|| 4.000e12 || 1.619e+13 || 1.618e+7 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6.250e+6 (2,500<sup>2</sup>)
|-
|}
The total area of Australia is 7,688,287 km² or 2,968,464 mi², making it the 6th largest country on Earth by area. A 2,500-mile square would actually be about 2.1 times greater than the land area of Australia, once again having a rounding error.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Arrows point to each consecutive panel.]

:[Megan is looking at her phone, with Cueball standing next to her.]
:Megan: This newly-described insect can devour up to a square inch of grass per day.
:Cueball: Oh, neat.

:[Cueball is speaking to Ponytail.]
:Cueball: ...it eats a square inch, or 6 cm², of grass per day...

:[Ponytail is speaking to Hairy.]
:Ponytail: ...a 6-centimeter (2½ inch) square of grass, or 36 cm²...

:[Arrows now point to each consecutive conversion.]
:Written out of panel: ...a 36 centimeter square, or over a square foot...
:Written out of panel: ...a square foot, or 900 cm²...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 cm (30 foot) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a 30 foot square of grass (900 square feet)...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 foot square, or almost 20 acres...
:Written out of panel: ...20 acres (8 hectares, or 80,000 square meters)...
:Written out of panel: ...an 80,000 meter (80 km) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a square 80 km wide, or roughly 2,500 square miles...
:Written out of panel: ...a 2,500-mile square, or twice the land area of Australia, per day...

:[An arrow points from the last conversion to the last panel.]
:[Hairbun is looking at her phone, with White Hat, Danish and Blondie standing next to her.]
:Hairbun: Did you hear about this insect that defoliates the entire land area of Australia twice a day?
:White Hat: Gosh!
:Danish: Wow.
:Blondie: I hope at least it's contained there...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]

3065: Square Units

2025-03-21T12:32:56Z

Cheesesentience: /* Table of conversions */

{{comic
| number = 3065
| date = March 19, 2025
| title = Square Units
| image = square_units_2x.png
| imagesize = 545x678px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The biggest I've seen in a published source in the wild is an 80-fold error in a reported distance, which I think came from a series of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BUG IN A SQUARE AREA DEFOLIATION BOT - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, [[Megan]] is using her phone to read about an insect species that consumes (hyperbolically described as 'devours') one square inch of grass per day. As it is relayed through a chain of conversations, this measurement gets misinterpreted up to 12 times until [[Hairbun]] tells other people that it devours an area of grass equal to two times the land area of Australia per day, which is clearly impossible by one insect.{{citation needed}} This is similar to the premise of [[2585: Rounding]].

This gross error is the result of repeatedly misinterpreting the number of square units as the side length of a square, thus increasing the described area by the power of two. The chain also involves converting between {{w|imperial units}} and {{w|International System of Units|SI}} units, thus introducing smaller rounding errors, and frequently switching which measurement is "a single square with sides of a certain distance" and which is "the number of squares that are each of unit length". The upshot is that, while each statement has two (or more) roughly similar measurements of area, the chain of misunderstanding ends up escalating to ever larger relative expanses. The later participants in this chain also clearly forget to sanity-check their figures, blithely informing others that an individual insect is effectively consuming impossibly huge quantities of food, and travelling enormous linear distances every day to do so. In fact, assuming the insect can eat a 1 cm strip of grass per second, it would need to travel at (2,500 miles)<sup>2</sup> / 1cm / 24 hours = 1.87×10<sup>7</sup> km/s, which is about 62 times the speed of light.

In the final frame, [[Blondie]] further misinterprets the comparative 'area of Australia' to mean the ''actual'' land mass of Australia, with the notional insect entirely defoliating the country twice a day, presumably of whatever had managed to grow within each 12 hour cycle. This would quickly kill off a large proportion of the vegetation, leading to a decreasing food supply for the insect.

The title text tells us that [[Randall]] once found an 80-fold error in a reported distance in a published source.

===Table of conversions===
{{incomplete|Explain the meanings behind the different colors.}}
{| class="wikitable"
! Step !! Multiplier !! Total multiplier !! Square inch !! Square cm !! Square foot !! Acre !! Square meters !! Square kilometers !! Square miles
|-
! 1
| N/A || 100% ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 1||style="background-color:red;"| 6.4516 || 0.006945 || 1.594e-7 || 0.0006451 || 6.451e-10 || 2.490e-10
|-
! 2
| 0.93 || 0.93 || 0.93 ||style="background-color:pink;"| 6 || 0.006458 || 1.482e-7 || 0.0006 || 6e-10 || 2.316e-10
|-
! 3
| 6.00 || 5.58 || 5.58 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 36 (6<sup>2</sup>)||0.03875 || 8.895e-7 || 0.0036 || 3.6e-9 || 1.39e-9
|-
! 4
| 36.00 || 200.90 || 200.9 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"|1,296 (36<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:red;"|1.395 || 3.202e-5 || 0.1296 || 1.296e-7 || 5.004e-8
|-
! 5
| 0.72 || 144.00 || 144 || style="background-color:red;"|929.03 || style="background-color:pink;"|1 || 2.296e-5 || 0.09290 || 9.290e-8 || 3.587e-8
|-
! 6
| 0.97 || 139.50 || 139.5 || style="background-color:pink;"|900|| 0.9688 || 2.224e-5 || 0.09 ||9e-8 || 3.475e-8
|-
! 7
| 90,000.00 || 125,550.25 || 125,550.25 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>)|| style="background-color:green;"|871.9||0.02002 || 81||8.1e-5 || 3.127e-5
|-
! 8
| 1.032 || 129,600 || 129,600 || 836,127||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 900 (30<sup>2</sup>) ||0.02066|| 83.61||8.361e-5 || 3.228e-5
|-
! 9
| 90,000.00 || 1.1,66e+8 || 1.166e+8 || 7.525e+8 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:green;"|18.59|| 7.525e+4 || 0.07525 || 0.02905
|-
! 10
| 1.076 || 1.255e+8 || 1.255e+8 || 8.094e+8|| 871,200||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 20|| style="background-color:green;"|8.093e+5 || 0.08093 || 0.03125
|-
! 11
| 7,91e+6 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 6.4e+9 (80,000<sup>2</sup>) || 6,400 ||2,471
|-
! 12
| 1.00 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || 6.4e+9 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6,400 (80<sup>2</sup>) ||style="background-color:green;"|2,471
|-
! 13
| 253,128 || 2.509e+16 || 2.509e+16|| 1.618e+17 || 1.7424e+14|| 4.000e12 || 1.619e+13 || 1.618e+7 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6.250e+6 (2,500<sup>2</sup>)
|-
|}
The total area of Australia is 7,688,287 km² or 2,968,464 mi², making it the 6th largest country on Earth by area. A 2,500-mile square would actually be about 2.1 times greater than the land area of Australia, once again having a rounding error.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Arrows point to each consecutive panel.]

:[Megan is looking at her phone, with Cueball standing next to her.]
:Megan: This newly-described insect can devour up to a square inch of grass per day.
:Cueball: Oh, neat.

:[Cueball is speaking to Ponytail.]
:Cueball: ...it eats a square inch, or 6 cm², of grass per day...

:[Ponytail is speaking to Hairy.]
:Ponytail: ...a 6-centimeter (2½ inch) square of grass, or 36 cm²...

:[Arrows now point to each consecutive conversion.]
:Written out of panel: ...a 36 centimeter square, or over a square foot...
:Written out of panel: ...a square foot, or 900 cm²...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 cm (30 foot) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a 30 foot square of grass (900 square feet)...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 foot square, or almost 20 acres...
:Written out of panel: ...20 acres (8 hectares, or 80,000 square meters)...
:Written out of panel: ...an 80,000 meter (80 km) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a square 80 km wide, or roughly 2,500 square miles...
:Written out of panel: ...a 2,500-mile square, or twice the land area of Australia, per day...

:[An arrow points from the last conversion to the last panel.]
:[Hairbun is looking at her phone, with White Hat, Danish and Blondie standing next to her.]
:Hairbun: Did you hear about this insect that defoliates the entire land area of Australia twice a day?
:White Hat: Gosh!
:Danish: Wow.
:Blondie: I hope at least it's contained there...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]

3065: Square Units

2025-03-21T12:32:23Z

Cheesesentience: /* Table of conversions */

{{comic
| number = 3065
| date = March 19, 2025
| title = Square Units
| image = square_units_2x.png
| imagesize = 545x678px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The biggest I've seen in a published source in the wild is an 80-fold error in a reported distance, which I think came from a series of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BUG IN A SQUARE AREA DEFOLIATION BOT - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, [[Megan]] is using her phone to read about an insect species that consumes (hyperbolically described as 'devours') one square inch of grass per day. As it is relayed through a chain of conversations, this measurement gets misinterpreted up to 12 times until [[Hairbun]] tells other people that it devours an area of grass equal to two times the land area of Australia per day, which is clearly impossible by one insect.{{citation needed}} This is similar to the premise of [[2585: Rounding]].

This gross error is the result of repeatedly misinterpreting the number of square units as the side length of a square, thus increasing the described area by the power of two. The chain also involves converting between {{w|imperial units}} and {{w|International System of Units|SI}} units, thus introducing smaller rounding errors, and frequently switching which measurement is "a single square with sides of a certain distance" and which is "the number of squares that are each of unit length". The upshot is that, while each statement has two (or more) roughly similar measurements of area, the chain of misunderstanding ends up escalating to ever larger relative expanses. The later participants in this chain also clearly forget to sanity-check their figures, blithely informing others that an individual insect is effectively consuming impossibly huge quantities of food, and travelling enormous linear distances every day to do so. In fact, assuming the insect can eat a 1 cm strip of grass per second, it would need to travel at (2,500 miles)<sup>2</sup> / 1cm / 24 hours = 1.87×10<sup>7</sup> km/s, which is about 62 times the speed of light.

In the final frame, [[Blondie]] further misinterprets the comparative 'area of Australia' to mean the ''actual'' land mass of Australia, with the notional insect entirely defoliating the country twice a day, presumably of whatever had managed to grow within each 12 hour cycle. This would quickly kill off a large proportion of the vegetation, leading to a decreasing food supply for the insect.

The title text tells us that [[Randall]] once found an 80-fold error in a reported distance in a published source.

===Table of conversions===
{{note|Explain the meanings behind the different colors.}}
{| class="wikitable"
! Step !! Multiplier !! Total multiplier !! Square inch !! Square cm !! Square foot !! Acre !! Square meters !! Square kilometers !! Square miles
|-
! 1
| N/A || 100% ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 1||style="background-color:red;"| 6.4516 || 0.006945 || 1.594e-7 || 0.0006451 || 6.451e-10 || 2.490e-10
|-
! 2
| 0.93 || 0.93 || 0.93 ||style="background-color:pink;"| 6 || 0.006458 || 1.482e-7 || 0.0006 || 6e-10 || 2.316e-10
|-
! 3
| 6.00 || 5.58 || 5.58 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 36 (6<sup>2</sup>)||0.03875 || 8.895e-7 || 0.0036 || 3.6e-9 || 1.39e-9
|-
! 4
| 36.00 || 200.90 || 200.9 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"|1,296 (36<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:red;"|1.395 || 3.202e-5 || 0.1296 || 1.296e-7 || 5.004e-8
|-
! 5
| 0.72 || 144.00 || 144 || style="background-color:red;"|929.03 || style="background-color:pink;"|1 || 2.296e-5 || 0.09290 || 9.290e-8 || 3.587e-8
|-
! 6
| 0.97 || 139.50 || 139.5 || style="background-color:pink;"|900|| 0.9688 || 2.224e-5 || 0.09 ||9e-8 || 3.475e-8
|-
! 7
| 90,000.00 || 125,550.25 || 125,550.25 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>)|| style="background-color:green;"|871.9||0.02002 || 81||8.1e-5 || 3.127e-5
|-
! 8
| 1.032 || 129,600 || 129,600 || 836,127||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 900 (30<sup>2</sup>) ||0.02066|| 83.61||8.361e-5 || 3.228e-5
|-
! 9
| 90,000.00 || 1.1,66e+8 || 1.166e+8 || 7.525e+8 ||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 810,000 (900<sup>2</sup>) || style="background-color:green;"|18.59|| 7.525e+4 || 0.07525 || 0.02905
|-
! 10
| 1.076 || 1.255e+8 || 1.255e+8 || 8.094e+8|| 871,200||style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 20|| style="background-color:green;"|8.093e+5 || 0.08093 || 0.03125
|-
! 11
| 7,91e+6 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"| 6.4e+9 (80,000<sup>2</sup>) || 6,400 ||2,471
|-
! 12
| 1.00 || 9.920e+12 || 9.920e+12 || 6.4e+13|| 6.889e+13 || 1.581e+6 || 6.4e+9 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6,400 (80<sup>2</sup>) ||style="background-color:green;"|2,471
|-
! 13
| 253,128 || 2.509e+16 || 2.509e+16|| 1.618e+17 || 1.7424e+14|| 4.000e12 || 1.619e+13 || 1.618e+7 || style="background-color:lightgreen;"|6.250e+6 (2,500<sup>2</sup>)
|-
|}
The total area of Australia is 7,688,287 km² or 2,968,464 mi², making it the 6th largest country on Earth by area. A 2,500-mile square would actually be about 2.1 times greater than the land area of Australia, once again having a rounding error.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Arrows point to each consecutive panel.]

:[Megan is looking at her phone, with Cueball standing next to her.]
:Megan: This newly-described insect can devour up to a square inch of grass per day.
:Cueball: Oh, neat.

:[Cueball is speaking to Ponytail.]
:Cueball: ...it eats a square inch, or 6 cm², of grass per day...

:[Ponytail is speaking to Hairy.]
:Ponytail: ...a 6-centimeter (2½ inch) square of grass, or 36 cm²...

:[Arrows now point to each consecutive conversion.]
:Written out of panel: ...a 36 centimeter square, or over a square foot...
:Written out of panel: ...a square foot, or 900 cm²...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 cm (30 foot) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a 30 foot square of grass (900 square feet)...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 foot square, or almost 20 acres...
:Written out of panel: ...20 acres (8 hectares, or 80,000 square meters)...
:Written out of panel: ...an 80,000 meter (80 km) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a square 80 km wide, or roughly 2,500 square miles...
:Written out of panel: ...a 2,500-mile square, or twice the land area of Australia, per day...

:[An arrow points from the last conversion to the last panel.]
:[Hairbun is looking at her phone, with White Hat, Danish and Blondie standing next to her.]
:Hairbun: Did you hear about this insect that defoliates the entire land area of Australia twice a day?
:White Hat: Gosh!
:Danish: Wow.
:Blondie: I hope at least it's contained there...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]

1529: Bracket

2025-03-20T17:13:11Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 1529
| date = May 25, 2015
| title = Bracket
| image = bracket.png
| titletext = I'm staring at the "doctor" section, and I can't help but feel like I've forgotten someone.
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|Bracket (tournament)|tournament bracket}} shows the planned series of matchups in a tournament. In this comic [[Randall]] has shown a plan for a tournament between a wide range of cultural icons, both real and fictional, based mostly on similarities in their names. Various Internet groups have speculated on who would win in a fight between characters from different films. It may be relevant that the film {{w|Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice}} was soon to be released at the time the comic was made where the two eponymous {{w|superheroes}}, {{w|Batman}} and {{w|Superman}}, fight against each other.

The individual starting pairings are generally based on common or similar given names or surnames. Some adjacent brackets are "segued" by someone like Jeff Daniels, who segues from a bracket of "Jeff"s into a bracket of "Daniels"es. The bracket itself is fairly arbitrary. Most initial matchups are pairs, although several are trios and there's a quadruplet in the Russels group, while a single entry, {{w|Beyoncé}}, is given a first- and second-round {{w|bye (sports)|bye}}. Most of the participants in the tournament are people, with a few exceptions. {{w|Shallots}} (small onions), {{w|scallops}} (bivalve mollusks), and {{w|scallions}} (green onions) are similar sounding foods, therefore may be confusing for some individuals (perhaps including [[Randall]]). The final grouping on the lower right of the bracket features several retail stores and a film.

The title text may be a reference to {{w|Dr. Dre}}'s 2001 song "{{w|Forgot About Dre}}" or could simply be a reference to the large number of pop culture personas that include the word "Doctor", such as {{w|Gregory House|Doctor House}}, {{w|Mehmet Oz|Dr. Oz}}, {{w|Doctor Eggman|Dr. Eggman}}, {{w|Phil McGraw|Dr. Phil}}, {{w|Dr. Watson}}, {{w|Emmett Brown|"Doc" Brown}}, {{w|Dr. Seuss}}, {{w|Dr Pepper}}, {{w|Doctor Doom}}, {{w|Zoidberg|Dr. Zoidberg}}, {{w|Dr. Horrible}}'s Sing-Along Blog and {{w|List of fictional doctors|many others}}. A simpler explanation is that it would cause the reader to question "Doctor Who?" answering their own question, although this answer would be incorrect because The Doctor is already present. It could also be a reference to the dual meaning of "The Doctor," either he meant to include Time Lord from Doctor Who and forgot about the EMH from Voyager, or he remembered the EMH and forgot the Time Lord.

The incentive for the comic may have been the {{w|2015 French Open|French Open 2015}}, which started on the day of the publication. The comic inspired several groups to play out versions of the bracket. One user-voting based match-up on twitter, [https://twitter.com/xkcdbracket XKCD Bracket], was featured by Randall on the xkcd home page, with a link at the top of the website, although he didn't create the account. (The link was part of a "news" flash, the other was regarding his book based on [[1133: Up Goer Five]]. See more on this news in that comics explanation.) In the final match on July 29, Neil Armstrong defeated Mister Spock (see the [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLKJUpFWIAAlDnW.png:orig complete bracket]). The link was removed sometimes before Monday, 10 August 2015, within two weeks of the final result being revealed.

Later, Randall has made one smaller but similar bracket in [[1819: Sweet 16]], and then an interactive [[:Category:April fools' comics|April fools' comics]] in 2019, with an even larger bracket for determining the best emoji in [[2131: Emojidome]]. The bracket for this comic was shown with links from the comic during the matches. Shallots, scallops, and scallions were also mentioned together in [[2372: Dialect Quiz]]. Randall would later release another comic that juxtaposed similar-looking names, [[1970: Name Dominoes]].

===Table of the bracket===
The names and other entries in the bracket are given here below, sorted to explain why the individual entries have been grouped as they are. The first-round matchups are grouped by shading.

{| class="wikitable"
!Grouping
!Subgrouping
!Person/Entry
!Known as
!Winning probability
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Armstrong
|{{w|Louis Armstrong}}
|Jazz-musician
| rowspan="4" |1/32
|-
|{{w|Neil Armstrong}}
|First human on the moon
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Lance Armstrong}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Cyclist
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Stretch Armstrong}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Action figure
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Jeff *
|Jeff Gordan (Probably {{w|Jeff Gordon}})
|Retired race car driver
| rowspan="9" |1/64
|-
|{{w|Jeff Bridges}}
|Actor in ''King Kong'', ''The Big Lebowski'', ''Iron Man'', ''Tron: Legacy''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Jeff Daniels}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Dumb and Dumber''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|J* Daniels
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jack Daniel's|Jack Daniels}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Alcoholic beverages
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>Well<nowiki>*</nowiki>
|{{w|Orson Welles}}
|Director of ''{{w|Citizen Kane}}'' and known for his {{w|The War of the Worlds (radio drama)|radio-play}} of {{w|H. G. Wells}}' ''{{w|The War of the Worlds}}''
|-
|{{w|H.G. Wells}}
|Author, known for ''The War of the Worlds'' and ''{{w|The Time Machine}}''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|George Orwell}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Author of ''{{w|Nineteen Eighty-Four}}'' and ''{{w|Animal Farm}}''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Wells Fargo}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Bank and stage coach company
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Russell *
|{{w|Kurt Russell}}
|Actor in ''John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.'', ''The Thing'', ''Big Trouble in Little China'', ''Stargate'', ''Fast & Furious 7''
| rowspan="5" |1/128
|-
|{{w|Russell Brand}}
|Comedian
|-
|{{w|Russell Crowe}}
|Actor in ''Gladiator'', ''A Beautiful Mind'', ''Les Misérables'', ''Noah''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Russell Simmons}}
|rowspan="2"|Rapper
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Simmons
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Richard Simmons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Host of exercise programs
| rowspan="3" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Gene Simmons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Musician, known from ''KISS''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Gene <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Gene Hackman}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Superman''
|rowspan="5" |1/96
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ckman
|-
|{{w|Hugh Jackman}}
|Actor in the ''{{w|X-Men}}'' franchise as {{w|Wolverine (character)|Wolverine}}
|rowspan="3"|Alan <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Alan Rickman}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Die Hard'', ''Harry Potter'' franchise, ''The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Alan Becker}}
|rowspan="2"|Flash Animator
|-
|rowspan="2"|Alan Par*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Alan Parsons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Musician
|rowspan="7" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Alan Partridge}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Fictional radio character
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> McCarthy
|{{w|Jenny McCarthy}}
|Anti-vaccination activist
|-
|{{w|Joseph McCarthy}}
|American Senator known for anti-communist policies.
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Eugene McCarthy}}
|rowspan="2"|Senator and Presidential candidate
|-
|rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>gene<nowiki>*</nowiki>
|rowspan="2"|Eugene <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|{{w|Eugene V. Debs}}
|Labor leader
|-
|rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Wilde*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Gene Wilder}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Young Frankenstein'', ''Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory''
| rowspan="4" |1/96
|-
|rowspan="2"|
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Olivia Wilde}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress in ''Tron: Legacy'', ''Her'', ''House M.D.''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Oscar Wilde}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Writer
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Oscar *
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Oscar De La Renta}}
|rowspan="2"|Fashion Designer
|rowspan="3"|1/32
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Oscar De La *
|-
|{{w|Oscar De La Hoya}}
|Boxer
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Jack Nic*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jack Nicklaus}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Golf player
| rowspan="9" |1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Jack Nicholson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'', ''The Shining'', ''Batman'', ''Witches of Eastwick'', ''The Bucketlist''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ichol* / *ickel* / *ickle*
|-
|{{w|Phil Mickelson}}
|Golf player
|-
|{{w|Nicholas Nickleby}}
|Charles Dickens protagonist in the novel by the same name
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ryan Adams
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Ryan Adams}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Bryan Adams}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Singers with Stage Names Referencing Weight/Games
|{{w|Chubby Checker}}
|Singer famous for "The Twist"
|-
|{{w|Fats Domino}}
|Rock and Roll Singer
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Colin F*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Colin Firth}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Pride and Prejudice'', ''Love Actually''
| rowspan="5" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Colin Farrell}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Daredevil'', ''In Bruges'', ''Total Recall''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|F*rell*
|-
|{{w|Will Ferrell}}
|Comic actor, ''Anchorman'' and ''The Other Guys''
|-
|{{w|The Farrelly Brothers}}
|Comedy film-makers
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|J<nowiki>*</nowiki> * *evitt/*ewitt (three names)
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Joseph Gordon-Levitt}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Third Rock from the Sun'', ''Dark Knight Rises''
| rowspan="2" |1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jennifer Love Hewitt}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress in ''Garfield: The Movie'' 
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|D* Glover
|{{w|Danny Glover}}
|Actor, ''Lethal Weapon'' series
| rowspan="7" |1/64
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Donald Glover}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor, ''Community'', also a rapper, aka ''Childish Gambino''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Don*
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Donnie Wahlberg}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Singer, ''{{w|New Kids on the Block}}'', actor, ''Blue Bloods''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Wahlberg
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Mark Wahlberg}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''The Departed'', ''The Other Guys'', and former hip-hop singer for ''Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Mark *
|-
|{{w|Mark Ruffalo}}
|Actor, known for his role as {{w|Hulk (comics)|the Hulk}} in the film ''{{w|The Avengers (2012 film)|The Avengers}}''
| rowspan="2" |1/32
|-
|{{w|Mark Shuttleworth}}
|Entrepreneur, founder of {{w|Ubuntu (operating system)|Ubuntu}}
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Pullman
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Philip Pullman}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Author, ''His Dark Materials'' and ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ''
|rowspan="4"|1/48
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Bill Pullman}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Spaceballs'', and ''Independence Day''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Bill *
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Bill Paxton}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Apollo 13'', ''Aliens''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Bill Murray}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Ghostbusters'', ''Groundhog Day''
|rowspan="3"|1/32
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Ghostbusters/SNL alumni
|-
|{{w|Dan Aykroyd}}
|Actor in ''Ghostbusters'', ''The Blues Brothers''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Rogers
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Ginger Rogers}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress known for dancing with {{w|Fred Astaire}}
|rowspan="2"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Confusing reference to {{w|Fred Rogers}} (host of children's show, popularly known as "Mister Rogers") and to {{w|Fred Astaire}} (Dancer, actor, and singer)
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Spock
|{{w|Mister Spock}}
|Character on ''Star Trek'' portrayed by {{w|Leonard Nimoy}}
|rowspan="10"|1/96
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Doctor Spock}}
|rowspan="2"|Author of book on childcare
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="8"|Doctors
|-
|{{w|Doctor Octopus}}
|Villain in Spider-Man comic books
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Manhattan}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Character in Alan Moore's Watchmen
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Strangelove}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Character in a movie about nuclear war by {{w|Stanley Kubrick}}
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Strange}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Sorceror Supreme in Marvel Comics
|-
|{{w|Julius No|Dr. No}}
|Main villain in the {{w|Dr. No (film)|first James Bond movie}}
|-
|The Doctor
|Ambiguous reference to either the {{w|The Doctor (Doctor Who)|main protagonist}} of the science fiction series ''{{w|Doctor Who}}'' or the {{w|Doctor (Star Trek: Voyager)|emergency medical hologram}} in ''{{w|Star Trek: Voyager}}''.
|-
|[[Cory Doctorow]]
|He is a real person and has been in [[:Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow|many xkcd comics]]
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|J* Lewis
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jerry Lee Lewis}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Rock and Roll singer
|rowspan="9"|1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jerry Lewis}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Comedian and former chairman of charitable organization
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Jenny Lewis}}
|rowspan="2"|Indie singer-songwriter
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Sounds like *"enny"
|-
|{{w|Xeni Jardin}}
|Digital commentator, Boing Boing co-editor
|-
|rowspan="4"|Chris *
|rowspan="2"|Chris * (Avengers actors)
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Chris Evans (actor)|Chris Evans}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Captain America''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Chris Hemsworth}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Thor''
|-
|rowspan="2"|Chris P*
|{{w|Chris Pine}}
|Actor, ''Star Trek'', ''Wonder Woman''
|-
|{{w|Chris Pratt}}
|Actor, ''Guardians of the Galaxy''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|S*all*o*s Foods
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Shallots}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Small onions (although the word 'shallot' can also refer to green onions in some dialects)
|rowspan="3"|1/96
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Scallops}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Bivalve mollusks
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Scallions}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Green onions.
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Suz* (Similar phonetics)
|{{w|Siouxie Sioux}}
|Rock singer
|rowspan="2"|1/64
|-
|{{w|Suzanne Vega}}
|Folk rock singer-songwriter
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Arnold *
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Tom Arnold (actor)|Tom Arnold}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor; ex-husband of {{w|Roseanne Barr}}
|rowspan="4"|1/48
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Arnold Palmer}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Golf player
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|A* Palmer
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Amanda Palmer}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer/songwriter
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Wes *
|{{w|Wes Craven}}
|Film maker
|rowspan="10"|1/64
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Wes Anderson}}
|rowspan="2"|Movie Director
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|* Anderson
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Paul Thomas Anderson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Film maker
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|P*ul Anderson
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Poul Anderson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Science fiction author
|-
|rowspan="3"|Sirs
|rowspan="2"|Sir Walter *
|{{w|Sir Walter Scott}}
|Scottish poet and writer
|-
|{{w|Sir Walter Raleigh}}
|British explorer of Virginia
|-

|rowspan="2"|Fran* Drake
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Sir Francis Drake}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|British explorer, 2nd to circumnavigate the Earth
|-
|
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Frank Drake}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Astrophysicist, SETI pioneer
|-
|rowspan="5"|"Van"
|rowspan="3"|Van *
|{{w|Van Halen}}
|Rock band
|rowspan="3"|1/96
|-
|{{w|Van Morrison}}
|Singer/songwriter
|-
|{{w|Van Wilder}}
|Comedy film
|-

|rowspan="2"|R* Van Winkle
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Robert Van Winkle}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|AKA Vanilla Ice, rapper
|rowspan="3"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Rip Van Winkle}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Fictional character
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Rip/Torn
|-
|{{w|Rip Torn}}
|Elmore Rual "Rip" Torn, actor on ''Cross Creek'', ''Larry Sanders Show''
|rowspan="2"|1/32
|-
|{{w|Natalie Imbruglia}}
|Singer of "Torn"
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Businesses with the word "Body" in their name
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|The Body Shop}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Shop
|rowspan="6"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Bath and Body Works}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Shop
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Businesses with the word "Bath" in their name
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Bed Bath and Beyond}}
|rowspan="2"|Shop
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Beyon*
|-
|{{w|Beyond Thunderdome}}
|Motion picture
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Beyoncé}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|1/16

|}

==Transcript==
:[A tournament bracket. With the names listed in groups on the left-hand side and right-hand side as shown below. Within individual groups the names are ordered in match-ups, two, three or even four in the first match. The last name on the right, Beyoncé, is not even matched for first round. The winners goes on to the next match, but there are many that skips some of the matches up until the quarterfinals, so some need to win 5 matches to reach the quarterfinals, others only need to win 4 of 3, and Beyoncé only 2. After the first level, the match-ups are always between two names. The two sides join up in a final in the middle, where the winner of the left side has a place for the name below and the winner of the right a place for the name above a central rectangular frame with place for the winners name. Below the pairing in the first round matches are mentioned above each of the clear groupings of the bracket.]
:{| class="wikitable" style="background:transparent;border:none;width:100%;"
| style="background:transparent;border:none;"|
<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Louis Armstrong
<br/>Neil Armstrong
<br/>Lance Armstrong
<br/>Stretch Armstrong

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jeff Gordan
<br/>Jeff Bridges
<br/>Jeff Daniels
<br/>Jack Daniels

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Orson Welles
<br/>H.G. Wells
<br/>George Orwell
<br/>Wells Fargo

<br/>[The first four, two, three and two are paired.]
<br/>Kurt Russell
<br/>Russell Brand
<br/>Russell Crowe
<br/>Russell Simmons
<br/>Richard Simmons
<br/>Gene Simmons
<br/>Gene Hackman
<br/>Hugh Jackman
<br/>Alan Rickman
<br/>Alan Parsons
<br/>Alan Partridge

<br/>[The first four, three and two are paired.]
<br/>Jenny McCarthy
<br/>Joseph McCarthy
<br/>Eugene McCarthy
<br/>Eugene V. Debs
<br/>Gene Wilder
<br/>Olivia Wilde
<br/>Oscar Wilde
<br/>Oscar De La Renta
<br/>Oscar De La Hoya

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jack Nicklaus
<br/>Jack Nicholson
<br/>Phil Mickelson
<br/>Nicholas Nickelby

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Ryan Adams
<br/>Bryan Adams

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Chubby Checker
<br/>Fats Domino

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Colin Firth
<br/>Colin Farrell
<br/>Will Ferrell
<br/>The Farrelly Brothers

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Joseph Gordon-Levitt
<br/>Jennifer Love Hewitt

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Danny Glover
<br/>Donald Glover
<br/>Donnie Wahlberg
<br/>Mark Wahlberg
<br/>Mark Ruffalo
<br/>Mark Shuttleworth

| style="background:transparent;border:none;"|
<br/>[The first three and two are paired.]
<br/>Philip Pullman
<br/>Bill Pullman
<br/>Bill Paxton
<br/>Bill Murray
<br/>Dan Aykroyd

<br/>[The first two, and then three times three are paired.]
<br/>Ginger Rogers
<br/>Fred Rogers|Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers
<br/>Mister Spock
<br/>Doctor Spock
<br/>Doctor Octopus
<br/>Doctor Manhattan
<br/>Doctor Strangelove
<br/>Doctor Strange
<br/>Dr. No
<br/>The Doctor
<br/>Cory Doctorow

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jerry Lee Lewis
<br/>Jerry Lewis
<br/>Jenny Lewis
<br/>Xeni Jardin

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Chris Evans
<br/>Chris Hemsworth
<br/>Chris Pine
<br/>Chris Pratt

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Shallots
<br/>Scallops
<br/>Scallions

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Siouxie Sioux
<br/>Suzanne Vega

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Tom Arnold
<br/>Arnold Palmer
<br/>Amanda Palmer

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Wes Craven
<br/>Wes Anderson
<br/>Paul Thomas Anderson
<br/>Poul Anderson

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Sir Walter Scott
<br/>Sir Walter Raleigh
<br/>Sir Francis Drake
<br/>Frank Drake

<br/>[The first three, two and two are paired.]
<br/>Van Halen
<br/>Van Morrison
<br/>Van Wilder
<br/>Robert Van Winkle
<br/>Rip Van Winkle
<br/>Rip Torn
<br/>Natalie Imbruglia

<br/>[The first four are paired two and two the last is the only one not paired.]
<br/>The Body Shop
<br/>Bath and Body Works
<br/>Bed Bath and Beyond
<br/>Beyond Thunderdome
<br/>Beyoncé
|}

==Trivia==
*In the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/8/8d/20250307171024%21bracket.png original version of the comic], Gordon was misspelled as Gordan. This was later fixed.
*The "Chris" group (Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt) would later be referenced in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGurtL83zhY Chris Pine's opening monologue for SNL], though without an explicit reference to this comic.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]
[[Category:Doctor Who]]
[[Category:Star Trek]]
[[Category:Tournament bracket]]

1529: Bracket

2025-03-20T17:12:49Z

Cheesesentience:

{{comic
| number = 1529
| date = May 25, 2015
| title = Bracket
| image = bracket.png
| titletext = I'm staring at the "doctor" section, and I can't help but feel like I've forgotten someone.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|See [[#Trivia]].}}A {{w|Bracket (tournament)|tournament bracket}} shows the planned series of matchups in a tournament. In this comic [[Randall]] has shown a plan for a tournament between a wide range of cultural icons, both real and fictional, based mostly on similarities in their names. Various Internet groups have speculated on who would win in a fight between characters from different films. It may be relevant that the film {{w|Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice}} was soon to be released at the time the comic was made where the two eponymous {{w|superheroes}}, {{w|Batman}} and {{w|Superman}}, fight against each other.

The individual starting pairings are generally based on common or similar given names or surnames. Some adjacent brackets are "segued" by someone like Jeff Daniels, who segues from a bracket of "Jeff"s into a bracket of "Daniels"es. The bracket itself is fairly arbitrary. Most initial matchups are pairs, although several are trios and there's a quadruplet in the Russels group, while a single entry, {{w|Beyoncé}}, is given a first- and second-round {{w|bye (sports)|bye}}. Most of the participants in the tournament are people, with a few exceptions. {{w|Shallots}} (small onions), {{w|scallops}} (bivalve mollusks), and {{w|scallions}} (green onions) are similar sounding foods, therefore may be confusing for some individuals (perhaps including [[Randall]]). The final grouping on the lower right of the bracket features several retail stores and a film.

The title text may be a reference to {{w|Dr. Dre}}'s 2001 song "{{w|Forgot About Dre}}" or could simply be a reference to the large number of pop culture personas that include the word "Doctor", such as {{w|Gregory House|Doctor House}}, {{w|Mehmet Oz|Dr. Oz}}, {{w|Doctor Eggman|Dr. Eggman}}, {{w|Phil McGraw|Dr. Phil}}, {{w|Dr. Watson}}, {{w|Emmett Brown|"Doc" Brown}}, {{w|Dr. Seuss}}, {{w|Dr Pepper}}, {{w|Doctor Doom}}, {{w|Zoidberg|Dr. Zoidberg}}, {{w|Dr. Horrible}}'s Sing-Along Blog and {{w|List of fictional doctors|many others}}. A simpler explanation is that it would cause the reader to question "Doctor Who?" answering their own question, although this answer would be incorrect because The Doctor is already present. It could also be a reference to the dual meaning of "The Doctor," either he meant to include Time Lord from Doctor Who and forgot about the EMH from Voyager, or he remembered the EMH and forgot the Time Lord.

The incentive for the comic may have been the {{w|2015 French Open|French Open 2015}}, which started on the day of the publication. The comic inspired several groups to play out versions of the bracket. One user-voting based match-up on twitter, [https://twitter.com/xkcdbracket XKCD Bracket], was featured by Randall on the xkcd home page, with a link at the top of the website, although he didn't create the account. (The link was part of a "news" flash, the other was regarding his book based on [[1133: Up Goer Five]]. See more on this news in that comics explanation.) In the final match on July 29, Neil Armstrong defeated Mister Spock (see the [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLKJUpFWIAAlDnW.png:orig complete bracket]). The link was removed sometimes before Monday, 10 August 2015, within two weeks of the final result being revealed.

Later, Randall has made one smaller but similar bracket in [[1819: Sweet 16]], and then an interactive [[:Category:April fools' comics|April fools' comics]] in 2019, with an even larger bracket for determining the best emoji in [[2131: Emojidome]]. The bracket for this comic was shown with links from the comic during the matches. Shallots, scallops, and scallions were also mentioned together in [[2372: Dialect Quiz]]. Randall would later release another comic that juxtaposed similar-looking names, [[1970: Name Dominoes]].

===Table of the bracket===
The names and other entries in the bracket are given here below, sorted to explain why the individual entries have been grouped as they are. The first-round matchups are grouped by shading.

{| class="wikitable"
!Grouping
!Subgrouping
!Person/Entry
!Known as
!Winning probability
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Armstrong
|{{w|Louis Armstrong}}
|Jazz-musician
| rowspan="4" |1/32
|-
|{{w|Neil Armstrong}}
|First human on the moon
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Lance Armstrong}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Cyclist
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Stretch Armstrong}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Action figure
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Jeff *
|Jeff Gordan (Probably {{w|Jeff Gordon}})
|Retired race car driver
| rowspan="9" |1/64
|-
|{{w|Jeff Bridges}}
|Actor in ''King Kong'', ''The Big Lebowski'', ''Iron Man'', ''Tron: Legacy''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Jeff Daniels}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Dumb and Dumber''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|J* Daniels
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jack Daniel's|Jack Daniels}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Alcoholic beverages
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>Well<nowiki>*</nowiki>
|{{w|Orson Welles}}
|Director of ''{{w|Citizen Kane}}'' and known for his {{w|The War of the Worlds (radio drama)|radio-play}} of {{w|H. G. Wells}}' ''{{w|The War of the Worlds}}''
|-
|{{w|H.G. Wells}}
|Author, known for ''The War of the Worlds'' and ''{{w|The Time Machine}}''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|George Orwell}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Author of ''{{w|Nineteen Eighty-Four}}'' and ''{{w|Animal Farm}}''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Wells Fargo}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Bank and stage coach company
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="4"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Russell *
|{{w|Kurt Russell}}
|Actor in ''John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.'', ''The Thing'', ''Big Trouble in Little China'', ''Stargate'', ''Fast & Furious 7''
| rowspan="5" |1/128
|-
|{{w|Russell Brand}}
|Comedian
|-
|{{w|Russell Crowe}}
|Actor in ''Gladiator'', ''A Beautiful Mind'', ''Les Misérables'', ''Noah''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Russell Simmons}}
|rowspan="2"|Rapper
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Simmons
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Richard Simmons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Host of exercise programs
| rowspan="3" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Gene Simmons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Musician, known from ''KISS''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Gene <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Gene Hackman}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Superman''
|rowspan="5" |1/96
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ckman
|-
|{{w|Hugh Jackman}}
|Actor in the ''{{w|X-Men}}'' franchise as {{w|Wolverine (character)|Wolverine}}
|rowspan="3"|Alan <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Alan Rickman}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Die Hard'', ''Harry Potter'' franchise, ''The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Alan Becker}}
|rowspan="2"|Flash Animator
|-
|rowspan="2"|Alan Par*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Alan Parsons}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Musician
|rowspan="7" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Alan Partridge}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Fictional radio character
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> McCarthy
|{{w|Jenny McCarthy}}
|Anti-vaccination activist
|-
|{{w|Joseph McCarthy}}
|American Senator known for anti-communist policies.
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Eugene McCarthy}}
|rowspan="2"|Senator and Presidential candidate
|-
|rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>gene<nowiki>*</nowiki>
|rowspan="2"|Eugene <nowiki>*</nowiki>
|-
|{{w|Eugene V. Debs}}
|Labor leader
|-
|rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Wilde*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Gene Wilder}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Young Frankenstein'', ''Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory''
| rowspan="4" |1/96
|-
|rowspan="2"|
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Olivia Wilde}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress in ''Tron: Legacy'', ''Her'', ''House M.D.''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Oscar Wilde}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Writer
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Oscar *
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Oscar De La Renta}}
|rowspan="2"|Fashion Designer
|rowspan="3"|1/32
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Oscar De La *
|-
|{{w|Oscar De La Hoya}}
|Boxer
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Jack Nic*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jack Nicklaus}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Golf player
| rowspan="9" |1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Jack Nicholson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'', ''The Shining'', ''Batman'', ''Witches of Eastwick'', ''The Bucketlist''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ichol* / *ickel* / *ickle*
|-
|{{w|Phil Mickelson}}
|Golf player
|-
|{{w|Nicholas Nickleby}}
|Charles Dickens protagonist in the novel by the same name
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki>ryan Adams
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Ryan Adams}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Bryan Adams}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Singers with Stage Names Referencing Weight/Games
|{{w|Chubby Checker}}
|Singer famous for "The Twist"
|-
|{{w|Fats Domino}}
|Rock and Roll Singer
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Colin F*
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Colin Firth}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Pride and Prejudice'', ''Love Actually''
| rowspan="5" |1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Colin Farrell}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Daredevil'', ''In Bruges'', ''Total Recall''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|F*rell*
|-
|{{w|Will Ferrell}}
|Comic actor, ''Anchorman'' and ''The Other Guys''
|-
|{{w|The Farrelly Brothers}}
|Comedy film-makers
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|J<nowiki>*</nowiki> * *evitt/*ewitt (three names)
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Joseph Gordon-Levitt}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Third Rock from the Sun'', ''Dark Knight Rises''
| rowspan="2" |1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jennifer Love Hewitt}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress in ''Garfield: The Movie'' 
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|D* Glover
|{{w|Danny Glover}}
|Actor, ''Lethal Weapon'' series
| rowspan="7" |1/64
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Donald Glover}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor, ''Community'', also a rapper, aka ''Childish Gambino''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Don*
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Donnie Wahlberg}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Singer, ''{{w|New Kids on the Block}}'', actor, ''Blue Bloods''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Wahlberg
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Mark Wahlberg}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''The Departed'', ''The Other Guys'', and former hip-hop singer for ''Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Mark *
|-
|{{w|Mark Ruffalo}}
|Actor, known for his role as {{w|Hulk (comics)|the Hulk}} in the film ''{{w|The Avengers (2012 film)|The Avengers}}''
| rowspan="2" |1/32
|-
|{{w|Mark Shuttleworth}}
|Entrepreneur, founder of {{w|Ubuntu (operating system)|Ubuntu}}
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Pullman
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Philip Pullman}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Author, ''His Dark Materials'' and ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ''
|rowspan="4"|1/48
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Bill Pullman}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Spaceballs'', and ''Independence Day''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Bill *
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Bill Paxton}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor in ''Apollo 13'', ''Aliens''
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Bill Murray}}
|rowspan="2"|Actor in ''Ghostbusters'', ''Groundhog Day''
|rowspan="3"|1/32
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Ghostbusters/SNL alumni
|-
|{{w|Dan Aykroyd}}
|Actor in ''Ghostbusters'', ''The Blues Brothers''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Rogers
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Ginger Rogers}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actress known for dancing with {{w|Fred Astaire}}
|rowspan="2"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Confusing reference to {{w|Fred Rogers}} (host of children's show, popularly known as "Mister Rogers") and to {{w|Fred Astaire}} (Dancer, actor, and singer)
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Spock
|{{w|Mister Spock}}
|Character on ''Star Trek'' portrayed by {{w|Leonard Nimoy}}
|rowspan="10"|1/96
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Doctor Spock}}
|rowspan="2"|Author of book on childcare
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="8"|Doctors
|-
|{{w|Doctor Octopus}}
|Villain in Spider-Man comic books
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Manhattan}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Character in Alan Moore's Watchmen
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Strangelove}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Character in a movie about nuclear war by {{w|Stanley Kubrick}}
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Doctor Strange}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Sorceror Supreme in Marvel Comics
|-
|{{w|Julius No|Dr. No}}
|Main villain in the {{w|Dr. No (film)|first James Bond movie}}
|-
|The Doctor
|Ambiguous reference to either the {{w|The Doctor (Doctor Who)|main protagonist}} of the science fiction series ''{{w|Doctor Who}}'' or the {{w|Doctor (Star Trek: Voyager)|emergency medical hologram}} in ''{{w|Star Trek: Voyager}}''.
|-
|[[Cory Doctorow]]
|He is a real person and has been in [[:Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow|many xkcd comics]]
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|J* Lewis
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jerry Lee Lewis}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Rock and Roll singer
|rowspan="9"|1/32
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Jerry Lewis}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Comedian and former chairman of charitable organization
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Jenny Lewis}}
|rowspan="2"|Indie singer-songwriter
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Sounds like *"enny"
|-
|{{w|Xeni Jardin}}
|Digital commentator, Boing Boing co-editor
|-
|rowspan="4"|Chris *
|rowspan="2"|Chris * (Avengers actors)
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Chris Evans (actor)|Chris Evans}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Captain America''
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Chris Hemsworth}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor, ''Thor''
|-
|rowspan="2"|Chris P*
|{{w|Chris Pine}}
|Actor, ''Star Trek'', ''Wonder Woman''
|-
|{{w|Chris Pratt}}
|Actor, ''Guardians of the Galaxy''
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|S*all*o*s Foods
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Shallots}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Small onions (although the word 'shallot' can also refer to green onions in some dialects)
|rowspan="3"|1/96
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Scallops}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Bivalve mollusks
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Scallions}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Green onions.
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Suz* (Similar phonetics)
|{{w|Siouxie Sioux}}
|Rock singer
|rowspan="2"|1/64
|-
|{{w|Suzanne Vega}}
|Folk rock singer-songwriter
|-

|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|<nowiki>*</nowiki> Arnold *
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Tom Arnold (actor)|Tom Arnold}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Actor; ex-husband of {{w|Roseanne Barr}}
|rowspan="4"|1/48
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Arnold Palmer}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Golf player
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|A* Palmer
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Amanda Palmer}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer/songwriter
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Wes *
|{{w|Wes Craven}}
|Film maker
|rowspan="10"|1/64
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Wes Anderson}}
|rowspan="2"|Movie Director
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|* Anderson
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Paul Thomas Anderson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Film maker
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|P*ul Anderson
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Poul Anderson}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Science fiction author
|-
|rowspan="3"|Sirs
|rowspan="2"|Sir Walter *
|{{w|Sir Walter Scott}}
|Scottish poet and writer
|-
|{{w|Sir Walter Raleigh}}
|British explorer of Virginia
|-

|rowspan="2"|Fran* Drake
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Sir Francis Drake}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|British explorer, 2nd to circumnavigate the Earth
|-
|
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Frank Drake}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Astrophysicist, SETI pioneer
|-
|rowspan="5"|"Van"
|rowspan="3"|Van *
|{{w|Van Halen}}
|Rock band
|rowspan="3"|1/96
|-
|{{w|Van Morrison}}
|Singer/songwriter
|-
|{{w|Van Wilder}}
|Comedy film
|-

|rowspan="2"|R* Van Winkle
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Robert Van Winkle}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|AKA Vanilla Ice, rapper
|rowspan="3"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Rip Van Winkle}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Fictional character
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Rip/Torn
|-
|{{w|Rip Torn}}
|Elmore Rual "Rip" Torn, actor on ''Cross Creek'', ''Larry Sanders Show''
|rowspan="2"|1/32
|-
|{{w|Natalie Imbruglia}}
|Singer of "Torn"
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Businesses with the word "Body" in their name
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|The Body Shop}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Shop
|rowspan="6"|1/64
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|{{w|Bath and Body Works}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6" rowspan="2"|Shop
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="2"|Businesses with the word "Bath" in their name
|-
|rowspan="2"|{{w|Bed Bath and Beyond}}
|rowspan="2"|Shop
|-
|colspan="2" rowspan="3"|Beyon*
|-
|{{w|Beyond Thunderdome}}
|Motion picture
|-
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|{{w|Beyoncé}}
|bgcolor="E6E6E6"|Singer
|1/16

|}

==Transcript==
:[A tournament bracket. With the names listed in groups on the left-hand side and right-hand side as shown below. Within individual groups the names are ordered in match-ups, two, three or even four in the first match. The last name on the right, Beyoncé, is not even matched for first round. The winners goes on to the next match, but there are many that skips some of the matches up until the quarterfinals, so some need to win 5 matches to reach the quarterfinals, others only need to win 4 of 3, and Beyoncé only 2. After the first level, the match-ups are always between two names. The two sides join up in a final in the middle, where the winner of the left side has a place for the name below and the winner of the right a place for the name above a central rectangular frame with place for the winners name. Below the pairing in the first round matches are mentioned above each of the clear groupings of the bracket.]
:{| class="wikitable" style="background:transparent;border:none;width:100%;"
| style="background:transparent;border:none;"|
<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Louis Armstrong
<br/>Neil Armstrong
<br/>Lance Armstrong
<br/>Stretch Armstrong

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jeff Gordan
<br/>Jeff Bridges
<br/>Jeff Daniels
<br/>Jack Daniels

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Orson Welles
<br/>H.G. Wells
<br/>George Orwell
<br/>Wells Fargo

<br/>[The first four, two, three and two are paired.]
<br/>Kurt Russell
<br/>Russell Brand
<br/>Russell Crowe
<br/>Russell Simmons
<br/>Richard Simmons
<br/>Gene Simmons
<br/>Gene Hackman
<br/>Hugh Jackman
<br/>Alan Rickman
<br/>Alan Parsons
<br/>Alan Partridge

<br/>[The first four, three and two are paired.]
<br/>Jenny McCarthy
<br/>Joseph McCarthy
<br/>Eugene McCarthy
<br/>Eugene V. Debs
<br/>Gene Wilder
<br/>Olivia Wilde
<br/>Oscar Wilde
<br/>Oscar De La Renta
<br/>Oscar De La Hoya

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jack Nicklaus
<br/>Jack Nicholson
<br/>Phil Mickelson
<br/>Nicholas Nickelby

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Ryan Adams
<br/>Bryan Adams

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Chubby Checker
<br/>Fats Domino

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Colin Firth
<br/>Colin Farrell
<br/>Will Ferrell
<br/>The Farrelly Brothers

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Joseph Gordon-Levitt
<br/>Jennifer Love Hewitt

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Danny Glover
<br/>Donald Glover
<br/>Donnie Wahlberg
<br/>Mark Wahlberg
<br/>Mark Ruffalo
<br/>Mark Shuttleworth

| style="background:transparent;border:none;"|
<br/>[The first three and two are paired.]
<br/>Philip Pullman
<br/>Bill Pullman
<br/>Bill Paxton
<br/>Bill Murray
<br/>Dan Aykroyd

<br/>[The first two, and then three times three are paired.]
<br/>Ginger Rogers
<br/>Fred Rogers|Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers
<br/>Mister Spock
<br/>Doctor Spock
<br/>Doctor Octopus
<br/>Doctor Manhattan
<br/>Doctor Strangelove
<br/>Doctor Strange
<br/>Dr. No
<br/>The Doctor
<br/>Cory Doctorow

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Jerry Lee Lewis
<br/>Jerry Lewis
<br/>Jenny Lewis
<br/>Xeni Jardin

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Chris Evans
<br/>Chris Hemsworth
<br/>Chris Pine
<br/>Chris Pratt

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Shallots
<br/>Scallops
<br/>Scallions

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Siouxie Sioux
<br/>Suzanne Vega

<br/>[These are paired.]
<br/>Tom Arnold
<br/>Arnold Palmer
<br/>Amanda Palmer

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Wes Craven
<br/>Wes Anderson
<br/>Paul Thomas Anderson
<br/>Poul Anderson

<br/>[These are paired two and two.]
<br/>Sir Walter Scott
<br/>Sir Walter Raleigh
<br/>Sir Francis Drake
<br/>Frank Drake

<br/>[The first three, two and two are paired.]
<br/>Van Halen
<br/>Van Morrison
<br/>Van Wilder
<br/>Robert Van Winkle
<br/>Rip Van Winkle
<br/>Rip Torn
<br/>Natalie Imbruglia

<br/>[The first four are paired two and two the last is the only one not paired.]
<br/>The Body Shop
<br/>Bath and Body Works
<br/>Bed Bath and Beyond
<br/>Beyond Thunderdome
<br/>Beyoncé
|}

==Trivia==
*In the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/8/8d/20250307171024%21bracket.png original version of the comic], Gordon was misspelled as Gordan. This was later fixed.
*The "Chris" group (Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt) would later be referenced in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGurtL83zhY Chris Pine's opening monologue for SNL], though without an explicit reference to this comic.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]
[[Category:Doctor Who]]
[[Category:Star Trek]]
[[Category:Tournament bracket]]