Review: Answering what should never have been answered

Randall Munroe’s book superbly epitomises beauty of math, science without compromising authenticity

KARACHI:

What if?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions does exactly what it says on the can. Written by Randall Munroe, the man responsible for the immensely popular XKCD comics, the book aims to answer a plethora of seemingly ludicrous questions.

In the introduction, Munroe labels himself as a ‘Dear Abby for mad scientists’ and continues to show his brilliant wit and humour, along with his superb grasp of a wide range of scientific concepts, throughout the book.

He also goes on to reveal his obsession with math from an early age. Then begin the questions, followed by solutions much more elegant than those put forward by what the five-year-old used to confront his mother with.



The beginning of the answer to the very first question — What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity? — is enough to warn the reader they are about to go on one hell of a hypothetical ride. “Nearly everyone would die. Then things would get interesting.”

The questions are answered in painstaking detail, often with the consultation of experts when Munroe — himself a former NASA man — needs confirmation or guidance. Some of the questions are delightfully absurd. “What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place?”

Since a mole is 602,214,129,000,000,000,000,000, Munroe’s short answer — “Things get a bit gruesome” — sums it up quite nicely. The long answer explains how that is sufficient moles to create a ‘mole planet’ larger than the moon and with a gravity to rival that of Pluto. Sometimes it is the answers that are absurd. “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?” has a simple answer — nothing.

Munroe goes captivatingly into detail, talking of the uncomfortable glances and coughs that will follow after everyone jumping together produces no result. That will be followed by massive road and air blocks as everyone tries to get back home, rampant crime as all the police were busy jumping and the eventual collapse of society as we know it.

Another such answer lies in the question, “How many unique English tweets are possible? How long would it take for the population of the world to read them all out loud?”

Munroe starts the answer with a seemingly random quote. “High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.”

He then goes on to establish the possible strings that can be made using the 26 English letters: 10,200. Removing random impossible words from that figure still leaves us with 2x1,046 ‘meaningful’ tweets, which would take around 1,047 if a tweet is read in five seconds. While this number does not seem that much, Munroe goes on to compare this to the time of the hypothetical eternity previously mentioned for context.

If you read tweets out aloud for 16 hours every day and the little bird continues to sharpen its beak once every thousand years in the back ground on that hypothetical rock until it is completely worn down to register an ‘eternal’ day, then it would take 10,000 eternal years before all the tweets will finish.

With his unique mixture of wit and comic illustrations, Munroe ensures even the most complex of mathematical equations remain appealing to the common man. In What If, he manages to superbly epitomise the beauty of mathematics and science without compromising on authenticity. A must read.

Title: What if?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Author: Randall Munroe
ISBN: 0544272994
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Price: $9.99

The writer is a senior subeditor at The Express Tribune’s sports desk. He tweets @Taha_Anis

Published in The Express Tribune, January 3^rd, 2016.

Like Life & Style on Facebook, follow @ETLifeandStyle on Twitter for the latest in fashion, gossip and entertainment.