From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, surprising answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask
Millions of people around the world visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe’s iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have an enormous, dedicated following, as do his deeply researched answers to his fans’ strangest questions. The queries he receives range from merely odd to downright diabolical:
What if I took a swim in a spent nuclear fuel pool?
Could you build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns?
What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City?
What would happen if someone’s DNA vanished?
His responses are comic gems, accurately and entertainingly explaining everything from your odds of meeting your soul mate to the many horrible ways you could die while building a periodic table out of all the actual elements.
This book features the most popular answers from the xkcd’s What If blog, but many of the questions (51 percent!) are new and answered here for the first time. What If? is an informative feast for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical.
《那些古怪又让人忧心的问题what if?》是前NASA员工、超热门科普漫画“xkcd”作家兰德尔·门罗的新作,内容来自他的“What If”科学问答专栏,辅以“xkcd”经典火柴人漫画,轻松幽默地将各学科知识跃然纸上。
如果人体内的DNA瞬间消失了会怎样?如果把海水抽干会怎样?如果地球膨胀得像太阳一样大会怎样?牛排从多高的地方掉下来正好烤熟?全人类搬离地球需要几步?这不是中规中矩的《十万个为什么》,而是脑洞大开的科学真相,小时候萌生的异想天开,都可以在这本书里找到最机智幽默的科学答案!