What If?

By Randall Munroe

Explore absurd questions with scientific precision and humor, revealing unexpected truths and explosive outcomes.

4.1/5 Goodreads · 200,134 ratings

303 pages· 64,621 words

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Bookroo's summary

Dive into a world of bizarre hypotheticals with Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd. From light-speed baseballs to robot apocalypses, Munroe tackles wild questions with scientific rigor and wit. Discover the fate of humanity in a robot uprising or the chaos of a Richter 15 earthquake. Each answer is a blend of clarity and humor, often predicting catastrophic results. This special edition offers new insights and expanded answers, making it a must-read for fans and curious minds alike. What happens when you push the boundaries of science and imagination? Find out in this thrilling exploration of the hypothetical.

From the publisher

A special 10th anniversary edition of WHAT IF?, the classic million-copy best-seller from the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, featuring new material that asks What If? x 10. This “brilliant” (Rolling Stone) book offers hilarious and informative answers to absurd questions you probably never thought to ask.Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? What if everyone only had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away?In pursuit of answers, Munroe ran computer simulations, pored over stacks of declassified military research memos, solved differential equations, and consulted with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by signature xkcd comics. (They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion.)In celebration of 10 years, Randall Munroe has revised his classic blockbuster to ask What If? x 10. What happens when you up the stakes by a factor of ten? The result is a 10X adventure of scientific insight and inquiry. Featuring brand new 2 color annotations and illustrations, this special anniversary edition is far more than a book for geeks, What If? explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much smarter for having read.

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