What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

<b>From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask</b><p></p> Millions of people 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.<p></p> <p></p> The queries he receives range from merely odd to downright diabolical:<p></p> <p></p> * What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool?<p></p> * Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?<p></p> * What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City?<p></p> * Are fire tornadoes possible?<p></p> <p></p> His responses are masterpieces of clarity and wit, gleefully and accurately explaining everything from the relativistic effects of a baseball pitched at near the speed of light to the many horrible ways you could die while building a periodic table out of all the actual elements.<p></p> <p></p> The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with the most popular answers from the xkcd website. <i>What If? </i>is an informative feast for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical.