“I like ridiculous questions because nobody is expected to know the answer, which means it’s okay to be confused.”
“In the United States, the average middle-aged driver suffers about one fatal crash per 100 million miles driven. If someone built a highway out of the Solar System, most drivers wouldn’t make it past the asteroid belt.”
“This plan has some flaws. It destroys the Earth, yes, but it’s also unnecessarily inefficient.”
“This is one of those questions that sounds like it’s going to create a disaster, but when you think about it for a moment, it actually doesn’t seem like it would be so bad. Then, if you think about it a little more, you realize it would be extremely bad.”
“In addition to later sunsets, taller people also experience earlier sunrises, which means that days last longer for them in general. If you’re near the equator at sea level, every extra inch of height corresponds to nearly a minute of extra daylight per year, and it’s even more at higher latitudes. At 100 feet above sea level, the effect is smaller, but each inch of height still gains you at least an extra 10 seconds of daylight annually.”
“High-quality diamonds are expensive, but it’s hard to get a handle on their exact price because the entire industry is a scam.”
“Good news: You can’t inhale a person, and also dust is not mostly dead skin.”
“Once the oceans boiled away, there would be no more raindrops to turn into lemon drops and gumdrops, so at least that rain would end. Earth might look a lot like Venus, with little to no water vapor and temperatures too hot for it to condense into rain.”
The Wall Street Journal: ‘What If? 2’ Review: Serious Science Can Be Silly
The Washington Post: The world’s funniest former NASA roboticist will take your questions