What If? chapters

For other instances of this title, see What If (disambiguation).

Article index

Thanks to a TON of work by so many people, the what if? index has been completely rebuilt! But we still need to finish a few things:

  Things left to do:   (If you need help editing the table, check out the Editors section! It includes a simple summary of the templates' documentations.)

• We mostly only need to work on the explanations now! Add them for the articles that don't have one and improve the existing ones (they should be a summary of the answer, not just 1-2 sentences).
• Need to finish explaining the exclusive chapters in the What If? books! Click here to jump to the book-exclusive chapters.

This is an index of all articles featured in Randall Munroe's what if? blog and 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 archive section of the blog.

The incomplete answers below will look like this. There are about 32 incomplete explanations below, and many more are missing!

Thumbnail	Title	Reader's question	Randall's answer	Article available in...  (click to sort)
				Blog	Books	YouTube
	Relativistic Baseball	"What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?" —Ellen McManis	The ball would create plasma and reach home plate by about 70 nanoseconds. The result would be some kind of nuclear explosion, destroying everything about a mile from the field. A ruling of "hit by pitch" could be interpreted in this situation.	1st blog article, on 2012‑07‑10	What If?, Chapter 2	5th video, on 2024‑02‑06: What if you threw a baseball at nearly light speed?
	SAT Guessing	"What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? How many perfect scores would there be?" —Rob Balder	No one would get a perfect score. The odds of guessing correctly on every question would be less than the odds of every ex-living president at that time and the main cast of Firefly getting struck by lightning on the same day.	2nd blog article, on 2012‑07‑10 (7d early)	What If?, Chapter 66
	Yoda	"How much Force power can Yoda output?" —Ryan Finnie	Yoda can output about 19.2 kilowatts, or 25 horsepower. "Yoda power" would cost about $2/hour.	3rd blog article, on 2012‑07‑17	What If?, Chapter 32
	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?" —Sean Rice	In physics, a mole is a number that equals approximately 6.022 × 1023. 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.	4th blog article, on 2012‑07‑24	What If?, Chapter 10
	Robot Apocalypse	"What if there was a robot apocalypse? How long would humanity last?" —Rob Lombino	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.	5th blog article, on 2012‑07‑31
	Glass Half Empty	"What if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty?" —Vittorio Iacovella	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.	6th blog article, on 2012‑08‑07	What If?, Chapter 26	16th video, on 2024‑09‑24: What if a glass of water were LITERALLY half empty?
	Everybody Out	"Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet?" —Adam	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.	7th blog article, on 2012‑08‑14	What If?, Chapter 35
	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?" —Thomas Bennett (and many others)	Earth would be unaffected, but almost all humans would probably be wiped out due to everyone trying to get home at the same time.	8th blog article, on 2012‑08‑21	What If?, Chapter 9	9th video, on 2024‑04‑16: What if everyone jumped at once?
	Soul Mates	"What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world?" —Benjamin Staffin	Almost nobody would find their soul mate, so most people would probably fake love, due to the difficult nature of finding true love and staying with someone.	9th blog article, on 2012‑08‑28	What If?, Chapter 6
	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?" —Socke	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.	10th blog article, on 2012‑09‑04		23rd video, on 2025‑04‑01: What if the Earth rotated 90 degrees?
	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?" —Adrienne Olson	Assuming you are in an area with a reasonable number of birds, you'd have to wait about 195 years.	11th blog article, on 2012‑09‑11
	Raindrop	"What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop?" —Michael McNeill	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.	12th blog article, on 2012‑09‑18	What If?, Chapter 65
	Laser Pointer	"If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?" —Peter Lipowicz	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.	13th blog article, on 2012‑09‑25	What If?, Chapter 7	18th video, on 2024‑11‑05: What if everyone pointed a laser at the moon?
	Short Answer Section	"How long would the Sun last if a giant water hose were focused upon it?" —Austin Dickey	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.	14th blog article, on 2012‑10‑02
		"What if you shined a flashlight (or a laser) into a sphere made of one-way mirror glass?" —Chase Montgomery	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?" —Jimmy Morey	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?" —Aidan Blake	Superman wasn't pushing the Earth. He was flying 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?" —Yitzi Turniansky	The 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 speed of light.
		"What would happen if you opened a portal between Boston (sea level) and Mexico City (elev. 8000+ feet)?" —Jake G.	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." —R. D.	This... isn’t actually a question, but thank you for sharing!
	Mariana Trench Explosion	"What if you exploded a nuclear bomb (say, the Tsar Bomba) at the bottom of the Marianas Trench?" —Evin Sellin	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.	15th blog article, on 2012‑10‑09
	Today's topic: Lightning	"How dangerous is it to be in a pool during a thunderstorm?" —Jay Gengelbach	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.	16th blog article, on 2012‑10‑16	What If?, with a different title, Chapter 19: Lightning
		"What would happen if you were taking a shower or standing under a waterfall when you were struck by lightning?" —Same3Chords	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?" —Soobnauce	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?" —Danny Wedul	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?" —Timothy Campbell	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?" —NJSG	It would bring you to “Microsoft BOB®”, “Gateway 2000 Edition”.
	Green Cows	"If cows could photosynthesize, how much less food would they need?" —Anonymous	They would need 4% less food. There simply isn't enough area on the cow for photosynthesis to provide all its energy requirements. Plus, it’d still need food for nutrients just like real plants.	17th blog article, on 2012‑10‑23
	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?" —Charles James O'Keefe	100,000 shooters distributed over 2 kilometers of track, each firing a few dozen rounds as the train comes near them.	18th blog article, on 2012‑10‑30
	Tie Vote	"What if there's LITERALLY a tie?" —Nate Silver (Twitter, January 4th, 2012)	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.	19th blog article, on 2012‑11‑06
	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?" —Aidan Smith, Age 8, via his father Jeff	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 Oh-My-God particle), the Earth would explode with enough force to obliterate the entire Solar System.	20th blog article, on 2012‑11‑13
	Machine Gun Jetpack	"Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns?" —Rob B	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.	21st blog article, on 2012‑11‑20	What If?, with a different title, Chapter 14: Machine-Gun Jetpack
	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?" —Leto Atreides	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.	22nd blog article, on 2012‑11‑27
	Short Answer Section II	"If my printer could literally print out money, would it have that big an effect on the world?" —Derek O’Brien	You'd make 200 million dollars a year, so no.	23rd blog article, on 2012‑12‑04	What If?, with a different title, Chapter 18: Short-Answer Section
		"What would happen if you exploded a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane? Would the storm cell be immediately vaporized?" —Rupert Bainbridge (and hundreds of others)	No. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has 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?" —Damien	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?" —Seamus Johnson	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?" —David Nai	You'd have to bike at 200 m/s, but you'd fry alive from overexerting your body.
		"How much physical space does the internet take up?" —Max L	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?" —Chad Macziewski	Aerodynamics aside, you'd have a bomb that comes back if you miss.
	Model Rockets	"How many model rocket engines would it take to launch a real rocket into space?" —Greg Schock, PA	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.	24th blog article, on 2012‑12‑11
	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?" —N. Murdoch	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.	25th blog article, on 2012‑12‑18		22nd video, on 2025‑03‑04: What if the wise men kept walking after Jesus’s birth?
	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?" —Anton (Berlin, Germany)	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)	26th blog article, on 2012‑12‑31 (6d late)
	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?" —Guy Petzall	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.	27th blog article, on 2013‑01‑08 (1d late)
	Steak Drop	"From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?" —Alex Lahey	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.	28th blog article, on 2013‑01‑15	What If?, Chapter 23
	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?" —Jonathan Bastien-Filiatrault	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.	29th blog article, on 2013‑01‑22	What If?, Chapter 3	8th video, on 2024‑04‑02: What if you swam in a nuclear storage pool?
	Interplanetary Cessna	"What would happen if you tried to fly a normal Earth airplane above different Solar System bodies?" —Glen Chiacchieri	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.	30th blog article, on 2013‑01‑29	What If?, Chapter 30
	FedEx Bandwidth	"When - if ever - will the bandwidth of the Internet surpass that of FedEx?" —Johan Öbrink	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.	31st blog article, on 2013‑02‑05	What If?, Chapter 44
	Hubble	"If the Hubble telescope were aimed at the Earth, how detailed would the images be?" —Kyle Rankin	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.	32nd blog article, on 2013‑02‑12		1st video, on 2023‑11‑29: What if we aimed the Hubble Telescope at Earth?
	Ships	"How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters?" —Michael Toje	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.	33rd blog article, on 2013‑02‑19
	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?" —Eric H., Hopatcong, NJ	Since there are 2 * 1046 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.	34th blog article, on 2013‑02‑26	What If?, Chapter 50
	Hair Dryer	"What would happen if a hair dryer with continuous power was turned on and put in an airtight 1x1x1 meter box?" —Nathan Terrell	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.	35th blog article, on 2013‑03‑05	What If?, Chapter 11
	Cornstarch	"How much cornstarch can I rinse down the drain before unpleasant things start to happen?" —Anna R., Fort Wayne, IN	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.	36th blog article, on 2013‑03‑12
	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?" —Tim Currie	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.	37th blog article, on 2013‑03‑19
	Voyager	"With today's technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I?" —Elliot Bennett	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.	38th blog article, on 2013‑03‑26
	Hockey Puck	"How hard would a puck have to be shot to be able to knock the goalie himself backwards into the net?" —Tom	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.	39th blog article, on 2013‑04‑02	What If?, Chapter 24
	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?" —Delphine Lourtau	Ordinarily, the worst that can happen is the lid blowing off and superheated liquid spraying everywhere, but you can use one to make Dioxygen difluoride, which is much worse.	40th blog article, on 2013‑04‑09
	Go West	"If everybody in the US drove west, could we temporarily halt continental drift?" —Derek	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.	41st blog article, on 2013‑04‑16
	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?" —Michael Berg	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 the terminator). A similar concept has been explored in comic 162: Angular Momentum.	42nd blog article, on 201304‑23‑	What If?, Chapter 52
	Train Loop	"Could a high-speed train run through a vertical loop, like a rollercoaster, with the passengers staying comfortable?" —Gero Walter	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.	43rd blog article, on 2013‑04‑30
	High Throw	"How high can a human throw something?" —Irish Dave on the Isle of Man	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.	44th blog article, on 2013‑05‑07	What If?, Chapter 38
	ISS Music Video	"Is this the most expensive music video ever?" —Various Youtube commenters	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.	45th blog article, on 2013‑05‑14
	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?" —Seth C.	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.	46th blog article, on 2013‑05‑21
	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?" —Chuck H.	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 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.	47th blog article, on 2013‑05‑28	What If?, Chapter 28
	Sunset on the British Empire	"When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire?" —Kurt Amundson	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 the British Indian Ocean Territory will become part of Mauritus in March 2025, allowing the Sun to finally set on the British Empire.	48th blog article, on 2013‑06‑04	What If?, Chapter 60
	Sunless Earth	"What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off?" —Many, many readers	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.	49th blog article, on 2013‑06‑11	What If?, Chapter 57	24th video, on 2025‑04‑15: What if the sun suddenly went out?
	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?" —Nicholas Aron	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.	50th blog article, on 2013‑06‑18
	Free Fall	"What place on Earth would allow you to freefall the longest by jumping off it? What about using a squirrel suit?" —Dhash Shrivathsa	It takes 26 seconds to fall from the top of 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.	51st blog article, on 2013‑06‑25	What If?, Chapter 45
	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?" —Ginger Bread	Around 3,000,000 balls. Death would occur and you would be charged with manslaughter or murder.	52nd blog article, on 2013‑07‑02
	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?" —Ted M.	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.	53rd blog article, on 2013‑07‑09	What If?, Chapter 48	12th video, on 2024‑06‑18: What if you drained the oceans?
	Drain the Oceans: Part II	"Supposing you did Drain the Oceans, and dumped the water on top of the Curiosity rover, how would Mars change as the water accumulated?" —Iain	The water would fill the Valles Marineris, eventually leaving only 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.	54th blog article, on 2013‑07‑16	What If?, Chapter 49	14th video, on 2024‑08‑13: What if we teleported the oceans to Mars?
	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." —Mimi	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.	55th blog article, on 2013‑07‑23	What If?, Chapter 53
	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?" —Connor Childerhose	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.	56th blog article, on 2013‑07‑30
	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?" —John-Clark Levin	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.	57th blog article, on 2013‑08‑06
	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?" —Brian	No, because you need to go 8 km/s to stay in orbit, and it would take impossible amounts of fuel to slow down.	58th blog article, on 2013‑08‑12 (1d early)	What If?, Chapter 43
		"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?" —Christopher Mallow
		"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?" —Kenny Van de Maele
	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?" —Susanne Könings	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.	59th blog article, on 2013‑08‑20 (1d late)	What If?, Chapter 58	13th video, on 2024‑07‑09: What if you tried to print Wikipedia?
	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?" —Borislav Stanimirov	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.	60th blog article, on 2013‑08‑27
	Speed Bump	"How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?" —Myrlin Barber	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.	61st blog article, on 2013‑09‑03	What If?, Chapter 41
	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?" —Colin Rowe	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.	62nd blog article, on 2013‑09‑10	What If?, Chapter 34
	Google's Datacenters on Punch Cards	"If all digital data were stored on punch cards, how big would Google's data warehouse be?" —James Zetlin	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.	63rd blog article, on 2013‑09‑17
	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?" —Rebecca B	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 death zone and suffocating. However, your corpse would outlast the Earth as it was swallowed by the Sun.	64th blog article, on 2013‑09‑24	What If?, Chapter 15
	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?" —Anonymous	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 German tank problem, the future and past timelines combined would likely contain 690 billion tweets.	65th blog article, on 2013‑10‑01
	500 MPH	"If winds reached 500 mph, would it pick up a human?" —Grey Flynn, age 7, Stoneham, MA	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.	66th blog article, on 2013‑10‑08
	Expanding Earth	"How long would it take for people to notice their weight gain if the mean radius of the world expanded by 1cm every second? (Assuming the average composition of rock were maintained.)" —Dennis O’Donnell	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.	67th blog article, on 2013‑10‑15	What If?, Chapter 55	17th video, on 2024‑10‑15: What if Earth grew 1cm every second?
	Little Planet	"If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince?" —Samantha Harper	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.	68th blog article, on 2013‑10‑22	What If?, Chapter 22
	Facebook of the Dead	"When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?" —Emily Dunham	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.	69th blog article, on 2013‑10‑29	What If?, Chapter 59
	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?" —Nick Nelson	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 the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife reports as 50-150 miles or 80-240 kilometers).	70th blog article, on 2013‑11‑05
	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?" —Will Evans	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.	71st blog article, on 2013‑11‑12	What If?, Chapter 61
	Loneliest Human	"What is the furthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? Were they lonely?" —Bryan J. McCarter	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.	72nd blog article, on 2013‑11‑19	What If?, Chapter 63
	Lethal Neutrinos	"How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation?" —(Overheard in a physics department)	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.	73rd blog article, on 2013‑11‑26	What If?, Chapter 39
	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?" —Brian Roelofs	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.	74th blog article, on 2013‑12‑03
	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?" —Stewart Bishop	The English word with the most consecutive letters on the same key is "Nonmonogamous".	75th blog article, on 2013‑12‑10
	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?" —Gregory Willmot	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.	76th blog article, on 2013‑12‑17	What If? 2, Chapter 10
	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?" —Maria	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.	77th blog article, on 2013‑12‑31 (7d late)
	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?" —Tony Schmitz	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 contains 110,000 calories. Therefore, a T-rex would need to eat someone every 2 days or so.	78th blog article, on 2014‑01‑07	What If? 2, with a different title, Chapter 7: T. Rex Calories
	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?" —Alex Burman	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.	79th blog article, on 2014‑01‑14
	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?" —Dave	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.	80th blog article, on 2014‑01‑21
	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." —Ed Hui, London	Yes, eventually the bullet would come to a maximum height, at which point you could grab the bullet before it fell down. You'd need to grip it firmly, because the bullet would still have it's rotational momentum and might jump out of your hand. A larger bullet would require a larger height to catch it at, and even then, it would still be difficult to grab. Of course, this is illegal and can injure you or other people.	81st blog article, on 2014‑01‑28	What If? 2, Chapter 12
	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?" —Tom Foster	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.	82nd blog article, on 2014‑02‑05 (1d late)
	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?" —Jeff Wartes	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.	83rd blog article, on 2014‑02‑11 (1d early)	What If? 2, Chapter 16
	Paint the Earth	"Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire land area of the Earth?" —Josh (Bolton, MA)	That there isn't enough paint to go around. The total estimated amount of produced paint, a trillion litres, is only enough to paint as much as the land area of Russia.	84th blog article, on 2014‑02‑18	What If? 2, Chapter 14
	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?" —Dan (Kanata, Ontario)	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.	85th blog article, on 2014‑02‑25
	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?" —Matt Russell	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.	86th blog article, on 2014‑03‑04
	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?" —Joausc	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.	87th blog article, on 2014‑03‑11
	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?" —Brandon Seah	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.	88th blog article, on 2014‑03‑18
	Tungsten Countertop	"How far would a tungsten countertop descend if I dropped it into the Sun?" —Michael Leuchtenburg	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.	89th blog article, on 2014‑03‑25
	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?" —John Eifert (quoting a Mother Goose rhyme)	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.	90th blog article, on 2014‑04‑03 (2d late)
	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?" —David Axel Kurtz	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.	91st blog article, on 2014‑04‑08 (2d early)
	One-Second Day	"What would happen if the Earth's rotation were sped up until a day only lasted one second?" —Dylan	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).	92nd blog article, on 2014‑04‑15	What If? 2, Chapter 21
	Windshield Raindrops	"At what speed would you have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield?" —Daniel Butler	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.	93rd blog article, on 2014‑04‑22
	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." —Keira, via Steve Brodovicz, Media, PA	The tower would be far too big to support itself under its own weight. The tower would also extend past the Moon. The sheer amount of elevators needed would provide little to now room for actual usable space. Additionally, space junk would be a large problem, as there is a high probability that space junk would collide with the tower.	94th blog article, on 2014‑04‑29	What If? 2, Chapter 22	21st video, on 2025‑02‑11: What if you built a billion-story building?
	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?" —Michael Marmol	The Apollo Program took about the same manpower as the building of the Great Pyramids, but physics wise, the Great Pyramid only contains 1012 joules of gravitational potential energy. A single Saturn V rocket's fuel has 20 times more energy.	95th blog article, on 2014‑05‑06
	$2 Undecillion Lawsuit	"What if Au Bon Pain lost this lawsuit and had to pay the plaintiff $2 undecillion?" —Kevin Underhill	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.	96th blog article, on 2014‑05‑14 (1d late)	What If? 2, Chapter 23
	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?" —Jessica Thornburg	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.	97th blog article, on 2014‑05‑20 (1d early)
	Blood Alcohol	"Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood?" —Fiona Byrne	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.	98th blog article, on 2014‑05‑27	What If? 2, Chapter 42
	Starlings	"I was watching 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?" —Justin Basinger	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 the 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.	99th blog article, on 2014‑06‑03
	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?" —Becky	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.	100th blog article, on 2014‑06‑11 (1d late)
	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?" —Steve Lydford	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.	101st blog article, on 2014‑06‑18	What If? 2, Chapter 26
	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." —Nicholas Dickner	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.	102nd blog article, on 2014‑06‑25
	Vanishing Water	"What would happen if all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared?" —Joanna Xu	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 later on also leads to a runaway greenhouse effect.	103rd blog article, on 2014‑07‑02
	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.)" —Jed Scott	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.	104th blog article, on 2014‑07‑09	What If? 2, Chapter 59
	Cannibalism	"How long could the human race survive on only cannibalism?" —Quinn Shaffer	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 prion disease.	105th blog article, on 2014‑07‑16
	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?" —David Pelkey	You'd use about 100,000,000,000,000,000 molecules.	106th blog article, on 2014‑07‑23
	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?" —Tim	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.	107th blog article, on 2014‑07‑30
	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)?" —Rick Lewis	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,	108th blog article, on 2014‑08‑13 (7d late)	What If? 2, Chapter 31
	Into the Blue	"If I shot an infinitely strong laser beam into the sky at a random point, how much damage would it do?" —Garrett D.	Too short. Why? Also, explain last sentence of the article Most of the time it would not hit anything.	109th blog article, on 2014‑08‑20
	Walking New York	"Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? (including inside apartments)" —Asif Shamir	Too short Yes, in around 30 years, but you'd end up in prison.	110th blog article, on 2014‑08‑27
	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?" —Daniel Pino	The only thing to do would be to make a swimming pool, as it is unlikely anybody else would agree with your claims to all the money and property.	111th blog article, on 2014‑09‑02 (1d early)
	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." —Phil Rodgers, Cambridge, UK	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 parasailing.	112th blog article, on 2014‑09‑17 (8d late)
	Visit Every State	"How fast could you visit all 50 states?" —as discussed by Stephen Von Worley on Data Pointed	Need to add the other ways you can do it In just over 6 hours, in 5 satellite orbits.	113th blog article, on 2014‑09‑24
	Antimatter	"What if everything was antimatter, EXCEPT Earth?" —Sean Gallagher	Too short Our existence would end, but much slower than in most other situations, from outer-space gas and meteorites.	114th blog article, on 2014‑10‑01
	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?" —AJ, Kansas City	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.	115th blog article, on 2014‑10‑08	What If? 2, Chapter 61	15th video, on 2024‑09‑03: Could you survive a nanosecond on the Sun?
	No-Rules NASCAR	"If you stripped away all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible, what strategy would win? Let's say the racer has to survive." —Hunter Freyer	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.	116th blog article, on 2014‑10‑15	What If? 2, Chapter 35	3rd video, on 2023‑12‑19: What if NASCAR had no rules?
	Distant Death	"What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died?" —Amy from NZ	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.	117th blog article, on 2014‑10‑23 (1d late)
	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?" —Julia Anderson, Albuquerque, NM	This is obvious. Explain every scenario. A normal person would not get buried. A CEO, on the other hand, would be in trouble.	118th blog article, on 2014‑10‑30
	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?" —Zach Wheeler	This is obvious. Explain why and the main issues. It would be very complicated, not worth it, and would probably make everything around you catch fire.	119th blog article, on 2014‑11‑13 (7d late)	What If? 2, Chapter 37	6th video, on 2024‑02‑20: Could you make an umbrella out of lasers?
	Alternate Universe What Ifs	"Dispatches from a horrifying alternate universe"		120th blog article, on 2014‑11‑20
	Frozen Rivers	"What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer?" —Zoe Cutler	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.	121st blog article, on 2014‑12‑11 14d late)
	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?" —Kathy Johnstone, 6th Grade Teacher (via a student)	The container would glow opaque from the heat, making it impossible to see the lava, which would solidify after a minute.	122nd blog article, on 2014‑12‑18	What If? 2, Chapter 40
	Fairy Demographics	"How many fairies would fly around, if each fairy is born from the first laugh of a child and fairies were immortal?" —Mira Kühn, Germany	They would have the same birth rate as humans, and they would become a major part of the ecosystem.	123rd blog article, on 2015‑01‑01 (7d late)
	Lunar Swimming	"What if there was a lake on the Moon? What would it be like to swim in it? Presuming that it is sheltered in a regular atmosphere, in some giant dome or something." —Kim Holder	It would be super-cool, given that lower gravity would increase the size of splashes and the height of jumps.	124th blog article, on 2015‑01‑08		20th video, on 2024‑12‑24: What if we put a pool on the moon?
	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?" —Doug Carter	It would take two hours and 20 minutes.	125th blog article, on 2015‑01‑15
	Stairs	"If you made an elevator that would go to space (like the one you mentioned in the billion-story building) and built a staircase up (assuming regulated air pressure) about how long would it take to climb to the top?" —Ethan Annas	Too short A week or two for a professional stair-climber. Half a day by motorcycle.	126th blog article, on 2015‑01‑22
	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?" —Markus Andersen	Too short, summarise the rest of the article. Two teams of 25 people each would be able to rip a half-inch iron bar apart.	127th blog article, on 2015‑01‑28 (1d early)
	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?" —Ian Cummings	The Zippo has more energy than your phone battery, but your hand would have even more, when burned as fuel.	128th blog article, on 2015‑02‑05 (1d late)
	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?" —Matt	What if it did happen in space age? Too short. It would not have a big impact unless it happened during the space age.	129th blog article, on 2015‑02‑12
	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?" —Matt Van Opens	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.	130th blog article, on 2015‑02‑19
	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?" —James	A bit too short, explain more. Use a lower power level, stir your food partway through microwaving, and let it sit for a few minutes before you eat it.	131st blog article, on 2015‑02‑27 (1d late)
	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?" —Graham Ward	Explain, what's a water average? There is a water average. Give the signmakers some credit.	132nd blog article, on 2015‑03‑07 (1d late)
	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?" —Rex Ungericht	It would be impossible, even a gymnast's arms would be ripped off from the force.	133rd blog article, on 2015‑03‑17 (3d late)
	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?" —Tim in Fremont	Maybe too short?? In low orbit, your body would fall to Earth and be burned from atmospheric re-entry. In a higher orbit, it would be destroyed from space debris. In high orbit, you could last for a few centuries.	134th blog article, on 2015‑03‑28 (4d late)
	Digging Downward	"What would happen if I dug straight down, at a speed of 1 foot per second? What would kill me first?" —Jack Kaunis	Mention the part about removing the dirt from your hole You could survive for one to two hours, as oxygen becomes toxic at depths higher than 5 kilometers.	135th blog article, on 2015‑04‑05 (1d late)
	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." —Marina Fleming	Maybe too short? Explain why. The Sun. But spiders are a lot more scary.	136th blog article, on 2015‑04‑12	What If? 2, Chapter 44
	New Horizons	"What if New Horizons hits my car?" —Robin Sheat		137th blog article, on 2015‑07‑14 (2m 25d late)
	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?" —KTH	Too short No. The submarine would be crushed by high pressure, and the materials composing it would be transformed into completely different ones.	138th blog article, on 2015‑07‑28 (7d late)
	Jupiter Descending	"If you did fall into Jupiter's atmosphere in a submarine, what would it actually look like? What would you see before you melted or burned up?" —Ada Munroe	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.	139th blog article, on 2015‑08‑04
	Proton Earth, Electron Moon	"What if the Earth were made entirely of protons, and the Moon were made entirely of electrons?" —Noah Williams	Why? It would create a type of black hole called a "naked singularity" that would expand outwards at the speed of light.	140th blog article, on 2015‑09‑18 (1m 7d late)	What If? 2, Chapter 48
	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?" —Max Schäfer	Too short, missing the last 2 paragraphs Parts of the atmosphere would be heated to millions of degrees. The light reflected off the moon would be hot enough to burn you to death.	141st blog article, on 2016‑01‑12 (3m 18d late)
	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?" —Casey Berg	Why?? Actually, it would be more clean than it is currently!	142nd blog article, on 2016‑01‑20 (1d late)
	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.)" —A group of Google Search SREs	Too short No, at least not with a siphon.	143rd blog article, on 2016‑01‑26 (1d early)
	Saliva Pool	"How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva?" —Mary Griffin, 9th grade	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.	144th blog article, on 2016‑02‑02	What If? 2, Chapter 53
	Fire From Moonlight	"Can you use a magnifying glass and moonlight to light a fire?" —Rogier Spoor	Too short, explain if you were surrounded by the Sun No. Because of the law of conservation of étendue, the light would only be as hot as the surface of the moon.	145th blog article, on 2016‑02‑09	What If? 2, Chapter 51
	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?" —Dillon	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.	146th blog article, on 2016‑02‑16
	Niagara Straw	"What would happen if one tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw?" —David Gwizdala	A list of agencies isn't useful here, explain the actual article. The International Niagara Committee, the International Niagara Board of Control, the International Joint Commission, the International Niagara Board Working Committee, and probably the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Adaptive Management Committee would get angry. The Earth would also be destroyed.	147th blog article, on 2016‑02‑26 3d late)	What If? 2, Chapter 55
	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?" —James Mitchell	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.	148th blog article, on 2016‑03‑12 (8d late)
	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?" —Tina Nguyen	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.	149th blog article, on 2016‑03‑26 (7d late)
	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?" —Raga	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.	150th blog article, on 2016‑05‑23 (1m 21d late)
	Sun Bug	"How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness of the Sun?" —Luke Doty	Talk about the problems he mentions, like each firefly turning into a black hole. 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 fireflies.	151st blog article, on 2016‑07‑21 (1m 23d late)
	Flood Death Valley	"Since Death Valley is below sea level could we dig a hole to the ocean and fill it up with water?" —Nick Traeden	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.	152nd blog article, on 2016‑10‑18 (2m 21d late)
The thumbnail for this blog article wasn't archived.	Peptides	"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?" —Kira (Lysine-Isoleucine-Arginine-Alanine) Guth	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.	153rd blog article, on 2016‑12‑05 (Published by accident and deleted: learn more)
	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?" —Sam Burke	The hole would need to be very big. Under the right circumstances, a five-mile hole over the entire state of Texas might suffice.	153rd blog article, on 2017‑01‑30 (3m 5d late)
	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?" —Brandon Rooks	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.	154th blog article, on 2017‑02‑08 (9d late)
	Toaster vs. Freezer	"Would a toaster still work in a freezer?" —My Brother, My Brother, and Me, Episode 343, discussing a Yahoo Answers question	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.	155th blog article, on 2017‑02‑28 (13d late)
	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?" —Madeline Cooper	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.	156th blog article, on 2017‑03‑09 (2d late)
	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?" —Ramon Schönborn, Germany	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.	157th blog article, on 2018‑03‑21 (1y 2m 5d late)	What If? 2, Chapter 58
	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?" —Kang Ji	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.	158th blog article, on 2022‑05‑04 (3y 11m 7d late)
	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?" —Michael Grill	Too short. Explain air resistance as Randall does. There's no real chance of producing that big hail stones, but if they could be lethal even if staying indoors.	159th blog article, on 2022‑07‑05 (1m 30d late)
This blog article doesn't have a thumbnail.	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?" —Eric Munson	In addition to destroying global ocean circulation and creating an illegal naval blockade, this is definitely a violation of her rental car agreement. Also, organizing a fleet of a trillion rental cars would be difficult.	160th blog article, on 2022‑09‑06 (1m 26d late)
This blog article doesn't have a thumbnail.	Star Ownership	"If every country's airspace extended up forever, which country would own the largest percentage of the galaxy at any given time?" —Reuven Lazarus	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.	161st blog article, on 2022‑11‑01 (1m 19d late)	What If? 2, Chapter 24
This blog article doesn't have a thumbnail.	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?" —Daniel Becker	Too short The comet either burns up in the atmosphere or speeds up global warming.	162nd blog article, on 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?" —Andrew Brown	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 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.		What If?, Chapter 1	4th video, on 2024‑01‑09: What if Earth suddenly stopped spinning?
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #1	"Would it be possible to get your teeth to such a cold temperature that they would shatter upon drinking a hot cup of coffee?" —Shelby Hebert			What If?, Chapter 4
		"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%)?" —Anonymous
	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?" —Mark Dettling	1,000 years back, you'd see many chestnut trees, wolves, and passenger pigeons. 10,000 years back, the ground would be mostly bedrock, with large chunks of ice and dropped boulders, called glacial erratics. 100,000 years back, several islands were pushed upwards by the ice. You would see many now-extinct species, such as Canis dirus, Smilodon fatalis, and Arctodus. 1,000,000 years back, you'd see relatives of hyenas called Chasmaporthetes. 1,000,000 years back would be no plants or animals, only single-celled organisms in the ocean.		What If?, Chapter 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?" —Andy Connolly	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.		What If?, Chapter 8
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #2	"Would dumping anti-matter into the Chernobyl reactor when it was melting down stop the meltdown?" —AJ			What If?, Chapter 12
		"Is it possible to cry so much you dehydrate yourself?" —Karl Wildermuth
	The Last Human Light	"If every human somehow simply disappeared from the face of the Earth, how long would it be before the last artificial light source would go out?" —Alan	Radioactive waste that was mixed with glass will glow for centuries.		What If?, Chapter 13	11th video, on 2024‑05‑28: If all humans died, when would the last light go out?
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #3	"Given humanity’s current knowledge and capabilities, is it possible to build a new star?" —Jeff Gordon			What If?, Chapter 16
		"What sort of logistic anomalies would you encounter in trying to raise an army of apes?" —Kevin
		"If people had wheels and could fly, how would we differentiate them from airplanes?" —Anonymous
	Orbital Submarine	"How long would a nuclear submarine last in orbit?" —Jason Lathbury	The submarine could last as long as it was in space.		What If?, Chapter 17	7th video, on 2024‑03‑05: Would a Submarine Work as a Spaceship?
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #4	"Would it be possible to stop a volcano eruption by placing a bomb (thermobaric or nuclear) underneath the surface?" —Tomasz Gruszka			What If?, Chapter 20
		"A friend of mine is convinced that there is sound in space. There isn’t, right?" —Aaron Smith
	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?" —Mateusz Knorps	The combined computing power of all devices surpassed the power of all humans in 1977.		What If?, Chapter 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?" —Sarah Ewart	No, because immunocompromised individuals can harbor rhinoviruses for a long time. Only a few hosts are needed for the virus to spread again.		What If?, Chapter 25
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #5	" If global warming puts us in danger through temperature rise, and super-volcanos put us into danger of global cooling, shouldn’t those two dangers balance each other out?" —Florian Seidl-Schulz			What If?, Chapter 27
		"How fast would a human have to run in order to be cut in half at the bellybutton by a cheese-cutting wire?" —Jon Merrill
	No More DNA	"This may be a bit gruesome, but... if someone's DNA suddenly vanished, how long would that person last?" —Nina Charest	You could live for several hours or days before succumbing to infection or systemwide organ failure.		What If?, Chapter 29
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #6	"What is the total nutritional value (calories, fat, vitamins, minerals, etc.) of the average human body?" —Justin Risner			What If?, Chapter 31
		"What temperature would a chainsaw (or other cutting implement) need to be at to instantly cauterize any injuries inflicted with it?" —Sylvia Gallagher
	Flyover States	"Which US state is actually flown over the most?" —Jesse Ruderman	Virgina, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America.		What If?, Chapter 33
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #7	"In Thor the main character is at one point spinning his hammer so fast that he creates a strong tornado. Would this be possible in real life?" —Davor			What If?, Chapter 36
		"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?" —Jonatan Lindström
		"How many nuclear missiles would have to be launched at the United States to turn it into a complete wasteland?" —Anonymous
	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?" —R Scott LaMorte	The resulting child would have many genetic defects, effectively being inbred.		What If?, Chapter 37
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #8	"A toxin blocks the ability of the nephron tubule reabsorption but does not affect filtration. What are the possible short-term effects of this toxin?" —Mary			What If?, Chapter 40
		"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?" —Jonathan Wang
	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?" —Ethan Lake	Depending on strategy and terrain, a few years to a few decades.		What If?, Chapter 42
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #9	"Could you survive a tidal wave by submerging yourself in an in-ground pool?" —Chris Muska			What If?, Chapter 46
		"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?" —Varadarajan Srinivasan
	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?" —Anna Newell	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.		What If?, Chapter 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?" —Jerry Petersen	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.		What If?, Chapter 51
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #10	"What is the probability that if I am stabbed by a knife in my torso that it won’t hit anything vital and I’ll live?" —Thomas			What If?, Chapter 54
		"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?" —Anonymous
		"What if every day, every human had a 1 percent chance of being turned into a turkey, and every turkey had a 1 percent chance of being turned into a human?" —Kenneth
	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?" —Mark Estano	It would stop at about 5 to 10 kilometers.		What If?, Chapter 56
	All the Lightning	"If all the lightning strikes happening in the world on any given day all happened in the same place at once, what would happen to that place?" —Trevor Jones	It would create a crater the size of a basketball court.		What If?, Chapter 62	10th video, on 2024‑05‑07: What if all the lightning on Earth struck the same place at once?
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #11	"What if everyone in Great Britain went to one of the coasts and started paddling? Could they move the island at all?" —Ellen Eubanks			What If?, Chapter 64
		"Are fire tornadoes possible?" —Seth Wishman
	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?" —Charlotte Ainsworth	No. The bullet would fall through the ground and stop in the center of the Earth.		What If?, Chapter 67
	Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #12	"What if I swallow a tick that has Lyme disease? Will my stomach acid kill the tick and the borreliosis, or would I get Lyme disease from the inside out?" —Christopher Vogel			What If?, Chapter 68
		"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”?" —Brittany
	Richter 15	"What if a Richter magnitude 15 earthquake were to hit America at, let's say, New York City? What about a Richter 20? 25?" —Alec Farid	A magnitude 15 earthquake would destroy the Earth.		What If?, Chapter 69	2nd video, on 2023‑12‑05: What would a magnitude 15 earthquake be like?
	Soupiter	"What would happen if the Solar System was filled with soup out to Jupiter?" —Amelia	The soup would collapse into a black hole and devour the Milky Way, though we would feel mostly fine for the first 10 to 15 minutes.		What If? 2, Chapter 1
	Helicopter Ride	"What if you were hanging on a helicopter blade by your hands and then someone turned it on?" —Corban Blanset	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 2
	Dangerously Cold	"Would there be any danger from standing next to a large object that was 0 Kelvin?" —Christopher	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		What If? 2, Chapter 3
	Ironic Vaporization	"What if we somehow evaporated a solid block of iron on earth [sic]?" —Cooper C.	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Sam H-H	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Nick Evans	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 6
	Short Answers #1	"What if your blood became liquid uranium? Would you die from radiation, lack of oxygen, or something else?" —Thomas Chattaway	You would die Having-no-Blood-and-Being-Full-of-Molten-Uranium Syndrome. Also known as Jeff's Disease.		What If? 2, Chapter 6.5 (S1)
		"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." —Emma	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?" —LyraxH	About 500 gallons of water.
		"What would we see if we attached a lightweight camera to a balloon and let it fly away?" —Raymond Peng	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?" —Daniel and Xavier Hovley	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?" —Freezachu	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?" —Jack Catten	No, you would die.
		"If there was no water on Earth, would we all live?" —Karen
		"Is it possible to make a homemade jetpack?" —Azhari Zadil	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.)" —Łukasz Grabowski	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?" —Catherine McGrath	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 8
	Pew, Pew, Pew	"If you shot a ridiculously powerful gun/lazer [sic] would it go off the edge of the world in a straight line or curve around the world?" —Maelor	The beam would go off the edge of the world, except under certain circumstances.		What If? 2, Chapter 9
	Weird & Worrying #1	"Can bees or other animals go to hell? Or can they murder other bees without consequences?" —Sadie Kim			What If? 2, Chapter 10.5 (W1)
		"How many mirrors reflecting (sun)light would it take to kill, or at least, injure somebody?" —Eli Collinge
		"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." —Tirzah
		"What would it take to defeat Air Force One with a drone???" —Anonymous
	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." —Jonas	Most of these are too short! If you own the second book, please help us by explaining more! Yes. They would likely only fill the churches to 6 inches deep.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Ryan Murphy	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Zachary	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 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.)" —Joe Coyle	This wouldn't happen.		What If? 2, Chapter 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!" —Brady Barkey	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 18
	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?" —Alan Fong	It's a total mystery why Billy is running out of cash.		What If? 2, Chapter 18.5 (S2)
		"How many leaf blowers would it take to move a standard SUV" —Ashley H.	One or two dozen heavy-duty leaf blowers on level ground; more if you don't want to be honked at.
		"If you put a vacuum at extremely high suction and aimed it at a normal BMW sedan, what would happen?" —Anonymous	Nothing.
		"On a warm summer evening, when you sit outside with a light on, you can be sure that bugs will be attracted to the light. Then why is it that these same bugs don't fly toward the biggest and strongest lamp of them all, namely the Sun, during the day?" —Anonymous	Those that would would die and not be able to produce offspring with the same traits.
		"If you collected all of the guns in the world and put them on one side of the Earth, then shot the all simultaneously, would it move the Earth?" —Nathan	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?" —Micheal	You would no longer be welcome in that IKEA.
		"If you're jumping on a trampoline, how fast would your body have to be going to: A. Break all bones on impact B. Make your body go though the tiny holes of the mesh." —Micah Lane	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. This can't happen, no matter how fast you're going.
		"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?" —Dave H.	You would have a device functionally similar to a regular grenade.
		"Is space hot or cold?" —Isaac	Space is the hottest place you can freeze to death in.
		"How many bones can you remove from the human body while allowing the human to continue living? Asking for a friend." —Chris Rakeman	That person is not your friend.
		"What would happen if you put a human under a g-force of 417 Gs for twenty seconds?" —Nythill	You would be arrested for murder.
		"Where or how can one commit a murder and not be prosecuted for it?" —Kunai Dhawan	Theoretically, in a section of Yellowstone National Park, where 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?" —Hannah McDonald	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?" —Seth Carrol	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" —Beni von Alemann	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 Jurassic Park were a real place, it could certainly cause a dinosaur extinction over there, if dropped on it.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Anonymous	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 be a fairly bight star When Neptune hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that's an x-ray..		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Fred	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 25
	Short Answers #3	"How long do you think two people would have to kiss continuously before they had no lips left?" —Asli	That's not how lips work		What If? 2, Chapter 26.5 (S3)
		"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?" —Eric Bowman	Both the human and the ants would go after the person who put them in the glass box.
		"What if all of humanity set all of their differences aside and work together to level out the Earth into a perfect sphere?" —Erik Andersen	This would quickly create new differences.
		"People talk a lot about a space elevator or a building that would reach into low orbit to save time and resources getting things into space. This is going to sound incredibly stupid, but why has no one proposed building a road into space? Since orbit is generally considered to be 62 miles out, would it be possible to build a 62-mile-high mountain somewhere in the United States? Colorado would be my suggestion, since it has a low population density and is about a mile above sea level already." —Brian	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?" —James Wilson	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?" —Ian	We would mostly be okay.
		"Can you fall down into the Mariana Trench, or would you just swim over it?" —Rodolfo Estrella	You can do both of those things
		"I play Dungeons & Dragons, and my DM doesn't want to let us use the Gust of Wind spell to push wind into the sails of a ship and make it move. Her argument is that you can't use this spell to move a ship because someone on a sailboat can't aim a fan at the sail to propel the boat. We argue that since the spell doesn't push you backward when you use it, then we should be able to use it to make the ship sail. She says she'll allow it only if you say so." —Georgia Paterson and Allison Adams	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?" —Ethan Fitzgibbon	While the match would light initially due to the small amount of oxidizer in a matchhead (typically 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?" —Olivia Caputo	That would not be a small change.
	Suction Aquarium	"When I was a child, I discovered that if I took a container into the swimming pool, i could fill it with water and then bring the container (open-end down) to the surface of the water, and the water level in my container was higher than the water level in the pool. What would happen if you tried to do this with a giant container and the ocean? Could you create a giant aquarium on top of the water that the animals could swim in and out of freely? Maybe an irregularly shaped container that you would walk around on to get closer to the fish?" —Caroline Collett	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 27
	Earth Eye	"If the Earth were a massive eye, how far would it see?" —Alasdir	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 redshifted 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.		What If? 2, Chapter 28
	Build Rome in a Day	"How many people would it take to build Rome in a day?" —Lauren	It would take anywhere between 15 minutes and 150 minutes with the whole Earth working.		What If? 2, Chapter 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." —Zoki Čulo	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 30
	MRI Compass	"Why don't compasses point toward the nearest hospital because of the magnetic fields created by MRI machines?" —D. Hughes	They actually do, but only within ~10 meters.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Seamus	Likely between 2-3 twenty-fourths of all humans who have ever lived.		What If? 2, Chapter 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." —Hunter W.	The bird would fall onto the seat at an angle, and then would fly out of the window (hopefully).		What If? 2, Chapter 34
	Weird & Worrying #2	"What would happen if you put the end of a vacuum hose up to your eye and turned on the vacuum?" —Kitty Greer			What If? 2, Chapter 35.5 (W2)
		"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?" —Ty Gwennap
		"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?" —Valen M.
		"In a defensive situation, how much epinephrine (in a EpiPen) would it take to subdue a possible attacker?" —Henry M.
	Vacuum Tube Smartphone	"What if my phone was based on vacuum tubes? How big would it be?" —Johnny	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 36
	Eat a Cloud	"Could a person eat a whole cloud?" —Tak	Not unless you can squeeze the air out first. If you don't you will burp out more cloud than you ate.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Rasmus Bunde Nielson	Over a second longer.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Nicholas Mittica	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Zayne Freshley	Yes.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Greg	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.		What If? 2, Chapter 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" —Violet M.	Billions		What If? 2, Chapter 46
	Short Answers #4	"Can humans safely eat rabid creatures?" —Winston	No.		What If? 2, Chapter 46.5 (S4)
		"What if the Earth's core suddenly stopped producing heat?" —Laura	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?" —Tyler	No.
		"Can global warming cause the Earth's magnetic fields to weaken?" —Pavaki	No.
		"If you used a laser, would you be able to bake something?" —Andrew Liu	Yes.
		"What if Earth was sliced in half, like an apple? Where should you be such that you have the best chance of survival?" —Anonymous	You should be holding the object that's slicing the Earth.
		"What would happen if a person dropped into a pool full of jellyfish?" —Lorenzo Belotti	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?" —Jacob Wood	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." —Steffen	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?" —Nick Evans	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?" —David	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.)" —Melissa Trible	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?" —Sam Stiehl	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?" —Peter Ahlström	Not many, because the house would quickly catch on fire.		What If? 2, Chapter 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)" —Lenka	You would see an eye superimposed with your head and the background of the room overlapping.		What If? 2, Chapter 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)?" —Miyu Uchida	It could shift the Earth's center of mass and axis of rotation by a foot. Sea level could also rise by up to a foot and a half in some areas. Ocean circulation in the Pacific could also be impacted.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Keith Yearman	Between 145000 and 12.3 million pages.		What If? 2, Chapter 52
	Weird & Worrying #3	"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?" —Stella Wohnig			What If? 2, Chapter 52.5 (W3)
		"What would happen to you if a colony of ants suddenly appeared in you bloodstream all at once?" —Matt, on behalf of Declan
		"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?" —Max Planker
	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?" —Michaeline Yates	It would remain about the same size, or it could cause an avalanche. Since the peak of 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.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Jojo Yawson	The sky would flicker at 50 Hz, and you would arrive around 300,000 years in the past.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Becca	There would be direct tissue damage, and other horrifying effects.		What If? 2, Chapter 57
	Short Answers #5	"Could life evolve in a constantly running microwave?" —Abby Doth	No.		What If? 2, Chapter 58.5 (S5)
		"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?" —Pete	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?" —Miller Broughton	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?" —Elizabeth	No. An eggshell weighs more than the air it displaces.
		"What would stars smell like, if it were possible to smell them?" —Finn Ellis	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?" —Max Carver	Not too big, not too small. About average.
		"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" —Nate Yu	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?" —Griffin	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 1c 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 10101 Dalmations.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Brian and Max Parker	You would need SPF 3,200,000 or a giant blob of sunscreen.		What If? 2, Chapter 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?" —Jabari Garland	The Sun will cool to room temperature in about 20 billion years. However, survival would not be an option.		What If? 2, Chapter 63
	Lemon Drops and Gumdrops	"What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?" —Shuo Peskoe-Yang	Human civilization would collapse, and we would all die.		What If? 2, Chapter 64
	Bonus Chapter	"...but what if we tried even more power?" —Randall Munroe	This is a continuation of 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.		Available exclusively on What If? 10th Anniversary Edition, Chapter 70	19th video, on 2024‑12‑03: But what if we tried MORE power?

Editors ㅤ (jump back to table)

Add name of reader who asked the question.

Here's how to add the name(s) to any question on the table. For example, this...

|''"What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?"''
|Human civilization would collapse, and we would all die.

... becomes this:

|''"What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?"''
<div align="right">—InsertNamesHere</div>
|Human civilization would collapse, and we would all die.

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 —.) 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.

Add YouTube video

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

Add book chapter

For the first What If? book:

{{book|1|CHAPTER-NUMBER}}

For the second What If? 2 book:

{{book|2|CHAPTER-NUMBER}}

EXAMPLE:{{book|2|69}}

If an article is available exclusively on the third book (What If? 10th Anniversary Edition) and not in the first two, use this:

{{book|3|CHAPTER-NUMBER}}

Link to a what if? article

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

EXAMPLE:
See the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|158|Hot Banana}}''.
RESULTS IN:
See the what if? article Hot Banana.

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

(jump back to table)

		The What If? Project Barnstar
		✓ Added:  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 the new book and the deleted article.  ✓ Changes:  Merged columns No., Release date, and Weeks since last release; every column now easily sortable; columns Blog, Book (new), and YouTube (new) now use {{blog}} and {{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: 42.book.addictTalk to me! 17:44, 14 February 2025 (UTC), WriterArtistCodertalk to me 21:56, 11 March 2025 (UTC), FaviFake (talk) 15:53, 12 March 2025 (UTC)