In 2012, xkcd comic artist (and former NASA roboticist) Randall Munroe took on a new challenge: answering his readers’ zany hypothetical queries with math and science. That regular online column is now a book, titled What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Munroe tells Ira what happens if you hit a baseball at 90 percent the speed of light, and explains why he definitely shouldn’t go diving in a spent nuclear fuel pool.
Read an excerpt at http://sciencefriday.com/whatif
