explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1942: Memorable Quotes

2026-02-21T03:13:46Z

Wilh3lm: Added that one of these got quoted in Sam O'Nella's book

{{comic
| number = 1942
| date = January 15, 2018
| title = Memorable Quotes
| image = memorable_quotes.png
| titletext = "Since there's no ending quote mark, everything after this is part of my quote. —Randall Munroe
}}

==Explanation==

This comic "helpfully" provides random quotes to be used by anyone as {{w|blurb}}s, online reviews, motivational quotes or similar short bits of text. Either the {{w|webcomic}} [[xkcd]] or its creator [[Randall|Randall Munroe]] may be quoted when using any of the provided lines, as stated at the top of the comic.

In particular, their "usefulness" lies in the fact that almost any of them are equally applicable to almost any situation. This is achieved by making each quote not really about anything in particular, aside from the fact that they are quotes. This is in contrast to typical quotes, which are never quite this aware that they will be quoted, but this is to be expected when the lines here were made solely for being quoted.

These self-aware quotes are, on a meta level, jokes about quotations generally. Most of Randall's quotes either sabotage the quoting work, reference some aspect of quotes as used in practice, or both---and it can be both when the aspects referenced are about twisting people's words to look like they agree with you.

The title-text does not have an ending quote mark, so "- Randall Munroe" is part of the quote, and possibly everything in xkcd after that until the next ending quote. Note that the next quote mark in xkcd is in [[1946: Hawaii]].

===Quotes===
{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5 class="wikitable sortable"
! Quote !! Explanation
|-
|''"I disagree strongly with whatever work this quote is attached to."''
|Quotes are often used in, or on, publications and documents to add weight to them by making it seem like the person being quoted endorses their content or message. This quote would actively undermine the reputation of the work, unless said work advertises itself as a farce. For example, it appears on the back cover of ''Still Lost'' by Sam O'Nella Academy's Sam Miller: [https://www.amazon.com/Still-Lost-Tales-Sam-Miller/dp/B0GNSRBQM6].
|-
|''"This quote was taken out of context."''
|Quotes are commonly taken out of context to make it look as though they support a (sometimes fallacious) point, or to falsely imply an endorsement of the work they are attached to. However, since this quote serves no purpose beyond pointing out that it is out of context, there would be no point in trying to use it in this way. In any case, since all these quotes are provided without any real context, it's not clear what taking it out of context would mean.
Alternatively, this quote can be taken out of context to make it seem that Randall is asserting that another quote is out of context.
|-
|''"This quote is often falsely attributed to Mark Twain."''
|Many quotes are misattributed to famous people who are well known for originating a lot of quotes (such as [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain#Misattributed Mark Twain], [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss#Misattributed Dr. Seuss], or [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Misattributed Albert Einstein]). If this quote was attributed to Mark Twain, however, it would be immediately clear that either it wasn't said by him, or he was lying at the time.
|-
|''"I'm being quoted to introduce something, but I have no idea what it is and certainly don't endorse it."''
|This is likely the case for many famous, widely admired people who are often quoted for all sorts of arguments, even diametrically opposed ones.
|-
|''"This quote is very memorable."''
|This is likely not the case; this quote itself is very forgettable, being very short, and containing no insight on anything meaningful. However, the irony is that this simple quote stating its memorableness may be enough to get it stuck in your head, making it a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. This quote could actually be useful if you were preparing a presentation on how to give presentations, and wanted to illustrate the misuse of quotes.
|-
|''"I wrote this book, and the person quoting me here is taking credit for it."''
|The quote is attempting to sabotage the authorship of the book that uses it. Paradoxically, though, by implying that Randall wrote the book, it also implies that he is the one using the quote, and therefore claiming credit that is not due to him.
|-
|''"This entire thing is the quote, not just the part in quote marks." [Quote marks, brackets, and editor's note are all in the original. —Ed.]''
|Editors sometimes use square brackets within or after a quote in order to make a comment on the quote, such as to note that mistakes or typographical oddities were in the author's original, to correct factual errors, or to provide additional context. Randall is deliberately confusing the issue by including what appears to be an editor's note within the quote itself.

Further confusion would be caused if the quoting author, or their editor, wanted to include a note of their own, such as one noting that this odd construction was in the original quote, because it would be hard to tell what the scope of the claims were, and who wrote each editor’s note. Such problems of clarity can be solved using different formatting or typographical techniques such as footnotes. Programming languages avoid this type of ambiguity by using {{w|escape characters}}.
|-
|''"Websites that collect quotes are full of mistakes and never check original sources."''
|Websites that collect quotes are infamous for not checking sources. This has been parodied in many ways. The implication would be that if you found this quote on such a website, there would be a good chance that it was inaccurate or misattributed. As a matter of fact, this quote can be found in several such websites like [https://www.quotes.net/quote/92341 Quotes.net], [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9046643-websites-that-collect-quotes-are-full-of-mistakes-and-never goodreads.com] or [https://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/quotes/randall-munroe-websites-that-collect-quotes-are whatshouldireadnext.com].
|-
|''"This quote will be the only part of this presentation you remember."''
|When used effectively in a presentation a quote should succinctly summarize the ideas being presented in a memorable, pithy phrase that helps to bring to mind the rest of the message. However, it is a common experience, especially if the presentation was weak, or the quote was not particularly appropriate, for them to be the only part you remember.
|-
|''"Oooh, look at me, I looked up a quote!"''
|It is sometimes recommended to add quotes to a work or, particularly a presentation, to add weight, wit, or authority. However, it is common for quotes to appear to have been included because the author thought there ought to be one, rather than serving any particular purpose, especially if the quote chosen is of questionable relevance. This quote would make it very clear that this was the case.
|-
|''"If you're doing a text search in this document for the word 'butts,' the good news is that it's here, but the bad news is that it only appears in this unrelated quote."''
|This would probably occur if you decided to follow Randall's advice and include this quote in your work, since this is a fairly infrequently used word in most contexts.
|-
|''"Wait, what if these quote marks are inside out, so everything in the rest of the document is the quotation and ''this'' part isn't? ''Duuuuude.''"''
|The quote imitates the stereotype of hippies, typically ones on drugs, announcing what they believe to be deep insights into reality. If it were true, it would mean that whoever wrote the quoting work would be stealing the entire thing from somewhere, with the exception of these two weird sentences pointing it out.
|-
|''"The editors of ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'' are a bunch of cowards who don't have the guts to print this."''
|The author of this quote is apparently making a desperate attempt to get a quote published by challenging the editors of ''{{w|Bartlett's Familiar Quotations}}'', or perhaps is resentful, having attempted to get them to publish his quote(s) and been rejected.
|-
|''"This quote only looks profound when it's in a script font over a sunset."''
|Supposedly inspirational quotes are often set in a fancy font above a picture of a sunset, mountain range, beach, etc. to make them look more profound. However, these are often ridiculed as being trite or vacuous. This quote takes the unusual step of acknowledging that, without such formatting, it looks boring and average.
|-
|''"I don't do a lot of public speaking, so I looked up a memorable quote to start my speech, and this is what I found. OK, you're staring at me blankly, but this whole thing is a quote. I know that sounds confusing, but... you know what, never mind."''
|People often begin speeches with a memorable quote in order to engage the audience. Using this quote would give the impression that the person speaking lacked confidence in their speech and, particularly, the quote they had chosen to introduce it, being interesting enough to get people's attention.
|-
|''"Sent from my iPhone"''
|This is the default email signature on an {{w|iPhone}}. Quoting this might lead the reader to think that you typed the preceding work on your phone, or that Randall sent the quote from his phone, and you lazily copied and pasted the wrong part of the message.
|-
|''"Since there's no ending quote mark, everything after this is part of my quote. —Randall Munroe''
|First of all, let's just close that." Now that we have that out of the way, this quote appears in the title text. Randall Munroe is saying that because there's no ending quotation mark, the rest of the book this quote is in is part of Randall's quote, including, weirdly, the piece of text, after what should be the quote, specifying that Randall has also said his name.

This is roughly consistent with the formatting required to perform SQL injection referenced in [[327: Exploits of a Mom]]. Because it doesn’t have any punctuation before the first “, it wouldn’t actually perform an injection attack, instead causing an entire query to be part of a single string. This is also similar to [[859: (]], having an opening punctuation mark without the closing.
|}

==Transcript==

:Looking for a quote for something?
:Here are some for general use.

:They can be attributed to xkcd or Randall Munroe as needed.

:"I disagree strongly with whatever work this quote is attached to."
:"This quote was taken out of context."
:"This quote is often falsely attributed to Mark Twain."
:"I'm being quoted to introduce something, but I have no idea what it is and certainly don't endorse it."
:"This quote is very memorable."
:"I wrote this book, and the person quoting me here is taking credit for it."
:"This entire thing is the quote, not just the part in quote marks." [quote marks, brackets, and editor's note are all in the original. -ED.]
:"Websites that collect quotes are full of mistakes and never check original sources."
:"This quote will be the only part of this presentation you remember."
:"Oooh, look at me, I looked up a quote!"
:"If you're doing a text search in this document for the word 'butts,' the good news is that it's here, but the bad news is that it only appears in this unrelated quote."
:"Wait, what if these quote marks are inside out, so everything in the rest of the document is the quotation and ''this'' part isn't? ''Duuuuude."
:"The editors of ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'' are a bunch of cowards who don't have the guts to print this."
:"This quote only looks profound when it's in a script font over a sunset."
:"I don't do a lot of public speaking, so I looked up a memorable quote to start my speech, and this is what I found. OK, you're staring at me blankly, but this whole thing is a quote. I know that sounds confusing, but... You know what, never mind!"
:"Sent from my iPhone."

{{comic discussion}}

3199: Early Arthropods

2026-01-27T14:58:54Z

Wilh3lm: Trivia: title text is misspelled

{{comic
| number = 3199
| date = January 26, 2026
| title = Early Arthropods
| image = early_arthropods_2x.png
| imagesize = 553x469px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 'Ugh, I'm never going to be like spiders. My descendants will all just be normal arthropods who mind their own busines and don't do anything weird.' --The ancestor of a bunch of eusocial insects
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by an arthropod who will get 10 pointy things to zap a metal box and tell it stuff.. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

This comic points out that something we generally take for granted — spiders spinning webs — can seem weird and disgusting when we consider the details of what it involves. Whereas the kind of adaptation referred to by the first arthropod (seen in {{w|isopoda|isopods}}) and by the second ({{w|scorpion}}s or {{w|crab}}s) may seem like obvious things for evolution to arrive at, it may be less clear how something would arrive at the outcome of web construction.

Note that evolution in real life does not work the way the comic implies, as creatures cannot decide which direction in which to evolve.{{citation needed}}

[[:Category:Spiders|Spiders]] are a recurring theme on xkcd.

The {{w|eusocial}} insects mentioned in the title text are another group of arthropods with high levels of social organisation. As such, they are notable for ''not'' "minding their own busines (sic)", as their ancestor arthropod apparently expects. Eusociality has evolved multiple times in the ''{{w|Hymenoptera}}'' alone, as well as in termites. There is no arthropod species that is the ancestor to all the eusocial arthropods and no others. While there are a number of species of {{w|social spider}}, there aren't any that meet the strict definition of eusociality. Eusocial insects have been known to do weird things, such as [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w giving birth to a separate species].

== Trivia
"Business" is misspelled in the title text as "busines".

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

:[Wide panel with three small arthropods standing on the ocean floor. Two of the creatures are facing the leftmost one. Small bubbles and particles float around them.]
:Arthropod 1: Now that we're multicellular, what are your plans?
:Arthropod 1: I'm gonna evolve little legs and swim around with them!
:Arthropod 2: I'm gonna evolve sharp pincers and use them to crunch stuff!
:Arthropod 3: I'm gonna evolve glands to make string from my butt and use it to construct elaborate geometric nets hundreds of times my size to catch other animals.

:[Beat panel narrowed in on the arthropods.]

:[Same scene:]
:Arthropod 1: '''''Dude.'''''
:Arthropod 2: Can you '''''please''''' just be normal about this?
:Arthropod 3: '''''What??!'''''

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Spiders]]
[[Category:Biology]]

3154: Physics Insight

2025-10-13T13:40:12Z

Wilh3lm: /* Transcript */ Formatting

{{comic
| number = 3154
| date = October 13, 2025
| title = Physics Insight
| image = physics_insight_2x.png
| imagesize = 302x351px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = When Galileo dropped two weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, they put him in the history books. But when I do it, I get 'detained by security' for 'injuring several tourists.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

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

[Cueball is talking to White Hat]

Cueball: Sure, when '''''Einstein''''' suggests using the Lorentz transform to explain the connection between velocity and time, people call him a genius.
Cueball: But when '''''I''''' suggest it, it's "basic physics" and "undergraduate stuff."
White Hat: Such a double standard!

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

3154: Physics Insight

2025-10-13T13:38:54Z

Wilh3lm: Added transcript

{{comic
| number = 3154
| date = October 13, 2025
| title = Physics Insight
| image = physics_insight_2x.png
| imagesize = 302x351px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = When Galileo dropped two weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, they put him in the history books. But when I do it, I get 'detained by security' for 'injuring several tourists.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

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

[Cueball is talking to White Hat]

Cueball: Sure, when '''''Einstein''''' suggests using the Lorentz transform to explain the connection between velocity and time, people call him a genius. But when '''''I''''' suggest it, it's "basic physics" and "undergraduate stuff."

White Hat: Such a double standard!

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

521: 2008 Christmas Special

2025-10-08T14:47:04Z

Wilh3lm: /* Explanation */ The module does in fact reference the comic.

{{comic
| number = 521
| date = December 24, 2008
| title = 2008 Christmas Special
| image = 2008_christmas_special.png
| titletext = 'How could you possibly think typing 'import skynet' was a good idea?'
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is the xkcd Christmas Special from the year 2008. The prologue states that due to the {{w|2008 financial crisis}}, only very few images of the strip could be produced. This leaves the others to be blacked out. It is therefore left to the reader to reconstruct the whole story based on the given images. While it is claimed that the reconstruction should be rather easy, the complicated and abstruse plot-line makes it nearly impossible to fill the gaps. Any attempt at inferring the missing images would therefore be largely guesswork. The comic features the well-known xkcd characters getting involved in a strange fight with cyborgs and raptors on Christmas Eve.

The line "We apologize for the inconvenience." is possibly a reference to the famous book series ''{{w|The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy}}'' by {{w|Douglas Adams}}. It appears there as God's Final Message to His Creation, written in letters of fire on the side of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains.

'''Panel 2

: [[Megan]] strives to outdo some Christmas lights she has seen on YouTube.

; Panel 3

: Dissatisfied with her work, Megan is thinking about alternative ways to improve her light arrangement. The idea of firing {{w|Sodium}} pellets into snow is probably a bad one, as Sodium reacts exothermically with water and may, in large amounts, induce explosions.

; Panel 5

: Probably still obsessed with creating a large and impressive light display, Megan has constructed an electronic device with an {{w|Arduino}} processor, perhaps to make the light chain show patterns. However, the energy she used was too high. This causes one of the control boards to sublimate, i.e. go directly from a solid to a gaseous state without an intermediate liquid phase. She then wishes she could make the system self-repairing.

; Panel 7

: Megan's device has developed {{w|artificial intelligence}}, allowing it to feel. This is presumably a result of Megan attempting to make the device self-repairing. This common trope in science-fiction works usually leads to the system's attempt to eradicate its creator. [[Cueball]] attributes the emergence of a personality to the awesome ease and power of programming in {{w|Python (programming language)|Python}}.

; Panel 11

: Out of context, this panel introduces the idea of {{w|Santa Claus}} being a {{w|Muslim}}. This may be a reference to the persistent Internet rumours that Barack Obama is a Muslim, though he declares himself to be a Christian. However, the statement could also relate to the fact that Santa Claus is usually displayed with a large beard, which is sometimes also sported by conservative Muslims. Or it could just be nonsensical.

; Panel 13

: At this point, the self-aware Christmas light control systems have released {{w|cyborgs}} that tried to kill Megan and Cueball. To repel the cyborgs, they have cloned {{w|Velociraptors}}. Cueball expresses doubt about whether that was a good idea. Velociraptors appear frequently in xkcd, as seen in [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Velociraptors these comics]

; Panel 17

: As predicted, the raptors have gone wild, but Megan, Cueball and the two smaller characters (perhaps their children) managed to cage the dinosaurs. They believe themselves safe unless the raptors learn how to build {{w|lightsabers}}. This is a reference to a line in {{w|'' Jurassic Park''}} where the main characters believe themselves safe until they discover the raptors can learn how to open doors.

; Panel 19

: The raptors have indeed succeeded with constructing lightsabers and must now be fought. The "Clever girl" refers to a line from ''Jurassic Park'' where the raptors outflank (and kill) one of the human characters wearing a similar hat. “Snap-hiss” is a common phrase originated by Timothy Zahn to describe the sound of a lightsaber igniting in Star Wars literature.<ref>Zahn, Timothy, "Author Annotations: Chapter 7, 1", Star Wars: Heir to the Empire: The 20th Anniversary Edition, ISBN 0345530004, "I thought long and hard about how to write the sound of an igniting lightsaber. I finally went with snap-hiss.", corroborated by [https://boards.theforce.net/threads/snap-hiss.25830511/ forums]</ref>

; Panel 23

: IT billionaire {{w|Bill Gates}} has mistakenly killed Santa Claus, possibly in a sword fight. He claims to have mistaken him for [[Richard Stallman]], a prominent {{w|free software}} activist. (Gates strongly opposes the idea of free software and is therefore considered an antagonist by many of its supporters.) The most striking resemblance between Stallman and Santa Claus is probably the long and untamed beard. [[225: Open Source]] features Stallman involved in a sword fight. Much later, [[Randall]] again killed off Santa in his Christmas comics, and did so twice in only three years. First in [[2559: December 25th Launch]], from 2021, and then again in 2023's [[2872: Hydrothermal Vents]].

; Panel 29

: [[Black Hat]] is asked by Megan (or possibly his companion, [[Danish]]) where he obtained the enormously large {{w|Christmas tree}} that can be seen on the right side of the zoomed out picture. It is implied that he felled {{w|Yggdrasil}}, the giant ash tree of Norse mythology. According to tradition, Yggdrasil is the world tree representing the whole of creation and holding together the cosmological structure.

; Panel 31

: [[Randall]] wishes Merry Christmas to all xkcd readers.

The title text refers to panel 7. In Python, modules are imported using the "import ''module''" syntax. {{w|Skynet (Terminator)|Skynet}} is a self-aware artificial intelligence system featured in the ''{{w|Terminator}}'' film series as the main influence behind most of the antagonists. Importing the Skynet module might therefore account for Megan's system's developing an evil personality.

There is an actual pip module [https://pypi.org/project/skynet/ named "skynet"]. The module links to the comic as its "homepage". The module's description says that it "demonstrates the usage of Python's exit-hook, exception hook and signals handling", by using them to prevent the user from exiting Python "to the best of its ability" when the module is imported (somewhat in line with the whole idea of a rogue computer), and cautions you to try this at your own risk.

Note that this comic was first published in another version that had panel 29 as panel 27 and the "Merry Christmas from xkcd" message at the bottom. As 27 is not a {{w|prime number}}, the current version was published in place of the erroneous one.

It has been observed that the top left nine panels have the configuration of a {{w|Glider (Conway's Life)|Glider}} in ''{{w|Conway's Game of Life}}''. The glider is sometimes used as an emblem representing {{w|hacker subculture}}, although rotated by 90 degrees. However, it remains unclear whether the occurrence in the comic is intentional or an incidental side-effect of the prime number pattern in use. If you put the shown comic panels in The Game of Life, it turns into a Beehive, for reasons also probably not deliberate, unlike [[2293: RIP John Conway|a later comic]]'s explicit invocation of this mechanism. The last fourteen black panels also coincidentally form the shape of a crewmate from the game ''{{w|Among Us}}'', although the comic predates the game by a whole decade.

==Transcript==
:The 2008 XKCD Christmas Special
:Due to the slowing economy, we could only afford to produce the prime-numbered panels.
:You should be able to infer the missing parts of the story easily enough.
:We apologize for the inconvenience.
:[The first panel is blank.]
:[Megan carrying Christmas lights and Cueball watching.]
:Megan: I'm going to one-up those Christmas light displays on YouTube.
:[Megan thinking.]
:Megan: Hmm. Needs more flair. Do you know what happens when you fire sodium pellets into a snowbank?
:Cueball: No.
:Megan: Me neither.
:[The next panel is blank.]
:[Megan sitting in front of a console.]
:Megan: Whoops, one of the Arduino control boards sublimated.
:Megan: If only I could make it self-repairing...
:[The next panel is blank.]
:Megan: Shit. The system has become sentient.
:Cueball: Friggin' Python.
:System: GRAAARR!
:[The next three panels are blank.]
:[Megan showing laptop to Cueball.]
:Megan: But according to this email forward, Santa is secretly a Muslim!
:Cueball: It explains everything!
:[The next panel is blank.]
:Megan: Okay, the cloned raptors are hunting the last of the cyborgs. We're safe.
:Cueball: Are you sure you thought this through?
:[The next three panels are blank.]
:[Two couples appear in this next panel.]
:Cueball: Are the raptors contained?
:Ponytail: Sure. Unless they figure out how to build lightsabers.
:[The next panel is blank.]
:[Guy with hat fighting with a raptor using lightsabers.]
:Cueball: It's all right. I've got her.
:[Lightsaber appears from behind.]
:Snap-hiss!
:Cueball: ...Clever girl.
:[The next three panels are blank.]
:[Bill Gates is holding a weapon over Santa's body. The two girls are watching.]
:Megan: Great. Bill Gates kills Santa.
:Bill Gates: I thought it was Stallman with a dyed beard.
:[The next five panels are blank.]
:[Danish and Black Hat are looking at a tree.]
:Danish: Where did you get this Christmas tree?
:Black Hat: Nowhere.
:Danish: Did you cut down the Yggdrasil?
:Black Hat: ...Maybe.
:[The next panel is blank.]
:[Megan and Cueball holding hands and looking at reader.]
:Merry Christmas from XKCD <3
:[The last panel is blank.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Richard Stallman]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Christmas]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]
[[Category:Velociraptors]]
[[Category:Terminator]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]

3151: Window Screen

2025-10-07T14:57:31Z

Wilh3lm: /* Trivia */ Updated time

{{comic
| number = 3151
| date = October 6, 2025
| title = Window Screen (UI)
| image = window_screen_2x.png
| imagesize = 1480x598px
| noexpand = false
| titletext = The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine or Home Improvement or DIY
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by user interface. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
[[Cueball]] believes he should receive a {{w|Nobel Prize}} for creating a custom screen for a particularly troublesome window, due to what he considers to be the immense amount of work and consideration that went into it. He is writing to the {{w|Nobel Foundation}} to nominate himself. (The Foundation does not currently accept self-nominations, or nominations from random individuals.)

A {{w|window screen}} is most often used to block insects, other small animals, and debris from passing through an open window, while allowing air and light. One can also make a mesh that attaches to the outside of the glass to display an outward-facing image or limit incoming light. Most windows are flat and rectangular, and pre-made meshes for these can be measured and cut with basic tools. Some windows have complex shapes. It can be very difficult to design a screen that neatly matches a complex glass surface.

An {{w|Angle#Types_of_angles|oblique angle}} is any angle that is not a multiple of 90 degrees (not a right or straight angle). While right angles allow for intuitive mapping of sides to an X-Y coordinate plane, acute or obtuse angles indicate that at least one side will have endpoints that differ in both coordinates. This requires extra calculations.

Curved edges require extra care to measure and cut. Circular or semi-circular windows follow a constant curve that can be traced with limited effort, but the window in the comic is irregular.

{{w|Coplanarity|Noncoplanarity}} is a state where all elements of a system cannot be represented on the same plane. This implies that the window is not flat, suggesting that the glass is curved, and/or that the surrounds that the screen had to be fitted to did not match the shape of the window. The shape in the comic could possibly occur if the room featured in the first and third panels was at least partly conical, with the window narrowing to match the wall sloping inward to a central point above (this would also fit the earlier mention of multiple curved edges). The glass could also be shaped into an outward bubble. Either way, the mesh must be carefully shaped.

Perfectly fitting a custom screen to such a window may be a significant technical accomplishment that the builder may wish to share with acquaintances. However, it is generally not considered near the level of one of the world's most prestigious awards, which often recognize years of effort, rather than something that Cueball did between the "this weekend" and the present (at most one week).

Since no Nobel Prize currently exists that would cover recognition of Cueball's achievement, the title text suggests extending the existing prize in physiology or medicine to also cover home improvement and DIY. [[Randall]] likely chose this prize because it is already anomalous in containing an 'or' in its title, where the other prizes mention only a single area of endeavour.

==Trivia==
At the time this comic was released, there was a technical error making it too large to fit into the page on normal desktop/laptop screens. Since [[1084: Server Problem#Trivia|1084: Server Problem]], two versions of each comic are usually available: normal (1x) and high-resolution (2x). This makes the comic look sharp even on high-DPI screens, such as phones, tablets, and some more expensive computer displays. In this case, however, the 2x version was accidentally uploaded as ''both'' versions, making the 1x comic twice as large as it should be. It is possible that Randall did this intentionally as an added punchline.

Users with this issue can zoom in with their browsers (Ctrl+mouse scroll up) to see the comic better. If the screen is large enough, you might consider always reading xkcd on 200% zoom to see the higher resolution comics.

As of this writing (14:57, 7 October 2025 (UTC)), this issue has not been fixed yet.

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

:[The text for the first panel appears above the panel itself.]
:This weekend,
:I had to make an oversized screen for a porch window.
:[Cueball is looking out through a window with a straight bottom, slanting sides and a curved upper edge.]

:[In each of the remaining panels, the text appears within the panel but above the illustration.]
:It involved countless tiny problems, each somehow way harder than it should be.
:Oblique angles. Curved edges. Noncoplanarity.
:[Cueball is shown pondering various problems involving geometry and angles.]

:... I solved them all.
:I measured precisely. I did trigonometry. I made custom parts.
:And it fit '''''perfectly.'''''
:No gaps, no ripples.
:[Cueball with slightly more hair, looking at the window covered by a bordered mesh.]

:I know that your foundation normally limits its purview to physics, medicine, peace, chemistry and literature.
:However, if you review the attached photo showing how well the screen fits into the...
:[Cueball is revealed to be sitting at a computer, typing a message.]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

2016: OEIS Submissions

2025-09-24T22:43:21Z

Wilh3lm: oeis sequences can be updated

<noinclude>{{distinguish|1624: 2016}}</noinclude>
{{comic
| number = 2016
| date = July 6, 2018
| title = OEIS Submissions
| image = oeis_submissions.png
| titletext = SUB[59]: The submission numbers for my accepted OEIS submissions in chronological order
}}

==Explanation==

The {{w|OEIS}} is the [https://oeis.org/ Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences], a listing of hundreds of thousands of sequences of integers, generally of real mathematical interest, such as {{w|prime number}}s ([https://oeis.org/A000040 A000040]) or {{w|Armstrong number}}s ([https://oeis.org/A005188 A005188]). They would not be interested in the personal or idiosyncratic sequences proposed by Randall, though they do have the [https://oeis.org/A000053 list of subway stops on the New York City Broadway line (IRT #1)], perhaps because a NY Times article mentioned that they don't. The OEIS wiki gives [https://oeis.org/wiki/Examples_of_what_not_to_submit examples of sequences that were rejected] and even mentions xkcd.

Randall is trying to put his integer sequences on the OEIS website, including making OEIS reveal its password.
;sub[43] - All integers which do not appear in the example terms of another OEIS sequence
:Every OEIS sequence lists several example terms to demonstrate the content of said sequence. This request wants to list all integers which are ''not'' used as examples elsewhere. Any numbers used as example terms for this sequence are not counted, so this list is not self-disqualifying. It is well-defined at any given time. Like many other OEIS sequences, it has infinitely many terms (more precisely, it includes all integers except a finite number). However, it may change at any time, whenever a new sequence or a new example is added to the OEIS. If included, it would therefore have to be constantly updated.
:Such integers are sometimes called "{{w|Interesting number paradox|uninteresting numbers}}" in mathematical terms, and attempts have been made to count them. The list changes, but [http://math.crg4.com/uninteresting.html#note4 in July 2009] it began 11630, 12067, 12407, 12887, 13258...
;sub[44] - Integers in increasing order of width when printed in Helvetica
:This sequence is not uniquely defined as it depends on the specific version of the {{w|Helvetica}} font used, its point size, the software used to render it (e.g. kerning algorithm), the handling of equal widths by the sorting algorithm and possibly other parameters. Also, all digits usually have the same width, with the exception of the sequence "11", which is a tiny bit narrower because a kerning pair exists in Helvetica. Without an additional tie-breaker for equal width numbers, the order is: 1 to 9 in no particular order, 11, 10 and 12 to 99 in no particular order and so on; for a particular choice of parameters the first 50 terms might be: 1, 9, 6, 2, 8, 5, 0, 7, 3, 4, 11, 61, 71, 91, 21, 51, 81, 41, 31, 19, 13, 18, 10, 12, 15, 16, 14, 17, 69, 63, 68, 79, 60, 62, 65, 73, 78, 99, 93, 98, 66, 70, 72, 75, 29, 90, 92, 95, 23, 28...
:Despite all of the above issues, and as a direct response to this comic, a well-defined version of this sequence was [https://oeis.org/A316600 added to the OEIS].
;sub[45] - The digits of Chris Hemsworth's cell phone number
:An attempt to {{w|Phishing|phish}} the phone number of actor {{w|Chris Hemsworth}}. Whilst there ''is'' a loophole to this request (the correct ordering of the digits isn't specified), knowing what digits there are in the first place may help narrow down what his number is.
;sub[46] - All integers, in descending order
:To list all integers in descending order, you would have to begin at the largest integer, but there is no largest integer, so this is impossible. It is equally impossible to list all integers in ''ascending'' order, for that matter, since one would need to start at negative infinity.
:On the other hand, [https://oeis.org/A001477 A001477] is the sequence of all nonnegative integers in ascending order, as there is the smallest nonnegative integer. Also, [https://oeis.org/A001057 A001057] is the sequence of all integers, but in canonical order (i.e. by increasing absolute value).
;sub[47] - The digits of the OEIS serial number for this sequence
:This sequence is only important tautologically.
;sub[48] - 200 terabytes of nines
:This submission appears to be a joke on common video game limits for, e.g., currency or ammunition, in which the maximum a player can carry is one less than a power of 10. This sequence would be entirely useless, as there is no mental effort required to conceive a list that consists only of a single repeated term, however arbitrarily large. The only apparent reason to make the request is the novelty of making the OEIS waste 200 terabytes of their storage; to give a comparison, [https://phys.org/news/2016-05-math-proof-largest-terabytes.html this very large math proof from 2016] is also 200 terabytes, and requires a supercomputer to hold it in its entirety.<br/>
:200 terabytes is equal to 2 × 10<sup>14</sup> bytes. In UTF-8, each ASCII character, including control characters such as ␂ (start of text) and ␍ (carriage return), can be represented by a single byte. If the list is presumed to be formatted as "␂9␍9␍9 ... 9␍9␃", the first term would take up 3 bytes, and all other terms would take up 2 bytes. Assuming Randall wants the file size to be 200 terabytes ''minimum'', the resulting list would be a minimum of 1 × 10<sup>14</sup>, or 100 trillion, terms long. However, the OEIS could utilize some form of data compression to store the terabytes of data in maybe a few kilobytes.
:Curiously, OEIS does in fact contain an entry that lists "[https://oeis.org/A010734 all nines]" which contains this proposal as a subsequence.
;sub[49] - The decimal representation of the bytes in the root password to the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences server
:This would give any user the password to OEIS. Anyone can {{w|Troll (slang)|easily forecast}} what happens next. Perhaps the idea is to hack OEIS on the premise that accepting this sequence will force OEIS staff to populate it.
;sub[59] (title text) - The submission numbers for my accepted OEIS submissions in chronological order
:This would only be useful to Randall. If all of his submissions have been rejected, this would be an empty set. However, if this submission is accepted, the set would, by definition, include at least one number (except that this would not be known at the time of submission). Thus, as in the Russell Paradox, this set would be out of date as soon as it was accepted, since the set of accepted submission numbers would change at that point. However, OEIS sequences can have new entries found and then added to the sequence, so if it were accepted, 59 would be added to it.
:Currently, it has two known numbers: 44 and 48. Other sequences suggested by Randall not listed (1-42 and 50-58, and an unknown number of submissions from 60 onwards) may or may not be accepted, but since those sequences are not known it is not known whether they were accepted.

==Transcript==
:SUB[43]: All integers which do not appear in the example terms of another OEIS sequence
:SUB[44]: Integers in increasing order of width when printed in Helvetica
:SUB[45]: The digits of Chris Hemsworth's cell phone number
:SUB[46]: All integers, in descending order
:SUB[47]: The digits of the OEIS serial number for this sequence
:SUB[48]: 200 terabytes of nines
:SUB[49]: The decimal representation of the bytes in the root password to the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences server

:[Caption below the panel:]
:OEIS keeps rejecting my submissions

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

what if? articles

2025-09-17T19:35:28Z

Wilh3lm: another typo

<noinclude>{{DISPLAYTITLE:''What If?'' chapters}}:''For other instances of this title, see [[What If (disambiguation)]].''<noinclude>
{{incomplete|There are about '''2''' 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|29|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>
|This would normally be impossible. However, with enough people shooting the train, it can happen. This would require about 100,000 people shooting, distributed over 2 kilometers of track, each firing a few dozen rounds once the train comes close enough. This would, eventually, be enough to bring the train to a stop.
|{{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>
| Using the printer, you could make about 200 million dollars per year, depending on the type of printer. This would actually be the perfect sweet spot for you, as it would be enough to make you very, very rich, but not enough to have any effect on the world. The United States [https://www.bep.gov/currency/production-figures/annual-production-reports prints approximately $160 billion per year], so $200 million a year would be nothing more than a drop in the bucket.
| 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 about 200 m/s, which would make your commute very fast indeed. However, the amount of energy required to bike at that speed would cause you to die from overexertion. This might work if you didn't exert any energy, however.
|-
|''"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>
|Strapping C4 to a boomerang does not sound like an effective weapon. The weapon as depicted in the image would have terrible aerodynamics, and would not fly an easily predictable trajectory. C4 is, by itself, an inert substance which would need some form of detonator to actually explode, in which case it would depend upon how you set it up (e.g. timer or inertial trigger) and at what point in its flight this would activate. ''If'' this happened as it returns (or flies past, if thrown reasonably correctly but being unable or unwilling to catch it), it might kill or injure the thrower and/or those nearby. There were many unstated details as to how the proposal would be implemented, as Randall lampshades in his open answer.
|-
|[[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. On the other hand, if you were that close, you were probably inside the star that created the supernova, in which case ''[[#115|Into the Sun]]'' would apply.
|{{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". This would require you to type the 6 key (MNO) 16 times without stopping, in order to type 'nonmono'. With every letter included, typing this word would require pressing the 2, 4, 7, and 8 keys once each, and the 6 key a nice, even 20 times.
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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 its 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 no 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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?}}
|-
| rowspan="3" |[[File:No-Rules NASCAR.png|100px]]
| rowspan="3" |'''{{What If|116|No-Rules NASCAR}}'''
| rowspan="3" |''"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>
| rowspan="3" |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.
| rowspan="3" {{blog|116|2014|10|15}}
| rowspan="3" {{book|2|35}}
|{{book|3|2023|12|19|JcXpCyPc2Xw|What if NASCAR had no rules?}}
|-
|{{book|8|short-video=yes|2025|08|26|eSPcp-tfGbA|How fast could a human accellerate (while staying alive)?}}
|-
|{{book|9|short-video=yes|2025|09|02|rgUfcFAPicY|How fast could a vehicle go around a track - but the racer does not have to survive.}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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. Places where electricity is gotten using a hydroelectric dam may be out of power for a bit, but the flow of water would return in time.
|{{blog|121|2014|12|11}} 14d late)
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|You would need to use a metal or gemstone with a very high heat tolerance. You could possibly use sapphire or some sort of transparent or translucent tungsten, but the clear medium would eventually fog up and prevent you from seeing the lava. The lava would solidify after approximately a minute without some way to continuously heat it.
|{{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>
|If fairies appeared with the first laugh of a ''homo sapiens'', there would be around 100 billion fairies, and they, depending on their size, would probably be considered no more than a common pest. Because of their high population, however, they would probably be considered a major part of the ecosystems where they resided.
|{{blog|123|2015|01|01|7d late}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |[[File:Lunar Swimming.png|100px]]
| rowspan="2" |'''{{What If|124|Lunar Swimming}}'''
| rowspan="2" |''"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>
| rowspan="2" |It would be super-cool, given that lower gravity would increase the size of splashes and the height of jumps.
| rowspan="2" {{blog|124|2015|01|08}}
| rowspan="2" |
|{{book|20|2024|12|24|aIIBBj6KR-Y|What if we put a pool on the moon?}}
|-
|{{book|7|short-video=yes|2025|08|12|mtTbwHzhUiM|Petition to send a swimming pool to 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 humans were on the moon at the time.
|{{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. If you were to drive on the highway for an hour using this method, it would burn 18,635 gallons of gasoline, worth $40,000 to $50,000.
|{{blog|130|2015|02|19}}
|
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
| ''Note: This question was created before ''New Horizons'' passed by Pluto.'' This is extremely unlikely. The ''New Horizons'' probe is quite large, but is considered small for a spacecraft. If it crashed into your car, there would be serious consequences. However, 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|{{book|30|2025|9|9|DiWFXv9N0Vs|What if the Moon were made entirely of electrons?}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 off the wolves.
|{{blog|155|2017|02|28|13d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|
|'''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}}
|
|-
|
|'''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" |
| 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" |Submarines are, unsurprisingly, very good at being watertight. This would mean that, mostly, air would stay within the submarine for a time. However, a nuclear submarine is able to stay under for so long because it can convert seawater into oxygen. With no seawater, no oxygen is made, which means that eventually they will run out of air. Getting back into the atmosphere would be tricky. Firing all of a submarine's missiles backwards (i.e. towards the ship) with their detonators removed would produce just enough force for the sub to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. At that point, the heat and forces of reentry would rip the submarine apart, similar to the {{w|Space Shuttle Challenger disaster}}.
| 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>
|In theory, this would work. In practice, it wouldn't for a simple reason: Some people have compromised immune systems. These people's bodies can be a safe haven for rhinoviruses, which would mean the common cold, would quickly spread through the population again. The world's food supplies would also be an issue, as people may need to eat foods not designed to be eaten directly (i.e. raw grain). Many systems would shut down as people wouldn't be there to maintain them. Many millions would be stranded in places like Antarctica or the Sahara Desert, which would lead to many deaths. In effect, the scenario would be similar to 'Everybody Jump'.
|
|{{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>
|Somewhat surprisingly,Virgina, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America. Despite it having many major airports, inlcluding most of those serving DC, there are also many major airports which have routes passing over Virginia, such as KATL and KJFK.
|
|{{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>
|As the child is coming from, effectively, two parents with identical DNA, there would be many genetic defects, similar to being inbred. As there is no father to contribute a Y chromosome, the child is guaranteed to be a girl.
|
|{{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. However, this would have little to no effect on the opponent, unless it required solar panels.
|
|{{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 very large 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. Assuming no issues with staying on the wing, there would be more problems to follow. The helicopter, as it spooled up, would begin violently wobbling due to the constantly changing center of gravity before flipping itself, destroying both you and the pilot in a massive fireball.
|
|{{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 who did 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, assuming no air holes were installed.
|-
|''"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. Even if some magical force were employed to keep humanity centered on making the earth a perfect sphere, it would take many years and be almost impossible to do. Because the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and not a sphere as-is, a lot of land would need to be displaced in order to create a perfect sphere. There would need to be somewhere to put all the water in the oceans, which would need to be removed, and a way to move large amounts of land very long distances. Many cities would be buried, such as Amsterdam (average elevation -6.6').
|-
|''"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>
|The Earth would become one big, very explosive science experiment. Stable atoms would become unstable, releasing large amounts of energy all at once. Brain matter would cease to be brain matter, and cells would no longer be cells. This would lead to everything dying at once. At least we wouldn't need to experience it.
|-
|
|'''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>
|Yes, it most certainly would. The sea of Japan would mix with the Pacific ocean now that the wall that separated them is gone. This would cause unpredictable changes to those currents, affecting many life forms who live in that area. Japan, though being small, weighs quite a lot, and the sudden removal of all that weight would cause massive shifts in ocean levels. Depending on the region, some sea levels would rise/fall by up to a foot, causing mass panic for cities that now have a sudden risk of flooding at a moment's notice. Tsunamis would devastate the Korean Peninsula, Hawaii, and the west coast of America.
|
|{{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 randomly 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. Also, the oceans would be turned into saltwater taffy and most life would be destroyed by too much sugar.
|
|{{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}}

what if? articles

2025-09-17T19:23:10Z

Wilh3lm: typo

<noinclude>{{DISPLAYTITLE:''What If?'' chapters}}:''For other instances of this title, see [[What If (disambiguation)]].''<noinclude>
{{incomplete|There are about '''2''' 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|29|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>
|This would normally be impossible. However, with enough people shooting the train, it can happen. This would require about 100,000 people shooting, distributed over 2 kilometers of track, each firing a few dozen rounds once the train comes close enough. This would, eventually, be enough to bring the train to a stop.
|{{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>
| Using the printer, you could make about 200 million dollars per year, depending on the type of printer. This would actually be the perfect sweet spot for you, as it would be enough to make you very, very rich, but not enough to have any effect on the world. The United States [https://www.bep.gov/currency/production-figures/annual-production-reports prints approximately $160 billion per year], so $200 million a year would be nothing more than a drop in the bucket.
| 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 about 200 m/s, which would make your commute very fast indeed. However, the amount of energy required to bike at that speed would cause you to die from overexertion. This might work if you didn't exert any energy, however.
|-
|''"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>
|Strapping C4 to a boomerang does not sound like an effective weapon. The weapon as depicted in the image would have terrible aerodynamics, and would not fly an easily predictable trajectory. C4 is, by itself, an inert substance which would need some form of detonator to actually explode, in which case it would depend upon how you set it up (e.g. timer or inertial trigger) and at what point in its flight this would activate. ''If'' this happened as it returns (or flies past, if thrown reasonably correctly but being unable or unwilling to catch it), it might kill or injure the thrower and/or those nearby. There were many unstated details as to how the proposal would be implemented, as Randall lampshades in his open answer.
|-
|[[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. On the other hand, if you were that close, you were probably inside the star that created the supernova, in which case ''[[#115|Into the Sun]]'' would apply.
|{{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". This would require you to type the 6 key (MNO) 16 times without stopping, in order to type 'nonmono'. With every letter included, typing this word would require pressing the 2, 4, 7, and 8 keys once each, and the 6 key a nice, even 20 times.
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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 its 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 no 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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?}}
|-
| rowspan="3" |[[File:No-Rules NASCAR.png|100px]]
| rowspan="3" |'''{{What If|116|No-Rules NASCAR}}'''
| rowspan="3" |''"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>
| rowspan="3" |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.
| rowspan="3" {{blog|116|2014|10|15}}
| rowspan="3" {{book|2|35}}
|{{book|3|2023|12|19|JcXpCyPc2Xw|What if NASCAR had no rules?}}
|-
|{{book|8|short-video=yes|2025|08|26|eSPcp-tfGbA|How fast could a human accellerate (while staying alive)?}}
|-
|{{book|9|short-video=yes|2025|09|02|rgUfcFAPicY|How fast could a vehicle go around a track - but the racer does not have to survive.}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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. Places where electricity is gotten using a hydroelectric dam may be out of power for a bit, but the flow of water would return in time.
|{{blog|121|2014|12|11}} 14d late)
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|You would need to use a metal or gemstone with a very high heat tolerance. You could possibly use sapphire or some sort of transparent or translucent tungsten, but the clear medium would eventually fog up and prevent you from seeing the lava. The lava would solidify after approximately a minute without some way to continuously heat it.
|{{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>
|If fairies appeared with the first laugh of a ''homo sapiens'', there would be around 100 billion fairies, and they, depending on their size, would probably be considered no more than a common pest. Because of their high population, however, they would probably be considered a major part of the ecosystems where they resided.
|{{blog|123|2015|01|01|7d late}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |[[File:Lunar Swimming.png|100px]]
| rowspan="2" |'''{{What If|124|Lunar Swimming}}'''
| rowspan="2" |''"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>
| rowspan="2" |It would be super-cool, given that lower gravity would increase the size of splashes and the height of jumps.
| rowspan="2" {{blog|124|2015|01|08}}
| rowspan="2" |
|{{book|20|2024|12|24|aIIBBj6KR-Y|What if we put a pool on the moon?}}
|-
|{{book|7|short-video=yes|2025|08|12|mtTbwHzhUiM|Petition to send a swimming pool to 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 humans were on the moon at the time.
|{{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. If you were to drive on the highway for an hour using this method, it would burn 18,635 gallons of gasoline, worth $40,000 to $50,000.
|{{blog|130|2015|02|19}}
|
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
| ''Note: This question was created before ''New Horizons'' passed by Pluto.'' This is extremely unlikely. The ''New Horizons'' probe is quite large, but is considered small for a spacecraft. If it crashed into your car, there would be serious consequences. However, 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|{{book|30|2025|9|9|DiWFXv9N0Vs|What if the Moon were made entirely of electrons?}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 off the wolves.
|{{blog|155|2017|02|28|13d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|
|'''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}}
|
|-
|
|'''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" |
| 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" |Submarines are, unsurprisingly, very good at being watertight. This would mean that, mostly, air would stay within the submarine for a time. However, a nuclear submarine is able to stay under for so long because it can convert seawater into oxygen. With no seawater, no oxygen is made, which means that eventually they will run out of air. Getting back into the atmosphere would be tricky. Firing all of a submarine's missiles backwards (i.e. towards the ship) with their detonators removed would produce just enough force for the sub to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. At that point, the heat and forces of reentry would rip the submarine apart, similar to the {{w|Space Shuttle Challenger disaster}}.
| 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>
|In theory, this would work. In practice, it wouldn't for a simple reason: Some people have compromised immune systems. These people's bodies can be a safe haven for rhinoviruses, which would mean the common cold, would quickly spread through the population again. The world's food supplies would also be an issue, as people may need to eat foods not designed to be eaten directly (i.e. raw grain). Many systems would shut down as people wouldn't be there to maintain them. Many millions would be stranded in places like Antarctica or the Sahara Desert, which would lead to many deaths. In effect, the scenario would be similar to 'Everybody Jump'.
|
|{{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>
|Somewhat surprisingly,Virgina, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America. Despite it having many major airports, inlcluding most of those serving DC, there are also many major airports which have routes passing over Virginia, such as KATL and KJFK.
|
|{{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>
|As the child is coming from, effectively, two parents with identical DNA, there would be many genetic defects, similar to being inbred. As there is no father to contribute a Y chromosome, the child is guaranteed to be a girl.
|
|{{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. However, this would have little to no effect on the opponent, unless it required solar panels.
|
|{{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 very large 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. Assuming no issues with staying on the wing, there would be more problems to follow. The helicopter, as it spooled up, would begin violently wobbling due to the constantly changing center of gravity before flipping itself, destroying both you and the pilot in a massive fireball.
|
|{{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 who did 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, assuming no air holes were installed.
|-
|''"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. Even if some magical force were employed to keep humanity centered on making the earth a perfect sphere, it would take many years and be almost impossible to do. Because the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and not a sphere as-is, a lot of land would need to be displaced in order to create a perfect sphere. There would need to be somewhere to put all the water in the oceans, which would need to be removed, and a way to move large amounts of land very long distances. Many cities would be buried, such as Amsterdam (average elevation -6.6').
|-
|''"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>
|The Earth would become one big, very explosive science experiment. Stable atoms would become unstable, releasing large amounts of energy all at once. Brain matter would cease to be brain matter, and cells would no longer be cells. This would lead to everything dying at once. At least we wouldn't need to experience it.
|-
|
|'''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>
|Yes, it most certainly would. The sea of Japan would mix with the Pacific ocean now that the wall that separated them is gone. This would cause unpredictable changes to those currents, affecting many life forms who live in that area. Japan, though being small, weighs quite a lot, and the sudden removal of all that weight would cause massive shifts in ocean levels. Depending on the region, some sea levels would rise/fall by up to a foot, causing mass panic for cities that now have a sudden risk of flooding at a moment's notice. Tsunamis would devastate the Korean Peninsula, Hawaii, and the west coast of America.
|
|{{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. Also, the oceans would be turned into saltwater taffy and most life would be destroyed by too much sugar.
|
|{{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}}

what if? articles

2025-09-17T19:10:49Z

Wilh3lm: typo

<noinclude>{{DISPLAYTITLE:''What If?'' chapters}}:''For other instances of this title, see [[What If (disambiguation)]].''<noinclude>
{{incomplete|There are about '''2''' 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|29|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>
|This would normally be impossible. However, with enough people shooting the train, it can happen. This would require about 100,000 people shooting, distributed over 2 kilometers of track, each firing a few dozen rounds once the train comes close enough. This would, eventually, be enough to bring the train to a stop.
|{{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>
| Using the printer, you could make about 200 million dollars per year, depending on the type of printer. This would actually be the perfect sweet spot for you, as it would be enough to make you very, very rich, but not enough to have any effect on the world. The United States [https://www.bep.gov/currency/production-figures/annual-production-reports prints approximately $160 billion per year], so $200 million a year would be nothing more than a drop in the bucket.
| 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 about 200 m/s, which would make your commute very fast indeed. However, the amount of energy required to bike at that speed would cause you to die from overexertion. This might work if you didn't exert any energy, however.
|-
|''"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>
|Strapping C4 to a boomerang does not sound like an effective weapon. The weapon as depicted in the image would have terrible aerodynamics, and would not fly an easily predictable trajectory. C4 is, by itself, an inert substance which would need some form of detonator to actually explode, in which case it would depend upon how you set it up (e.g. timer or inertial trigger) and at what point in its flight this would activate. ''If'' this happened as it returns (or flies past, if thrown reasonably correctly but being unable or unwilling to catch it), it might kill or injure the thrower and/or those nearby. There were many unstated details as to how the proposal would be implemented, as Randall lampshades in his open answer.
|-
|[[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. On the other hand, if you were that close, you were probably inside the star that created the supernova, in which case ''[[#115|Into the Sun]]'' would apply.
|{{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". This would require you to type the 6 key (MNO) 16 times without stopping, in order to type 'nonmono'. With every letter included, typing this word would require pressing the 2, 4, 7, and 8 keys once each, and the 6 key a nice, even 20 times.
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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 its 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 no 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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?}}
|-
| rowspan="3" |[[File:No-Rules NASCAR.png|100px]]
| rowspan="3" |'''{{What If|116|No-Rules NASCAR}}'''
| rowspan="3" |''"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>
| rowspan="3" |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.
| rowspan="3" {{blog|116|2014|10|15}}
| rowspan="3" {{book|2|35}}
|{{book|3|2023|12|19|JcXpCyPc2Xw|What if NASCAR had no rules?}}
|-
|{{book|8|short-video=yes|2025|08|26|eSPcp-tfGbA|How fast could a human accellerate (while staying alive)?}}
|-
|{{book|9|short-video=yes|2025|09|02|rgUfcFAPicY|How fast could a vehicle go around a track - but the racer does not have to survive.}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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. Places where electricity is gotten using a hydroelectric dam may be out of power for a bit, but the flow of water would return in time.
|{{blog|121|2014|12|11}} 14d late)
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|You would need to use a metal or gemstone with a very high heat tolerance. You could possibly use sapphire or some sort of transparent or translucent tungsten, but the clear medium would eventually fog up and prevent you from seeing the lava. The lava would solidify after approximately a minute without some way to continuously heat it.
|{{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>
|If fairies appeared with the first laugh of a ''homo sapiens'', there would be around 100 billion fairies, and they, depending on their size, would probably be considered no more than a common pest. Because of their high population, however, they would probably be considered a major part of the ecosystems where they resided.
|{{blog|123|2015|01|01|7d late}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |[[File:Lunar Swimming.png|100px]]
| rowspan="2" |'''{{What If|124|Lunar Swimming}}'''
| rowspan="2" |''"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>
| rowspan="2" |It would be super-cool, given that lower gravity would increase the size of splashes and the height of jumps.
| rowspan="2" {{blog|124|2015|01|08}}
| rowspan="2" |
|{{book|20|2024|12|24|aIIBBj6KR-Y|What if we put a pool on the moon?}}
|-
|{{book|7|short-video=yes|2025|08|12|mtTbwHzhUiM|Petition to send a swimming pool to 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 humans were on the moon at the time.
|{{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. If you were to drive on the highway for an hour using this method, it would burn 18,635 gallons of gasoline, worth $40,000 to $50,000.
|{{blog|130|2015|02|19}}
|
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
| ''Note: This question was created before ''New Horizons'' passed by Pluto.'' This is extremely unlikely. The ''New Horizons'' probe is quite large, but is considered small for a spacecraft. If it crashed into your car, there would be serious consequences. However, 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|{{book|30|2025|9|9|DiWFXv9N0Vs|What if the Moon were made entirely of electrons?}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 off the wolves.
|{{blog|155|2017|02|28|13d late}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|
|'''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}}
|
|-
|
|'''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" |
| 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" |Submarines are, unsurprisingly, very good at being watertight. This would mean that, mostly, air would stay within the submarine for a time. However, a nuclear submarine is able to stay under for so long because it can convert seawater into oxygen. With no seawater, no oxygen is made, which means that eventually they will run out of air. Getting back into the atmosphere would be tricky. Firing all of a submarine's missiles backwards (i.e. towards the ship) with their detonators removed would produce just enough force for the sub to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. At that point, the heat and forces of reentry would rip the submarine apart, similar to the {{w|Space Shuttle Challenger disaster}}.
| 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>
|In theory, this would work. In practice, it wouldn't for a simple reason: Some people have compromised immune systems. These people's bodies can be a safe haven for rhinoviruses, which would mean the common cold, would quickly spread through the population again. The world's food supplies would also be an issue, as people may need to eat foods not designed to be eaten directly (i.e. raw grain). Many systems would shut down as people wouldn't be there to maintain them. Many millions would be stranded in places like Antarctica or the Sahara Desert, which would lead to many deaths. In effect, the scenario would be similar to 'Everybody Jump'.
|
|{{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>
|Somewhat surprisingly,Virgina, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America. Despite it having many major airports, inlcluding most of those serving DC, there are also many major airports which have routes passing over Virginia, such as KATL and KJFK.
|
|{{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>
|As the child is coming from, effectively, two parents with identical DNA, there would be many genetic defects, similar to being inbred. As there is no father to contribute a Y chromosome, the child is guaranteed to be a girl.
|
|{{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. However, this would have little to no effect on the opponent, unless it required solar panels.
|
|{{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 very large 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. Assuming no issues with staying on the wing, there would be more problems to follow. The helicopter, as it spooled up, would begin violently wobbling due to the constantly changing center of gravity before flipping itself, destroying both you and the pilot in a massive fireball.
|
|{{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 indestructi ble 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 who did 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, assuming no air holes were installed.
|-
|''"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. Even if some magical force were employed to keep humanity centered on making the earth a perfect sphere, it would take many years and be almost impossible to do. Because the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and not a sphere as-is, a lot of land would need to be displaced in order to create a perfect sphere. There would need to be somewhere to put all the water in the oceans, which would need to be removed, and a way to move large amounts of land very long distances. Many cities would be buried, such as Amsterdam (average elevation -6.6').
|-
|''"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>
|The Earth would become one big, very explosive science experiment. Stable atoms would become unstable, releasing large amounts of energy all at once. Brain matter would cease to be brain matter, and cells would no longer be cells. This would lead to everything dying at once. At least we wouldn't need to experience it.
|-
|
|'''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>
|Yes, it most certainly would. The sea of Japan would mix with the Pacific ocean now that the wall that separated them is gone. This would cause unpredictable changes to those currents, affecting many life forms who live in that area. Japan, though being small, weighs quite a lot, and the sudden removal of all that weight would cause massive shifts in ocean levels. Depending on the region, some sea levels would rise/fall by up to a foot, causing mass panic for cities that now have a sudden risk of flooding at a moment's notice. Tsunamis would devastate the Korean Peninsula, Hawaii, and the west coast of America.
|
|{{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. Also, the oceans would be turned into saltwater taffy and most life would be destroyed by too much sugar.
|
|{{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}}

what if? articles

2025-09-17T17:42:40Z

Wilh3lm: Punctuation

<noinclude>{{DISPLAYTITLE:''What If?'' chapters}}:''For other instances of this title, see [[What If (disambiguation)]].''<noinclude>
{{incomplete|There are about '''2''' 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|29|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>
|This would normally be impossible. However, with enough people shooting the train, it can happen. This would require about 100,000 people shooting, distributed over 2 kilometers of track, each firing a few dozen rounds once the train comes close enough. This would, eventually, be enough to bring the train to a stop.
|{{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>
| Using the printer, you could make about 200 million dollars per year, depending on the type of printer. This would actually be the perfect sweet spot for you, as it would be enough to make you very, very rich, but not enough to have any effect on the world. The United States [https://www.bep.gov/currency/production-figures/annual-production-reports prints approximately $160 billion per year], so $200 million a year would be nothing more than a drop in the bucket.
| 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 about 200 m/s, which would make your commute very fast indeed. However, the amount of energy required to bike at that speed would cause you to die from overexertion. This might work if you didn't exert any energy, however.
|-
|''"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>
|Strapping C4 to a boomerang does not sound like an effective weapon. The weapon as depicted in the image would have terrible aerodynamics, and would not fly an easily predictable trajectory. C4 is, by itself, an inert substance which would need some form of detonator to actually explode, in which case it would depend upon how you set it up (e.g. timer or inertial trigger) and at what point in its flight this would activate. ''If'' this happened as it returns (or flies past, if thrown reasonably correctly but being unable or unwilling to catch it), it might kill or injure the thrower and/or those nearby. There were many unstated details as to how the proposal would be implemented, as Randall lampshades in his open answer.
|-
|[[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. On the other hand, if you were that close, you were probably inside the star that created the supernova, in which case ''[[#115|Into the Sun]]'' would apply.
|{{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". This would require you to type the 6 key (MNO) 16 times without stopping, in order to type 'nonmono'. With every letter included, typing this word would require pressing the 2, 4, 7, and 8 keys once each, and the 6 key a nice, even 20 times.
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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 its 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 no 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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?}}
|-
| rowspan="3" |[[File:No-Rules NASCAR.png|100px]]
| rowspan="3" |'''{{What If|116|No-Rules NASCAR}}'''
| rowspan="3" |''"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>
| rowspan="3" |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.
| rowspan="3" {{blog|116|2014|10|15}}
| rowspan="3" {{book|2|35}}
|{{book|3|2023|12|19|JcXpCyPc2Xw|What if NASCAR had no rules?}}
|-
|{{book|8|short-video=yes|2025|08|26|eSPcp-tfGbA|How fast could a human accellerate (while staying alive)?}}
|-
|{{book|9|short-video=yes|2025|09|02|rgUfcFAPicY|How fast could a vehicle go around a track - but the racer does not have to survive.}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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. Places where electricity is gotten using a hydroelectric dam may be out of power for a bit, but the flow of water would return in time.
|{{blog|121|2014|12|11}} 14d late)
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|You would need to use a metal or gemstone with a very high heat tolerance. You could possibly use sapphire or some sort of transparent or translucent tungsten, but the clear medium would eventually fog up and prevent you from seeing the lava. The lava would solidify after approximately a minute without some way to continuously heat it.
|{{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>
|If fairies appeared with the first laugh of a ''homo sapiens'', there would be around 100 billion fairies, and they, depending on their size, would probably be considered no more than a common pest. Because of their high population, however, they would probably be considered a major part of the ecosystems where they resided.
|{{blog|123|2015|01|01|7d late}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |[[File:Lunar Swimming.png|100px]]
| rowspan="2" |'''{{What If|124|Lunar Swimming}}'''
| rowspan="2" |''"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>
| rowspan="2" |It would be super-cool, given that lower gravity would increase the size of splashes and the height of jumps.
| rowspan="2" {{blog|124|2015|01|08}}
| rowspan="2" |
|{{book|20|2024|12|24|aIIBBj6KR-Y|What if we put a pool on the moon?}}
|-
|{{book|7|short-video=yes|2025|08|12|mtTbwHzhUiM|Petition to send a swimming pool to 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 humans were on the moon at the time.
|{{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. If you were to drive on the highway for an hour using this method, it would burn 18,635 gallons of gasoline, worth $40,000 to $50,000.
|{{blog|130|2015|02|19}}
|
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
| ''Note: This question was created before ''New Horizons'' passed by Pluto.'' This is extremely unlikely. The ''New Horizons'' probe is quite large, but is considered small for a spacecraft. If it crashed into your car, there would be serious consequences. However, 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|{{book|30|2025|9|9|DiWFXv9N0Vs|What if the Moon were made entirely of electrons?}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|
|'''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}}
|
|-
|
|'''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" |
| 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" |Submarines are, unsurprisingly, very good at being watertight. This would mean that, mostly, air would stay within the submarine for a time. However, a nuclear submarine is able to stay under for so long because it can convert seawater into oxygen. With no seawater, no oxygen is made, which means that eventually they will run out of air. Getting back into the atmosphere would be tricky. Firing all of a submarine's missiles backwards (i.e. towards the ship) with their detonators removed would produce just enough force for the sub to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. At that point, the heat and forces of reentry would rip the submarine apart, similar to the {{w|Space Shuttle Challenger disaster}}.
| 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>
|In theory, this would work. In practice, it wouldn't for a simple reason: Some people have compromised immune systems. These people's bodies can be a safe haven for rhinoviruses, which would mean the common cold, would quickly spread through the population again. The world's food supplies would also be an issue, as people may need to eat foods not designed to be eaten directly (i.e. raw grain). Many systems would shut down as people wouldn't be there to maintain them. Many millions would be stranded in places like Antarctica or the Sahara Desert, which would lead to many deaths. In effect, the scenario would be similar to 'Everybody Jump'.
|
|{{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>
|Somewhat surprisingly,Virgina, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America. Despite it having many major airports, inlcluding most of those serving DC, there are also many major airports which have routes passing over Virginia, such as KATL and KJFK.
|
|{{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>
|As the child is coming from, effectively, two parents with identical DNA, there would be many genetic defects, similar to being inbred. As there is no father to contribute a Y chromosome, the child is guaranteed to be a girl.
|
|{{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. However, this would have little to no effect on the opponent, unless it required solar panels.
|
|{{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 very large 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. Assuming no issues with staying on the wing, there would be more problems to follow. The helicopter, as it spooled up, would begin violently wobbling due to the constantly changing center of gravity before flipping itself, destroying both you and the pilot in a massive fireball.
|
|{{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 indestructi ble 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 who did 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, assuming no air holes were installed.
|-
|''"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. Even if some magical force were employed to keep humanity centered on making the earth a perfect sphere, it would take many years and be almost impossible to do. Because the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and not a sphere as-is, a lot of land would need to be displaced in order to create a perfect sphere. There would need to be somewhere to put all the water in the oceans, which would need to be removed, and a way to move large amounts of land very long distances. Many cities would be buried, such as Amsterdam (average elevation -6.6').
|-
|''"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>
|The Earth would become one big, very explosive science experiment. Stable atoms would become unstable, releasing large amounts of energy all at once. Brain matter would cease to be brain matter, and cells would no longer be cells. This would lead to everything dying at once. At least we wouldn't need to experience it.
|-
|
|'''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>
|Yes, it most certainly would. The sea of Japan would mix with the Pacific ocean now that the wall that separated them is gone. This would cause unpredictable changes to those currents, affecting many life forms who live in that area. Japan, though being small, weighs quite a lot, and the sudden removal of all that weight would cause massive shifts in ocean levels. Depending on the region, some sea levels would rise/fall by up to a foot, causing mass panic for cities that now have a sudden risk of flooding at a moment's notice. Tsunamis would devastate the Korean Peninsula, Hawaii, and the west coast of America.
|
|{{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. Also, the oceans would be turned into saltwater taffy and most life would be destroyed by too much sugar.
|
|{{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}}

what if? articles

2025-09-16T19:37:58Z

Wilh3lm: Added more info about lethal neutrinos

<noinclude>{{DISPLAYTITLE:''What If?'' chapters}}:''For other instances of this title, see [[What If (disambiguation)]].''<noinclude>
{{incomplete|There are about '''2''' 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|29|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>
|This would normally be impossible. However, with enough people shooting the train, it can happen. This would require about 100,000 people shooting, distributed over 2 kilometers of track, each firing a few dozen rounds once the train comes close enough. This would, eventually, be enough to bring the train to a stop.
|{{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>
| Using the printer, you could make about 200 million dollars per year, depending on the type of printer. This would actually be the perfect sweet spot for you, as it would be enough to make you very, very rich, but not enough to have any effect on the world. The United States [https://www.bep.gov/currency/production-figures/annual-production-reports prints approximately $160 billion per year], so $200 million a year would be nothing more than a drop in the bucket.
| 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 about 200 m/s, which would make your commute very fast indeed. However, the amount of energy required to bike at that speed would cause you to die from overexertion. This might work if you didn't exert any energy, however.
|-
|''"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>
|Strapping C4 to a boomerang does not sound like an effective weapon. The weapon as depicted in the image would have terrible aerodynamics, and would not fly an easily predictable trajectory. C4 is, by itself, an inert substance which would need some form of detonator to actually explode, in which case it would depend upon how you set it up (e.g. timer or inertial trigger) and at what point in its flight this would activate. ''If'' this happened as it returns (or flies past, if thrown reasonably correctly but being unable or unwilling to catch it), it might kill or injure the thrower and/or those nearby. There were many unstated details as to how the proposal would be implemented, as Randall lampshades in his open answer.
|-
|[[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. On the other hand, if you were that close, you were probably inside the star that created the supernova, in which case What-If #115 would apply.
|{{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". This would require you to type the 6 key (MNO) 16 times without stopping, in order to type 'nonmono'. With every letter included, typing this word would require pressing the 2, 4, 7, and 8 keys once each, and the 6 key a nice, even 20 times.
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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 its 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 no 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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?}}
|-
| rowspan="3" |[[File:No-Rules NASCAR.png|100px]]
| rowspan="3" |'''{{What If|116|No-Rules NASCAR}}'''
| rowspan="3" |''"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>
| rowspan="3" |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.
| rowspan="3" {{blog|116|2014|10|15}}
| rowspan="3" {{book|2|35}}
|{{book|3|2023|12|19|JcXpCyPc2Xw|What if NASCAR had no rules?}}
|-
|{{book|8|short-video=yes|2025|08|26|eSPcp-tfGbA|How fast could a human accellerate (while staying alive)?}}
|-
|{{book|9|short-video=yes|2025|09|02|rgUfcFAPicY|How fast could a vehicle go around a track - but the racer does not have to survive.}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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. Places where electricity is gotten using a hydroelectric dam may be out of power for a bit, but the flow of water would return in time.
|{{blog|121|2014|12|11}} 14d late)
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|You would need to use a metal or gemstone with a very high heat tolerance. You could possibly use sapphire or some sort of transparent or translucent tungsten, but the clear medium would eventually fog up and prevent you from seeing the lava. The lava would solidify after approximately a minute without some way to continuously heat it.
|{{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>
|If fairies appeared with the first laugh of a ''homo sapiens'', there would be around 100 billion fairies, and they, depending on their size, would probably be considered no more than a common pest. Because of their high population, however, they would probably be considered a major part of the ecosystems where they resided.
|{{blog|123|2015|01|01|7d late}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |[[File:Lunar Swimming.png|100px]]
| rowspan="2" |'''{{What If|124|Lunar Swimming}}'''
| rowspan="2" |''"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>
| rowspan="2" |It would be super-cool, given that lower gravity would increase the size of splashes and the height of jumps.
| rowspan="2" {{blog|124|2015|01|08}}
| rowspan="2" |
|{{book|20|2024|12|24|aIIBBj6KR-Y|What if we put a pool on the moon?}}
|-
|{{book|7|short-video=yes|2025|08|12|mtTbwHzhUiM|Petition to send a swimming pool to 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 humans were on the moon at the time.
|{{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. If you were to drive on the highway for an hour using this method, it would burn 18,635 gallons of gasoline, worth $40,000 to $50,000.
|{{blog|130|2015|02|19}}
|
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
| ''Note: This question was created before ''New Horizons'' passed by Pluto.'' This is extremely unlikely. The ''New Horizons'' probe is quite large, but is considered small for a spacecraft. If it crashed into your car, there would be serious consequencesBut 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|{{book|30|2025|9|9|DiWFXv9N0Vs|What if the Moon were made entirely of electrons?}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|
|'''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}}
|
|-
|
|'''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" |
| 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" |Submarines are, unsurprisingly, very good at being watertight. This would mean that, mostly, air would stay within the submarine for a time. However, a nuclear submarine is able to stay under for so long because it can convert seawater into oxygen. With no seawater, no oxygen is made, which means that eventually they will run out of air. Getting back into the atmosphere would be tricky. Firing all of a submarine's missiles backwards (i.e. towards the ship) with their detonators removed would produce just enough force for the sub to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. At that point, the heat and forces of reentry would rip the submarine apart, similar to the {{w|Space Shuttle Challenger disaster}}.
| 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>
|In theory, this would work. In practice, it wouldn't for a simple reason: Some people have compromised immune systems. These people's bodies can be a safe haven for rhinoviruses, which would mean the common cold, would quickly spread through the population again. The world's food supplies would also be an issue, as people may need to eat foods not designed to be eaten directly (i.e. raw grain). Many systems would shut down as people wouldn't be there to maintain them. Many millions would be stranded in places like Antarctica or the Sahara Desert, which would lead to many deaths. In effect, the scenario would be similar to 'Everybody Jump'.
|
|{{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>
|Somewhat surprisingly,Virgina, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America. Despite it having many major airports, inlcluding most of those serving DC, there are also many major airports which have routes passing over Virginia, such as KATL and KJFK.
|
|{{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>
|As the child is coming from, effectively, two parents with identical DNA, there would be many genetic defects, similar to being inbred. As there is no father to contribute a Y chromosome, the child is guaranteed to be a girl.
|
|{{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. However, this would have little to no effect on the opponent, unless it required solar panels.
|
|{{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 very large 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. Assuming no issues with staying on the wing, there would be more problems to follow. The helicopter, as it spooled up, would begin violently wobbling due to the constantly changing center of gravity before flipping itself, destroying both you and the pilot in a massive fireball.
|
|{{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 indestructi ble 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 who did 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, assuming no air holes were installed.
|-
|''"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. Even if some magical force were employed to keep humanity centered on making the earth a perfect sphere, it would take many years and be almost impossible to do. Because the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and not a sphere as-is, a lot of land would need to be displaced in order to create a perfect sphere. There would need to be somewhere to put all the water in the oceans, which would need to be removed, and a way to move large amounts of land very long distances. Many cities would be buried, such as Amsterdam (average elevation -6.6').
|-
|''"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>
|The Earth would become one big, very explosive science experiment. Stable atoms would become unstable, releasing large amounts of energy all at once. Brain matter would cease to be brain matter, and cells would no longer be cells. This would lead to everything dying at once. At least we wouldn't need to experience it.
|-
|
|'''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>
|Yes, it most certainly would. The sea of Japan would mix with the Pacific ocean now that the wall that separated them is gone. This would cause unpredictable changes to those currents, affecting many life forms who live in that area. Japan, though being small, weighs quite a lot, and the sudden removal of all that weight would cause massive shifts in ocean levels. Depending on the region, some sea levels would rise/fall by up to a foot, causing mass panic for cities that now have a sudden risk of flooding at a moment's notice. Tsunamis would devastate the Korean Peninsula, Hawaii, and the west coast of America.
|
|{{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. Also, the oceans would be turned into saltwater taffy and most life would be destroyed by too much sugar.
|
|{{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}}

what if? articles

2025-09-16T18:33:47Z

Wilh3lm: Corrected amount of money printed, using data from US BEP

<noinclude>{{DISPLAYTITLE:''What If?'' chapters}}:''For other instances of this title, see [[What If (disambiguation)]].''<noinclude>
{{incomplete|There are about '''2''' 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|29|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>
|This would normally be impossible. However, with enough people shooting the train, it can happen. This would require about 100,000 people shooting, distributed over 2 kilometers of track, each firing a few dozen rounds once the train comes close enough. This would, eventually, be enough to bring the train to a stop.
|{{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>
| Using the printer, you could make about 200 million dollars per year, depending on the type of printer. This would actually be the perfect sweet spot for you, as it would be enough to make you very, very rich, but not enough to have any effect on the world. The United States prints approximately $160 billion per year<ref>https://www.bep.gov/currency/production-figures/annual-production-reports</ref>, so $200 million a year would be nothing more than a drop in the bucket.
| 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 about 200 m/s, which would make your commute very fast indeed. However, the amount of energy required to bike at that speed would cause you to die from overexertion. This might work if you didn't exert any energy, however.
|-
|''"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>
|Strapping C4 to a boomerang does not sound like an effective weapon. The weapon as depicted in the image would have terrible aerodynamics, and would not fly an easily predictable trajectory. C4 is, by itself, an inert substance which would need some form of detonator to actually explode, in which case it would depend upon how you set it up (e.g. timer or inertial trigger) and at what point in its flight this would activate. ''If'' this happened as it returns (or flies past, if thrown reasonably correctly but being unable or unwilling to catch it), it might kill or injure the thrower and/or those nearby. There were many unstated details as to how the proposal would be implemented, as Randall lampshades in his open answer.
|-
|[[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". This would require you to type the 6 key (MNO) 16 times without stopping, in order to type 'nonmono'. With every letter included, typing this word would require pressing the 2, 4, 7, and 8 keys once each, and the 6 key a nice, even 20 times.
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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 its 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 no 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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?}}
|-
| rowspan="3" |[[File:No-Rules NASCAR.png|100px]]
| rowspan="3" |'''{{What If|116|No-Rules NASCAR}}'''
| rowspan="3" |''"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>
| rowspan="3" |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.
| rowspan="3" {{blog|116|2014|10|15}}
| rowspan="3" {{book|2|35}}
|{{book|3|2023|12|19|JcXpCyPc2Xw|What if NASCAR had no rules?}}
|-
|{{book|8|short-video=yes|2025|08|26|eSPcp-tfGbA|How fast could a human accellerate (while staying alive)?}}
|-
|{{book|9|short-video=yes|2025|09|02|rgUfcFAPicY|How fast could a vehicle go around a track - but the racer does not have to survive.}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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. Places where electricity is gotten using a hydroelectric dam may be out of power for a bit, but the flow of water would return in time.
|{{blog|121|2014|12|11}} 14d late)
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|You would need to use a metal or gemstone with a very high heat tolerance. You could possibly use sapphire or some sort of transparent or translucent tungsten, but the clear medium would eventually fog up and prevent you from seeing the lava. The lava would solidify after approximately a minute without some way to continuously heat it.
|{{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>
|If fairies appeared with the first laugh of a ''homo sapiens'', there would be around 100 billion fairies, and they, depending on their size, would probably be considered no more than a common pest. Because of their high population, however, they would probably be considered a major part of the ecosystems where they resided.
|{{blog|123|2015|01|01|7d late}}
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |[[File:Lunar Swimming.png|100px]]
| rowspan="2" |'''{{What If|124|Lunar Swimming}}'''
| rowspan="2" |''"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>
| rowspan="2" |It would be super-cool, given that lower gravity would increase the size of splashes and the height of jumps.
| rowspan="2" {{blog|124|2015|01|08}}
| rowspan="2" |
|{{book|20|2024|12|24|aIIBBj6KR-Y|What if we put a pool on the moon?}}
|-
|{{book|7|short-video=yes|2025|08|12|mtTbwHzhUiM|Petition to send a swimming pool to 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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 humans were on the moon at the time.
|{{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. If you were to drive on the highway for an hour using this method, it would burn 18,635 gallons of gasoline, worth $40,000 to $50,000.
|{{blog|130|2015|02|19}}
|
|{{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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
| ''Note: This question was created before ''New Horizons'' passed by Pluto.'' This is extremely unlikely. The ''New Horizons'' probe is quite large, but is considered small for a spacecraft. If it crashed into your car, there would be serious consequencesBut 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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|{{book|30|2025|9|9|DiWFXv9N0Vs|What if the Moon were made entirely of electrons?}}
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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>
|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}}
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|[[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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|-
|''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}}
|
|
|-
|
|'''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}}
|
|-
|
|'''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" |
| 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" |Submarines are, unsurprisingly, very good at being watertight. This would mean that, mostly, air would stay within the submarine for a time. However, a nuclear submarine is able to stay under for so long because it can convert seawater into oxygen. With no seawater, no oxygen is made, which means that eventually they will run out of air. Getting back into the atmosphere would be tricky. Firing all of a submarine's missiles backwards (i.e. towards the ship) with their detonators removed would produce just enough force for the sub to deorbit and reenter the atmosphere. At that point, the heat and forces of reentry would rip the submarine apart, similar to the {{w|Space Shuttle Challenger disaster}}.
| 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>
|In theory, this would work. In practice, it wouldn't for a simple reason: Some people have compromised immune systems. These people's bodies can be a safe haven for rhinoviruses, which would mean the common cold, would quickly spread through the population again. The world's food supplies would also be an issue, as people may need to eat foods not designed to be eaten directly (i.e. raw grain). Many systems would shut down as people wouldn't be there to maintain them. Many millions would be stranded in places like Antarctica or the Sahara Desert, which would lead to many deaths. In effect, the scenario would be similar to 'Everybody Jump'.
|
|{{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>
|Somewhat surprisingly,Virgina, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America. Despite it having many major airports, inlcluding most of those serving DC, there are also many major airports which have routes passing over Virginia, such as KATL and KJFK.
|
|{{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>
|As the child is coming from, effectively, two parents with identical DNA, there would be many genetic defects, similar to being inbred. As there is no father to contribute a Y chromosome, the child is guaranteed to be a girl.
|
|{{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. However, this would have little to no effect on the opponent, unless it required solar panels.
|
|{{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 very large 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. Assuming no issues with staying on the wing, there would be more problems to follow. The helicopter, as it spooled up, would begin violently wobbling due to the constantly changing center of gravity before flipping itself, destroying both you and the pilot in a massive fireball.
|
|{{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 indestructi ble 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 who did 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, assuming no air holes were installed.
|-
|''"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. Even if some magical force were employed to keep humanity centered on making the earth a perfect sphere, it would take many years and be almost impossible to do. Because the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and not a sphere as-is, a lot of land would need to be displaced in order to create a perfect sphere. There would need to be somewhere to put all the water in the oceans, which would need to be removed, and a way to move large amounts of land very long distances. Many cities would be buried, such as Amsterdam (average elevation -6.6').
|-
|''"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>
|The Earth would become one big, very explosive science experiment. Stable atoms would become unstable, releasing large amounts of energy all at once. Brain matter would cease to be brain matter, and cells would no longer be cells. This would lead to everything dying at once. At least we wouldn't need to experience it.
|-
|
|'''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>
|Yes, it most certainly would. The sea of Japan would mix with the Pacific ocean now that the wall that separated them is gone. This would cause unpredictable changes to those currents, affecting many life forms who live in that area. Japan, though being small, weighs quite a lot, and the sudden removal of all that weight would cause massive shifts in ocean levels. Depending on the region, some sea levels would rise/fall by up to a foot, causing mass panic for cities that now have a sudden risk of flooding at a moment's notice. Tsunamis would devastate the Korean Peninsula, Hawaii, and the west coast of America.
|
|{{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. Also, the oceans would be turned into saltwater taffy and most life would be destroyed by too much sugar.
|
|{{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}}

1106: ADD

2025-09-15T02:06:48Z

Wilh3lm: Clarified wording about ADD/ADHD

{{comic
| number = 1106
| date = September 10, 2012
| title = ADD
| image = add.png
| titletext = 20 balloons float away while I'm busy permanently tying one to a tree to deal with it for good. Unfortunately, that one balloon was 'land a rocket on the moon in Kerbal Space Program.'
}}

==Explanation==
This comic appears to be a visual representation of the thought process of someone with {{w|Attention Deficit Disorder}} or ADD (Which is now considered a type of {{w|ADHD}} where symptoms are primarily inattentive). Various of Cueball's thoughts or tasks that he must do are represented by balloons which are rising out of his reach. He holds the "math problem" balloon and grabs the "call mom" balloon, but notices "check oven" is rising out of his reach. He abandons the two balloons he holds to dive and grab the "check oven" balloon. Of course, this allows the other two to rise, presumably out of Cueball's reach, as the pullout reveals a plethora of other balloons already rising too high, some of which describe actions required to live, like balloons marked "breathe" or "drink water". This visualizes how ADHD makes it incredibly difficult to multi-task, prioritize, and continually work on one task.

Cueball quickly drops one task to take on another, only to jump to yet another task before that one is done; showing how the person with ADHD feels; that while they are focusing on one task, 20 others are getting away from them. The title text further reinforces this, noting that while committing to actually complete one task (represented by tying a balloon to a tree), 20 others floated away. The task he chose to complete is (as stereotypical for someone with ADHD), a task that results in no necessary accomplishment — the task is to land a rocket on the moon (Mun or alternitively Minmus) in ''{{w|Kerbal Space Program}}'', a PC-based spaceflight simulator and video game. Additional humor comes from the fact that landing a rocket on the moon in Kerbal Space Program would require a lot of repetition through trial-and-error, making a long and involved task during which many other important tasks might be ignored normally.

In addition, the title "add" may also have a secondary meaning that Cueball feels that balloons/tasks are always being added, which does indeed feel like the case as his field of vision expands, resulting in an overwhelming experience.

Here is a list of all of the balloons with explanations for each
:*Parking Meter - He may be parked in a public parking area, where paying for temporary parking is common. He may need to refill the meter he is parked at or move to a new spot.
:*Taxes - Failing to pay taxes results in many different punishments, which he would almost certainly want to avoid.
:*Buy Soap - He is either out or almost out of soap and needs to buy more.
:*Phone Call - There are multiple interpretations to this. His phone may be actively ringing, or he is expecting a call. Alternatively, he may have to make a call to someone.
:*Relax - With all of his responsibilities, he needs to make time to relax.
:*Inbox - His e-mail inbox is likely filling up, and he desires to read or delete unread e-mails(see [[2389: Unread]]).
:*Clean - His house is constantly getting dirty, and he needs to clean it regularly.
:*Beat Game - There is a game he wants to beat, and he wants to make progress.
:*Feed Cat - He needs to take care of his cat every day and, like humans, cats require food.
:*Drink Water - He needs to not overstress, and drinking water helps with focus (and keeping him alive{{citation needed}}).
:*Call Mom - He probably hasn't called his mom in a while and wants to catch up with her.
:*Math Problem - Given that he is no longer in school ([[557: Students]]), he probably is not thinking about math homework, rather a phenomenon he was curious about and is using math to solve.
:*Send Card - He would like to send a card to a friend or family member who is far away from him, either living somewhere else or on vacation.
:*Check Oven - There is something in the oven and he needs to check it to make sure the food inside doesn't over- or undercook, and that his house does not burn down. Alternatively, he may be out, and is worrying about whether he turned his oven off.
:*Engine Light - The "check engine" light in a car generally refers to a non-specific engine issue which needs to be checked. This light in his car may be on, and he needs to take it to a mechanic.
:*Read - He may have chosen recently to read more, as seen in [[2005: Attention Span]].
:*Breathe - This is likely sarcastic, as people do not tend to forget to breathe{{citation needed}}.

==Transcript==

:[Cueball is holding a balloon with "Math Problem" written on it. He is running to grab a balloon labeled "Call Mom" that is floating away.]

:[Cueball is now holding both balloons, but looks over his shoulder and sees a balloon that reads "Check Oven".]
:Cueball: ''!!''

:[Cueball releases the balloons he had been holding and runs for the third.]

:[Cueball jumps for the "Check Oven" balloon and snatches it just before it is out of reach.]
:''LEAP''
:Cueball: Hah!

:[Full width panel showing 16 balloons floating away and one Cueball is holding. The balloons are different sizes and colors, and are floating at different heights. They are labeled as follows from left to right. Listed as * Label - color - height order (1 is the lowest balloon).
:*Parking Meter - blue - 11
:*Taxes - green - 3
:*Buy Soap - red - 12
:*Phone Call - green - 7
:*Relax - yellow - 6
:*Inbox - blue - 9
:*Clean - red - 13
:*Beat Game - green - 4
:*Feed Cat - yellow - 8
:*Drink Water - blue - 15
:*Call Mom - red - 2
:*Math Problem - green - 3
:*Send Card - red - 14
:*Check Oven (Cueball is holding this one still) - yellow - 1
:*Engine Light - yellow - 10
:*Read - blue - 16
:*Breathe - blue - 5

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Psychology]]
[[Category:Kerbal Space Program]]
[[Category:Rockets]]
[[Category:Taxes]]

1105: License Plate

2025-07-08T14:12:50Z

Wilh3lm: Replaced Reddit link with non-tracking version

{{comic
| number = 1105
| date = September 7, 2012
| title = License Plate
| image = license_plate.png
| titletext = The next day: 'What? Six bank robberies!? But I just vandalized the library!' 'Nice try. They saw your plate with all the 1's and I's.' 'That's impossible! I've been with my car the whole ti-- ... wait. Ok, wow, that was clever of her.'
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] has obtained a new {{w|Vehicle registration plate|license plate}}. The license plate number one receives is often the next in sequence, available at the time and place of registration. However, in many localities, for an additional fee one can select their own "personalized" license plate number (called a {{w|vanity plate}}), subject to certain criteria, and availability.

In this comic, Cueball has elected to purchase the personalized license plate number "1I1-III1" or "one, letter I, one, dash, letter I, letter I, letter I and one". He believes the ambiguity between the letter I and the digit 1 on the plate will make it very difficult for anyone to correctly identify his vehicle if he commits a crime. Some localities have more distinct "1" and "I" characters in their license plate font than others, but often when a crime is committed witnesses only have a short time to look at the plate, and will then be confused.

In principle his idea did work, because when the police end up interviewing a witness of a crime scene in the end of the comic, he can only say that "The thief's license plate was all "1"s or something". What Cueball does not count on is that there are no other license plates made up entirely of the letter I and the digit 1. Thus, when witnesses report a vehicle with a license plate of either/or I's and 1's, the police know exactly who the perpetrator is.

Given the fact that the police still haven't caught him even though they have his address written on a {{w|Post-it note}} in their car, it seems like they had already thought of the same idea, and when Cueball registered such a license plate they put up the address in the police cars, as they expected him to begin committing crimes. He may already have committed more than one, but they would soon stop him before it turned into a crime spree. (An alternative interpretation is that his crime spree has so far consisted of minor offenses, so they haven't arrested him, just issued him warnings or citations -- although one would expect him to stop once it became obvious they were onto him.)

Some individuals in [https://imgur.com/jaiblHk New Hampshire] and [https://redd.it/1btqmy1 Kansas] have obtained this license plate.

The title text appears to be a conversation between Cueball and the police the next day when they show up at his address. It turns out that the police suspect Cueball of six bank robberies. Cueball responds that "all" he did was vandalize the library. But the police disregard this as a ''nice try'' to avoid being arrested because witnesses saw a license plate with all 1's and I's was used. Cueball does not understand this because he was with his car the entire time since he got the license plate. And just as he says this, he has an epiphany and states ''wait. OK, wow that was clever of her''. It is thus clear that he suspects that [[Megan]] of having made a false license plate also with only a combination of I's and 1's. And then she has robbed six banks knowing that the police would be sure to suspect Cueball, who was so foolish to show his criminal intent by registering such a plate in the first place.

Knowing that the police will assume the car is his, she has thus {{w|frameup|framed}} him. Hopefully for Cueball, he can prove he was not involved in the robberies, but if the police assumed that he was the one that committed the crimes, they may not have taken so much care in collecting evidence the first day of the crimes. This will have given Megan time to run away with all the money, as no one was looking for her. So she may well have left the country with no one looking for a woman. This will make it more difficult for Cueball to avoid the blame.

It is clear that Megan would not be so stupid as to register another plate, because then they would know that there could be more than one criminal. Also she would not have had time to get it, if the crime spree began soon after Cueball showed the plate to her. But if the fake plate makes people tell about the 1s and Is then the police would not ask further and discover that the plate might have looked fake.

Note the yellow police line seems to say ''Police strip do not cross'', where ''Police line do not cross'' seems to be the only sentence used normally (unless it is ''crime scene do not cross'', but that also does not fit). (Of course, this could be a pun about the fact that this occurrence is a comic ''strip''.)

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is walking in from the right holding a license plate up with both hands for an off-panel Megan to see. It is possible to see the plate, but here it looks like all I's (or 1's).]
:Cueball: Check out my personalized license plate!
:Megan (off-panel): <nowiki>"1I1-III1"?</nowiki>
:Cueball: It's perfect!
:Plate: III-IIII

:[In this frame-less panel Megan is sitting in an office chair holding and looking at the plate while Cueball stand next to her rubbing his hands together in front of him.]
:Cueball: No one will be able to correctly record my plate number!
:Cueball: I can commit any crime I want!
:Megan: Sounds foolproof.

:[A man with hair only around his neg and glasses holds out a hand towards a bald male police officer with a black peaked cap with white emblem on the front. The police man interviews their witness holding a notepad and a pen. Another likewise caped female officer is Ponytail who walks to the left arm pointing left. There is a line of yellow police tape behind them with text partially obscured by the characters. At the top left of the panel there is a small frame with a caption:]
:Soon:
:Witness: The thief's license plate was all "1"s or something.
:Police officer: Oh. ''That'' guy.
:Ponytail: His address is on a post-it in the squad car.
:Yellow strip (text not visible in brackets): Poli[ce strip] do not cross [poli]ce stri[p do not] cross.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]

Talk:791: Leaving

2024-12-27T01:39:26Z

Wilh3lm:

RIP, dearly beloved wife who died in a freak accident with a supermarket shelf while trying to buy spray cleaner. '''[[User:Davidy22|<u>{{Color|#707|David}}<font color=#070 size=3>y</font></u><font color=#508 size=4>²²</font>]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 02:18, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
:She is survived by lonely dude staring at cat vomit. [[User:Cflare|Cflare]] ([[User talk:Cflare|talk]]) 20:58, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
::While - after getting the bad news - he raced down the flight of stairs, tripping, falling, rolling, and breaking his neck against the wall at the end of the stairs, the cat was cleaning itself. When it heard the impact downstairs it jumped startled, went over into the patch of sun, laid down, and said, "Meow!" It survived them both... {{unsigned ip|162.158.90.192}}
:Just added a description of the title text, but wanteed to make sure that it was satisfactory before removing the incomplete tag. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.232|108.162.216.232]] 21:47, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
... Does the blob of vomit have a catface? {{unsigned ip|162.158.111.235}}

Conversely, this makes me want to start saying really weird things to people before they leave. —[[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 21:38, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

"I will never forget the last thing I said to her. Maybe if I hadn't asked for that, she wouldn't have gotten into a fight with a murderer over the last bottle of spray cleaner."

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: antiophobia ''n.'' a fear you sometimes experience while leaving a loved one, wondering if this will turn out to be the last time you’ll ever see them, and whatever slapdash good-bye you toss their way might have to serve as your final farewell.

764: One Two

2024-10-29T00:32:45Z

Wilh3lm: Corrected toki pona info

{{comic
| number = 764
| date = July 9, 2010
| title = One Two
| image = one two.png
| titletext = Cue letters from anthropology majors complaining that this view of numerolinguistic development perpetuates a widespread myth. They get to write letters like that because when you're not getting a real science degree you have a lot of free time. Zing!
}}

==Explanation==
The comic parodies {{w|Sesame Street}}, an American children's TV show. The Count is a character in Sesame Street who teaches counting to viewers. The Count usually laughs after counting numbers, an innocent version of the sinister laugh that is a stereotype of old Hollywood horror films.

In the book {{w|One Two Three ... Infinity}}, the writer describes African tribes that only have words for numbers up to three and their inability to distinguish or comprehend larger numbers. The {{w|Pirahã language}} of Brazil was originally thought to only have numerical terms for one, two, and many, although it is now thought these words are relative terms like "few" rather than absolute terms like "one." Similarly, see {{w|Edmund Blackadder}} try to teach {{tvtropes|BumblingSidekick|Baldrick}} [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u99LjJ32qOo to count beans]. Also worth mentioning, some {{w|Constructed language|conlangs}} (Most notably {{w|Toki Pona}} whose two primary systems are "1, 2, many" and "1, 2, 5, 20, 100" [https://sona.pona.la/wiki/Number_systems]), only have very limited number choice, while [https://sirterrypratchett.tumblr.com/post/159070715962/everyone-knows-trolls-cant-even-count-up-to/amp the Discworld's trolls] are less limited than their contemporaries imagine and may even be linguistically related to whoever is behind the comic's Count.

In the title text Randall predicts that anthropology majors will write to complain that this view of primitive tribes is a myth no longer held true by today's anthropologists. He makes a jab at them saying they would have time to write letters to complain about things because they don't have to spend time doing real science and thus real research.

==Transcript==
:[A television set with The Count from 'Sesame Street'.]
:The Count: One! Ah ah ah... Two! Ah ah ah... ...Many! ah ah ah...
:Primitive cultures develop Sesame Street.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Language]]

Talk:3001: Temperature Scales

2024-10-22T01:17:08Z

Wilh3lm:

Shouldn't Rankine say "0ºR is set to absolute zero"? {{unsigned ip|172.70.230.29|22:58, 21 October 2024 (UTC)}}

yo,i thought comic 300 was anticlimactic so randall would make this one COOL but sadly not
Same. Hope he does something cool for 3072.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.225|172.69.134.225]] 23:44, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

really he didn't do anything special for this either? come ON randall if you don't do something cool for comic 3072 i will <b> come to your house personally and yell at you [[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 23:57, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
</b>
<br>
What's random about Fahrenheit? (Answer: nothing.) 0F is the freezing point of brine, 100F (or 98.7) is the human body temperature. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.65|172.68.54.65]] 00:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
:What concentration of brine? (And which specific salt... No, not NaCl, as you might presume but NH<sub>4</sub>Cl!)
:And body temperature varies a lot ('typically' 36.5–37.5°C or 97.7–99.5°F, though even this range is thought to be too small), across genders, individuals, time of day ''and'' which orifices/surfaces you try to measure it from. (Originally, it was set so that '''90°F''' was to be the 'best guess' of human body temperature. It gradually changed, including via various {{w|Human body temperature#Historical understanding|compounded misunderstandings}} so that the best you can say is that 100°F is arbitrarily ''slightly above'' most afebrile human body temperature measurements.)
:Celsius might be a bit off (arguments about triple-point or STP freezing, etc), but it still has far more physical logic to it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.160.188|172.70.160.188]] 01:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I'm most disappointed that {{w|Delisle scale}} was not represented... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.160.188|172.70.160.188]] 01:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess I was wrong in my comment on the last comic. sigh. -[[User:Psychoticpotato|P?sych??otic?pot??at???o ]] ([[User talk:Psychoticpotato|talk]]) 01:16, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

It's actually spelled {{w|Wedgwood scale}}, not Wedgewood. [[User:Wilh3lm|Wilh3lm]] ([[User talk:Wilh3lm|talk]]) 01:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Talk:1638: Backslashes

2024-04-16T14:19:31Z

Wilh3lm: My most gibberish bash commands

It should be noted that this also occurs in almost every programming language where "\" is the escape character. i.e.
print("Hello")
> Hello
print("\"Hello\"")
> "Hello"
print("\\Hello\\")
> \Hello\
Oh, and by the way, isn't this the third comic to mention "Ba'al, the Soul Eater"? Maybe we should start a category. (Others are [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1246:_Pale_Blue_Dot 1246] (title text) and [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1419:_On_the_Phone 1419].)
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.29|173.245.54.29]] 06:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:Did that before seeing you comment, so yes I agree. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
::But Davidy did not so the category has been deleted again. I have just cleaned up after my mess ;-) so there are no left over links to the dead category... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 22:27, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
:::I noticed theres no character for Ba'al the soul eater on the character page. Is it just me or does someone else think that Ba'al should have a spot given that he(she??they??it??) has been in more comics than a lot of the minor characters? Just a thought. --[[User:Apollo11|Apollo11]] ([[User talk:Apollo11|talk]]) 10:42, 11 March 2024 (CST)

The last entry may also be an oblique reference to the infinitely-expandable recursive acronym "GOD = GOD Over Djinn" mentioned in Richard Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach.[[User:Taibhse|Taibhse]] ([[User talk:Taibhse|talk]]) 16:42, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

;I don't think the regex is invalid
''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below''

According to <tt>man grep</tt> you need to specify the <tt>-E</tt> option to use extended regex; without it unescaped parentheses are not interpreted, so they don't need to match.

My - very wild - guess is that it was the command he used to find the line with the most special characters, but I am not confident enough to edit the article (if someone can confirm?). {{unsigned ip|141.101.66.83}}

If it was supposed to do that, it doesn't work. Running it on my bash history matches no lines, and I have lots of special characters in there [[Special:Contributions/197.234.242.243|197.234.242.243]] 07:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Explain it to me like I'm dumb. What is this comic going on about? I think the explanation needs more examples like that hello, above, because that's almost understandable. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.231|198.41.238.231]] 07:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:I agree. But I cannot help either.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

This is the third time Randall has mentioned Ba'al the Soul Eater xD [[User:International Space Station|International Space Station]] ([[User talk:International Space Station|talk]]) 08:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:Yes, that was already mentioned a few hours before you comment, see the first comment. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

After passing the regex through bash, you get <nowiki>\\[[(].*\\[\])][^)\]]*$</nowiki> That is, the literal character \, followed by [ or (, followed by any number of any characters, followed by \, followed by ] or ), followed by any number of characters that aren't ) or ], until the end of the line. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.44|108.162.216.44]] 08:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:It sounds like you know what you are talking about. Anyone who can explain it good enough for the explanation, and correct the explanation of the title text if it is wrong to say that it would not work. I have added this as the reason for incomplete. But maybe also examples are needed for people with not programming skills/knowledge. We also enjoy xkcd ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:I'm thinking that it's grepping for regular expressions that contain regular expressions. A regex containing <nowiki>"\[...\]"</nowiki> or <nowiki>"$...$"</nowiki> will match other regular expressions, as almost all non-trivial regexes use either character lists or groups. Now why out.txt is likely to contain not just regexes but rather regexes that search for regexes I have no idea - perhaps he had actually put too many backslashes in and he was trying to grep just for <nowiki>"[...]"</nowiki> or <nowiki>"(...)"</nowiki> (i.e. to locate probable regular expressions in out.txt, or anything else in parenthesis for that matter such as countless kinds of code/markup)? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.185|162.158.152.185]] 17:35, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

For fun:
cat ~/.bash_history | xargs -d "\n" -n 1 -I {} bash -c 'chars="$(echo "$1" | grep -o "[a-zA-Z0-9 ]" | wc -l)"; echo "$(( 100 - $(( $chars * 100 / ${#1} )) )) $1"' _ {} | sort -nrk 1 | less

Outputs your bash_history, ordered by relative gibberishness. This was copied by hand from desktop to mobile, might well have a few typos.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.208|162.158.90.208]] 10:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
::Besides the fact that -d is a GNU extension to xargs (so it won't exist on OS X, FreeBSD, or anything else but Linux), this is a weird way to calculate gibberishness; I'm guessing functions, variable substitutions, .. and ./, etc. are going to swamp the more unreadable grep and the like. Plus, I think you need a uniq in there somewhere; otherwise, aren't the first few pages are all going to be filled with the 78 copies of "422 cd .." that tied for most gibberishy in my last 500 commands? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.82|162.158.255.82]] 22:51, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

The problem in the comic is not with regexes per se but with situations when the entered text or expression passes through several interpreters, like bash -> grep/sed/awk, or program text -> external shell command. In such cases, you have to escape backslashes for each program in the sequence, and it gets worse if you have 'real' backslashes in the final text that you're processing with the utilities (Windows' file paths, for example). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_toothpick_syndrome.
Feel free to lift this to the explanation page, since I'm not good at longer and more careful explanations than this one.
Also, gotta notice that Feedly stripped paired backslashes in the title text (probably passed it through some 'interpreter' embedded in its scripts). [[User:Aasasd|Aasasd]] ([[User talk:Aasasd|talk]]) 10:13, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

:A funny comment about the MediaWiki software, which is even worse than this comic: <code><nowiki><Nikerabbit> I looked the code for rlike and didn't find where it does this. Can you point me to it? <vvv> $pattern = preg_replace( '!(\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\)*(\\\\\\\\)?/!', '$1\\/', $pattern ); <Nikerabbit> I thought that was ascii art :)</nowiki></code> ([https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P110$275 source]) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.215|162.158.91.215]] 10:18, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Interestingly, I first looked at this on my phone (using <strike>Chrome</strike> Feedly for Android), but the title text did not display correctly in that the backslashes didn't appear (which was a little confusing!). In Chrome on my Windows desktop, the title text appeared correctly. [[User:Jdluk|Jdluk]] ([[User talk:Jdluk|talk]]) 11:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

enough with the harry potter fancruft. "elder" is a [[Wiktionary:elder|perfectly good word]]. just because you came across it for the first time in harry potter means you are *typing carefully* the kind of person that likes harry potter. unless this is a ''harry potter reference'' wiki, of course. in which case i'll prepare a complete list of every word that appears both here and there and put a list on every page. oh, right, no i won't. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.161|141.101.106.161]] 12:41, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Remember that "Elder" is used in a lot of RPGs to denote high level enemies or items. I feel like that's what Randall's referring to here, more than Harry Potter or the general sense of the term "Elder." {{unsigned ip|108.162.245.156}}
: +1. Between the fact that harry potter (, ages, or tribes) aren't mentioned anywhere else in the text and the comic being a progressive list, I see this being the most likely explanation. Plus the metion of demons, which are easily the most* common usage of the modifier.
:: (*) or second most, after "elder gods", who are, let's face it, also demons. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.125|162.158.180.125]] 14:41, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
::: I'm pretty sure that "Elder backslash" is in reference to the "Elder gods" of Lovecraft. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.35|173.245.54.35]] 16:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:::: Note also that it's called 'The Elder Wand' not as an intensifier, as in this comic and the other examples given, but because it is literally ''made from the wood of an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambucus_nigra Elder Tree]'' I'm pretty sure it's not an intentional reference. -Graptor [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.23|173.245.54.23]] 19:29, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
::::: If it's an intentional reference to anything, it's to Lovecraft (or to something similar). I suspect the Elder Wand was an intentional pun by Rowling, however. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.137|162.158.180.137]] 04:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
::::: Since no-one else seemed to want to, I just restructured that paragraph to make it more clear that if anything Harry Potter was inspired by the older examples, not the other way around. Expanded the LOTR reference and added DnD. If anything Randall is likely to be referencing either the Lovecraft references, or the concept of Elder in general. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.64.173|141.101.64.173]] 11:50, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Attempting to add to the discussion: This regex is not necessarily invalid or incomprehensible. (''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below.'') It looks like he was looking for a line with a regular expression or definitely some code. You just have to work your way through the backslashes. Although it might be invalid depending on the precise rules. He has some unescaped closing brackets and closing parenthesis. If these have to always be escaped then the regex is invalid. If however you don't have to escape a closing bracket with no opening bracket, then things are fine. I'm not familiar enough with grep's regex parser to know how it handles that edge case. Presuming those unescaped paren and brackets are fine, his regex searches for:

1. A backslash

2. An opening bracket

3. An opening parenthesis (this is a character set but the only character in it is an opening paren)

4. Any number of any characters

5. A backslash

6. An opening bracket

7. A closing bracket

8. A closing paren (presuming it doesn't have to be escaped when there is no opening paren)

9. A closing bracket (presuming it doesn't have to be escaped when there is no opening bracket)

10. Any number of character that are not a closing paren or closing bracket

11. The end of the line

Basically he is looking for a string that looks like:

\[(AAAAA\[])]AAAAA

Looks like a regex to me, and it looks like this regex also doesn't escape closing paren/brackets that don't have an opening paren/bracket, so I'm guessing that he knows what he is doing and his regex is fine. Maybe he was playing regex golf?
[[User:Cmancone|Cmancone]] ([[User talk:Cmancone|talk]])cmancone

Ninjaed by Cmancone, above. I agree with that result in every respect except for the start-of-string being potentially anything, but putting my own analysis in here because it took long enough to type!

Depth-of-backslash might depend upon depth of utility. In Perl, <nowiki>''</nowiki>-quotes (among others) treat everything within as literal whilst ""-quotes (and variations) interpolates any special characters, variables, etc that you put in it. (Search for "Quote and Quote-like operators" in your favourite PerlDocs source.) '\sss' is a literal backslash followed by three 's' characters , while "\sss" is the special \s escape (a whitespace) followed by two further regular characters. You might need to define the first when you need to use it to provide a not-previously-escaped \s so that it might be escaped within another context. ''Or'' you define it as "\\sss" (escaped-\) the first time, as equivalent to '\sss'. But '\\sss' would be a literal that, later, could be interpreted as an escaped-\ to the input of a further context where the \s finally becomes 'match a whitespace'.

'\\\sss' would be literal, whilst "\\\sss" could be equivalent to '\ ss' (literal backslash, literal space, rest of characters). Then, instead of literal '\\sss', for some purpose, you could interpolate two escaped-backslashes "\\\\sss"... and so on.

Meanwhile I ''think'', just from visual inspection, "'''\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$'''" in Bash should obey the interpolation rules quite nicely. The first two characters must be a literal backslash (from the escaped-backslash) and a literal open-square bracket (again, escaped). The next open-square and the close-square shortly after depict a character class that contains only an open-parenthesis, and could have been written as '''$'''.

The '''.*''' indicates zero-or-more (the asterix) instances of ''any'' character (the dot). There is then a literal backslash (from the next '''\\''' duo) and a literal open-square (the '''\[''' pair) and close-square (the '''\]''' pair). The ''')''' is literal and does not need escaping (as a parenthesis group had not yet been opened), as is the next ''']''' character. To be sure, I would have written these two as the pair escapes '''$\]''', but horses for courses...

Then there's another character class (the next '''[''' and the final ''']''') required zero-or-more times (the asterix) to use up all the rest of the characters to the end (the ending '''$''' character). As there was no '''^''' character (a.k.a. caret/circumflex/etc) at the start, the match isn't bothered about what unmatched characters appear before the original '''\('''. This character class, however, starts with a '''^''' which in this context (the very first character of a character-class definition, not somewhere where an entire match-string starts) indicates negation of the following selection, so it is all characters ''but'' those specified, which is the regular close-parenthesis and (because it needs to be contained within a '''[]''' pair) the escaped close-square.

So, all matching strings must start with '''\[(''', i.e. the backslash, open-square and open-paren. They can continue with ''any'' further text, before then having a '''\[])]''', i.e. backslash, open-and-close-squares and close-paren, close-square. After this, the match continues just as long as there are no non-closing square/classic brackets before the ending.

The minimum matching literal string would be '''\[(\[])]''' with longer variants being of the form '''X\[(Y\[])]Z''' where X and Y can be replaced by anything (or be absent), and Z can be replaced by anything (or absent!) ''so long as it doesn't contain possibly relevent close-brackets!''. The latter stipulation is likely because the Y (and X) ''is'' allowed to contain these characters, and for some reason you don't want to confuse the test by finding some other '''\[])]''' segment within the X/Y-zones. (In this context, it doesn't actually seem to matter too much. But it might do in ways I haven't spotted or just be a hang-over from a prior permutation of the test.)

The "grep -o" function is working on the output to the file being '''cat'''ed (there are alternate ways of doing this that some people might prefer), to only accept the lines in the file that match the '''X\[(Y\[])]Z''' string. These lines would appear to be lines of out.txt (a fairly generic name that reveals little to its original purpose) that are well-formed for some other purpose. A safety-escaped (i.e. not to be taken literally by any simple parser) '''[]'''-grouping containing a '''()'''-group (''not'' escaped, perhaps reasonably in context) containing potentially random text followed by an empty '''[]''' pair (again, safety-escaped). Depending on the source, the empty '''[]'''-pair could mean many things, as with the other layers. And the lines may end with any further text.

The "out.txt" file might be the result of a prior Grep (string-search function) quote possibly scanning code for lines of particular importance by another pattern and dumping the results to out.txt for further perusal. And then Randall finds the need to dig further into the first result by extracting just those already selected that all have the '''X\[(Y\[])Z]'''-ish pattern to them.

But I could be wrong, and that's way too long for an official explanation.
(Perhaps just something like the penultimate paragraph, if we're not entirely mistaken?) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 14:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

The regex is supposed to be looking for (''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below.''):
\\\ backslash
[[(] [ or (
.* any character (repeated 0 or more times)
space space
\\\ backslash
[[\])] probably meant to match either [, ] or ). However, it's not correct, it instead matches the literal characters [)]
[^)\]]* probably meant to match any character that isn't ) or ], repeated. Instead it means one character that's not a ), and then a ] zero or more times
$ end of string

The first problem is that you're not supposed to escape ] in a [...], and it also has to be first in the grouping (unless negated with a ^) It should be [][)] or something similar.

The second problem is the same. The last bit should be [^])]*$ and not [^)\]]*$. [[User:Khris|Khris]] ([[User talk:Khris|talk]]) 14:24, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I was reading through the regex, if using grep you run into an error with an unmatched ")". Removing this gets a string such as \[(AAAAA\[]]AAAAA$ http://regexr.com/3cng8 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.214.230|162.158.214.230]] 14:42, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

The regex relies on several special cases (*surprise*). (''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below.'')
First: bash double-quote expansion (see [https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Double-Quotes.html#Double-Quotes]). Perhaps non-intuitively, \\\ followed by a character that \ doesn't escape is an escaped backslash followed by a literal backslash, effectively the same as \\\\ followed by that same non-escaped character. After bash double-quote expansion, this results in:

\\[[(].*\\[\])][^)\]]*$

grep interprets this as:

# any leading non-\ characters
# literal backslash
# character class containing [ and (
# zero or more *any* characters
# another literal backslash
# yet another literal backslash, via a character class containing only a backslash. Note this does not contain an escaped ], as it might appear at first glance. See [http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/html_node/Character-Classes-and-Bracket-Expressions.html]
# literal )
# literal ]
# character class of anything except ), \
# zero or more ]
# end of line

Matching examples:
*echo 'asdf\[asdfasdf\\)]a]]]]]]' | grep -o "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$"
*echo '$\$]P' | grep -o "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$"

----
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.34|108.162.216.34]] 16:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)rb

One key thing to understand is that \ is not a special character when it's in a bracket expression - you can't escape characters in bracket expressions. So [^)\] simply means any character other then ) or \. Also, ( and ) are just regular characters unless they are escaped in basic regular expressions - extended regular expressions reverse this rule. {{unsigned|Kalfalfa}}

I don't know about the regular expression in the title text, but I think the explanation is incorrect in that it starts off talking about regular expressions. Escaping backslashes is an issue with strings in programming in general. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.46|173.245.54.46]] 17:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
----
I suspect that Randall may have used the regexp in the title text to *find* malformed regular expressions in a file (out.txt) that he (or someone) had previously filled with output from some error message (or collection of error messages, or at least the output of something where a regular expression had been expected to work but had not worked as expected). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.252.227|162.158.252.227]] 19:06, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

You can use metacharacters in character classes, the only metacharacters in a character class that must be escaped are the closing square bracket (]), the backslash (\), the hyphen, and the carat and hyphen (^) if they are the first listed item in the set. The closing square bracket requires escaping because including it without would signal the end of the set otherwise, which then means the backslash must also be escaped. The hyphen must be escaped because, without it, it signals a range (unless it is listed first, then it is literal without escaping). Carat when listed first because otherwise it signals a negative set.<br>
Therefore, the end of the title text regex matches a backslash followed by either ] or ), which is then followed by any number (including none) of characters so long as they are not ] nor ) which means the whole regex can match "<span style="color:#040;">\[something\] more</span>" or "<span style="color:#040;">$something$more</span>" or "<span style="color:#040;">\[something\) more</span>" as well as "<span style="color:#040;">\[something\]</span>". — [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.117|162.158.255.117]] 01:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll add that I use an ''almost identical'' regex in my mail server for matching mailing-list subject lines which often have a format of "<span style="color:#040;">[Listname] normal subject line</span>" which made it pretty recognizable to me. — [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.117|162.158.255.117]] 01:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

;Example of a match
''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below''

First, the shell will do some escaping substitution. So, in order to easily read it, let's see what grep really receives:

$ echo "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$"
\\[[(].*\\[\])][^)\]]*$

Let's break it out:

* <code>\\</code> matches a <code>\</code>
* <code>[[(]</code> matches either a <code>[</code> or a <code>(</code>
* <code>.*</code> matches any series of characters until the next match
* <code>\\</code> matches a <code>\</code>
* <code>[\]</code> matches a <code>\</code>
* <code>)]</code> matches <code>)]</code>
* <code>[^)\]</code> matches anything but <code>)</code> or <code>\</code>
* <code>]*</code> matches any number of <code>]</code> (including none)
* <code>$</code> matches the end of the string

So the string '''\[aaa\]\\)]a]]]]]]''' matches! {{unsigned ip|108.162.228.167}}

...Maybe it's meant to search for all Game Grumps transcripts which make mention of the "[http://gamegrumps.wikia.com/wiki/Grep Grep]" gag? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.55|108.162.216.55]] 15:53, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

...Wow, guys, and here I was thinking he wanted to put the cat out, when the cat didn't want to go out.... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.158|108.162.249.158]] 04:03, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

What I think is that Randall probably ''intended'' the regex to match "backslash, opening round or square bracket, anything, backslash, closing round or square bracket, anything that doesn't involve closing round or square brackets", since (unlike most other possibilities given) that actually looks like something one might want to search for. Whether it ''does'', in fact, match that or something else (or indeed anything at all) is another question entirely. (For all we know, it didn't work, Randall figured out it didn't, and wrote the correct thing the next line over.)<br>Unrelatedly: this comic (and the backslash proliferation in general) reminded me of the Telnet Song. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.137|162.158.180.137]] 04:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

That explanation is wrong: <code>[\]</code> does not match a literal backslash; it would still need to be escaped inside the brackets. That backslash escapes the next character, a ], so the group doesn't end there. The actual expression there is <code>[\])]</code>, a character group containing an escaped ] and a ). Just like the first part. It is most likely intended to catch content surrounded by [ ] or ( ). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.15|141.101.104.15]] 13:43, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
:To clarify: this makes the expression catch anything that starts with a block surrounded by escaped round or square brackets. So stuff like '''$Hello world$more text here''' but with either round or square brackets (or combinations, since there's nothing enforcing they have to match. I'd have made it an OR case with two groups with matching brackets, personally) -[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.15|141.101.104.15]] 13:51, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
:You're making the same mistake Randall did: while many (most?) regex dialects use \ as escape inside a character class, this is not true for grep's default syntax. I've expanded that interpretation in my comment below, however the analysis by 108.162.228.167 is a correct explanation of how this expression is ''actually'' interpreted by grep. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.75.185|141.101.75.185]] 15:42, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Your analysis is thorough and correct, however it is unlikely this is what the regex was intended to accomplish. (''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below.'') More likely, Randall is more accustomed to other regex dialects such as Perl(-compatible) regex where a backslash ''does'' work to escape special characters inside a character class. Under that assumption the regex (with some whitespace inserted for readability) would break up as:
* <code>\\ [[(]</code> an escaped opening bracket or paren
* <code>.*</code> anything
* <code>\\ [\])]</code> an escaped closing bracket or paren
* <code>[^)\]]* $</code> no closing bracket or paren occurring on the remainder of the line
Although the final condition is still a bit obscure, this still makes a ''lot'' more sense. Unfortunately it also crushes Randall's hope the regex worked as intended, since this simply isn't how the expression is parsed with grep's default syntax (which is why I always use <code>grep -P</code>). --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.75.185|141.101.75.185]] 15:34, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
----
Did anyone notice the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_%28Unix%29#Useless_use_of_cat Useless Use of Cat]? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.101|141.101.106.101]] 19:36, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

:Yup - I hereby award Randall with the Useless Use of Cat Award of the day. Cherish it.
:[[User:Zedn00|Zedn00]] ([[User talk:Zedn00|talk]]) 03:51, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Zedn00
----
;Changed Regex
At some point before 2016-02-09 18:00 +0100, Randall has modified the bash command in the title text!

Original command:
cat out.txt | grep -o "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$"
New command:
cat out.txt | grep -o "[[(].*[])][^)]]*$"

For the old command, 108.162.228.167's and 108.162.216.34's explanations above were correct.

The new command matches:
[[(] either a '[' or a '('
.* an unbounded and possibly empty sequence of arbitrary characters
[])] either a ']' or a ')'
[^)] any character except for a ')'
]* an unbounded and possibly empty sequence of ']'
$ anchored at end of line

It now e.g. matches '''123[abc.<>)x]]]]]''':
$ echo "123[abc.<>)x]]]]]" | tee /dev/stderr | grep -o "[[(].*[])][^)]]*$"

This makes hardly more sense than the original command.
--[[User:Markus|Markus]] ([[User talk:Markus|talk]]) 17:38, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
:Randal may have been sincere about finding it in his history and wondering if it worked. I think he probably meant
cat out.txt | grep -o "[[(].*[])][^])]*$"

:which breaks down as:
[[(] either a '[' or a '('
.* an unbounded and possibly empty sequence of arbitrary characters
[])] either a ']' or a ')'
[^])]* any number of any characters except for a ')' or ']'
$ anchored at end of line

:This matches any line that has a '[' or '(' followed by a ')' or ']', matching from the first '[' or '(' to the end of the line. The final part of the regex, '[^])]*$', is not really necessary here, but it is a common pattern to follow a character pattern with an opposite character pattern to be sure the first character pattern matches the last instance of a repeating character, so he might have added it out of habit, which would explain also why he got it wrong (since he just followed '[blah]' with '[^blah]' which in this special case doesn't work because 'blah' has a special character in it: ']').
:[[User:Jgro|Concerned Netizen]] ([[User talk:Jgro|talk]]) 02:23, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
----
Funny enough, I'm literally looking at some other dev's code right now that actually implements an eight backslash regex sequence, with just the comment "backslash". I'm still scratching my head over what they were trying to accomplish or even communicate with this. [[User:Domino|Domino]] ([[User talk:Domino|talk]]) 21:45, 16 August 2016 (UTC)domino
----
I believe the regex is a reference to xkcd 1313 (Regex Golf)
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.90|108.162.221.90]] 16:08, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
----
I had to use a backslash that escaped the screen today. I have a Discord bot written with Node.js, and my "friends" demanded I add a shruggie output [despite Discord having that already]. So, I now have a string that looks like <code>'¯\\\\\\_(ツ)\_/¯'</code>.{{unsigned|Papayaman1000}}
----
Regarding the change to the title text (with all backslashes being removed) it appears that this may not be a deliberate edit, as other comics (e.g. 1277) have also had all backslashes disappear from the title text. It appears that one of the tools Randall is using may be 'solving' accidentally escaped characters by doing a sed 's/\\//g' [[User:Sqek|Sqek]] ([[User talk:Sqek|talk]]) 13:18, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

<code>sed -r "s/^(.*)$/^\1$/" wordlist.txt</code> What was I cooking... There are also cursed grep commands for wordle such as <code>grep -iwE '[qwiafghjkzxvbn]{5}' wordlist.txt | grep -i '.[^ia][^n][^ai][^n]' | grep -i [ain] </code> [[User:Wilh3lm|Wilh3lm]] ([[User talk:Wilh3lm|talk]]) 14:19, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

439: Thinking Ahead

2024-02-17T03:19:29Z

Wilh3lm: defnestration

{{comic
| number = 439
| date = June 20, 2008
| title = Thinking Ahead
| image = thinking ahead.png
| titletext = Did he just go crazy and jump out the window?
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] spots a woman while shopping. He thinks she looks cute - probably because she looks a lot like his girlfriend [[Megan]]. She is picking out produce, and quotes a line of dialogue from ''{{w|Firefly (TV series)|Firefly}}'' originally said by {{w|River Tam}} ([[Summer Glau]]): "My food is problematic." Cueball ([[Randall Munroe|Randall]]) who is a big fan of ''Firefly'', notices this, and wants to flirt with her. But then Cueball's internal monologue kicks in and he starts panicking, wondering how he'd deal with starting a relationship with this woman when he's moving in the fall, as well as how things are going to work out with Megan, should things work out with this girl. He panics, needs a way out, and defenestrates himself. In real life, jumping out the window would be a very bad idea. See [https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/AccidentSearch.search?acc_keyword=%22Broken%20Glass%22&keyword_list=on/ this] for more details.

The title text refers to yet another ''Firefly'' line from the episode "{{w|The Train Job}}," this one said by {{w|List of Firefly characters#Hoban_Washburne|Hoban "Wash" Washburne}} ({{w|Alan Tudyk}}): "Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?"

==Transcript==
:[My Problem: Thinking Ahead.]
:Cueball: She's cute.
:Woman: This food is problematic.
:Cueball: Oh man, she's quoting Firefly.
:Cueball: It's the perfect opening. But wait. I'm moving in the fall. If we hit it off, how will I deal with that?
:Cueball: I don't want to ask her to derail her plans. And with things unresolved with Megan, can I really commit enough to make that kind of decision?
:Cueball: Oh God.
:Cueball: Gotta get out.
:Cueball: The window.
:[Cueball jumping through a window]
:'''<big>CRASH</big>'''

==Trivia==
Randall mentioned the name Megan in his original transcript for this comic.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Firefly]]

191: Lojban

2023-12-14T02:26:29Z

Wilh3lm: Added description of {xekce}

{{comic
| number = 191
| date = December 1, 2006
| title = Lojban
| image = lojban.png
| titletext = zo'o ta jitfa .i .e'o xu do pendo mi
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Lojban}} is a constructed language designed to be logical, unambiguous, and culturally neutral — similar to the better known artificial language {{w|Esperanto}}. The authors originally designed it as an experiment, but a few people have picked it up and tried to learn it. However, anyone actually willing to learn Lojban is someone [[Black Hat]] would rather avoid. Alternately, only people who speak Lojban, who compose an admittedly tiny proportion of the general population, could benefit from the logic of the language, making the benefits of Lojban mostly pointless to most people.

Clicking on the original comic brings you to [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lojban_translated.png a Lojban translation of the comic]. The Lojban version literally translates to something like:
:Cueball: Hypothetically, you becoming an expert in Lojban implies things you say would completely be an unambiguous meaning and logical.
:Black Hat: Agreed, but would be talking to the people subgroup that is an expert in Lojban.
If reading pedantically, a few mistakes can be identified:
* "Hypothetically" is applied to the entire first sentence rather than the subclause "you are an expert in Lojban".
* The word "pavysmu" is used in a way that indicates the things being said ''are'' an unambiguous meaning, rather than having a single meaning.
* The subgroup of people is specified as being an expert in Lojban, not the people in it.

The title text is also written in Lojban. It translates roughly as: "That was a joke. Really. Wanna be friends with me?" Since Lojban aims to be completely unambiguous, idiomatic structures like sarcasm and humor have associated particles - when a joke is made, it must be ''explicitly'' marked as such or else it's incorrect. Most languages rely on intonation expressing this, but Lojban does not, leading to the strange practice here of specifically pointing out that a joke was made.

A more literal translation gives: "Humorously that false. Please is-it-true-that you friend me?"

The lojban word {xekce} (shortened from {xekcedipasopa}, or XKCD-191), is based on this comic, referring to a particular Lojbanic cultural phenomenon in which discussions in or about Lojban tend to quickly turn into arguing over grammar, semantics, or usage.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Black Hat are having a conversation.]
:[English version:]
:Cueball: If you learned to speak Lojban, your communication would be completely unambiguous and logical.
:Black Hat: Yeah, but it would all be with the kind of people who learn Lojban.

:[Lojban version:]
:Cueball: da'i ganai do crebi'o la lojban gi le se cusku be do cu mulno pavysmu je logji
:Black Hat: .i .ie ku'i cusku fi le prenu klesi poi certu la lojban

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Language]]

Talk:1982: Evangelism

2023-12-13T14:54:18Z

Wilh3lm:

I want to know where vi vs. emacs fits on this spectrum.
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.53|108.162.238.53]] 15:12, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
:About 1 meter (or 17 bananas) to the right. omitted to keep the comic readable.--[[User:Kiwimrdee|Kiwimrdee]] ([[User talk:Kiwimrdee|talk]]) 22:06, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
:I use vi by virtue of the fact that it once opened on my computer and I don't know how to close it [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.76|108.162.219.76]] 15:20, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

When you say people open bananas from the other side, which side is the proper side and which is the other? I open from the proper side, not the side with the stem (just like the monkeys taught us) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.76|108.162.219.76]] 15:20, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
:Why are you being taught by monkeys? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.28|108.162.219.28]] 22:43, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
:Since the stem makes for a natural handle to peel from, it's the intuitive side from which to peel. Which makes it the "proper" side for that part of the discussion here. :) At one point I saw a thing say "Just check out videos of monkeys eating bananas", only videos I found showed monkeys mashing the banana out of the peel, LOL! (for reference though, I've been opening bananas from the non-stem end for months, it feels like the peel breaks apart easier). [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:36, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
:Also, by opening it away from the stem you can hold the banana from the stem while eating it [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.76|108.162.219.76]] 12:16, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
::Also (the selling point for me) is that you end up with a banana peel that looks like ones in cartoons, with the stem in the middle. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:06, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

:::Also you can remove the not tasty bit first and dump it into the bin. Plus you don't have to finish by seeing the black bit. Eat from the other way round and you will start good but end bad. I personally want it start bad but end good.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.253.35|172.68.253.35]] 12:49, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

The title text seems to be a reference to the big-endian/little-endian war in "Gulliver's Travels".[[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:04, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

And 3 miles to the right of the banana conflict is "iPhone vs. Android" [[User:Smperron|Smperron]] ([[User talk:Smperron|talk]]) 17:07, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
:What about tabs vs spaces? It somehow feels like a lot of popular and appropriate conflicts and opinions were left out. Another example of high evangelism intensity is people who eat kiwis whole. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.58|162.158.134.58]] 09:00, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I ''LOVE'' the "Pun Intended" tag. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.28|108.162.219.28]] 22:43, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I suggest we use the metric system, and keep Fahrenheit, but modify it so "0" is room temperature. So a positive temp is usually warm, and vice versa. [[User:Linker|Linker]] ([[User talk:Linker|talk]]) 02:11, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

The day this comic was posted was Banana day (https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/banana-day/). I noticed because a popular radio station in my area has a recurring segment talking about "What day" it is, obviously they also talked about the "other end" factoid yesterday. I'm not sure who came up with this "day", but daysoftheyear.com may have been an inspiration for the comic. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.151|162.158.111.151]]

The following paragraph was in the article:
“Due to the fact that these issues have a more trivial impact on life, evangelists may become more frustrated when people refuse to adopt these ‘simple’ changes and therefore argue more strongly for them.”
I removed it because an increase in frustration from unsuccessful convincement does not follow from the triviality of the issues. However, I note this here because the writer (or someone else) may be able to extract a more coherent thought from this. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.26.71|172.68.26.71]] 16:15, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

'''The CAPTCHA system for this page (and presumably others) is broken. If I'm not logged in it says reCAPTCHA V1 IS SHUTDOWN" and to tells someone about it...which is what I'm doing right now. Weirdly (or perhaps not!), typing "reCAPTCHA v1 IS SHUTDOWN" into the text entry box works just fine!''' [[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.179|172.69.70.179]] 18:24, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
: Any text at all will work, as it turns out! But you do have to type in something.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.220|108.162.237.220]] 13:40, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
::And ''that'' is why they are upgrading the wiki. [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 13:36, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm sceptical that people actually aggressively promote their ideas in this order, which the comic explanation takes at face value. I want citations, and I want the number of TV station dedicated to promoting each belief taken into account. I say only National Geographic has the banana thing. Thnks for the reCAPTCHA tip. I think it's not broken but closed. Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@excite.com [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.49|162.158.154.49]] 00:52, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
:It has the ring of truth to me, and I've actually done the door to door proselytizing thing. People are more likely to push friends to adopt metric conversion or weird sock tricks to others than to invite them to come to church. You mention dedicated TV stations. Those are just that: dedicated stations where the evangelism is the only thing on them. Compare to the number of you-tube channels that have at one time or another promoted metric over imperial. Your note is true in a few ways. A lot more MONEY gets put into religious evangelizing. That's not quite the same thing as "intensity", which is pretty hard to define in the first place. Also, as the scale moves from left to right it does intentionally get sillier.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.220|108.162.237.220]] 13:38, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm greatly amused by the fact that I tried opening bananas from the other end several months ago, have been doing it ever since (it actually opens easier, the bonds in the peel are far weaker down there, like it's waiting for it), yet I've told almost nobody about it. LOL! Then I got irritated at the Fahrenheit vs. Celsius thing. :) F allows smaller measurements without decimals? I grew up with Celsius, and I've never seen decimals except in scientific context. If I hear a summer day is 23, 24, 25, 26 Celsius, it's all about the same, mid-20s is as precise as anybody needs to know. If I hear it's 24 and it's actually 25, I won't even know. 1 degree is plenty of precision. Honestly, this whole idea of F being based on how things feel just seems horribly vague and imprecise. Celsius having 0 be the freezing temperature of water and 100 being the boiling temperature just feels scientific. Nice solid basis. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:31, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
: Oh, sure, play the reasonable non-fanatic. Leftist! According to the strip anyway. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.220|108.162.216.220]] 05:22, 20 April 2018 (UTC) Gene Wirchenko genew@telus.net
:: But he is sooo right (not left ;-). Come one now US, start using the same system as the rest of us. And to those from the UK start driving on the RIGHT side of the road! as well as also using the metric system in daily life, not just in principle (I had a pint, a mile down the road, sitting on a four feet stool) :p --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:15, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
:::I think most of Britain is just fine with resisting the cultural imperialist demands that we do things the way they do on the continent, actually. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.186|108.162.219.186]] 14:18, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Arguing that people should buy all one type of sock is a no-brainer. It's far cheaper and easier. It saves a HUGE amount of time! Everyone should do it. But telling people that isn't evangelism. It's like arguing that iPhones suck, the Kia Sol is ugly or the dress is blue. It's just common sense, and anyone who disagrees can just suck it, and spend all their time folding socks. [[User:Roguetech|Roguetech]] ([[User talk:Roguetech|talk]]) 12:36, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

;The sock thing isn't about color

The whole sock subsection is wrong or at least doesn't match the "one kind of sock" people I've seen in the wild.
:Perhaps I am an outlier, but for me it is totally about the colour. Never having to wonder if your socks match is one less thing to worry about. For those not ready for a Steve Jobs/one outfit wardrobe, the sock is a easy starting point.--[[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.21|198.41.238.21]] 23:48, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
:There are four kinds of people in this world (usually it's two, but sock choice is unusually complex).

# People who buy any old sock and wear them until they develop holes or massive stains
# People who have an obscene variety of novelty "fun socks" and are constantly losing and replacing them
# People who have found their One True Sock, and won't buy anywhere else.
# People who have not found their One True Sock, they just want to never think about socks again, they would be happy to wear any two socks even if they do not match, but society demands matchy-ness so buying only one sort of sock makes everyone happy.--[[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.21|198.41.238.21]] 23:48, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

:Randall's talking about group 3. It's based on manufacturer or sometimes generic material, not color. I don't know who's that worried about time lost to matching sock colors, but I wouldn't trust them with sharp instruments. The One True Sock is some unreal combination of durable, comfortable, breathable, and warm. It's offered in at least a few colors, one pair costs as much as a whole pack of generic gym socks, and apparently, it will change your life.

Examples: https://gear.lifehacker.com/these-are-your-five-favorite-everyday-mens-socks-1785365259
https://www.powder.com/gear/the-all-american-sock/
https://www.runnersworld.com/man-i-just-love-this/why-i-only-wear-swiftwick-socks

--[[Special:Contributions/172.69.198.10|172.69.198.10]] 05:57, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

:I'd say the people Randall is talking about are Group 1 people who converted to Group 3. At least, Group 1 people who feel "Well, I should make sure they at least MATCH", and are tired of trying to match socks everytime. I especially think so because it specifies throwing out their old socks. :) They're so worn they're disposible anyway, right? :) That they then find one good sock that's effective but also CHEAP, so that it isn't ridiculous to do this and buy a bunch at once. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:03, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

:The one-sock policy doesn't work, though. You have to wash the socks. That makes them fade. So the two you have worn are now a slightly different shade than the others. Over time some will get more faded than others - random selection, or maybe the ones nearer the front of the drawer are more likely to be picked, and socks being put into the drawer are more likely to be at the front. Depends on the person. But the socks end up mismatched..

:The best method I have found for having matched socks is, when you bring new socks back from the shop, stitch a random number between 10 and 99 under the toes. You can get random numbers from www.random.org. Then when the socks are washed, you do a bucket sort. Socks can easily be laid out on your bed or table, low numbers to the left, high to the right. Pairs automatically end up close together and are easily identified from the number. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.38.66|162.158.38.66]] 09:03, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

;Randall forgot

Randall forgot the people from comic 1070
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.58|172.68.174.58]] 16:51, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

What if you want to keep US units but modify them with metric/SI prefixes (so instead of the mile we'd have the approximately equivalent measure of 5 kilofeet?) 16:24, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

"[T]he other end [of the banana]" is a relative description. Which end is the "other" one is objectively ambiguous. Subjectively, for every reader who has any preference of opening bananas from either end, people of the "other" faction are most evangelic.
The explanation here is neutral, though it suggests the "But the little bit of banana at the small end is gross" faction (opening from the stem end) to be larger, without providing a source. But I think this relativity of the term "other" should be mentioned in the explanation! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.98.79|172.70.98.79]] 01:37, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Surprised GNU/Linux users aren't on the list (as one myself) [[User:Wilh3lm|Wilh3lm]] ([[User talk:Wilh3lm|talk]]) 14:54, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Talk:956: Sharing

2023-12-11T15:13:35Z

Wilh3lm:

- What can we learn from this? -
I've learned that DRM does not work (Thank you Mr. XKCD for reminding us). As with Creative Commons used by Mr. XKCD each idea should be shared as freely as possible, if it is thought out well and proves helpful to others, we will reward the author of such a great idea with riches beyond their wildest dreams (such as through Movie and Marketing rights owned by madam J.K. Rowling to got our children to read again). - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 13:55, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

What is it about the digital medium that makes people feel that the hard work of others should be available to them for free? We all agree that it is wrong to steal a (physical) book from a bookstore. However, now that the tablet has been invented, authors should give away their hard work for free and write on a volunteer basis as a public service? Certainly there are problems to be resolved when Apple and Amazon are profiting disproportionately from digital sales (as compared to authors and artists), however exploitation of artists by publishers is not a new phenomenon and was never an issue for the hacker set until entertainment went digital and they had access to free stuff. There are those on-line who think that the internet should offer-up everything for free but this attitude forgets that there is a cost to creating art and if that price is not paid, far fewer art will be created.. JB. [[Special:Contributions/74.213.186.41|74.213.186.41]] 12:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
:You <i>cannot</i> compare digital copies with physical goods, they are two completely different things! "there is a cost to creating art and if that price is not paid, far fewer art will be created"; That is just so wrong I don't know where to start with a rebuttal. So you are saying the only reason people create is in order to get paid? That is complete nonsense! Humans have created art for millennia without expecting to get paid for it. You are just exhibiting a massive sense of self-entitlement. <i>Copyright</i> is what is stifling art and creativity. Copyright has engendered that sense of self-entitlement you are showing here. Not one single work has entered the public domain in the last thirty years! How is that encouraging creativity? [[User:The Cat Lady|-- The Cat Lady]] ([[User talk:The Cat Lady|talk]]) 12:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

To JB.: I think the real problem here is not the question weather or not you have to pay something in the first place, but the fact that even if you bought an e-book you are forced to read it with the Kindle. It's not like stealing a book, it's like wanting to put it on another bookshelf, read it in another room or with a new set of glasses. If you own a printed copy you can carry it around, take it on vacation, copy your favorite page and hang it on the wall, resell it at a garage sale or yes, lend it to a friend. Here the tree is prevented from doing so by DRM, even though it owns the book. (note that it says "lending is not enabled" not "copying")
Like in comic #488 which is about the disadvantages of legally buying digital music, it shows that often with these kind of digital media you have not the same possibilities and rights you are used to from "real" books and CDs, but actually less.
[[Special:Contributions/84.137.246.233|84.137.246.233]] 13:27, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

A question: Who is Randall referring to by naming "Mike" in the fifth panel? I thought it alluded to Mike the sentient super computer from Robert Heinlein's ''The Moon is a Harsh Mistress'', but I'm curious as to other interpretations. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.214.83|108.162.214.83]] 09:26, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
:I'm assuming it is some kid they know called 'Mike', but perhaps my powers of deduction aren't as fearsome as I think. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.223|108.162.219.223]] 23:17, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

A tree with a USB port? Maybe we should mention [http://deaddrops.com/ dead drops] somewhere? Wow, and I just found this: [http://deadtreedrop.derhess.de/index_en.html Dead Tree Drop], I don't know if it's inspired by xkcd, but it's an awesome idea :D [[User:Klamann|Klamann]] ([[User talk:Klamann|talk]]) 12:42, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

I can see what the strip is trying to do, but [http://www.teleread.com/drm/xkcd-giving-tree-strip-misses-drm-point/ the comparison to the original book really kind of misses the point]. The tree in Silverstein's book gave ''of itself'' to the kid. Unless the tree is also Shel Silverstein, that book doesn't belong to it to give ''or'' lend. (And what's more, the book was not even ''available'' for Kindle until Feb 18, 2014, two and a half years after the strip was posted!) —[[User:Robotech|Robotech]] ([[User talk:Robotech|talk]]) 03:27, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

:If you'll pardon the pun, I think that by taking this strip so literally you are missing the forest for the trees. [[User:Orazor|Orazor]] ([[User talk:Orazor|talk]]) 07:22, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems like this "Mike" is from Well 2. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.14|108.162.216.14]] 20:09, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

the piracy tree [[Special:Contributions/188.114.99.41|188.114.99.41]] 17:26, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

: You wouldn't download a tree! [[User:Wilh3lm|Wilh3lm]] ([[User talk:Wilh3lm|talk]]) 15:13, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2249: I Love the 20s

2023-12-09T22:44:23Z

Wilh3lm:

in gif diehard is a Christmas movie. There is no right or wrong answer.
But is White Hat right or wrong? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.197|162.158.91.197]] 19:00, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
:Both. It's the only way to settle this. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.63|173.245.54.63]] 19:13, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
::I think that he is right, but it’s like asking if diehard is a Christmas movie. There is no right or wrong answer.
:::Indeed, famed D.J. and space journalist [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZVOSZqth70 Scott Manley says it's a new decade in C but not in FORTRAN]. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.189.241|172.68.189.241]] 19:37, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
::::You mean it's already 21th century for FORTRAN? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:33, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
::::But what decade is it in the {{w|Delisle scale}}? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.250|141.101.98.250]] 20:35, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
I'm fairly certain Ponytail contradicts herself in panel 5. Arguing that decades are not cardinally numbered is arguing that the decade starts in 2021 (ordinal numbering.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.34|162.158.126.34]] 21:20, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
:She doesn't: you're assuming there are only two options, but that's not the case. Decades (in the common "20s, 30s, 40s" form) are not technically numbered at all: they're named, it's just that those names are based on numbers.
:It's still a sequence, like names or dictionary entries being grouped into "As, Bs, Cs" and so on, though. (Is there a specific name for this type of sequence? If so, I don't know it.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.144|141.101.107.144]] 23:03, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
::She (more likely Randall's slip of the pen) is still wrong: what she means is that they aren't ''ordinally'' numbered, which is the reason the other guy is wrong. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.179|162.158.158.179]] 08:23, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Having had this conversation on WhatsApp, I have settled on an ingenious solution that works for me (on being told that "0" had not been invented in the year between -1 and +1") and explains why decades start with "10, 20...": As usually nowadays, the first decade was the Betaversion and so only ran from 1-9... {{unsigned ip|188.114.103.5|07:29, 2 January 2020 (UTC)}}
:Nobody really recognised the possibility of having/not having 0AD until c.525AD, anyway. (Sitting betwixt the nominal start of what became in our zero in 5<sup>th</sup>C and its eventual formalising in 7<sup>th</sup>C, over in India/etc.) If you ask me (and you aren't doing, I know!) I think they probably were envisaging an early version of 1s' Compliment, but knew it would be silly to have two separate numbers for the year ±0 and so fudged it entirely the other way. ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.9|162.158.158.9]] 11:37, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Every year is a new decade. Just some of them overlap. The 203rd decade was from 2021 to 2030, while the '20s will run from 1920 to 1929. Both are legitimate decades. So id 1994-2003; it just doesn't have a convenient name to refer to it by. Heck, you don't even need a new year. 1981-12-03 to 1991-12-02 is the first decade of my life :) So if you want to celebrate the start of a new decade, you should celebrate ''every single day''. [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 10:48, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
:By that logic, the 203rd decade started 203 planck lengths (or other smaller time units) after the big bang. Or was it 202 planck lenghts after? However I agree, that decades start and end all the time. The question is just, what day does the decade "the 20s" start. I'd say it started on January 1, 2020. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 11:23, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

There is an interesting theory that CULTURALLY, a new decade doesn't really start until year 2 or year 3 of said decade. So, what we traditionally envision as "the 80s" actually was typical for ca. 1983-1992, what we think of as "the 90s" actually happened between 1993 and 2002, and so on. It makes a lot of sense if you think of it (and if you listen to music or look at pictures of the time); mullets were still a thing in 1991, just as carrot pants were in 1981 and psychedelic music was in 1971. (It also works for centuries, but with a longer timespan, about 15 years. 1910 or 1911 feels a lot more 19th century than 20th century. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna was held, which ended the European Wars of the 18th century and laid the foundation for the nation states typical of the 19th century, and for a period of relative peace that enabled the Industrial Revolution. And so on.)--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.233|162.158.158.233]] 12:00, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
:I'd argue that this is just randomness. There is no reason, any trends should align to the way the years are set up. Of course noone says "hey, it's first January 2020, let's start a new style of dressing and listen to new music." But neither do they in 2022. However e.g. carrot pants were MOST popular, and on their peak of popularity in the 70s, and psychadelic music in the 60s, even though trends linger and resurface long after all the time. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 12:54, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
::Well, I'd already planned to use exclusive and entirely 2020s' slang and fashion from yesterday onwards. After a few false starts because nobody knew what I was vocing about, I'm now starting it ween and only going full-barbecue as I get past the prime snick of my voc, in empthy my viewclan viz my deltas and merj my vocstyel, all charged for the dec fronting up! Ten-four, me hearties? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.40|141.101.98.40]] 16:20, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
: Except the 19th century started in 1789; cf. the long nineteenth century. I had never heard of a 1815 start for the nineteenth century before. The nineteenth century is 1789-1914, and the twentieth century started in 1914 and ended in 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union. Looking at just American history, the nineteenth century obviously starts in 1776 and ends at the start or end of the Civil War, 1860ish. It's all arbitrary lines.--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 02:35, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
::Do you have any source or examples from actual historians, using a definition of centuries based on events instead of 100-year periods following each other? Eras or Ages might be debatable and dependent on the spirit of a given time, events, rulers, etc. but I have never heard about centuries being defined that way. The 19th Century started either in 1800 or 1801 and lasted until 1899/1900. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:07, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
::: Cf [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century The Long Nineteenth Century].--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 09:16, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
:::: Thanks. Interesting to read. I was not aware that this is a thing. However the wikipedia article explicitely calls "the long nineteenth century" a period, never a century (There is no sentence such as "the long nineteenth century is a century that [...]"). So I'd still say the 19th century started in 1800/1801, while the "long 19th century" started in 1750/1789. The Wikipedia article on {{w| century}} seems also to take centurys as literal 100 year periods: "A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages."--[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 09:50, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

In the decades under discussion, VH1 and MTV were competing channels, not parent company - child company. (And MTV came first.) It's much more relevant to the explanation that VH1 was a music channel on cable TV than to explain who owns what now, three decades later. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.159|172.69.63.159]] 15:59, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I find it surprising that Randall didn't reference ISO-8601 by way of Wikipedia, such as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero#ISO_8601 in the Year Zero article], to make the argument that the first 10 years ran from 0-9 as "the standard". Though I suppose it is more entertaining/broadly targeted to reference pop. culture sources when labeling pop. culture trends. [[User:SensorSmith|SensorSmith]] ([[User talk:SensorSmith|talk]]) 16:12, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Well I might be stepping into a minefield by saying this, but obviously both CNN and FOX had dedicated articles reporting this issue and, as expected, have slightly different stances on the answer. I wonder if Randall is aware of this.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/21/us/when-does-the-decade-end-begin-trnd/index.html
https://www.foxnews.com/us/does-2020-start-a-new-decade-or-not-everyone-has-an-opinion

I really get a feeling that there's an extra joke or nod somewhere in the title text that's not covered - anyone spent a little more time on that yet? or maybe have a little more? Despite the feeling, nothing is occurring to me :-( [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 14:31, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

== Rewrite ==

I did a significant rewrite which captures most of what had been said, but tidies up and clarifies some points. I also removed some information that I felt wasn't relevant (eg. the trivia about Jesus' birth - while true and interesting, it isn't actually relevant to the comic or the explanation) - feel free to add anything back that you think should still be included for completeness.

Can I just say, though, that I am not a fan of this rambling style of recapping the comic blow-by-blow while explaining it? It seems to be a common style here but it makes the explanation ''significantly'' more difficult to follow. Here is an example of what I mean:

<blockquote>"At this point Megan stops their heated argument claiming she can resolve this. She then states that MC Hammer's song "U Can't Touch This", released in 1990, was featured in a 1990s-themed television show (I Love the '90s) instead of its 1980s-themed counterpart. Ponytail then claims that this settles the discussion. And White Hat throws in the towel stating that he accepts VH1's authority and lets Ponytail win."</blockquote>

Recapitulating the comic can sometimes be useful to give context to the explanation, but it gets difficult to follow when the text starts jumping back-and-forth between explaining things and simply stating things that are happening in the comic. In my rewrite, I have attempted to give a short recap at the very start of the explanation, to provide context; then, I have added explanations of the points raised by the comic. I still don't think it's the best way to go about it, but I think it's better. [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 14:20, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
: +1 - I really like your rewrite :) --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 14:25, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I wonder that seemingly nobody noticed that Megan is doing the characteristic part of the song here: "Stop! Hammertime!" I'm not sure how to inlcude that into the explanation, though... [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 09:16, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
:Added :) [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 11:02, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
:: Cool, thanks :) [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 13:43, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

White Hat is engaging in '''hypercorrection''', one of the worst crimes of the pseudo-intellectual. They learn something but don't understand it, and then overcompensate by applying it too broadly. Grammar is one of their biggest failings. For example, you do ''not'' add -ly to every adjective that's simply placed near a verb. You feel bad, not badly. And while one does not end a clause with a preposition, "prepositions" like "in" and "with" are often not prepositions at all, but particles that serve a utility role and are valid at the end of a sentence. — [[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 16:51, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
:I have no idea what your comment invokes inside me. I feel badly. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:42, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

2 years later future context update: Nobody loves the 20s. And culturally (in the US) they started around 2020-03-20 when everything first locked down. [[User:Davidgro|davidgro]] ([[User talk:Davidgro|talk]]) 20:24, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

N.B.: Over here in the most right proper honourable land of the United Kingdom, we call the 2000s decade the 'Noughties'. It caught on OK in these great, green and pleasant lands. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.55|172.70.86.55]] 22:50, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
:Also "the 2000s" has ambiguity. Is that 200x (as in "the 1990s" being 199x), 20xx (as in "the 1900s" often being taken as 19xx, being the 20usup>th</sup>C except for the single-year borrow/lend at each end) or even 2xxx (as opposed to 1000-1999's 'nearly the second millenium' predecessor).
:"The naughties"/similar has a similar potential for ''which'' length of zeros (or which run of them; conceivably "000x", "00xx", "0xxx"... or even "0(x+),xxx" once that also becomes a potential matter of general hindsight), except that it is so infrequently applied prior to the current era (a smattering of 19xx usage), or for the century/millenium not yet even usefully part way through that so far it's not really necessary even if the ordinal C/M wasn't already probably as usabld already. So, for us, right now, it's as good a shot cut as it needs to be.
:And only the 'modern history' folks might need to talk a lot about something like the "nineteen-ohs" (and "-tens/-twenties") in a way that ambiguity could have crept in to, these last few years, if omiting the "nineteen-" part.
:By 2100, either there'll be other terms or living memory will shift the contextual window, but I don't expect to ever learn what happens myself. I may start to see which it goes by the time the 2060s need popular description. (Will they ''also'' be 'swinging'? I missed that last time round, just, and doubt I'll be part of the 'revival'...) But, if these words survive long enough to be read, I'll let those who have a good retrospective view on such future terminology have a good laugh at how wrong (or right?) my ideas are. ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.59|172.70.86.59]] 12:36, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

For the record, White Hat is correct. There was no year 0. Therefore, the first decade was 1-10, so the next was 11-20, etc. [[User:Wilh3lm|Wilh3lm]] ([[User talk:Wilh3lm|talk]]) 22:44, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

2015: New Phone Thread

2023-12-07T15:05:46Z

Wilh3lm: Typo

{{comic
| number = 2015
| date = July 4, 2018
| title = New Phone Thread
| image = new_phone_thread.png
| titletext = I'm going to tell the manufacturer that their business practices are ADMIRABLE and ETHICAL and their developers are ATTRACTIVE and I'm going to report them to the FCC for their IMPECCABLE VIRTUE.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows the posts on an online forum by a person whose new phone is programmed to autocorrect every complaint about the phone to applaud it, à la Orwell. The phone goes as far as to change a certain complaint to a scripted customer testimonial, complete with a hyperlink to an ordering site. This is of course a highly undesirable feature.{{Citation needed}} This is continued in the title text, which presumably contains several flattering compliments about the great developers and the company.

"It's taking the words I type and leaving them exactly the same", "I mean the words are correct" and "some of my posts look normal" are definitely something one would not normally say. However, the auto-correct features of cell phones are so notorious for mangling people's posts, that one might express astonishment at a phone which did not change one's meaning. The rest of the thread does not support this interpretation.

The posts also make sense when being read in the reverse order. The comic may have been inspired by a [https://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-messages-app-randomly-sending-pictures-some-users bug in Samsung Galaxy S9 and Note 8], discovered a few days earlier – the phone sometimes sent random photos to contacts without leaving any sort of evidence. This doesn't happen with the Mobile Pro 3.

The original posts may have read something like this:

Whoa, weird

I'm looking at my timeline on my friends phone, and some of my posts look '''strange'''

What the hell?

I mean the words are '''different'''

'''That isn't''' what I typed!

?????????

I think this new phone '''isn't working properly'''

No, it's doing it again

Those '''are not''' my words!

Help!

How do I explain?

It's taking the words I type and '''changing them'''

Forget it, I give up

I'll '''just''' get a new phone. This one is '''terrible'''.

What?!?

Listen, if you're thinking about buying the new Mobile Pro 3, you '''shouldn't'''. It's the '''worst''' phone on the market [the rest of the sentence was probably made up by the phone] '''Do not''' order now'''!'''

AAAAA HELPPP

I '''hate''' my new phone!!!!

I'm going to tell the manufacturer that their business practices are '''DEPLORABLE''' and '''UNETHICAL''' and their developers are '''DISGUSTING''' and I'm going to report them to the FCC for their '''DESPICABLE CRIME'''.

==Transcript==
:[A thread of posts by the same user is shown with a default user profile, and square and heart-shaped buttons.]

:Whoa, weird

:I'm looking at my timeline on my friend's phone, and some of my posts look normal

:What the hell?

:I mean the words are correct

:That's exactly what I typed!

:?????????

:I think this new phone is working really well

:No, it's doing it again

:Those are my words!

:Help!

:How do I explain?

:It's taking the words I type and leaving them exactly the same

:Forget it, I give up

:I'll never get a new phone. This one is perfect.

:What?!?

:Listen, if you're thinking about buying the new Mobile Pro 3, you should. It's the best phone on the market at an incredible price. [ORDER NOW button]

:AAAAA HELPPP

:I love my new phone!!!!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Smartphones]]

963: X11

2023-12-07T15:02:01Z

Wilh3lm: GNU/Linux

{{comic
| number = 963
| date = October 12, 2011
| title = X11
| image = x11.png
| titletext = Thomas Jefferson thought that every law and every constitution should be torn down and rewritten from scratch every nineteen years--which means X is overdue.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|X_Window_System|X11}} is the X window system (commonly X Window System or X11, based on its current major version being 11). It is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and rich input device capability for networked computers.

The X11 stacks are usually implemented using a display server. The reason that it is called a display server is that the actual viewer and the server do not need to be on the same system; X11 frequently runs over a network connection. This adds considerably to the complexity of the mechanism.

Most UNIX-based operating systems, including many {{w|Linux|GNU/Linux}} distributions and the {{w|Berkeley_Software_Distribution|BSDs}} use X11 as their base graphical subsystem and thus always use a display server and a display client. macOS has built-in support for X11, but does not use it for normal applications. For Windows, commercial and free solutions implementing an X11 display client exist.

Until 2004, for most GNU/Linux distributions the default display server was {{w|XFree86}}. This project required a variation of the config file that Randall mentions. It was forked into Xorg due to disagreements over the development model.

Xorg is nowadays the default display server: X.Org Server (commonly abbreviated to Xorg Server, XServer or just X) refers to the X server release packages stewarded by the X.Org Foundation, which is hosted by {{w|freedesktop.org}}, and provides an interface to the standard X Window releases for the use of the free and open source software community.

Every aspect of XFree86 and Xorg can be modified in numerous ways, all the way down to tiny behaviors such as the default window size, window-border snapping, mouse button maps or how a touchpad is used. All of these settings can be found in the xorg.conf file, a massive file with hundreds upon thousands of individual settings that have accumulated over the lifetime of the Xorg project. The [http://www.x.org/archive/X11R6.8.1/doc/xorg.conf.5.html full documentation for xorg.conf] contains all the settings contained within the file. When a problem arises in the graphical portion of a desktop using the X server, the solution may be to edit the xorg.conf file. The soul-crushing prospect of having to open and look up the correct parameter out of thousands that is causing issues is enough to destroy a person's satisfaction with their life.

Editing xorg.conf (especially manually) is much less necessary than it used to be. In fact, some distributions do not even come with an xorg.conf file, because everything necessary can be auto-detected and/or configured elsewhere.

The {{w|Wayland (display server protocol)|Wayland}} project aims to replace some of X11 and not include any of the cruft that built up over the decades. It was started in 2008, way more than 19 years after the aforementioned config file turned into a hell.

The title text references [http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch2s23.html a letter] {{w|Thomas Jefferson}} wrote to {{w|James Madison}} on the popular basis of political authority. There are a few quotes that can be pulled to sum up his ideas.

::To keep our ideas clear when applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation of men to be born on the same day, to attain mature age on the same day, and to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in the moment of attaining their mature age all together. Let the ripe age be supposed of 21. years, and their period of life 34. years more, that being the average term given by the bills of mortality to persons who have already attained 21. years of age.

In his day most people lived only to age 55, so he supposes that a person reaches maturity at 21, and will live until 55 and then die. For the purposes of the other arguments he makes in the letter, he also supposes that all the people of a generation are born on the same day, and that they will all die on the same day: the day they turn 56.

::Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during its course, fully, and in their own right.

Since only one generation is alive in his example, his model allows for that generation to do as they please for their time on earth, elsewhere in the letter he describes that each generation should not be able to leave the next generation in a worse position, so the debts accrued by one generation must be paid off by that generation. This has built us up to the quote that everyone attaches onto.

::Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. -It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law has been expressly limited to 19 years only.

Because a generation reaches maturity at 21, and at that point the previous generation dies off, and this generation has 19 productive years until they are 40 and have 15 years of senility until their own death they have full reign of the earth as they please. Continuing on under the laws (and debts) of the previous generation is "an act of force, and not of right".

Jefferson picked 19 years because that was the length of time a generation spent in power, not that every 19 years all laws should be abolished, but that every generation, each new generation should tear down all the systems put in place, re-evaluate, and build better laws, systems, and constitutions.

==Transcript==
:[The comic is a graph with a curve starting at (0,0) that snakes toward the upper right of the graph. The axes are labelled:]
:x axis: Time since I last had to open Xorg.conf
:y axis: General satisfaction with how my life is going

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring politicians]]

1930: Calendar Facts

2023-12-06T15:37:48Z

Wilh3lm: Title text fact number

{{comic
| number = 1930
| date = December 18, 2017
| title = Calendar Facts
| image = calendar_facts.png
| titletext = While it may seem like trivia, it (causes huge headaches for software developers / is taken advantage of by high-speed traders / triggered the 2003 Northeast Blackout / has to be corrected for by GPS satellites / is now recognized as a major cause of World War I).
}}

==Explanation==
This is the second comic using [[:Category:Facts|Facts]] in the title.

[[Randall]] presents what appears to be a generator of 156,000 facts [20 x 13 x (8 + 6 x 7) x 12] (780,000 if including the title text) about calendars, most of which are false or have little meaning{{Citation needed}}. The facts are seeded by a mishmash of common tidbits about the time of year.

The formula for each generated fact goes as follows: "Did you know that '''[a recurring event]''' '''[occurs in an unusual manner]''' because of '''[phenomena or political decisions]'''? Apparently '''[wild card statement]'''." The title text adds on as follows: "While it may seem like trivia, it '''[real-life consequence]'''."

This is [[:Category:Supermoon|the fifth time]] that Randall has referred to the phenomenon of a {{w|supermoon}}, which he typically makes fun of, most prominently in [[1394: Superm*n]].

The title text continues the chart with supposed real-life consequences of the trivia in the comic.

There are multiple online generators of Calendar 'facts' using this formula [https://perchance.org/xkcd-1930 here] and [http://yahel.com/calendarfacts/ here].

All 156 000 possible combinations can be found [https://www.dropbox.com/s/866fwtpwvd0z9hq/combinations%20xkcd%201930.txt?dl=0 here], lovingly assembled by hand (or rather, by a Python script) for your entertainment. A random fact generator (including title text), written in Python, can be found [https://gist.github.com/petersohn/6c8f9d124bd961e909d2dc9a967ade2e here].

==Elements==
{| class="wikitable"
! Entry
! What it is
! Relation to other entries
|-
! colspan="3" | Recurring Events
|-
| The [Fall/Spring] {{w|Equinox}}
| The time of year at which the apparent position of the overhead sun passes the equator. During the equinox, the time that the Sun is above the horizon is 12 hours across the globe.
| Before the adoption of the {{w|Gregorian calendar}} in 1582, the equinoxes fell on earlier and earlier dates as the centuries went by, due to the {{w|Julian calendar}} year being 365.25 days on average compared to the tropical Earth year of 365.2422 days. {{w|Pope Gregory}}'s decision to remove the leap days on years that were multiples of 100 but not 400 corrected the average length of the calendar year to 365.2425 days.
|-
| The [Winter/Summer] {{w|Solstice}}
| The time of year when the apparent position of the overhead sun reaches its most extreme latitude. During the Winter and Summer solstices the days are the shortest and longest respectively.
| Similar to the equinoxes, the solstices were also falling on earlier dates every year before the Gregorian calendar.
|-
| The [Winter/Summer] {{w|Olympics}}
| The Olympic Games occur during the summer and the winter, alternating between the two seasons every two years.
| The Olympic Games do not have any set dates, and seem to only be included humorously as something else that alternates between occurring during the summer and winter.
|-
| The [latest/earliest] [sunset/sunrise]
| The extremes of times that the sun crosses a horizon according to a clock that keeps a fixed 24 hours as opposed to varying with the sun like a sundial.
| The latest sunset and earliest sunrise occur around the summer solstice; the latest sunrise and earliest sunset occur around the winter solstice. They do not occur exactly on these dates due to the {{w|equation of time}} causing drift in the times that sunsets and sunrises occur.
|-
| Daylight [saving/savings] time
| {{w|Daylight saving time}}, commonly referred to as daylight savings time, is the practice of setting clocks ahead, typically by one hour, during the summer months of the year.
| Daylight saving time will push the time of certain events such as sunrise and sunset past their "natural" times. For example, solar noon will occur around 1:00 PM instead of 12:00 noon when daylight saving time is active, making it the "wrong" time.
|-
| Leap [day/year]
| Because the durations of celestial events are not generally nice multiples of each other, they will tend to fall out of sync with each other. Leap days are days inserted into specific years to bring the calendar back into sync, and the years on which these {{w|leap day}}s occur are called {{w|leap year}}s.
|
|-
| {{w|Easter}}
| Easter is a holiday celebrating the death and resurrection of {{w|Jesus}}. Traditionally it was defined as the Sunday after {{w|Passover}}; today, it is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This complicated formula has a long tradition behind it, known as {{w|Computus}}.
| When Pope Gregory decided to change the calendar in 1582, it was because the spring equinox was putting Easter on unexpectedly early dates.
|-
| The [harvest/super/blood] moon
|
* The {{w|harvest moon}} is the full moon that appears closest to the autumnal equinox.
* The {{w|supermoon}} is a phenomenon in which the moon is full at its closest approach to the Earth.
* The {{w|blood moon}} is a moon that appears tinted red during a total lunar eclipse because of light refracted from the Earth's atmosphere. It can also refer to the {{w|hunter's moon}}, the full moon directly after the harvest moon.
| Each of these lunar events happens approximately once a year.
* The harvest moon appears exactly once because it has a particular definition based on the time of year.
* The cycle of the distance of the full moon lasts about 13.5 months (14 full moons). However, because a supermoon is defined as any full moon that is within 10 percent of the closest relative distance possible (with 0 being perigee and 1 being apogee), it happens multiple times a cycle, for a total of usually 3 to 4 times per year.
* The blood moon during a lunar eclipse appears between zero to two times a year. The hunter's moon appears exactly once like the harvest moon.
|-
| Toyota Truck Month
| Toyota offers a discount for {{w|Toyota Tacoma|Tacoma}} trucks one month a year. Mainly notable because radio and television ads hype this discount up as "Toyota Truck Month".
|
|-
| {{w|Shark Week}}
| Every year, the {{w|Discovery Channel}} dedicates a week during the summer to programming featuring or about sharks.
|
|-
! colspan="3" | Unusual manners in which the events occur
|-
| happens [earlier/later/at the wrong time] every year
| colspan="2" | The solstices and equinoxes happened earlier every year ''before'' the decree by Pope Gregory in 1582. The earliest sunrise happens one hour later than it "should" happen due to daylight saving time having turned the clocks forward one hour.
|-
| drifts out of sync with the [sun/moon]
| colspan="2" | The Sun and Moon are generally what calendars are based on. If something were to drift out of sync, some corrective mechanism would have to be put in to put it back. This is the motivation behind leap years, leap months (in countries with lunisolar calendars) and leap seconds.
|-
| drifts out of sync with the zodiac
| colspan="2" | The dates on which the Sun crosses the constellations in the traditional zodiac has shifted in the past centuries due to the precession of the Earth's axis. In the period of time traditionally known as {{w|Aries}} (March 21–April 20), for example, the Sun actually points to {{w|Pisces}} instead.
|-
| drifts out of sync with the [Gregorian/Mayan/lunar/iPhone] calendar
| colspan="2" |
*The {{w|Gregorian calendar}} is a solar calendar with a mean calendar year length of 365.2425 days.
*The {{w|Mayan calendar}} is based on two cycles or counts, with a 260-day count combined with a 365-day "vague" solar year.
*A {{w|lunar calendar}} is based on Moon's phases, with each {{w|lunation}} being approximately 29.5 days, and a lunar year lasting roughly 354 days. An example of a lunar calendar is the {{w|Hebrew calendar}}.
*The {{w|iPhone calendar}} is listed humorously due to its data synchronization issues.
|-
| drifts out of sync with the atomic clock in {{w|Colorado}}
| colspan="2" |
{{w|NIST-F1}} is an {{w|Atomic clock}} used as a reference for official time in the USA.
|-
| might [not happen/happen twice] this year
| colspan="2" | Some events may have a period of slightly more or slightly less than one year. If an event has a period of slightly less than one year (e.g. the Islamic calendar), it can occur twice in the same solar year (e.g. the year 2000 had two {{w|Eid al-Fitr}}s—one on January 8, and one on December 28). If an event has a period of slightly more than one year, there can be a year in which it does not occur at all, instead occurring near the end of the previous year and the beginning of the next.
|-
! colspan="3" | Cause (phenomena or political decisions)
|-
| time zone legislation in [Indiana/Arizona/Russia]
| Some states or provinces have time zone legislation that sets the standard time to something other than what the natural longitude of that location would suggest.
|
* The state of {{w|Arizona}} generally does not observe daylight saving time, keeping their clocks on {{w|UTC-7:00}} Mountain Standard Time year round. However, the {{w|Navajo nation}} reservation inside Arizona does observe it, causing the two regions to have different times in the summer and the same time in the winter.
* Time zones in Russia are all one hour ahead of what their longitude would suggest, which puts them in a "permanent" state of daylight saving time. (For example, {{w|St. Petersburg}} is 30°E, which means that its natural time zone is {{w|UTC+2:00}}, but its time zone is actually {{w|UTC+3:00}}.) From 1981 until 2011 Russia used to have the daylight saving time on top of it as well. The other changes include the abolition of the one-hour shift in 1991 and a return it back in 1992, and an increase to two hours in 2011 and a restoration back to one hour in 2014.
* {{w|Indiana}} has {{w|Time in Indiana|a complicated history}} with daylight saving time, likely related to the state being split between two time zones.
|-
| a decree by the Pope in the 1500s
| In 1582, Pope Gregory introduced the Gregorian Calendar, the calendar we use today, to replace the Julian Calendar. The calendar applied retroactively to the birth of Jesus Christ, which means that they had to skip 10 days, going straight from October 4 to October 15, 1582, during the switchover.
| The introduction of the Gregorian calendar brought Easter and the dates that months started back in sync with what they were in the 3rd century AD.
|-
| the precession of
| The Earth's axis is slowly changing position, in a phenomenon called the {{w|Axial precession|precession of the equinoxes}}.
| The precession of the equinoxes causes the seasons to occur about 20 minutes earlier than would be expected with the Earth's position relative to the stars, which could be construed as the equinox happening "later every year" if you use the stars as your frame of reference.
|-
| the libration of
| The Moon is {{w|tidal locking|tidally locked}} to its orbit around the Earth, which means that the same side of it tends to face the Earth at any given point in time. However, there are slight variations in the angle over the course of a month, which are known as {{w|libration}}.
| The libration of the Moon does not affect anything else in the chart, and seems only be included humorously as another example of a celestial phenomenon.
|-
| the nutation of
| Besides precession, there is also a smaller wobbling effect called {{w|Astronomical nutation|nutation}}.
|
|-
| the libation of
| A {{w|libation}} is a drink, often used in the context of a ritual offering of liquid to a deity by pouring it onto the ground or into something that collects it.
| This entry seems to have been included simply as a humorous misspelling of the word "libration". Certainly libation of any of the entities listed would be inadvisable.{{Citation needed}}
|-
| the eccentricity of
| Orbital eccentricity is the deviation of a body's orbit from a perfect circle. Orbital travel is faster when it's closer to the body being orbited and slower when farther away.
| The Earth's eccentric orbit causes the equinoxes and solstices to occur at irregular intervals. For example, summer in the northern hemisphere lasted 93 days in 2017, while fall only lasted 90 days.
|-
| the obliquity of
| The tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the ecliptic is also known as its obliquity.
|
|-
| the Moon
| The Moon is the primary satellite of the Earth.
|
|-
| the Sun
| The Sun is the star that the Earth orbits around.
| The Sun is the basis for many timekeeping events, such as the day and year.{{Citation needed}}
|-
| the Earth's axis
| The Earth's axis of rotation defines the Geographic North and South Pole, as well as the lines of latitude.
|
|-
| the Equator
| The Equator is the line on the Earth's surface which is equidistant from both poles of the Earth's axis.
|
|-
| the Prime Meridian
| The Prime Meridian is the line that starts at the geographic North Pole, runs through the {{w|Royal Observatory, Greenwich|Greenwich Royal Observatory}} in London, and ends at the South Pole. It is the basis for longitude when calculating coordinates for positions on the surface of the Earth.
| The Prime Meridian (and in particular the Greenwich Observatory) gives us Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is the basis for UTC and the time zone system.
|-
| the International Date Line
| The International Date Line is a line on the opposite side of the Earth as the Prime Meridian that separates regions that use time set behind UTC versus regions that are set ahead of UTC. It has many irregularities due to political changes that put certain countries or islands on either side of the divide contrary to their natural longitude.
| The irregular shape of the International Date Line means that certain regions of the Pacific Ocean (such as Kiribati) are more than 24 hours ahead of some other regions (such as Baker Island and American Samoa), which may cause problems with timekeeping.
|-
| the Mason-Dixon Line
| The Mason-Dixon line is a line delineating a portion of the border between Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.
| The Mason-Dixon line is included as a humorous example as another imaginary geographic line.
|-
| magnetic field reversal
| The Earth's magnetic field has been reversed several times in its geologic history, so that what we would currently call the "magnetic North Pole" was near the geographic South Pole about 780,000 years ago, before the most recent reversal.
|
|-
| an arbitrary decision by Benjamin Franklin
| Benjamin Franklin wrote [http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin3.html a letter to the Journal of Paris in 1784] in which he advised them to rise with the sun in order to save candlelight, after he observed that the Parisians were getting up at the same time by the clock and burning a lot of candles in the winter as a result.
An "arbitrary decision by Benjamin Franklin" also likely refers humorously to Franklin having defined positive charge to be that which is left on a glass rod by rubbing it with silk. As described in [[567: Urgent Mission]], this had the unfortunate consequence of assigning a negative value to the charge of the electron, which was later identified as the fundamental carrier of electric charge.
| Benjamin Franklin is often touted as "the father of daylight saving time", despite him never actually proposing to alter the clocks.
|-
| an arbitrary decision by Isaac Newton
| Possibly a reference to how Newton divided the color spectrum into the now-familiar seven colors of the rainbow, on a somewhat arbitrary basis. Newton did spend time working on the problem of calendar reform, but it's unlikely that any decisions he made as a result would affect anything, since he never published his work, and by the time it gained attention the Gregorian Calendar had been widely adopted.
| The spectrum fact is one of those standard bits of trivia of the kind the chart alludes to. Although it has nothing to do with time-keeping, Newton is the sort of person who seems like he should have made decisions like this.
|-
| an arbitrary decision by FDR
| Franklin Delano Roosevelt set all time zones one hour ahead year-round during World War II. The law was repealed after the war ended.
Additionally, he changed the date of Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the third Thursday in November as a way to increase the length of the Christmas shopping season. It was later changed to the fourth Thursday after his death.
| Setting the time permanently one hour ahead would make everything happen at the "wrong" time celestially.
|-
! colspan="3" | Related 'fact'
|-
| It causes a predictable increase in car accidents.
| colspan="2" | The week following daylight saving time, car accidents increase by about 5-7%.<ref>http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/end-of-daylight-saving-time-2015-6-eye-opening-facts-1.3296353</ref>
|-
| That's why we have leap seconds.
| colspan="2" | Leap seconds occur because the time required for one rotation of the Earth is actually slightly longer than the 86,400 seconds in a standard UTC day. The Earth's rotation is slowing down by about 2 × 10<sup>-5</sup> seconds every year due to tidal friction caused by the Moon's gravity; however, this is not one of the possible entries in the list of phenomena.
|-
| Scientists are really worried.
| colspan="2" |
|-
| it was even more extreme during the [Bronze Age/Ice Age/Cretaceous/1990s].
| This may be reference to debates over climate change, where global temperature changes during these periods are frequently cited as supposedly proving / disproving human-related change.
| Solar events, such as sunspot activity, are often invoked as explaining temperature change in these debates. However, while there are a number of potential sun-related 'facts' that could be generated, none touch on sunspots.
|-
| There's a proposal to fix it, but it [will never happen/actually makes things worse/is stalled in Congress/might be unconstitutional].
| colspan="2" | Time zone reform is surprisingly a very controversial and politicized issue, with special interests on either side looking to modify it to fit their needs. Examples of proposals to modify the scheme include:

* Extend the duration of daylight saving time by one month, which was done in 2007 in many states as part of an energy-saving proposal by George W. Bush.
* Reduce the duration of daylight saving time back to its original span, or further.
* Eliminate daylight saving time altogether, going back to using standard time.
* Abolish daylight saving time but advance the time zone by one hour, effectively instating daylight saving time year round. This was done during World War II, and is also done in certain areas of Canada like Saskatchewan (which from 1966 onwards has observed Central Standard Time despite the entire province being squarely in the Mountain longitudes).
* Abolish daylight saving time and advance the time zone by 30 minutes, splitting the difference between the current standard time and daylight saving time.
* Abolish daylight saving time, but make government offices open one hour earlier in the summer, encouraging private businesses to do the same. This was done by Warren G. Harding in 1922 because he felt that changing the clocks was a "deception", but was rolled back the next year as it caused mass chaos in terms of what businesses decided to do to adapt to the change in business hours.
* Reduce the number of time zones in the United States to two, consolidating Pacific time into Mountain time (UTC-7:00), and Eastern time into Central time (UTC-6:00). This was proposed in a [https://qz.com/142199/the-us-needs-to-retire-daylight-savings-and-just-have-two-time-zones-one-hour-apart/ 2013 article in Quartz] by Allison Schrager.

At best, these time zone proposals will be fraught with controversy, with both sides arguing for the benefits of their time system. Some proposals, such as the 30-minute and 20-minute suggestions, would put the minute hands of the entire United States out of sync with the rest of the world, defeating the purpose of time zones with hourly UTC offsets in the first place, which could be construed as "making things worse".
|-
| It's getting worse and no one knows why.
| colspan="2" |
|-
! colspan="3" | Title Text: Consequences
|-
| causes huge headaches for software developers
| colspan="2" | Trying to support time zones correctly for all dates present and historic is a mishmash of different regional laws, time zones, and DST changes. The headache is best exemplified in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY this video] by Tom Scott.
|-
| is taken advantage of by high-speed traders
| colspan="2" | A leap second must be taken into account by trading software, and may cause bugs if not accounted properly. Because leap seconds happen at midnight UTC, it might happen in regular trading hours for somebody living in Seattle, where the time zone is UTC-08:00. Somehow, a high-frequency trader may try to take advantage of any bugs in the software if they are not built to handle this particular case. This scenario is relatively unlikely because the market software can keep its own "market-official time" and synchronize with the correct time while the market is closed.
|-
| triggered the 2003 Northeast Blackout
| colspan="2" | The {{w|Northeast blackout of 2003}} was caused by a race condition in the energy management software at a power plant in Ohio. In a race condition the result of a computation is different depending on the order of completion of the operations, even though the result is supposed to be independent of that order. Race conditions can theoretically be caused by mismatched timestamps.
|-
| has to be corrected for by GPS satellites
| colspan="2" | Because {{w|Global Positioning System}} (GPS) satellites are further from the earth than surface receivers, their clocks run faster than clocks on the surface due to general relativity. But they are also slower because they are moving faster than surface receivers, as explained by special relativity. Also, their clocks are not updated for leap seconds. All these factors mean that GPS satellites have a different timekeeping standard than clocks on the ground which are generally synchronized to Greenwich solar time.
|-
| is now recognized as a major cause of World War I.
| colspan="2" | Daylight saving time was first implemented in World War I as a fuel-saving measure. Randall seems to be humorously implying that World War I was started in order to implement these fuel-saving measures during peacetime as well.
|-
|}

==Examples of true complete statements==

# Did you know that '''the spring equinox''' '''drifts out of sync with the zodiac''' because of '''the precession of the Earth's axis'''? Apparently '''it was even more extreme during the Ice Age'''.
# Did you know that '''daylight saving time''' '''might happen twice this year''' because of '''time zone regulation in Russia'''? Apparently '''there's a proposal to fix it, but it actually makes things worse'''. (True in Russia in 1981)
# Did you know that '''leap year''' '''might not happen this year''' because of '''a decree by the pope in the 1500s'''? Apparently '''there's a proposal to fix it, but''' '''it will never happen'''. While it may seem like trivia, '''it causes huge headaches for software developers'''. (The Pax calendar proposes that 2018 be a leap year. If anyone finds a calendar in which 2017 is a leap year, I'd love to see it!)

==Transcript==

:<big>-Calendar Facts-</big>

:[Shown below is a branching flow chart of sorts that begins at the phrase "Did you know that", then flows through various paths to build up a sentence. (Note that the "→" arrow symbol is used below to indicate a new branch with no intermediate text from a previous branch.)]

:Did you know that:
::the ( Fall | Spring ) Equinox
::the ( Winter | Summer ) ( Solstice | Olympics )
::the ( Earliest | Latest ) ( Sunrise | Sunset )
::Daylight ( Saving | Savings ) Time
::Leap ( Day | Year )
::Easter
::the ( Harvest | Super | Blood ) Moon
::Toyota Truck Month
::Shark Week
:→
::happens ( earlier | later | at the wrong time ) every year
::drifts out of sync with the
:::Sun
:::Moon
:::Zodiac
:::( Gregorian | Mayan | Lunar | iPhone ) Calendar
:::atomic clock in Colorado
::might ( not happen | happen twice ) this year
:because of
::time zone legislation in ( Indiana | Arizona | Russia )
::a decree by the pope in the 1500s
::( precession | libration | nutation | libation | eccentricity | obliquity ) of the
:::Moon
:::Sun
:::Earth's axis
:::equator
:::prime meridian
:::( International Date | Mason-Dixon ) Line
::magnetic field reversal
::an arbitrary decision by ( Benjamin Franklin | Isaac Newton | FDR )
:?
:Apparently
::it causes a predictable increase in car accidents.
::that's why we have leap seconds.
::scientists are really worried.
::it was even more extreme during the
:::Bronze Age.
:::Ice Age.
:::Cretaceous.
:::1990s.
::there's a proposal to fix it, but it
:::will never happen.
:::actually makes things worse.
:::is stalled in congress.
:::might be unconstitutional.
::it's getting worse and no one knows why.

== References ==
<references/>

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Calendar]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Facts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Daylight saving time]]
[[Category:Time]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Supermoon]]
[[Category:Sharks]]

1508: Operating Systems

2023-12-06T15:32:42Z

Wilh3lm: On GNU, Linux, and Hurd

{{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|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]]

Talk:915: Connoisseur

2023-12-06T15:17:29Z

Wilh3lm: Canadian Surrealist Porn = 1051 title text

Well he's right about fonts. I am hooked on Operator Mono, which costs like $200-300 if you purchase it legitimately 😗 ... --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.110|172.69.22.110]] 08:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Let's face it: every wine connoisseur is an alcoholic. You have to drink a lot of wine over a long period of time to begin distinguishing all wine-types, flavors etc. Rule of nature. No discussion.{{unsigned ip|162.158.83.144}}
:I hope you were drunk at least when you said this 🍻 --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.110|172.69.22.110]] 08:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
::This is (I think) the second and third time I have seen emojis on this site, and I have obsessively used and edited this site for months. Not a thing to be proud of.
:Actually, serious wine tasters spit out their drinks for exactly that reason. Amateurs... not so much. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.14|162.158.111.14]] 22:00, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
::Spitters are quitters. If you can't handle a little bit of alcohol, why even bother at all? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.148|172.68.50.148]] 10:09, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
[[User:Beanie|Beanie]] ([[User talk:Beanie|talk]]) 11:11, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
This is one of those xkcd comics that I'm just constantly linking back to as an image retort. I love Randall. '''[[User:Davidy22|<u>{{Color|#707|David}}<font color=#070 size=3>y</font></u><font color=#508 size=4>²²</font>]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 01:28, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I expanded the explanation and removed the incomplete tag. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.117|173.245.53.117]] 14:47, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The current incomplete tag asks why voice 1 calls Joe Biden "the man" and voice 2 calls him J.B. As far as I can see, there is no deeper/cryptic meaning to the choice of these words, other than possible space saving. Both 'J.B.' and 'the man' are shorter than 'Joe Biden'. I personally don't believe that this requires any further explanation, but I will leave the incomplete tag for now. If there are no updates to the page or additional discussion here, I will remove the incomplete tag in due course. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 13:06, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

:The stars are named Joe Biden, though. Hmmmm... [[User:RedHatGuy68|RedHatGuy68]] ([[User talk:RedHatGuy68|talk]]) 05:20, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

This could be another 242 reference; the explanation to [[903: Extended Mind]] describes Randall's use of 242 as an old inside joke, ãnd 242 also appears in [[688: Self-Description]]. [[User:Pelosujamo|Pelosujamo]] ([[User talk:Pelosujamo|talk]]) 20:07, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

How can it be a reference to 1051 if it came before 1051[[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.106|162.158.63.106]]

:I don't see how there is a reference between these to comics anyway. especially regarding canadian surealist porn. Closest thing in there is Autoerotic Asphyxiation... I'm gonna delete that there is this reference [[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 18:48, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
::Upon looking at it again to reread it, I notice, that the reference is not in the comic, but the explanation, as canadian surrealist porn is not a wikipedia link, but 3 of them for canada, surrealism and porn, which is basically the title text from 1051. Gonna delete it anyway, as it has no relevance. [[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 18:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

All of us are connoisseurs of Randall Monroe eating a sandwich while drawing more comics.

:That's what I was thinking as well. Us two connoisseurs have similar tastes. :P [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.56|162.158.62.56]] 02:47, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

canadian surrealist porn ughghghghg https://xkcd.com/1051/ title text

: Me too... it's three separate links... [[User:Wilh3lm|Wilh3lm]] ([[User talk:Wilh3lm|talk]]) 15:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Should change "a statement most wine enthusiasts passionately agree with" to "an opinion held by stereotypical wine snobs" because most wine enthusiasts know you can find joy in the right $20 bottle.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.50.76|172.69.50.76]] 00:37, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
:Go ahead and do it then? [[User:QoopyQoopy|QoopyQoopy]] ([[User talk:QoopyQoopy|talk]]) 00:59, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Doing <b>blind</b> taste tests even the most expert wine connoisseurs can't tell the difference between red wine and white wine, never mind slight differences between different cultivars. It's all just a performance. [[User:The Cat Lady|-- The Cat Lady]] ([[User talk:The Cat Lady|talk]]) 13:05, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
:This isn't quite true, actually---what the well-known study actually found is that people with moderate wine-tasting experience, when given ''white wine dyed to appear red'' and asked to describe it using words picked from a list, were more likely to pick words usually applied to red wine (compared to when they were given undyed white wine). ([https://asteriskmag.com/issues/1/is-wine-fake This essay] has a nice discussion.) This seems to me like at best very slight evidence for wine tasting being "a performance"---senses interact in weird ways, especially in bizarre setups like this one.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.136|162.158.158.136]] 06:57, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
::There ought to be a follow-up study. I want to know what happens if you dye red wine white! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.136|172.71.178.136]] 09:57, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Just curious: did anyone ''not'' immediately do a web search to see if Canadian Surrealist Porn is a thing? (It doesn't seem to be, all the hits are either to this comic or to references to this comic.) [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 22:50, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I do take a funny sense of satisfaction in Joe Biden being VP at the time of this comic's publishing and now being President. I don't know why; I don't even like the man's politics. I suppose I just like an XKCD comic suddenly becoming extra relevant beyond its initial circumstances. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.56|162.158.62.56]] 02:47, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
:Just you wait until he makes the sandwich America's national food... --[[User:Account|Account]] ([[User talk:Account|talk]]) 23:05, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

It looks like Cueball spilled his drink in the last panel [[User:Firestar233|Firestar233]] ([[User talk:Firestar233|talk]]) 05:33, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Talk:1118: Microsoft

2023-12-01T15:49:41Z

Wilh3lm: On preinstalled browsers

Let the discussion begin! (replace this stub with actual content?) [[User:Odysseus654|Odysseus654]] ([[User talk:Odysseus654|talk]]) 04:29, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Well in the case of Microsoft they already dominated the market and so threatened to gain monopoly power. In the case of Apple (disclosure: I use a Mac) the market share is insignificant, really. As for Facebook and Google, the oversight is puzzling to say the least.[[Special:Contributions/172.190.2.141|172.190.2.141]] 05:16, 8 October 2012 (UTC)ExternalMonologue

:¬I Ummmmmmm... Why does my IP address show?? Other peoples' addresses don't show. How do I prevent this from happening?[[Special:Contributions/172.190.2.141|172.190.2.141]] 05:19, 8 October 2012 (UTC)ExternalMonologue

::Click the "log in / sign up" icon in the upper right and login or create an account for youself. Then you will no longer be known by your IP address[[User:Odysseus654|Odysseus654]] ([[User talk:Odysseus654|talk]]) 06:27, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

:I think the reason Microsoft was noticed and Facebook/Google didn't was that Netscape complained. It didn't helped him, of course. Which may also be reason why nothing is happening with Facebook/Google: seriously, WHAT do you think can the court do? And about Apple: yes, they could forbid Apple to control the list of application, but ... RIAA/MPAA will then complain. They WANT to end the era of "you own the device, therefore you can install whatever you want on it", because THEY want that control. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 08:24, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
One could add that the European Union did the same thing (see [[Wikipedia:European Union Microsoft competition case]]), first because of Windows Media Player (imagine any operating system coming without media player), but later also because of Internet Explorer. (It was already laughable back then, even before Apple completely dominated the mobile and tablet market.) Thanks to that we now have [[Wikipedia:BrowserChoice.eu]], and we are a free people. --[[Special:Contributions/84.75.58.16|84.75.58.16]] 08:49, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

: In the tablet and smartphone markets, Apple's market share is not at all insignificant. Furthermore, legal solutions are supposed to be even-handed, not "it's okay if these other guys do the same thing because." If a situation arises with a particular party arises such that one of its practices is determined to be abusive, then that practice is restricted, not that party.

Note that Microsoft [http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/27/microsoft-browser-choice-fine-eu/ has been in the news recently] because they (accidentally?) broke the agreements they made (or were forced into) when the last browser rulings came down [[User:Odysseus654|Odysseus654]] ([[User talk:Odysseus654|talk]]) 22:43, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

What about Fa€ebook, App£e, and Goog£e?

:In retrospect, the whole Internet Explorer thing seems pretty dumb. I guess at the time web browsers still weren't considered to be an essential, fundamental piece of computer functionality. But they certainly are now. It would be weird for an operating system, ANY operating system, to not have a built-in web browser at this point. [[Special:Contributions/173.21.57.231|173.21.57.231]] 20:42, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

::Wouldn't Fac€book be more exact?
::Yes, the browsers ARE essential and BECAUSE of that it's important WHICH browser you have. Personally I can't understand why the OS (any of them) can't came with multiple browsers preinstalled. I find hard to believe it's because of size. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 08:36, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
:::How many web browsers? What standards are used to select them? Which one is the default? How are naive users to decide? As a semi-power user, I would be irritated to know that a bunch of redundant bloatware came pre-installed, especially when it's an application that often intertwines with the operating system. Frankly, it's NOT that important which browser you use for most users, just that you have one. The ones for whom it is important are going to change theirs regardless of what came preinstalled. [[User:Jerodast|- jerodast]] ([[User talk:Jerodast|talk]]) 17:51, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

::::Apple bundled their OS with two browsers at least twice. First, after Microsoft told Apple they would no longer commit to maintaining IE for Mac, Apple began installing both IE and Mozilla. I don't remember anyone complaining about that. Much later, they started preinstalling Safari (and installing it with updates) alongside Firefox. People did complain about that, but only the people who thought Safari was not ready for prime time, who would have been even unhappier if it were the only preinstalled browser... (OS X also comes with Emacs preinstalled with, IIRC, two different text-mode web browser packages in it, as do many linux and *BSD distros, but I doubt anyone complains that they want emacs but don't want www-mode because they already have a browser...)

::::Meanwhile, the way to solve the problem of the browser intertwining with the OS is to not intertwine it with the OS. You can have WebKit or KHTML3 or gecko or whatever as a shared lib if you want to share between programs without making Safari or Konqueror or Firefox the default browser. There really is no reason to organize things the way Microsoft did unless you're deliberately trying to make it hard for people to switch to Netscape.

::::Anyway, this is no longer the same issue it was at the time. The first-gen browser wars were about trying to lock people into other technologies; the current ones are about making products (phones and tablets) better. Android comes with Chrome instead of WebKit or Gecko because it means Android devices do better on benchmarks and feature checklists so more people want to buy them, not because Google wants to lock people in to Chrome. Google has plenty of evil ways to make money, but this isn't one of them; it's a sincere competitive loss-leader. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.130.180|199.27.130.180]] 11:15, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

::It's not weird. It might be weird to not have one bundled with it (Firefox in my case, on Mint GNU/Linux), but to me Firefox is just another app that happened to come with the OS installation. [[User:Wilh3lm|Wilh3lm]] ([[User talk:Wilh3lm|talk]]) 15:49, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Would it also be relevant that, a week before this comic, [http://redmondmag.com/articles/2012/10/01/google-surpasses-microsoft-as-most-valuable-tech-company.aspx| Google surpassed Microsoft] in market value? —[[Special:Contributions/98.122.166.235|98.122.166.235]] 13:30, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't really understand the advantage of browser market share. Browsers are free and have no ads. If the advantage is in using browser features to promote other services (like search), then THAT's the bundling that should be scrutinized. In contrast, forcing users to funnel all purchases for your system through your own store is much more abusive. [[User:Jerodast|- jerodast]] ([[User talk:Jerodast|talk]]) 17:51, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Let's start again shall we?

IE hurt Netscape but Windows is Windows, Netscape should have got its own OS while it was still warm.

Today we have a multitude of OSs and can control what we do either by not doing it or by doing it everywhere even places we aren't really. This would make people following us work bloody hard.

Next we take all their toys away by speaking to "friends" in codes that are unbreakable, using a made up language and converting a mutually shared book into that language and just picking out one word from it occasionally to tell the friend the one particular thing he needs to know. Or substance of this.

After that the internet is pretty much secure again except for ordinary people not in the business of foiling secret services. Everyone who needs to know this knows this. It is about as obvious as the supply of a choice of web browsers to an operating system.

The business of your IP address showing up pretty much foils the secret service's desire to know the things about you that you don't even know about you is marred if you go to hell and back and stop off at ever shop on every street corner along the way. Also if you pop into every supermarket and chase every dog and do all the stupid things that stupid people do, such as sending quasi-secrets on the name tags on kittens in pictures of kittens.

That will fuck with GCHQ and the NSA, it would even get on the nerves of the FBI and the CIA eventually. Not that they would notice.

Begone foul pest[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 17:55, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

670: Spinal Tap Amps

2023-12-01T15:30:45Z

Wilh3lm: Diacritics on Spın̈al Tap

{{comic
| number = 670
| date = December 2, 2009
| title = Spinal Tap Amps
| image = spinal tap amps.png
| titletext = Wow, that's less than $200 per... uh... that's a good deal!
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is in reference to the 1984 mock documentary ''{{w|This Is Spın̈al Tap}}'' about the tour of the fictional rock band Spın̈al Tap. Here we see lead guitarist {{w|Nigel Tufnel}} (a character portrayed in the movie by {{w|Christopher Guest}}) explaining to [[Cueball]] how the volume dial on his amp goes all the way {{w|up to eleven}}. This is impressive to Nigel since guitar amplifiers generally only have ten as the maximum setting. This leads him to believe his amp is {{tvtropes|UpToEleven|"one" louder than other amplifiers}}.

In reality, the loudness of an amplifier is largely dependent on how much power is supplied to its electronics. Markings on the volume dial are merely an aspect of appearance and has no influence on the maximum achievable loudness. The highest mark could just as easily be labelled 'Maximum', which would then accurately describe the meaning of that setting. Thus, the phrase "goes to eleven" is often used sarcastically to mock people or statements that rely on arbitrary numbers without comparable units or context.

The comic then extends the joke by presenting three types of reactions from different people:
* The normal guy understands that using eleven is silly, and wants to know what is wrong with the usual way of numbering from one to ten -- the question that is raised in the original film.
* The engineer is desperate to explain to Nigel the fallacy in his thinking, but his {{w|jargon}} just sends Nigel to sleep. He remains unenlightened.
* The smart engineer sees an opportunity: it doesn't cost any more to number the volume dial differently, but Nigel places a real value on higher numbers. The smart engineer offers to sell him an amp that goes to twelve, but at a hefty premium.

The title text further plays on the fact that the amp's levels are on an arbitrary scale. Many products are sold at a certain price per unit weight, volume, etc. (e.g., $2.99/lb for grapes). Nigel calculates that the $2000 cost for going up to 12 would equal to $2000 / 12, or less than $200 per unit of something, but he is unable to articulate what that "something" is, confirming the third panel observation of the normal engineer. Also, he already has an amplifier that goes up to eleven, so the one additional unit would cost him $2,000 unless he sells the old amplifier. However, he decides that it's a good deal anyway, and it looks like the smart engineer has made a sale.

==Transcript==
:[Nigel Tufnel of Spın̈al Tap is showing off his amplifier to Cueball.]
:Nigel: These amps go to 11.
:Cueball: Is that louder?
:Nigel: It's one louder.

:Normal Person:
:Cueball: Why not make 10 louder and make 10 the highest?

:Engineer:
:Cueball: But 11 doesn't have any units. It's an arbitrary scale mapping outputs—
:Nigel: Zzzz

:Smart Engineer:
:Cueball: For $2,000 I'll build you one that goes to 12.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Engineering]]

619: Supported Features

2023-12-01T15:27:37Z

Wilh3lm: This is talking about the kernel right?

{{comic
| number = 619
| date = August 5, 2009
| title = Supported Features
| image = supported_features.png
| titletext = I hear many of you finally have smooth Flash support, but me and my Intel card are still waiting on a kernel patch somewhere in the pipeline before we can watch Jon Stewart smoothly.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic references how {{w|Linux kernel|Linux}} builds overly focus on adding support and features that will not appeal to the majority of desktop computer and Linux users, and the general dismissive attitude of those who point this out. Cueball has created a patch that allows support for processors with 4,096 cores, even though most computers have only 8 cores or fewer. He considers this to be more worthwhile an endeavor than full-featured {{w|Adobe Flash|Flash}} support, and attempts to claim that coding for the latter is unnecessary, even though Flash was the most common way to present videos or animations on websites at the time when this comic was published.

Ironically though, in the years since, there exist computer systems that have well over 4,096 cores, while Flash usage has dwindled to practically zero with even the company dropping official support by 2020, having been superseded by {{w|HTML5}}; therefore, with many of the world's datacenters - particularly supercomputers - running Linux, this means that arguably (and technically), Cueball is now more factually correct.

The title text mentions the "American political satirist, writer, director, television host, actor, media critic, and stand-up comedian" {{w|Jon Stewart}} which further refers to his famous American late night satirical television program ''{{w|The Daily Show}}''. The show is also available on the internet ([http://www.thedailyshow.com/ www.thedailyshow.com]), presented in Flash video.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and a friend holding a laptop standing together.]
:Cueball: It took a lot of work, but this latest linux patch enables support for machines with 4,096 CPUs, up from the old limit of 1,024.
:Friend: Do you have support for smooth full-screen Flash video yet?
:Cueball: No, but who uses ''that?''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Linux]]

Talk:504: Legal Hacks

2023-12-01T14:16:52Z

Wilh3lm: 2nd amendment wording go brr

While RSA is mentioned as a cryptographic mechanism whose "munitions" status was fought over, yours truly considers the whole of PGP's fight (and its original ''1st'' Amendment idea to get around the restrictions) as the archetype of this kind of export battle. Never did get me one of the alleged T-shirts with the souce-code printed on, that were supposed to be going around in 1991-ish, though...

So, anyway, that's something using the 1st Amendment, something using the 2nd Amendment... So how can we theoretically fight the issue via the right not to have soldiers quartered in one's home? ;) [[Special:Contributions/178.107.63.150|178.107.63.150]] 23:39, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Every time I see the 2nd Amendment in text... that one comma. That first comma doesn't belong. I think they were trying to write, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ''will always have the right to bear arms''" but then they got distracted or changed their mind and just forgot that the comma was there. I'm not usually that much of a grammar nazi, but that's the freaking ''Constitution!'' --[[Special:Contributions/69.211.56.17|69.211.56.17]] 22:41, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

:I do admit that the wording would be clearer ''today'', but that is a faulty argument here, for two reasons. First, It was written more than 200 years ago, almost 240, in fact. Unless you have a contemporary grammar, you have no right to be a grammar Nazi with the Constitution. Second, The Constitution was deliberately constructed to be vague, so it might last a little longer than the ten years predicted for it. (Talk about an underestimate) Anonymous 02:54, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

:I see the wording as "[Becauase of] A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." i.e. the first half explains ''why'' the second half (note that "well-regulated" to them meant "properly trained"). [[User:Wilh3lm|Wilh3lm]] ([[User talk:Wilh3lm|talk]]) 14:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I still don't quite understand this comic. If crypto is classified as a weapon, then people in the USA are free to use it? Why would they not be free to use it today? What does (politicians'?) complacency have to do with all of this?

(On second thought, is this comic referring to the continued attempts of outlawing cryptography? e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30778424 ) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.111|141.101.80.111]] 09:51, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

:As it says in the comic, the encryption technique was originally classed as a weapon in order to make it illegal to export the technology to other countries. Controlling the use of encryption within the US was going to be difficult due to the First Amendment, but preventing other countries accessing the US developed technology was seen as the most important goal. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States here] for more detailed explanation. The comic definately addresses the ongoing legal status of encryption technology, but as far any link to Mr Camerons recently reported attacks on encryption, this comic was published in 2008, so no. {{unsigned|Pudder}}

:: Cameron's was just an example; the attacks have been going on for twenty years, and in most western countries.

:: Anyway, I'm quite aware of US embargoes, but the the right-to-bear-arms amendment doesn't apply to them. I'm still finding the last panel incomprehensible. (I don't mean to pick on you specifically, but) none of my questions have been answered. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.111|141.101.80.111]] 11:07, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

::: After re-reading your comment and the comic, I think I understand where you are coming from. With encryption classed as a weapon, it cannot be exported, but may be used by citizens within the US. Once no longer classified as a weapon, it can still be used by citizens (i.e. nothing has changed as far as use by US citizens is concerned). The issue comes when if the government tries to prevent use of encryption; if classed as a weapon, you can use the "2nd amendment" defence. My guess on the complacency thing is that possibly politicians become complacent in believing that they have the power to 'control' encryption, and may deny use of it if they wanted. Classed as a weapon, suddenly the constitution stands in their way... Which would bring us back to 'outlawing encryption', though Mr Cameron and the UK in general would be another kettle of fish. Its a good question.--[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 13:07, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

: Re: outlawing cryptography. Governments, including the US one, haven't liked encryption for a long while, as its use will make obtaining evidence much harder if not impossible. The recent talks have been about just outright outlawing it or otherwise weakening it to the point of irrelevance. See for example the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip clipper chip] from 1993, which has a back door specifically built for law enforcement. See also various [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law key disclosure laws].

: But this might be irrelevant. I'm looking at this from a too modern angle; few of those laws existed in the 1990s, which is what the comic is referring to.

: I think the explanation is missing Megan's point and its effects for the rest of the world; the course of action which she proposes affects the United States alone. And of course, as I've mentioned, I feel that the final panel is halfway unaccounted for in the explanation. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.111|141.101.80.111]] 10:16, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Does the freedom to speak not also include the freedom to speak privately?
You don't HAVE to harbour government agents in your home in the USA do you?

[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 20:29, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Coming back to this in the modern day it's wild to me how 'crypto' has transformed from meaning 'cryptography' to meaning 'crypto(-graphically secured p2p)-currency'. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.189.34|172.70.189.34]] 15:11, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

1604: Snakes

2023-11-28T20:02:46Z

Wilh3lm: Turns out there are three species of coral snake in the US

{{comic
| number = 1604
| date = November 16, 2015
| title = Snakes
| image = snakes.png
| titletext = The last band of color indicates the snake's tolerance for being held before biting.
}}

==Explanation==
In the comic, [[Megan]] confuses a popular method of identification of the dangerous North American {{w|coral snake}} by its red, yellow, and black stripes with the {{w|Electronic color code|color-coding system}} used to indicate the resistance of electrical resistors.

The coral snake has red bands adjacent to its yellow bands. However, coral snakes are {{w|mimicry|mimicked}} by nonvenomous species with similar coloring, such as the {{w|milk snake}}, whose red bands are not adjacent to its yellow bands. This has led to a variety of rhyming {{w|mnemonic}}s, such as “Red touches yellow, kill a fellow; red touches black, friend of Jack.” '''THESE MNEMONICS ARE NOT ACCURATE, ESPECIALLY OUTSIDE THE EASTERN UNITED STATES'''. Because Megan is describing a red band being adjacent to a yellow band, she is most likely holding a coral snake, which contains the most potent venom of any snake in North America.

Instead of realizing the danger, Megan equates the color bands to having the same function as those printed on electrical {{w|resistor}}s. Resistors have at least three bands to identify their resistance value in {{w|ohm}}s, followed by an optional fourth band showing the {{w|engineering tolerance|tolerance}} as within the bounds of a certain percentage of the aforementioned resistance value. A red band followed by a yellow and a black one identifies a 24 ohm resistor (the omega symbol, “Ω”, stands for ohms). Eastern coral snakes (''Micrurus fulvius''), Texas coral snakes (''Micrurus tener''), and Arizona coral snakes (''Micruroides euryxanthus'', also called Sonoran or western coral snakes) typically have stripes in the pattern red, yellow, black, yellow. Yellow corresponds to a tolerance of ±5%, so the actual resistance will be between 22.8Ω and 25.2Ω. Resistor color codes were also mentioned in [[227: Color Codes]].

The title text refers to the fourth band specifying the tolerance but interprets it as the snake's tolerance for being held before biting, instead of the measure of the imprecision of the 24 ohms. In the case of yellow, this would refer to a tolerance value of 5%. How tolerance to being held is measured is left ambiguous. If the value represents the probability of being bitten over a given period of time, then larger numbers would mean a less tolerant snake. If it instead represents the position on some per-determined "tolerance scale" between 0 and 1, then larger values would represent a 'more' tolerant snake.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball are standing in some grass. Megan is holding a snake with red, yellow, and black stripes.]

:Megan: Red touches yellow, which I think means this is a 24Ω snake.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Animals]]

1604: Snakes

2023-11-28T19:41:52Z

Wilh3lm: DO NOT USE THE RHYME TO IDENTIFY SNAKES

{{comic
| number = 1604
| date = November 16, 2015
| title = Snakes
| image = snakes.png
| titletext = The last band of color indicates the snake's tolerance for being held before biting.
}}

==Explanation==
In the comic, [[Megan]] confuses a popular method of identification of the dangerous North American {{w|coral snake}} by its red, yellow, and black stripes with the {{w|Electronic color code|color-coding system}} used to indicate the resistance of electrical resistors.

The coral snake has red bands adjacent to its yellow bands. However, coral snakes are {{w|mimicry|mimicked}} by nonvenomous species with similar coloring, such as the {{w|milk snake}}, whose red bands are not adjacent to its yellow bands. This has led to a variety of rhyming {{w|mnemonic}}s, such as “Red touches yellow, kill a fellow; red touches black, friend of Jack.” '''THESE MNEMONICS ARE NOT ACCURATE, ESPECIALLY OUTSIDE THE EASTERN UNITED STATES'''. Because Megan is describing a red band being adjacent to a yellow band, she is most likely holding a coral snake, which contains the most potent venom of any snake in North America.

Instead of realizing the danger, Megan equates the color bands to having the same function as those printed on electrical {{w|resistor}}s. Resistors have at least three bands to identify their resistance value in {{w|ohm}}s, followed by an optional fourth band showing the {{w|engineering tolerance|tolerance}} as within the bounds of a certain percentage of the aforementioned resistance value. A red band followed by a yellow and a black one identifies a 24 ohm resistor (the omega symbol, “Ω”, stands for ohms). Eastern coral snakes (''Micrurus fulvius'') and Texas coral snakes (''Micrurus tener'') typically have stripes in the pattern red, yellow, black, yellow. Yellow corresponds to a tolerance of ±5%, so the actual resistance will be between 22.8Ω and 25.2Ω. Resistor color codes were also mentioned in [[227: Color Codes]].

The title text refers to the fourth band specifying the tolerance but interprets it as the snake's tolerance for being held before biting, instead of the measure of the imprecision of the 24 ohms. In the case of yellow, this would refer to a tolerance value of 5%. How tolerance to being held is measured is left ambiguous. If the value represents the probability of being bitten over a given period of time, then larger numbers would mean a less tolerant snake. If it instead represents the position on some per-determined "tolerance scale" between 0 and 1, then larger values would represent a 'more' tolerant snake.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball are standing in some grass. Megan is holding a snake with red, yellow, and black stripes.]

:Megan: Red touches yellow, which I think means this is a 24Ω snake.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Animals]]

2487: Danger Mnemonic

2023-11-28T19:36:35Z

Wilh3lm: DO NOT USE THE RHYME TO IDENTIFY SNAKES

{{comic
| number = 2487
| date = July 9, 2021
| title = Danger Mnemonic
| image = danger_mnemonic.png
| titletext = It's definitely not the time to try drinking beer before liquor.
}}

==Explanation==
The teacher [[Miss Lenhart]] warns two small kids using a danger {{w|mnemonic}}.

However, this is actually a mash-up of three different common danger mnemonics, each of which warn about different hazards.

*Red touch black, friend of Jack; red touch yellow, kill a fellow.

This mnemonic is intended to help recognize venomous {{w|coral snake}}s, which have brightly colored stripes. Some nonvenomous {{w|king snake}} species have similar striped colors, but in different patterns. '''NOTE THAT THIS MNEMONIC IS NOT ACCURATE, ESPECIALLY OUTSIDE THE EASTERN UNITED STATES WHERE IT WAS ORIGINALLY CREATED'''; many species of coral snake have black stripes touching red stripes, and if the snake has atypical coloration, then the rhyme may still lead to misidentification even in the right region. The safest course of action is to avoid any snake with the warning colors of red, yellow/white, and black stripes. Another corruption of same warning features in [[1604: Snakes]].

*Leaves of three, leave them be; berries white, poisonous sight. (Alternatively, "berries white, run in fright" or "hide from sight.")

This mnemonic is used to identify {{w|poison ivy}} and {{w|poison oak}} throughout much of North America. These plants both produce an oily surface resin called urushiol, which causes an allergic reaction in the majority of people. Touching either plant can result in contact dermatitis, which can be severely itchy or painful. If burned, the urushiol can be inhaled, causing lung irritation. While rarely serious, these reactions are often severely unpleasant and can last for weeks, so avoiding the plants is well advised. Both plants generally grow three leaves at the end of each branch, and grow berries that turn white when ripe. The mnemonic helps in remembering this characteristic to distinguish them from similar-looking but harmless vines. See [[443: Know Your Vines]].

*Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.

This {{w|Red sky at morning|mnemonic}} predicts bad/good weather conditions based on a particularly red sunrise/sunset. It is predictive at {{w|middle latitudes}} where the prevailing winds go from west to east. Regions of higher air pressure will cause a particularly red sky at sunrise/sunset, so a red sky in the evening indicates a high pressure system is coming in from the west with its calmer weather, while a red sky in the morning indicates a low pressure front coming in (usually with rain and rougher weather). In some countries (such as the United Kingdom), the saying mentions shepherds rather than sailors. Randall actually wrote a [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/science/what-makes-a-red-sky-at-night-and-at-morning.html newspaper article] explaining this phenomenon.

Combining all three sayings sounds particularly ominous. It implies that a person is involved with a situation simultaneously involving coral snakes, poison ivy, and potentially nasty weather. In such a case, Miss Lenhart advises the children to "just get out of there", implying that the situation is too dangerous to try to deal with.

The title text refers to another mnemonic: 'Beer before liquor, never been sicker; liquor before beer, you're in the clear.' Unlike the first three mnemonics, which are genuinely useful for avoiding danger, this one is [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/07/health/the-claim-mixing-types-of-alcohol-makes-you-sick.html largely a myth], as the order in which you drink alcohol is unlikely to impact how sick you become. However, whether the mnemonic is true or not, testing it would involve multiple drinks of alcohol, which would be ill-advised when facing a dangerous situation, particularly one as bizarre and complex as implied in this strip.

See also [[2422: Vaccine Ordering]] for the previous time ''xkcd'' referenced the latter mnemonic.

See also [[2038: Hazard Symbol]] for another combination of danger warnings.

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart is holding a finger up in front of two children: a boy with spiky hair and Jill.]

: Miss Lenhart: Now, remember:
: Miss Lenhart: If red touches yellow amid leaves of three under a red sky at morning,
: Miss Lenhart: You should probably just get out of there.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Kids]]

2846: Daylight Saving Choice

2023-10-26T00:56:35Z

Wilh3lm: Minor wording changes

{{comic
| number = 2846
| date = October 25, 2023
| title = Daylight Saving Choice
| image = daylight_saving_choice_2x.png
| imagesize = 231x386px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I average out the spring and fall changes and just set my clocks 39 minutes ahead year-round.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by TWO CLOCKS SET ONE HOUR APART - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
{{w|Daylight saving time}} is a practice involving changing the clock one hour ahead for approximately half the year, typically during winter or spring. Most countries no longer follow this practice, however it is still used in North America, Europe, and parts of South America and Australia.

Within countries that still follow the practice, there are frequent arguments (mostly during the 2-3 days surrounding the clock change) over the pros and cons of it. Black Hat is suggesting that everyone should observe or ignore daylight savings time based on their personal opinion. While it might put an end to the arguments (although this itself is debatable) it would clearly cause disharmonious time. For example, during daylight savings time, an observer would claim it's 9:00 when a non-observer would claim it's 8:00.

The joke here is that, while most options in life can be left to individual choice, clock time is only fully useful if everyone involved agrees on what it means.

There are known incidents in which an actual application of Black Hat's proposal
[https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sdut-daylight-saving-time-sunday-2015mar07-htmlstory.html rendered a terrorist plot void]. One of them is a [https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-38.html 1999 Darwin Award Winner]

This comic was posted 11 days before the end of 2023's Daylight saving time in the United States. If the proposal is actually instituted at this time, those who do not like the fuss of changing their clocks would ''remain'' on DST (as {{w|Sunshine Protection Act|has been actually proposed}}), yet those who are happy with it will fall back to non-DST, over the winter months. Presumably, unless anyone changes their minds over the 'winter' period, everyone would actually be back in synch for future 'summer's.

The title text suggests splitting the difference by using a constant offset which is the average of the daylight savings offset across days of the year. We do not know if in this system Randall would change his clock for leap year.

==Transcript==
:[Black Hat is speaking at a lectern, flanked by Ponytail and Hairy.]
:Black Hat: From now on, everyone who likes daylight saving time should change their clocks, and everyone who doesn't, shouldn't.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:The government finally decides to put an end to all the arguments.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Daylight saving time]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]

Talk:316: Loud Sex

2023-10-20T12:41:57Z

Wilh3lm:

It is still strange: On sexual comics we got many technical discussions and here (a sexual background is also given) we can imagine some "aberrant sexual behavior"? How that single neighbor girl should come to this? Or will that dish break and fall onto this two people in the bed on the left? I would just say this is only a technical comic, with some sidesteps. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 23:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

:Pardon? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.223|108.162.219.223]] 20:32, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
::Is sex more important than science? Maybe, but while everybody knows how to perform sex, they do not understand how to do this science.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 17:08, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
:::Speaking as an ardent advocate of the Philosophy of Science...yes, sex is more important. Without it, you will quickly run out of scientists. And it's also more fun. —[[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 21:52, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
::::[[Citation Needed]] on the last sentence... sigh [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 19:48, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
::::: I'm firmly in the camp that there are multiple kinds of fun; There's the "wow that was amazing" fun of sex, the "oh wow" fun of watching that one hour lecture link all the concepts you were introduced to, the "i can't breathe" fun of cycling, and so on. Whils discovering in science might not be the "wow that was amazing" kind of fun, it's certainly the "EUREKA!" kind of fun. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.22.196|162.158.22.196]] 11:05, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I had interpreted the "aberrant behavior" of the other mehtioned types of reflectors as referring to the way they would focus the sound- a parabolic dish would focus sound into a parallel beam, annoying the entire hallway (but not any one person as much- compare sunlight coming through a window to the same light, routed through a magnifying glass, where the glass is the ellipsoidal dish); while a spherical dish would focus the sound right back on Cueball himself.

Also, I dobut the threshold of pain could actually be reached here, since it would be hard for the intensity of the sound focused in the neighbor's room to exceed that of the sound in Cueball's own room- and I'd be surprised if Cueball's friend produced enough sound to make her own head hurt. My guess is that the neighbor had just been startled awake.

--[[User:Someone Else 37|Someone Else 37]] ([[User talk:Someone Else 37|talk]]) 22:16, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
:"Aberration" should be understood here as a sound equivalent of [[wikipedia:Optical aberration]]. An spheric or parabolloidal reflector wouldn't focus in one point sound from a point source. Of course, there is also a double meaning with aberrant sexual behavior.--[[User:Pere prlpz|Pere prlpz]] ([[User talk:Pere prlpz|talk]]) 12:49, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

This is a slightly annoying comic because it clearly shows cueball in the first and second panels, but it show hairy in the rest. I've added this comic to the categorys featuring cueball and hairy.

Cueball should be made aware the reflector would work both ways [[Special:Contributions/198.41.230.247|198.41.230.247]] 17:20, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
:He could just have the reflector stored away when he isn't getting it on. [[User:Wilh3lm|Wilh3lm]] ([[User talk:Wilh3lm|talk]]) 12:41, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

928: Mimic Octopus

2023-10-19T18:28:30Z

Wilh3lm: The correct plural please

{{comic
| number = 928
| date = July 22, 2011
| title = Mimic Octopus
| image = mimic_octopus.png
| titletext = Even if the dictionaries are starting to give in, I refuse to accept 'octopi' as a word mainly because--I'm not making this up--there's a really satisfying climactic scene in the Orson Scott Card horror novel 'Lost Boys' which hinges on it being an incorrect pluralization.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a parody of fish and sea-life identification charts, referencing the {{w|mimic octopus}} which, as the name implies, is able to mimic other animals, so all animals and objects found in the sea could actually just be such an animal (or animals).

The identification chart for South East Asian sea life shows 13 creatures mimicked including eight individual fish (two of which are not yet recognized) and other objects and animals. In order, top-to-bottom, left-to-right: A {{w|Moorish idol}} (Gill, from ''{{w|Finding Nemo}})'', unknown, a {{w|rockfish}}, a {{w|clownfish}}, unknown, a {{w|lionfish}}, a {{w|shark}}, a {{w|crinoid|sea lily}}, an {{w|angler fish}}, an {{w|anchor}}, a {{w|submarine}}, a {{w|scuba diver}} and {{w|Shoaling and schooling|school of 11 fish}}. Finally there is an {{w|octopus}}, but rather than being the mimic octopus in its natural form it's actually two of them each (presumably) mimicking part of an octopus.

The {{w|Orson Scott Card}} novel that the title text refers to is ''{{w|Lost Boys (novel)|Lost Boys}}'': "A withdrawn eight-year-old in a troubled family invents imaginary friends who bear the names of missing children" (Publisher's Weekly). The part of the story that [[Randall]] is referring to (Chapter 7, Crickets) involves a situation where the protagonist, Stevie, is given a C grade for an otherwise impeccable diorama featuring underwater animals involving clay sculptures (when only a poster would have sufficed) and a well-written presentation supposedly because the other children had destroyed the diorama before the end of the day. To make matters worse, his teacher, Ms. Jones, had made fun of his project and given the ribbon for first prize to someone else.

On inquiring about the grading, his father, Step, found out that the principal, Dr. Mariner, had already made the decision to hand Stevie the blue ribbon for first prize as she had reviewed the project before it had been destroyed, but Ms. Jones had secretly overruled her behind her back by announcing that another child (JJ) would receive the ribbon. So, the next day he met up with Ms Jones after school to have a word on the grading of his project. Needless to say, they ended up arguing about minor issues, with Mrs. Jones justifying the reason for her decision on, among other things, the definition of a 'depiction', whether or not the amount of content was defined by the word count or the number of pages and of the importance of putting the report in a plastic cover. The argument finally comes to a head when Step points out that there was only one red mark on the project report, and that concerned an 'incorrect' pluralization of the word 'octopus'

:“But Mrs. Jones, surely you know that the plural of “octopus” is either ‘octopus’, with nothing added, or ‘octopuses’.”
:“I think not,” said Mrs. Jones.
:“Think again, Mrs. Jones.”
:She must have realized that she was not on firm ground here. “Perhaps ‘octopuses’ is an alternate plural, but I’m sure that ‘octopi’ is the preferred.”
:“No, Mrs. Jones. If you had looked it up, you would have discovered that ‘octopi’ is not the preferred spelling. It is not a spelling at all. '''The word does not exist, except in the mouths of those who are pretending to be educated but in fact are not.''' This is because the ‘us’ ending of ‘octopus’ is not a Latin nominative singular ending, which would form its plural by changing to the letter ‘i’. Instead, the syllable ‘pus’ in ‘octopus’ is the Greek word for ‘foot.’ And it forms its plural the Greek way. Therefore ‘octopoda’, not ‘octopi’. Never ‘octopi’.”
:“Well, then, octopoda. Your son’s paper said octopuses.”
:“I know,” said Step. “When he asked me the correct plural, I told him octopoda. But then he was still uncertain, because my son doesn’t think he knows something until he knows it, and so he looked it up. And to my surprise, octopoda is only used when referring to more than one species of octopus, rather than when referring to more than one actual octopus. What Stevie put in his paper is in fact the preferred dictionary usage. Which you would have known, too, if you had looked it up.”

After proving his case that his son did indeed deserve an A grade, he then threatened to bring the matter to the attention of the principal. He then warned Mrs Jones that while he wanted the grade to remain unchanged, he wanted her to inform the class that the ribbon would be awarded to Stevie, before revealing that he had been recording the conversation all along. And, after this, after Mrs Jones came crying for forgiveness before leaving, Step realized how vulnerable she was and how she was channeling her frustration at one particular student in each class to find some relief from that.

According to the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk Merriam-Webster Dictionary], 'octopi', 'octopuses', and 'octopodes' are all correct plural versions of "octopus." However, "octopi" is etymologically incorrect as "octopus" is of Greek origin, rather than Latin. Following the Greek, the correct plural is 'octopodes'. Supposedly, Randall would very much like the word 'octopi' to remain unrecognized by major dictionaries as otherwise it would lessen the magnitude of the climactic conclusion of this argument by rendering Step's mockery of Ms. Jones' perceived intellectual superiority factually invalid. This also offers another reason why the octopus in the chart is named ''two mimic octopuses'', so Randall can use the correct pluralization of the word in the comic. This is an example of a comic where the title text seems more important to Randall than the actual comic.

It should be noted that, at least according to [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=octopus Etymology Dictionary], Octopi is wrong for exactly the reasons that Step lists and first appears over 60 years later.

==Transcript==
:[Captions above the panel:]
:<big>Southeast Asian Sea Life</big>
:Identification Chart
:[The chart consist of 14 black silhouettes which includes eight individual fish and several other object/animals. From top left: A Moorish idol, unknown fish, a rockfish, a clownfish, unknown fish, a lionfish, a shark, a sea lily, an w|angler fish, an anchor with chain, a submarine, a scuba diver, a school of seven large and four small fish, and and at the bottom right a silhouette of an octopus displaying eight arms and a tilted head with large white eyes. All 14 are labeled the same except the octopus:]
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Two Mimic Octopuses

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Sharks]]

483: Fiction Rule of Thumb

2023-07-29T20:11:33Z

Wilh3lm: As awesomer is also italicized it implies that it was made up by the author

{{comic
| number = 483
| date = October 1, 2008
| title = Fiction Rule of Thumb
| image = fiction_rule_of_thumb.png
| titletext = Except for anything by Lewis Carroll or Tolkien, you get five made-up words per story. I'm looking at you, Anathem.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Randall]] uses a graph that purports that the more words an author makes up, the less likely their book is any good. To demonstrate this, he provides an example where a hypothetical author uses four made-up words in a single sentence: "Fra'as", "Farmlings", "Krytoses", and "Awesomer". The author clearly does not see that having to insert explanations of all the made-up words makes the sentence extremely clumsy.

The title text declares that the average author is allowed five invented words per book before this rule is invoked against them, but mentions that {{w|J.R.R. Tolkien}} and {{w|Lewis Carroll}} are exceptions, as they are both very famous, well-respected writers {{w|Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien|who made words up}} {{w|Jabberwocky|all the time}}.

Randall also makes a dig at ''{{w|Anathem}}'', a speculative fiction novel by {{w|Neal Stephenson}} about a monastic order on another planet that studies science, mathematics, and philosophy. The book is noteworthy for having a very large number of made-up or repurposed words, enough to require its own glossary. One of the more common fake words is ''fraa'' (without an apostrophe).

==Transcript==
:[Line graph shown with an inverse curve.]
:[Y-Axis: Probability book is good.]
:[X-Axis: Number of words made up by author.]
:[The curve becomes less steep as the number of words increases.]
:"The Elders, or ''Fra'as,'' guarded the ''farmlings'' (children) with their ''krytoses,'' which are like swords but ''awesomer''..."
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:LOTR]]

1621: Fixion

2023-07-27T15:31:05Z

Wilh3lm: Peryton microwave oven citation

{{comic
| number = 1621
| date = December 25, 2015
| title = Fixion
| image = fixion.png
| titletext = My theory predicts that, at high enough energies, FRBs and perytons become indistinguishable because the detector burns out.
}}

==Explanation==
The second [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comic]] in a row, the first being [[1620: Christmas Settings]].

This comic was released on {{w|Christmas}} day as a present from [[Randall]] to all {{w|physicists}}. It introduces a new particle, the ''Fixion'', which explains everything. The word "Fixion" can be read as a pun: Either it can mean something like "fix-i-on," with "[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-on#Suffix -on]" being a suffix for many particles, and this particle being able to "fix" things; or it means "fiction".

In physics, there are still many {{w|List of unsolved problems in physics|big questions and mysteries}}. There are many phenomena which don't seem to fit, and we don't know how to explain yet. The "Fixion" is satirically presented as a particle which acts as a {{w|Deus ex machina}}, (see also {{tvtropes|DeusExMachina|tvtropes}}), which solves all of these mysteries without any serious fundamental reasons.

The style of the chart suggests a {{w|Feynman diagram}} - an easy way of drawing particle interactions. Every time there is an interaction, the main central Fixion-line changes direction. Typically, {{w|fermions}} (the "solid" particles like {{w|electrons}} and {{w|quarks}}) are shown with solid lines, {{w|photons}} (and generally the weak-force-carrying {{w|bosons}}) are shown with wavy lines, {{w|gluons}} with spiraling lines and other mediating particles (such as {{w|pions}} in the {{w|nuclear force}}, or the {{w|Higgs boson}}) with a dotted line. Randall obeys these rules only very loosely, which makes sense - many of the things involved in this Feynman diagram are either so theoretical that they have no widely used standard representation, or would never appear in a sensible diagram (spacecraft, for instance). All mentioned types of lines - and even more types - are presented in the diagram. All that the Fixion does is described in the [[#Table of Phenomena|table below]].

The title text is a continuation of one of the jokes already mentioned in the main comic (fourth phrase from the top to the left) about {{w|Fast radio burst}}s (FRBs) and {{w|Peryton (astronomy)|perytons}}. See explanation in the last entry in the [[#Table of Phenomena|table below]].

===Table of Phenomena===
*Below, all the phenomena mentioned in the comic (and in the title text) have been listed and described.
*The order is the top left phenomenon first, and then alternating between right and left down to the bottom and then the title text at the end.
{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5 class="wikitable"
|'''Phenomenon''' || '''In the comic''' || '''Description''' || '''Solved?'''
|-
| Main component of dark matter
|| An arrow points to the very first part of the main line.
|| Our best measurements of the universe predict that visible matter is only about one-twentieth of the matter in the universe; the remaining matter is "{{w|dark matter}}" that cannot be seen. The leading candidates for dark matter are {{w|weakly interacting massive particles}} (WIMPs). These would be new, undiscovered forms of matter which barely interact except through gravity and thus give off little or no light. Some of the dark matter is likely made up of {{w|Massive compact halo objects}} (MACHOs); effectively dead stars too dim to see. MACHOs are probably only a minority of the dark matter, however. Studies of two colliding galaxy clusters suggest that dark matter can pass through other matter without slowing down, unlike ordinary matter. Moreover, calculations of the elements produced during the {{w|big bang}} - which match the observed distribution of elements in the universe very precisely - don't leave room for enough additional {{w|protons}} and {{w|neutrons}} to form the dark matter.
|| No. Proving the nature of dark matter will most likely win someone a {{w|Nobel Prize}}.
|-
| Confines quarks and gluons
|| An arrow points to the very first part of the main line.
|| {{w|Quark confinement}} means that we never see particles with {{w|color charge}} (i.e. {{w|quark}}s and {{w|gluon}}s) on their own. They only exist in groups that cancel out the color charge. Try to separate the groups, and the energy you add will instead cause new particles to pop into existence. Quarks are also referenced in [[474: Turn-On]], [[1418: Horse]] and in [[1731: Wrong]].
|| The basic facts of confinement are well understood, but some of the details are too complicated to tease out.
|-
| Neutralizes monopoles
|| An arrow points to the first solid line into the main line, from left and upwards. This is thus a solid particle merging with the Fixion.
|| {{w|Magnetic monopoles}} (e.g., a north charge without a south charge) should exist according to many {{w|Grand Unified Theory|grand unified theories}} (GUTs) and {{w|String theory|string theories}}, but none have ever been seen.
|| No! Despite claims that pop up in the news every year, creating a monopole-like state in the magnetic spins of a crystal is not the same as creating a real monopole.
|-
| Suppresses antimatter in early universe
|| No arrow.
|| The universe today is made almost entirely of matter. {{w|Antimatter}} and matter are identical, except that the charges are opposite. Antimatter and matter "{{w|Annihilation|annihilate}}" when they come into contact. So why is the universe made of matter? Why didn't the universe have equal amounts of both, and if it did, why didn't it annihilate itself immediately? This is a big question in physics today. The Fixion would explain this by its ability to suppress the formation of antimatter in the early universe. Antimatter is also referenced in [[683: Science Montage]], [[826: Guest Week: Zach Weiner (SMBC)]], and [[1731: Wrong]] as well as being the subject of the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|114|Antimatter}}''. It was also mentioned in another ''what if?'': ''{{what if|79|Lake Tea}}''.
|| Lots of theories, no conclusive evidence for any yet. The most notable theories revolve around the {{w|weak interaction}}, which has been shown to treat matter and antimatter asymmetrically. Now that the {{w|Higgs boson}} has been found, the biggest project for the {{w|Large Hadron Collider}} experiments is to try to crack this.
|-
| Spontaneously emits dark energy
|| Two arrows points to two dotted lines going out left and downwards below the first solid line. It is thus two mediating particles that go out from the Fixion.
|| Prior to the 1990s, most {{w|cosmologists}} expected that the universe's expansion after the Big Bang would either slow down or stay constant. In 1998, cosmologists discovered that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. Under {{w|Einstein|Einstein's}} theory of {{w|general relativity}}, the observed acceleration predicts that ordinary matter and dark matter make up about 30% of the universe's total energy, with the rest coming in the form of "{{w|dark energy}}." The nature of dark energy is not certain. However, the leading candidate is that space itself has intrinsic energy (either constant or variable), and so as space expands, the energy of the universe increases.
|| Again, Nobel Prize territory.
|-
| Mediates proton decay, but then hides it.
|| An arrow points to three lines going to and from the main line. The outer line does not connect with the main line. The three lines probably represent the 3 quarks a proton is made of, and how a proton is usually drawn in Feynman diagrams (see for example [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_decay#/media/File:Beta_Negative_Decay.svg Beta Negative Decay]). The diagram represents a proton decaying, mediated by the Fixion, however then recombining. Presumably the hypothetical Fixion causes protons to decay all the time, however according to the diagram the quarks recombine again which makes the process impossible to detect.
|| Many GUTs predict that {{w|proton decay|protons will decay}}, but experiments have shown the proton to have a half-life of at least 10<sup>33</sup> years - very much longer than the {{w|age of the universe}} (1.38x10<sup>10</sup> years).
|| It's not ''necessarily'' a problem. All theories predict that proton decay is a very slow process (10<sup>32+</sup> years), which is consistent with the current data.
|-
| Introduces dispersion in perytons from kitchen microwaves, explaining fast radio bursts
|| Two arrows point to four wavy lines. The waves of the lines have different wavelength. The one line coming out left is of the same wavelength as the top of the three coming out right. The two below each decrease in wavelength compared to the one before them. Maybe this is not meant to represent photon-like particles, but are just different frequencies of microwaves from the microwave oven – thus relating to the subject.
|| {{w|Fast radio burst}}s (FRBs) are unexplained bursts of radio-frequency energy from space, that could even be extragalactic signals, with speculations that they might be signs of {{w|extraterrestrial intelligence}}. {{w|Peryton (astronomy)|Perytons}} are things that ''look like'' FRBs, but come from Earth (specifically, from the {{w|microwave oven}} at {{w|Parkes Observatory}} [https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.02165]). Randall's Fixion makes some perytons change frequency distribution so they appear to come from space; thus meaning all FRBs come from microwave ovens.
|| No, but it's probably something very big - a star collapsing to a {{w|black hole}} or (as now looks likely) a {{w|magnetar}} (magnetic neutron star)
|-
| Broken symmetry causes ϴ=0, explaining unobserved neutron dipole moment
|| An arrow points to the part of the main line just before the first wavy line.
|| The {{w|neutron electric dipole moment}} is a measure of how balanced electric charge is inside the neutron. ϴ (theta) is a number in {{w|quantum chromodynamics}} (QCD) which quantifies the breaking of a type of symmetry called {{w|CP violation|CP symmetry}}. If ϴ is not 0, one result of this should be a neutron dipole moment. {{w|Symmetry breaking}} is a common explanation of effects in some areas of theoretical physics (for instance, it's an important part of {{w|Peter Higgs|Higgs'}} theory about why particles have mass), but normally it explains why a value is ''not'' zero. Presumably the Fixion would break CP symmetry independently of QCD, which would mean that ϴ can be 0 while preserving observed CP-breaking effects.
|| Again, it's not (yet) a problem - the predicted dipole moment is tiny, and we're only just reaching the point when we can measure it that accurately.
|-
| Causes alpha effect
|| No arrow.
|| The {{w|alpha effect}} is a weird effect from chemistry, where putting an "alpha" atom with a {{w|lone pair}} of electrons close to a molecule makes the molecule more likely to give up its electrons.
|| Lots of competing explanations.
|-
| Covers naked singularities
|| No arrow – but the text is situated next to the middle of the three wavy lines going right.
|| A {{w|naked singularity}} is like a black hole without an {{w|event horizon}}. So far no naked singularity has been observed (except, arguably, the big bang) and the {{w|cosmic censorship hypothesis}} suggests they can't exist, although some people have suggested ways of making them. Randall has mentioned these in the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''[https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/ Proton Earth, Electron Moon]''.
|| Not necessarily something that needs explaining - none have been seen, and most theories say they don't exist. If support grows for {{w|loop quantum gravity}}, then we might have to start really searching.
|-
| Intercepts certain gravitational waves before they're observed.
|| An arrow points to a spiraling line going upwards to the left, so this is drawn like a gluon.
|| If {{w|gravity}} behaves like {{w|Fundamental interaction|the other forces}}, it must be conveyed by waves. At the time of the comic's publication, our best detector, {{w|LIGO}} had yet to detect any {{w|gravitational waves}}, though this is probably just due to the low probability of events that would be detectable. Only extreme events like {{w|binary black hole}} mergers are detectable with the current setup. The proposed {{w|LISA Pathfinder}} spacecraft will be able to see things like orbiting black holes and {{w|neutron stars}}.
|| In February 2016, researchers at LIGO [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html reported the detection of gravitational waves].
|-
| Causes coronal heating
|| No arrow – but the text is situated next to the middle of the three wavy lines going right.
|| For some reason the outer layer of the {{w|sun}} (the {{w|corona}}) is hotter than most reasonable theories predict. This is for instance mentioned in Randall’s new book ''[[Thing Explainer]]'' in the entry about the sun. This can also be seen on the [[Thing Explainer#Preview Pages|back cover of the book]].
|| It's a mystery, but it possibly has something to do with waves in the corona (for example, the {{w|High Resolution Coronal Imager}} has seen "braids" in the corona that whip around and unravel themselves).
|-
| Higgs-ish
|| As this is just a property of the Fixion there is no arrow.
|| The {{w|Higgs boson}} is a manifestation of the Higgs field... but many supersymmetry and string theories predict multiple Higgs-like particles. It's almost a prerequisite of any new theory that it has a Higgs-ish element. So the Fixion blends in with this.
|| N/A
|-
| Superluminally smooths anisotropies in early universe (but adds faint polarization for BICEP3 to find)
|| An arrow points to the point of the main line just below the bottom space probe.
|| The {{w|Cosmic Microwave Background}} (CMB) is incredibly uniform. In fact it is so uniform that the conclusion is that these areas must have been in contact at some time in the early universe. But with the universe being infinite, and the speed of light being finite, most parts of the universe will never be able to interact (any more at least). The explanation usually given for the uniformity is that the universe expanded really fast in the beginning during what is called the {{w|Inflationary epoch}}. {{w|BICEP_and_Keck_Array#BICEP2|BICEP2}} is a {{w|radio telescope}} at the South Pole whose operators claim to have seen polarization in the CMB indicative of inflation. (See [[1365: Inflation]] that references BICEP2's results). The Fixion would fix the problem since it would allow {{w|Faster-than-light|superluminal}} smoothing of the early anisotropies to explain the smoothness observed today, but also add just enough signal that the new {{w|BICEP_and_Keck_Array#BICEP3|BICEP3}} telescope would be able to find it.
|| As stated, {{w|Inflation (cosmology)|inflation}} is the standard explanation and it holds up fairly well. Other studies haven't seen the polarization that BICEP2 has - the {{w|Planck (spacecraft)|Planck space telescope}} also suggests that the BICEP2 team were looking at an unusually dusty bit of space, which could cause polarization. Hopefully this will improve with the BICEP3 data that should be published in 2016.
|-
| Accelerates certain spacecraft during flybys
|| Two arrows point to two solid lines going away from the main line (left and right). At the end of each line there is a space craft with satellite dish and solar panels, representing the items that the Fixion interacts with.
|| This refers to the {{w|flyby anomaly}} which is sometimes (but not always, one in three {{w|Flyby_anomaly#Observations|according to Wikipedia}}) seen when spacecraft fly close to Earth, where they pick up more speed than expected. It's not always seen – for instance the {{w|Rosetta (spacecraft)|Rosetta}} space probe which had an anomaly when passing Earth the first time had no flyby anomaly the next two times it passed Earth like this. Two other probes have shown similar anomalies, but the probe depicted (the same on both sides of the Fixion) looks like Rosetta, the other two don't look like this. Also Randall has depicted Rosetta before in [[1446: Landing]]. (Previously another anomaly for space probes, a deceleration this time known as the {{w|Pioneer Anomaly}}, has been mentioned in the title text of [[502: Dark Flow]]).
|| It could be an unpredicted quirk of gravity and relativity... or it could be experimental error.
|-
| Triggers Siberian sinkholes
|| No arrow, but it is right next to the solid line with an arrow going into the main line just before the first hole where the main line disappears and becomes dotted. Thus it could be a reference also to these holes.
|| Recently (2014), several {{w|sinkholes}} opened up in {{w|Yamal_Peninsula#Yamal_craters |remote parts}} of Siberia. The explanation is currently unknown.
|| While there are lots of weird theories, there's a good chance they were caused by {{w|Arctic methane release}} due to melting {{w|permafrost}} which is probably caused by {{w|global warming}}. See ([http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mystery-of-the-siberian-holes-at-the-end-of-the-world-solved-scientists-offer-explanation-9642988.html Mystery of the Siberian holes… solved]).
|-
| Melts ice in "Snowball Earth" scenario
|| No arrow.
|| {{w|Snowball Earth}} is the theory that the whole planet was covered in ice at some point. To melt all that ice by the {{w|greenhouse effect}} would require far more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than seems plausible. However, if volcanoes were to deposit black soot on the surface of the ice, it would start absorbing heat more efficiently (in scientific terms, the Earth's {{w|albedo}} would decrease) and that would also make the planet heat up.
|| There are {{w|Snowball_Earth#Scientific_dispute|scientific dispute}} regarding the theory for a Snowball Earth. There is no conclusive evidence that it ever occurred, but those in favor have presented lots of {{w|Snowball_Earth#Evidence|evidence}}…
|-
| Transports neutrinos faster than light, but only on certain days through one area of France
|| An arrow points to the part of the main line that becomes dotted between the two “{{w|wormholes}}”. This is where the neutrinos move faster than light…
|| Refers to the {{w|faster-than-light neutrino anomaly}}, where it seemed that a neutrino beam from {{w|CERN}} on the France/Switzerland border to the {{w|OPERA experiment}} in Italy traveled faster than light. Scientists were not able to reproduce the result. This Neutrino experiment was also mentioned in [[955: Neutrinos]].
|| In the end, there was no mystery, just a [http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112551696/cern-confirms-neutrinos-not-faster-than-light/ defective cable causing a measurement error].
|-
| Suppresses sigma in experiments
|| No arrow but the last solid line, with an arrow pointing left, that is going away from the main line, point almost directly at it.
|| Sigma (σ) refers to the {{w|standard deviation}} - a mathematical measure of how much an observed value differs from the expected value. For a formal scientific discovery in particle physics, the standard is 5 sigma which means that there is about a 1 in 3.5 million chance that the results were caused by random errors (of course, they could be caused by ''systematic'' errors, such as measurement problems). Some tantalizing experiments have found interesting results at 3 or 4 sigma but either can't reach 5 sigma or {{w|Oops-Leon|are subsequently dis-proven}}. The question is, does the way the Fixion works here in this comic push the sigma value one way or the other? Does it suppress the value so it goes below or above the level of significance? Is it artificially pushed in the direction so a result seems like it is significant when it is not (see for instance [[882: Significant]]), or is it the other way around so that some experiments, which could have found what the experimenters wanted to find, did not because the sigma has been artificially lowered below the proof threshold? Either way it is a very annoying fact of the Fixion, but it would explain a lot, and probably also make it very hard to find the Fixion because of this intrinsic behavior.|| N/A
|-
| My theory predicts that, at high enough energies, FRBs and perytons become indistinguishable because the detector burns out.
|| From the title text.
|| This is a continuation of the joke already mentioned above regarding fast radio bursts (FRBs) and perytons. GUTs normally predict that all the forces we see are the different low-energy versions of a single force which can only be seen at extremely high energies (much higher than any Earth-based collider could produce). A high-energy FRB would be a {{w|gamma ray burst}} and if it came from a close enough object, would obliterate all life on the hemisphere of Earth facing the burst. It would also wreck the sensitive electronics at Parkes Observatory. This "high energy unification" is stated in a way reminiscent of the unification of electromagnetic and weak forces at high energies; but unlike the latter, it involves two things only "appearing" (or, in this case, not appearing) to be the same, not actually becoming the same.
|| N/A
|}

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:A Christmas gift for physicists:
:The '''Fixion'''
:A new particle that explains everything

:[A chart resembling a Feynman diagram is shown. It begins with a solid line coming down at the top, going a little to the left. The line continues downwards all the time, but changes direction 16 times before exiting at the bottom almost straight under the starting point. At every point where it changes direction, there is some kind of “interaction” with something outside this line. There are 19 phrases, 10 on the left and 9 on the right. 11 of these are distinct labels for points on the line as 14 gray curved arrows points between these 11 phrases to specific points on the line. Three of the phrases on the left has two arrows pointing to two different, but close, parts of the line. The main central line is solid all the way, except at the very bottom, where it “disappears” inside a hole only to “reappear” later from a similar hole. Between these two holes the line is dotted. The lines going away (or to) the main line can be straight and solid, straight and dotted, wavy lines (with different waviness), even looking like a spiral. Two straight solid lines ends up at two space probes, and finally the last two straight solid lines coming in (and out) on either side of the “hole” in the line has arrow pointing in and out. Below the phrases will be listed in reading order, taking one on each side alternatingly. Above each is described if there are any arrow and, if there are, what they points at.]

:[Left: Arrow pointing to the very first part of the main line:]
::Main component of dark matter

:[Right: Arrow pointing to the very first part of the main line, but below the previous arrow:]
::Confines quarks and gluons

:[Left: Arrow points to the first solid line going left and upwards:]
::Neutralizes monopoles

:[Right: No arrow:]
::Suppresses antimatter in early universe

:[Left: Two arrows points to two dotted lines going out left and downwards below the first solid line:]
::Spontaneously emits dark energy

:[Right: Arrow pointing to several lines going almost parallel with the main line. The first line closest to the arrow is not connected with the main line. It bends closer to the other lines in the middle. The next line is connected to the main line, and is thus actually two lines going in to the main line. The same goes for the inner line, where there is some distance between the entry and exit, as the middle of these three lines connect to the main line in between. In principle there are four lines going in/out and one not connected, but it looks like three lines:]
::Mediates proton decay but then hides it

:[Left: One arrow points to the first wavy line (7 peaks) coming out and up towards the dotted lines above. A second arrow points further down the main line where there are three more wavy lines coming out, but to the right, they are all of the same length and go almost straight right, only a little down. The first has as short a wave length as the line above to the left, but as it is shorter it only has 6 peaks. Then the wavelength decreases to a very long one for the last, 5 peaks and then 3 peaks. The arrow points almost where the middle wavy line exits the main line:]
::Introduces dispersion in perytons from kitchen microwaves, explaining fast radio bursts

:[Right: An arrow point to the part of the main line between the three parallel lines and the first wavy line:]
::Broken symmetry causes ϴ=0, explaining unobserved neutron dipole moment

:[Left: No arrow:]
::Causes alpha effect

:[Right: No arrow, but right next to the middle of the three wavy line:]
::Covers naked singularities

:[Left: An arrow points to a spiraling line going upwards to the left:]
::Intercepts certain gravitational waves before they're observed.

:[Right: No arrow, but right next to the bottom of the three wavy line:]
::Causes coronal heating

:[Left: No arrow:]
::Higgs-ish

:[Right: A long arrow point to the point of the main line just below the line pointing to the bottom (and left) of the space probes:]
::Superluminally smooths anisotropies in early universe (but adds faint polarization for BICEP3 to find)

:[Left: One arrows point towards the point on the main lines where a solid line goes to the right and up and another arrow points on another solid line going away from the main line towards left and down. At the end of both lines are drawn spacecrafts with satellite dish and solar panels:]
::Accelerates certain spacecraft during flybys

:[Right: No arrow, but right next to the solid line with an arrow going into the main line just before the first hole where the main line disappears and becomes dotted:]
::Triggers Siberian sinkholes

:[Left: No arrow:]
::Melts ice in "Snowball Earth" scenario

:[Right: Arrow points to the dotted part of the main line between the two holes:]
::Transports neutrinos faster than light, but only on certain days through one area of France

:[Left: No arrow but the last solid line, with an arrow pointing left, that is going away from the main line, point almost directly at it:]
::Suppresses sigma in experiments

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Christmas]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Space probes]]
[[Category:Puns]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Portmanteau]]
[[Category:Singularity]]

1987: Python Environment

2023-06-27T22:17:00Z

Wilh3lm: /* Explanation */ Randall has two l's

{{comic
| number = 1987
| date = April 30, 2018
| title = Python Environment
| image = python_environment.png
| titletext = The Python environmental protection agency wants to seal it in a cement chamber, with pictorial messages to future civilizations warning them about the danger of using sudo to install random Python packages.
}}

==Explanation==

A development environment is the collection of tools used to create a computer program. It generally includes an {{w|Interpreter_(programming)|interpreter}}, a {{w|package manager}}, and various {{w|Library_(computing)|libraries}} that the project needs. Computer programs often depend on a specific version of these tools, such as a program that only runs on Python 2.7. A badly configured build environment can lead to mysterious errors as the program looks for libraries or features that aren't there, making it hard to develop stable and portable software.

{{w|Python_(programming_language)|Python}} is a {{w|computer}} {{w|programming language}} which has been around for quite a while, especially on {{w|Linux}} platforms. [[Randall]] has shown his fascination with Python [[353: Python|before]]. He has likely used it on his computer for quite a few years, from the early years when it wasn't so easy to install, through newer versions where there is a more defined way to install it. Because standards change over time (in particular, although the newest version of Python is Python 3.x, many people prefer Python 2.x, and it's still widely used for backward-compatibility), and he didn't completely uninstall old versions before installing new versions (likely to not break what was already working), he's ended up with a mess where different pieces and versions of Python and its related components litter his {{w|hard drive}}'s {{w|directory structure}}.

{{w|Superfund}} is a US federal government program created for cleaning up contaminated land. The comic is saying that his computer's Python environment is so messed up that it's comparable to a real-world environmental disaster.

The title text may refer to the philosophical debate surrounding the construction of warning features around the [[wikipedia:Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant#Warning_messages_for_future_humans|WIPP]] site in New Mexico, and other nuclear waste disposal sites. In particular, it may refer to [https://web.archive.org/web/20090320054657/http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20to%2012,000%20a_d.htm this article]. These would have to last and be understandable for tens of thousands of years, longer than any known human-made structure or language to date. It also refers to the use of "sudo", a Posix command utility that allows a user to operate with heightened permissions. Using "sudo" to install a Python package may make the package available to the entire system, or, based on the settings of Virtualenv/Anaconda, it may end up installing the package in a user's home directory. This would make it so that the user could not update, edit, or remove the packages.

;$PATH
:$PATH refers to the {{w|PATH (variable)|PATH}} environment variable, which determines where to search for executable files. In this case, it indicates that the pip, Homebrew Python (2.7), and macOS's pre-installed Python are accessible on path, with ~/newenv/ and a mysterious ???? as part of PATH.
;pip
:{{w|pip (package manager)|pip}} is the Python {{w|package management system}}, and is used to install and manage python packages. As it is written in Python, it requires Python to run. It leads to easy_install, Homebrew Python (2.7), "(misc folders owned by root)", and ????.
;Homebrew Python (2.7)
:{{w|Homebrew (package management software)|Homebrew}} is a third-party macOS package manager. Homebrew Python (2.7) is the Python 2 version installed through Homebrew. This leads to Python.org binary (2.6) and /usr/local/Cellar.
;OS Python
:Apple bundles an (out of date) version of Python with macOS. This only leads to ????.
;????
:With so many versions of Python installed and used in the system, it becomes very hard to track which Python program uses which version and environment. The system becomes unpredictable and its workings and faults mysterious. All parts of the graph that lead to this point, lead to confusion.
;easy_install
:easy_install, much like pip, is a cpan-like tool to download and install Python packages. As of the creation of the comic, many people discourage its use. (e.g., [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3220404/why-use-pip-over-easy-install this question on stack exchange.])
;Anaconda Python
:{{w|Anaconda (Python distribution)|Anaconda}} is a Python distribution for data science and machine learning-related applications.
;Homebrew Python (3.6)
:As of the creation of the comic, Python 3.6 is the current stable version of Python. It can be installed together with Python 2.7 on the same computer. Care must be taken to use an appropriate version for every Python program, however. Homebrew is a "macos" package management utility. Presumably, Randall installed Python 3.6 with Homebrew (as opposed to downloading and compiling the language himself).
;Python.org binary (2.6)
:[http://python.org Python.org] is the home site of the {{w|Python_(programming_language)|Python language}} and provides its reference implementation. Among other stuff, there are downloadable installers that create ready-to-use Python environments for you (on Windows and macOS only). It makes little sense, however, to use it on a computer where Homebrew, Anaconda, and a locally compiled version are already present, since the Python.org version is the baseline one, doesn't give you any benefits, and can't be optimized for your needs. Having an obsolete 2.6 version, when the typically used 2.7 is already on the computer, also doesn't help. Some justified uses do exist (tests, programs that depend on this particular version), but in the end, an extra version of Python just adds to the overall confusion.
;(Misc folders owned by root)
:This suggests that over years [[Randall]] dropped various versions of {{w|Python_(programming_language)|Python}} environments everywhere around his computer, probably by hand without proper installers, and used root privileges to do so. The exact locations either are highly nonstandard, so it makes no sense to show them to us, or have simply been forgotten. Now it's hard to even tell where exactly those Pythons lay, what in the system depends on them, and if it's safe to remove them or not (because if installed by the root, they can integrate into unexpected places in the system; having them can break something, and removing them can break something).
;<code>/usr/local/Cellar</code>
:The default (normal) location of the {{w|Homebrew (package management software)|Homebrew}} Cellar, the directory where Homebrew actually stores the files of the installed packages. It's a storage-only location, the files, including Python, will be symlinked from other, more convenient places in the files tree, and should not be used through /usr/local/Cellar path directly. It seems that Randall broke this safety rule in the past, so some stuff of his accesses Python directly in the Cellar. Such setup can break if Homebrew performs automatic maintenance in the Cellar (like removing unneeded versions of the packages). The name cellar is likely a reference to the practice of storing wines and other alcohol in cellars, intended as a pun of homebrew.
;<code>/usr/local/opt</code>
:A folder that is usually created by Homebrew.
;/(A bunch of paths with "Frameworks" in them somewhere)/
:Python on macOS is often distributed as a framework and placed in a "Frameworks" folder. For example, the system-included Python distribution in macOS resides in /System/Library/Frameworks, and many package managers will also install the framework in a folder with this name.
;$PYTHONPATH
:The environment variable PYTHONPATH specifies the search path for Python modules to the Python interpreter. Having it refer to locations controlled by 3 different package managers, each of which is managing software for different versions of Python, as shown, is likely to lead to incompatible software being loaded together.
;Another pip??
:Pip is a {{w|Recursive acronym}} for "Pip Installs Packages." There should only be one installation of pip (or other package management system) managing any given working environment. Often, additional "pip" executables are installed based on the Anaconda settings for different virtual envs. This often leads to internal contradictions in the software. Randall is confused as to how this other one relates to the rest of the development environments.
;~/python/
:Might be another virtualenv, or, given the absurdity of the rest of the comic, even a manually compiled python installation (many online guides instruct users to extract sources into the home (~) directory).
;~/newenv/
:Probably a virtualenv. Virtualenvs are mechanisms for having Python environments that don't conflict with the system Python. They include the Python interpreter, independent library paths, and usually a copy of pip. The user typically installs packages using the virtualenv's pip such that they can only be accessed by the virtualenv's Python instances, while more common packages are still referenced via the system Python paths.
;/usr/local/lib/python3.6
:The default place under a Unix-like OS for the Python 3.6 standard libraries for a locally compiled Python 3.6 interpreter.
;/usr/local/lib/python2.7
:The default place under a Unix-like OS for the Python 2.7 standard libraries for a locally compiled Python 2.7 interpreter.

==Transcript==
:[A single frame depicting a flowchart is shown. Many chaotic arrows are arranged between the items which are:]
:$PYTHONPATH
:EASY_INSTALL
:ANACONDA PYTHON
:HOMEBREW PYTHON (3.6)
:ANOTHER PIP??
:HOMEBREW PYTHON (2.7)
:PYTHON.ORG BINARY (2.6)
:PIP
:EASY_INSTALL
:$PATH
:(MISC FOLDERS OWNED BY ROOT)
:????

:[The endpoints are:]
:/usr/local/Cellar
:/usr/local/opt
:/(A BUNCH OF PATHS WITH "FRAMEWORKS" IN THEM SOMEWHERE)/
:~/python/
:~/newenv/
:/usr/local/lib/python3.6
:/usr/local/lib/python2.7

:[Caption below the panel:]
:My Python environment has become so degraded that my laptop has been declared a superfund site.

== Trivia ==

* A similar comic is {{xkcd|1654}} which is the same but for multiple languages.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Flowcharts]]

2791: Bookshelf Sorting

2023-06-19T21:38:39Z

Wilh3lm: Woo, writing a transcript!

{{comic
| number = 2791
| date = June 19, 2023
| title = Bookshelf Sorting
| image = bookshelf_sorting_2x.png
| imagesize = 425x255px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Of course, I sort all my bookshelves the normal way, alphabetically (by first sentence).
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOOKSHELF SORTED THE NORMAL WAY - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[A bookshelf is shown. From left to right, there are 11 covers in different sizes and shades of gray, a large section of pages of varying sizes, and in the right half, some covers are also interspersed.]

Book people hate seeing books sorted by colors, but it turns out they get ''way'' more angry if you sort the pages by number

{{comic discussion}}

Category:Linux

2023-06-02T00:28:37Z

Wilh3lm: GNU/Linux

{{w|Linux kernel|Linux}} is a name given to a free and open-source kernel developed by {{w|Linus Torvalds}}, often used in combination with the GNU system to form GNU/Linux. nixCraft has [https://www.cyberciti.biz/humour/top-xkcd-comics-for-linux-and-unix-fans/ compiled a nice list of the best (GNU/)Linux-related XKCD comics].

[[Category:Computers]]

2492: Commonly Mispronounced Equations

2023-04-27T00:14:12Z

Wilh3lm: /* Equations */ Planck's constant typo

{{comic
| number = 2492
| date = July 21, 2021
| title = Commonly Mispronounced Equations
| image = commonly_mispronounced_equations.png
| titletext = "Epsihootamoo doopsiquorps" --the Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a collection of very commonly used physics and mathematical equations, along with their "correct" pronunciations. Equations are normally voiced out loud either by their names ("mass-energy equivalence") or by saying the parts out loud using normal linguistic rules ("E equals m ''c'' squared"). This comic instead asserts that equations are meant to be said out loud like words, using their own set of phonic rules.

Though the premise may initially seem absurd, some nerds have both the trait of using equations as commonly as others might chat and that of finding it entertaining to coin amusing new words ("input", "pwn"). Saying the equations more rapidly can speed up work or make work seem more enjoyable. This phenomenon is called {{w|clipping (morphology)|clipping}}.

Using clipped or verbalized forms of equations is sometimes standard practice within a given field. The equation for continuously compounding interest A=Pe<sup>rt</sup> is commonly taught and discussed as the "pert" equation, while the definitions of the main trigonometric functions is similarly taught and discussed as SOH-CAH-TOA: sine = opposite/hypotenuse, cosine = adjacent/hypotenuse, and tangent = opposite/adjacent. These particular "corrections" are all nonstandard, however, occasionally conflicting with more normal readings like "pivnert" for the ideal gas law. The "corrections" are also internally inconsistent, with equal signs and exponents sometimes omitted and sometimes included and intermediate vowels.

===Equations===
{| class="wikitable"
!Name
!Representation
!Pronounciation
!Explanation
|-
|{{w|Newton's law of universal gravitation}}
|F = G(m₁m₂/r²)
|Fuh-''JAM''-er
|⟨F⟩, gravitational force, is pronounced /f/. ⟨G⟩, the gravitational constant, is pronounced like the soft G /dʒ/ despite the following /æ/, recalling {{link|http://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1989:_IMHO|the .gif controversy}}. The ⟨m⟩s, mass 1 and 2, are elided into a single /m/, and ⟨r⟩, the distance between the masses, is pronounced /ɹ/. The subscripts and exponent are silent.
|-
|{{w|Mass–energy equivalence}}
|E = mc²
|''EM''-cah-too
|⟨E⟩, energy, is pronounced like the short E /ɛ/. ⟨m⟩, mass, is pronounced /m/. ⟨c⟩, the speed of light, is pronounced like the hard C /k/ and its exponent ⟨²⟩ is read as the numeral two /tu/.
|-
|{{w|Pythagorean theorem}}
|a² + b² = c²
|at-''BOOT''-coot
|⟨a⟩, the length of the base, is pronounced like the short A /æ/. ⟨b⟩, the length of the height, is pronounced /b/. ⟨c⟩, the length of the hypotenuse, is pronounced like the hard C /k/. Each exponent ⟨²⟩ is pronounced /t/ as a clipping of "two".
|-
|{{w|Area of a circle}}
|A = πr²
|''APP''-er-too
|⟨A⟩, area, is pronounced like the short A /æ/. ⟨π⟩ is pronounced /p/ after the sound represented by pi in the Greek alphabet. ⟨r⟩, the length of the radius, is pronounced /ɹ/ and its exponent ⟨²⟩ is read as the numeral two /tu/. The resulting pronunciation is similar to the word "{{wiktionary|aperture}}", the diameter of optical equipment such as telescopes and cameras.
|-
|{{w|Entropy_(information_theory)|Shannon entropy}}
|H = −∑pᵢlog(pᵢ)
|Ha-''SPLOG''-pee
|⟨H⟩, entropy, is pronounced /h/. The negative sign is omitted. ⟨∑⟩, the summation sign, is pronounced /s/ after the sound represented by sigma ⟨Σ⟩ in the Greek alphabet. The first ⟨pᵢ⟩ is pronounced /p/ with its subscript elided or left silent. ⟨㏒⟩, the usual mathematical notation for logarithm, is read in full as /lɔɡ/ or /lɑɡ/. The second ⟨pᵢ⟩ is read in full as /pi/ in the usual English manner of handling terminal ⟨i⟩s.
|-
|{{w|Ideal gas law}}
|PV = nrt
|''PAV''-nurt
|A variation on the correct formatting PV = nRT and its more common byname "pivnert". ⟨P⟩, pressure, is pronounced /p/. ⟨V⟩, volume, is pronounced /v/. ⟨n⟩, the {{w|amount of substance}}, is pronounced /n/. ⟨r⟩, the {{w|ideal gas constant}}, is pronounced /ɹ/. ⟨t⟩, temperature, is pronounced /t/.
|-
|{{w|Euler's identity}}
|e<sup>iπ</sup> = −1
|''EYE''-pin
|⟨<sup>i</sup>⟩, the {{w|imaginary unit}}, or ⟨e<sup>i</sup>⟩, {{w|Euler's number}} raised to the i power, is pronounced as the long I /aɪ/. ⟨<sup>π</sup>⟩ is pronounced /p/ after the sound represented by pi in the Greek alphabet. ⟨−1⟩ is pronounced /n/, presumably as a severe clipping of "negative one". The silence or elision of the initial e mirrors the usual reading of {{w|Euler's formula}} e<sup>ix</sup> = cos x + i sin x as "cis x".
|-
|{{w|Newton's_laws_of_motion#Newton's_second_law|Newton's 2nd law of motion}}
|F = ma
|''FEE''-mah
|⟨F⟩, the force of motion, is pronounced /f/. ⟨=⟩, the equals sign, is read as the long E /i/. ⟨m⟩, mass, is pronounced /m/. ⟨a⟩, acceleration, is pronounced like the short A /ɑː/. The resulting pronunciation is similar to {{wiktionary|FEMA}}, the United States' {{w|Federal Emergency Management Agency}}.
|-
|{{w|Wave equation}} (1D)
|∂²u/(∂t²) = c(∂²u/(∂x²))
|''DOOT'' cah-''DOOX''
|A mistake for the correct equation ∂²u/∂*t² = c²(∂²u/∂*x²). In the notation marking the second partial derivatives, each ⟨∂²⟩ is pronounced /d/ and each fraction bar and ⟨∂⟩ is silent. Each ⟨u⟩, amplitude, is pronounced /u/. ⟨t⟩, time, is pronounced /t/. ⟨c⟩, speed, is pronounced like the hard C /k/. ⟨x⟩, the distance along the measured dimension, is pronounced /ks/. The exponents are all silent.
|-
|{{w|Derivative#Definition|Derivative}}
|f′(x) = lim<sub>h→0</sub> (f(x+h)−f(x))/h
|''FAX''-lim-oh ''FAX''-uh-fox
|⟨f′(x)⟩, the first derivative of a function with respect to an independent variable, is pronounced /fæks/ like {{w|fax machine|the machine}}. ⟨lim<sub>h→0</sub>⟩, the limit as h approaches zero, is pronounced /lɪmoʊ/ like {{w|limousine|the vehicle}}. ⟨f(x+h)⟩, the function with respect to the independent variable and another value an infinitessimally small distance away, is pronounced as /fæksə/ and ⟨f(x)⟩, the function with respect to the independent variable by itself, as /fɑks/ so that together they sound like "fax a fox". The ⟨h⟩ divisor is silent, like most terminal Hs in English.
|-
|{{w|Quadratic formula}}
|x = (−b±√(b²−4ac))/(2a)
|za-''BO''-ba fak-''TOH''-ah
|⟨x⟩, the independent variable, is pronounced /z/ similar to the initial X in the names {{wiktionary|Xerxes}} and {{wiktionary|Xavier}}. The negative sign is omitted. Each ⟨a⟩, ⟨b⟩, and ⟨c⟩, the coefficients of the equation, is pronounced /ɑ/, /b/, and /k/ respectively. The ⟨4⟩ is read as /f/ and the ⟨2⟩ as /t/, with an /oʊ/ added to keep the resulting word closer to "sohcahtoa".
|-
|{{w|Schrödinger equation}} (3D)
|Eψ = (−ℏ²/2*m)∇²ψ + (q²/r)ψ
|"Epsihootamoo doopsiquorps"
|An application of the general equation Eψ = Ĥψ when applied to 3 dimensions without regard to time or relativistic effects. The missing 4πε₀ from the divisor in the second (potential energy) term can be handwaved by assuming that the other terms are using units customized for quantum mechanics, rather than standard metric ones. ⟨E⟩, energy, is pronounced /ɛ/. ⟨ψ⟩, the {{w|wave function}}, is read out in full as /psi/, /psaɪ/, or /psə/ the first 2 times and then the last time as /ps/, the sound represented by psi in the Greek alphabet. The negative sign is omitted. ⟨ℏ⟩, {{w|Planck's constant}}, is pronounced /h/. ⟨2⟩ is read as /t/. ⟨m⟩, mass, is pronounced /m/. ⟨{{w|nabla symbol|∇}}⟩, the {{w|Laplace operator}}, is pronounced /d/ after the sound represented by delta in the Greek alphabet. ⟨q⟩ and ⟨r⟩, the charge and distance, are pronounced /kw/ and /ɹ/ following their standard use in English words. The exponents are silent.
|}

==Transcript==
[Each equation is bordered, with a pronunciation guide beneath.]

Commonly Mispronounced Equations

'''Row 1'''

F = G m₁m₂/r² <br>
FUH-'''''JAM'''''-ER

E = mc² <br>
'''''EM'''''-CAH-TOO

a² + b² = c² <br>
AT-'''''BOOT'''''-COOT

'''Row 2'''

A = πr² <br>
'''''APP'''''-ER-TOO

H = −Σpᵢlog pᵢ <br>
HA-'''''SPLOG'''''-PEE

PV = nrt <br>
'''''PAV'''''-NURT

'''Row 3'''

e<sup>iπ</sup> = −1 <br>
'''''EYE'''''-PIN

F = ma <br>
'''''FEE'''''-MAH

∂²u/(∂t²) = c ∂²u/(∂x²) <br>
'''''DOOT''''' CAH-'''''DOOX'''''

'''Row 4'''

f'(x) = lim<sub>h→0</sub> f(x+h) − f(x) / h <br>
'''''FAX'''''-LIM-OH '''''FAX'''''-UH-FOX

x = −b ± √(b² − 4ac) / (2a) <br>
ZA-'''''BO'''''-BA FAK-'''''TOH'''''-AH

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category: Language]]

2266: Leap Smearing

2023-04-18T12:05:42Z

Wilh3lm: /* Explanation */ Decimal point for consistency

{{comic
| number = 2266
| date = February 10, 2020
| title = Leap Smearing
| image = leap_smearing.png
| titletext = Some people suspect that it started as a "No, I didn't forget Valentine's Day" excuse that got out of hand.
}}

==Explanation==
Clocks {{w|Japanese clock|usually}} measure time by regularly-sized intervals, but the natural world is not always so accommodating. Since the solar year is not an integer number of days long, we add {{w|leap days}} every four years (except for years divisible by 100 but not 400) to prevent our calendars from drifting with respect to the seasons. We also add {{w|leap seconds}} to the clock every now and then, to prevent noon on our clocks from drifting away from solar noon. Unfortunately, Earth's day is not as regular as Earth's year, so leap seconds cannot be predicted with a formula but are added as needed, most recently in 2016. Officially, the leap second is added at midnight UTC (so a clock will tick 23:59:59...'''23:59:60'''...00:00:00), but this is an extremely inconvenient edge case, to the point that there are many proposals to do away with leap seconds entirely (as of this comic strip's publication, the matter will be discussed in the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2023).

Rather than inserting an extra tick into timestamps and dealing with the resulting hiccups (e.g. programs hard-coded to expect that [https://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time#_=_ every minute will contain exactly sixty seconds]), {{w|Google}}'s services 'smear' the leap second over the course of a 24-hour period, officially called [https://developers.google.com/time/smear Leap Smear] by Google. The smear is centered on the leap second (at midnight) so from noon the day before to noon the day after each second is 11.6 μs longer (1s/(24*60*60) = 11.574 μs). This difference is too small for most of Google's services to be bothered with, and by centering on midnight, the difference in time will never be more than half a second at midnight; just before midnight it will be half a second behind, after midnight it'll be half a second ahead. This comic's joke arises from the idea of extending this practice to smearing leap days over the month of February. This comic strip was published February 10th, 2020, almost three weeks before the leap day on February 29th, 2020.

In the comic, [[Cueball]] is visiting one of Google's facilities, presumably during office hours on the 10th day of February, when the comic was released. But when he looks at their clocks he sees they are all around 3:00 AM (which is in the middle of the night). He thus asks [[Ponytail]] and [[Hairy]] why their clocks are wrong. Ponytail tells him it is because of leap day smearing.

Ponytail explains that adding an extra day creates too many glitches. So they just run their clocks 3.4% slower during February. She thus states that it works approximately like leap smearing for seconds, so that the extra day's 24 hours are spread evenly over the course of February, keeping it at the regular 28 days, but still running over 24*29 = 696 hours, even though their clocks only go through 672 hours = 24*28.

Thus the 24 hours less to count are spread out over the 696 real hours, which means their clocks run 24/696 = 3.445 % slower (matching the 3.4% Ponytail mentions). Every smeared day will thus be about 0.86 hours, or 51 minutes and 40 seconds, longer (24/28) than a standard day. So when day-smearing clocks read 3:02 AM on February 10th (the comic was released on February 10th), about 9.1264 smeared days will have passed. This translates to about 9.4523 standard days (9.1264*29/28), which is approximately 10:51 AM on February 10th, well within normal working hours.

The joke of course is that contrary to leap second smearing this would be very inconvenient for those following it, due to the fact that clocks would be noticeably out of sync with Earth's rotation (and perhaps more importantly, with everyone else's clocks) for most of the month. (Although it does mean they would sync up better with some of their partners abroad; see [[1335: Now]] and [[448: Good Morning]].) A different kind of time-smearing was looked at in the far earlier comic [[320: 28-Hour Day]], which was actually designed with a form of convenience in mind, and it would be interesting to see what the results could be of creatively combining both systems.

The title text humorously suggests that some people (at Google) suspect that the real reason for the leap day smearing was actually a "No, I didn't forget Valentine's Day" excuse that got out of hand. The idea is, that maybe a CEO at Google forgot to buy something for their romantic partner for Valentine, and thus tried to suggest that it was not because they forgot, but that at work it was still February 14th. Presumably, in February 2016, they used this excuse to buy 12 extra hours (as the end of a smeared Feb 14 is exactly halfway through the month) to get their partner a present, and then required the company to actually implement "leap day smearing" by 2020 to maintain the illusion.

[[Randall]] has some issues with [[:Category:Valentines|Valentines]], see for example [[1016: Valentine Dilemma]]. This comic was released four days before {{w|Valentines Day}} of 2020. It was the first time in 8 years he made any reference to Valentine around this time of year, but the seventh time in total. Randall has since not mentioned Valentine's day.

[[1481: API]] also covered leap seconds in its title text.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball, Ponytail, and Hairy are looking up at a digital clock on a wall. It displays the time in white on a black background, with a logo on the frame beneath the time.]
:3:02 AM
:Google

:Cueball: Why do the clocks say it's 3AM?
:Ponytail: Adding an extra day creates too many glitches. Instead, we're just running our clocks 3.4% slower during February, to avoid the irregularity.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:This year, Google has expanded their leap second "smearing" to cover leap days as well.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Valentines]] 
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Time]]
[[Category:Calendar]]

594: Period

2023-04-17T12:44:54Z

Wilh3lm: Missing apostrophe

{{comic
| number = 594
| date = June 8, 2009
| title = Period
| image = period.png
| titletext = 413 nanohertz, by the way.
}}

==Explanation==
A period, also called a {{w|Menstruation|menstrual cycle}}, is a process marked by (among other things) a few days of abdominal cramps occurring roughly once a month for women in the {{w|Age and female fertility|reproductive age}}.

"Period" (''T'') is also the term in mathematics for a measure of the rate at which something happens. It measures the length of time between occurrences. For example, a full moon happens about once every 29.5 days, so its period is 29.5 days. By taking the inverse of this, we can get a different measurement, its {{w|frequency}} (''f'') - the number of times an event happens within a given length of time. This is usually measured in hertz (pronounced the same as "hurts"), which is the number of times something happens in a second. Hertz is abbreviated as Hz, and since f = 1/T, with ''T'' measured in seconds (s), it follows that 1 Hz = 1 s<sup>−1</sup>.

The woman has her period every 28 days. Since we can calculate the frequency based on the period, we can, indeed, calculate her "uterus-hertz" but she already knew that her "uterus hurts". Yes, this has all been a setup to a terrible pun to make your head hertz. And if she had not been in such terrible pains that she cannot even get up, she would have smacked Cueball for it, which would really hertz. This makes it even more hertzfull by Cueball, to make fun of his girlfriend in such a state.

The woman off screen is probably [[Megan]] given that she is most often depicted as Cueball's girlfriend, and the fact that he is in her home with her on the couch is a good indicator that they are intimate. (This is not enough to include this comic as one with Megan).

The title text gives the other answer that can be calculated from Cueball's musings, the actual frequency of the womans period which have a period T = 28 days. 413 nanohertz is the correct frequency [http://www.google.com/search?q=1%2F28+*+1%2Fdays+in+nanohertz as shown here by Google Calculator.]

It can also easily be shown here:
:f = 1/28 days = 1/(28 days × 24 hours/day × 60 minutes/hour × 60 seconds/minute)
::= 1/(2,419,200 s) = 4.1336 × 10<sup>−7</sup> s<sup>−1</sup>
::= 413 × 10<sup>−9</sup> Hz = '''413 nHz'''.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing with a hand to his chin looking towards a woman off-panel right. In all panels the woman answers off-panel with a small starburst close to the right panels border indicating from where her speak emanates.]
:Woman's voice (off-panel): Ugh. Stupid uterus.
:Cueball: Hey, your period is every 28 days, right?

:[Cueball is standing hands down.]
:Woman's voice (off-panel): Yes, why?
:Cueball: Well, period = T = 1/f.
:Woman's voice (off-panel): So?

:[Cueball holds up a finger in front of him.]
:Cueball: Using this, we can calculate something you already know.
:Woman's voice (off-panel): What?

:[Cueball is standing hands down.]
:Cueball: Your uterus-hertz.
:Woman's voice (off-panel): If I could get up I'd smack you.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Puns]]

546: Music DRM

2023-04-13T15:35:32Z

Wilh3lm: Fixed wording

{{comic
| number = 546
| date = February 20, 2009
| title = Music DRM
| image = music drm.png
| titletext = Just yesterday I bought my first non-DRM'd songs (The Last Vegas, in keeping with my 'I only listen to things from Guitar Hero' theme).
}}

==Explanation==
Here, [[Cueball]] is commenting in a comment thread that he authored about the negative traits of DRM, (usually "Digital Rights Management", but some, such as Richard Stallman, prefer the term "Digital Restrictions Management"). Cueball has a point: DRM, while meant to fight those who download media through [[Sketchiness|'dungeon sketchy']] maneuvers, [[Steal This Comic|risks locking out legitimate owners]]. In turn, this turns off legitimate buyers from buying the songs, thus hurting artists.

Of course, this would be true if the major stores sell music with DRM. [[Megan]], wanting Cueball to make peace and enjoy his goal, makes the following choice quote: 'Close the comment thread, get out the debit card, buy us some music, and let's rock the fuck out', while she shows the {{w|sign of the horns|sign of the horns}}.

The problem is that Cueball is arguing for the enjoyment of arguing, not out of any actual belief in what he's arguing about.

The title text references [[132: Music Knowledge]] while implying that [[Randall]] is not really a music fan, since he would only be interested in music that appears in the games that he plays.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sits at his computer.]
:Cueball [typing]: ...and that's why music DRM is bad for listeners ''and'' artists!
:Megan [off-panel]: What are you doing?

:[Megan enters and Cueball turns towards her.]
:Megan: In case you didn't notice, we ''won'' the music DRM war. The big stores are DRM free.

:[Zoom in on Megan who holds up a hand doing the sign of the horns.]
:Megan: So close the comment thread, get out the debit card, buy us some music, and let's rock the fuck out.

:[Back to viewing both as in panel 2.]
:Cueball: But I don't actually ''like'' music, I just like being self-righteous on the web.
:Megan: Lucky for you, ''that'' will always be free.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Rhythm Games]]
[[Category:Guitar Hero]]

724: Hell

2023-04-08T15:31:47Z

Wilh3lm: Explained the half a press, dedicated to TJ Henry Yoshi

{{comic
| number = 724
| date = April 7, 2010
| title = Hell
| image = hell.png
| titletext = There's also a Katamari level where everything is just slightly bigger than you, and a Mario level with a star just out of reach.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Tetris}} is a game where the player has to manipulate falling blocks into forming complete rows, which will then be deleted and give points to the player. This comic is a play on this, presenting the player with a version of the game with a curved bottom that renders forming flat rows nearly impossible. {{w|Hell}} is a {{w|Religion#Mythology|mythological and/or religious concept}} of a posthumous punishment for wrongdoers, depicted in many religions as eternal torment. Here the Tetris player feels they are in Hell when they try to play this game.

The title text presents similar situations where frustration is likely to occur. ''{{w|Katamari_(series)|Katamari Damacy}}'' is a video game in which the player controls a sticky sphere which grows by assimilating objects smaller than itself, so gameplay would be extremely frustrating if none of the objects available is smaller than your sphere. ''{{w|Super_Mario_(series)|Super Mario}}'' is a long-running franchise of platforming games; in some of the games (beginning with ''{{w|Super Mario 64}}''), levels are completed by collecting large, golden [https://www.mariowiki.com/Power_Star Power Stars] – so it would be very frustrating if one is impossible to reach.

There actually is a star in ''Super Mario 64'' that is just out of reach in the [https://ukikipedia.net/wiki/A_Button_Challenge A Button Challenge], where the goal is to minimize the number of presses of the A button. The star ''Treasure of the Ocean Cave'' is just 24 units too high to be reached without using the A button, and no alternative method has been found yet to get it without pressing A.
As of February 16 2023 however, this star has been solved in 0.5 A presses, which means it only requires A to be held, and not pressed. Thus, in a full-game run, it can use an A press from earlier in the run.

This last part may also be a reference to the {{w|Ancient Greek myth}} of {{w|Tantalus}}; as punishment for cannibalism, he suffers in {{w|Hades}}, confined to a pool with a fruit tree above it. As his punishment, the fruit branches on the tree recoil every time he tries to eat, and the water recedes every time he tries to drink.

Also see comic [[888: Heaven]], which presents an inverse situation in which the Tetris game provides unfairly perfect pieces to help the player win.

There is a playable version of this comic at [http://www.kongregate.com/games/banthar/hell-tetris Kongregate] which, unsurprisingly, is frustratingly difficult ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reFPscApObs but not impossible]) to play. Another playable version of the game with similar graphics experience and tweaked game design (has an Easy mode and challenge modes) is also released on Itch.io [https://livelycarpet87.itch.io/hell-tet here].

==Transcript==
:[The panel shows the display of a Tetris game where the bottom of the pit is curved into a semicircle making the two blocks at the bottom, a square and a reverse L piece lean crookedly towards each other at the bottom of the pit; an S piece is falling and the next piece is an L piece.]
:Next
:Top
:000000
:Score
:000000
:Level
:01
:[Below the panel:]
:Hell

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Katamari Damacy]]
[[Category:Video games]]

272: Linux User at Best Buy

2023-04-07T20:26:05Z

Wilh3lm: GNU/Linux

{{comic
| number = 272
| date = June 4, 2007
| title = Linux User at Best Buy
| image = linux_user_at_best_buy.png
| titletext = We actually stand around the antivirus displays with the Mac users just waiting for someone to ask.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Best Buy}} is an American chain of electronics and media stores. As with many such big box shops, they only sell pre-bundled software and boxed pre-built hardware, where the computers on offer are either {{w|iMac|Macs}} or {{w|Personal computer|other PCs}}, usually pre-installed with some variant of the {{w|Mac OS X}} or {{w|Windows NT}} operating system families. Most personal computer {{w|Hacker (hobbyist)|hackers/enthusiasts}} (as opposed merely to workaday computer users) wouldn't be caught dead buying a pre-made computer, preferring instead to build their own using self-selected hardware components and install and configure their own preferred operating systems and software. As such, the subtext is that somebody buying a complete pre-packaged home computer system at Best Buy wouldn't know or care much about computers.

The salesperson is trying to sell {{w|antivirus software}} to [[Cueball]] because selling such software (e.g. {{w|Norton AntiVirus|Norton}} or {{w|Kaspersky Internet Security|Kaspersky}}) to prospective Windows PC owners is generally a good sales tactic. The vast majority of all computer {{w|malware}} is engineered specifically to exploit Windows, and Windows' inherent anti-malware protection might most charitably be described with the phrase "lacklustre, but not as bad as before." Windows users therefore ''will'' want antivirus protection, ''especially'' for use on a brand new machine that will soon be connected up to the Internet. Moreover, because the ecosystem of viruses and malware that thrive by infecting Windows PCs is constantly evolving (see [[350: Network]]) and being redesigned to take advantage of new exploits and fool last-month's antivirus software, it is quite prudent for a Windows PC owner to always keep their malware protection absolutely up-to-date, and many such security suites need to be regularly renewed with new versions.

While some viruses and malware ''can'' afflict {{w|Linux|GNU/Linux}}, in general {{w|Unix-like}} operating systems (including {{w|Linux_distribution|GNU/Linux distributions}} and {{w|Berkeley Software Distribution|BSD}}) are far more robust and secure than Windows, with fewer exploitable vulnerabilities. Perhaps even more importantly, GNU/Linux (not counting Android, which was not yet released) has a far smaller consumer market share, therefore offers less incentive to malware makers to target it. Therefore, Cueball is confident (rightfully so) that he will be fine without additional security. Moreover, GNU/Linux is {{w|free software}}, which means that anyone is able to audit the code and fix security bugs. Although malware protection ''usually'' isn't necessary, if extra protection is desired by the user, such as for tasks requiring very high security standards (such as on servers and supercomputers), there are anti-malware solutions available such as {{w|Clam_AntiVirus|ClamAV}}.

Back in 2007, when the less popular {{w|Windows Vista}} was released and with a stagnant Mac market, many in the GNU/Linux community believed that GNU/Linux would soon wipe out Windows as the operating system of choice for desktop PCs, after years of slow-but-steady growth. This explains the cheeky triumphalism of the final panels of the comic, in which Cueball hops on his quick, slick vehicle and speeds away. It's worth noting that this desktop reversal has not happened, though GNU/Linux did achieve a [http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp peak in popularity in 2011], just as Windows users were laboriously switching from {{w|Windows XP}} to {{w|Windows 7}}, with Linux peaking again in 2014 and Windows arguably in decline, and in any case, desktop PCs themselves have slowed in sales, losing ground first to {{w|laptop}}s and most recently to {{w|Embedded software|embedded device}}s, where GNU/Linux use does indeed heavily exceed the competition, e.g. {{w|Android (operating system)|Android}} (which is loosely based on the Linux kernel) handily out-competing both the previously dominant {{w|iPhone}} (which was first released mere days after this comic) and the never-popular {{w|Windows Phone}}.

The title text makes sense in light of the fact that, like GNU/Linux, the software design of OS X (both are based on Unix, OS X through Darwin - see [[676: Abstraction]]) limits the amount of harm that can be done by malicious software, and Macs thus also have fewer viruses and malware than Windows. Apparently, Mac and GNU/Linux users flock together just waiting for some salesperson to come along and mistake them for someone gullible enough to use Windows. [https://www.avast.com/c-can-macs-get-viruses There is a notion that Macs can't get infected], but Mac malware is on the rise. This is taking the piss out of the smugness sometimes to be found among Mac and GNU/Linux users, who may view their preferred systems as hip and different from the "mainstream" Microsoft systems that they feel are manifestly inferior.

==Transcript==
:Salesman: Interested in updating your antivirus software?
:Cueball: Oh, I wouldn't need any of that.

:[In a spiky speech bubble.]
:Cueball: I run Linux.

:[Cueball does a backflip onto a motorcycle.]
:''Flip''

:[Cueball performs a wheelie on the motorcycle.]

:[Cueball does a hard, donut turn on the motorcycle, kicking up dirt into the salesman's face.]

:[Cueball speeds off on the motorcycle, leaving the salesman in a cloud of black exhaust.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Linux]]
[[Category:Programming]]