What If? 2

Key Insights

In “What If? 2,” Randall Munroe invites readers to ponder the wildest questions in science that nobody has dared to ask. For example, how many humans would a Tyrannosaurus Rex need to eat to meet its daily caloric needs?

Munroe is a former NASA roboticist who has built his career by answering silly scientific questions. He invites his followers to submit weird hypothetical questions and then answers them with logic, math, and of course, a little humor. This book is a collection of those answers!

If you’ve ever looked up into the sky and wondered, “What if…?”, then this book is for you. It won’t unravel all the mysteries of existence or the secrets of the afterlife. But this book is sure to fill your curiosity tank about dino diets, moon lasers, and the physics of absurdity. 

If Jupiter Was The Size Of A House…

The question is: What would happen if Jupiter was shrunk down to the size of a house and placed on a suburban street?

So there’s good news and there’s bad news. 

To be optimistic, let’s start with the good news: Jupiter is approximately just as dense as water, so if it were the size of an average suburban house, spanning about 50 feet wide, then it would probably weigh around 2,500 tons. Thankfully, that means that shrunken-down Jupiter would not interfere with gravity and form a black hole in your neighborhood.

But don’t hold your breath. There is some bad news, too, because Jupiter isn’t actually made out of water. In fact, before Jupiter came to be, it was just a big cloud of gas that was floating through the galaxy. What happened was that gravity made this gas cloud collapse on itself, and when gas is compressed, it gets mega hot!

Similar to Earth, Jupiter has a thin and cool exterior for its surface. This exterior surrounds a very hot interior. And this isn’t just normal hot, we’re talking tens of thousands of degrees! Because the inside of Jupiter is hot and compressed, it wants to expand outwards. The only thing keeping Jupiter from expanding is its own gravitational forces, which counteract the expansion.

However, you have to realize that if you shrink Jupiter down to the size of an average suburban home, then you’re taking away its gravitational force.

So, let’s look at what would happen then…

Your new next-door neighbor, Jupiter, would quickly expand into a fireball the size of a house! Naturally, this would destroy everything around it, from your street, all the houses on it, cars, backyards, you get the picture…

There is some more GOOD news, though. The fireball explosion wouldn’t just continue destroying more neighborhoods; it would actually be pretty contained. Because it wouldn’t be densely compressed after the explosion into a fireball, Jupiter’s core will cool off fairly rapidly. Then, Jupiter would disperse into a cloud of floating gas again. 

If Earth’s Countries Extended Into The Sky…

The question is: If the territories of Earth’s countries extended into the sky, which country would own most of the galaxy?

If we can...