Some time ago, when Shichao was writing about the overflow of nuclear wastewater in Japan, he accidentally found a very interesting popular science website: What if & How to.
In the manuscript at that time, we used one of the popular science articles as an example, about the consequences of ordinary people swimming in the spent fuel pool that cools nuclear fuel.
Author: Randall · Monroe, from the intensity of the radiation, the temperature of the pool to the trajectory of a person's swimming, and other possible factors, analyzed it from beginning to end.
Finally, under normal circumstances, a few meters on the surface of the spent fuel pool, no matter how you swim, there will be no safety hazards.
At first, Shichao didn't pay much attention to it, thinking that it was just a big V specializing in popular science, and accidentally made such a nonsensical topic.
But after flipping through two articles before and after, I found out that this is a website specializing in the popularization of science on various anti-natural problems.
The official website is like this.,It's a straightforward type.,The homepage is the latest popular science article.,You can click the arrow to switch articles.。
The theme of popular science is not hidden, and it is directly marked in the top bar of the website, focusing on a "ridiculous" -
What if is to use scientific theories to answer some ridiculous questions, and how to: is to give some ridiculous suggestions to the problems we usually encounter.
As for how ridiculous it is, Shichao also roughly flipped through the popular science articles that have been released, although there are not a total of 30 articles included in the official website, but to be honest, almost every question can give Shichao a little shock.
Like, "If everyone on Earth shines a laser pointer on the moon, will it change color?" What if everyone had a soulmate somewhere in the world? And so on and so forth.
And how out of tune the problem is, how rigorous and impeccable this brother's analysis is.
For example, "If a Tyrannosaurus rex is released on the street, how many people does it have to eat every day to meet its calorie intake?" This question.
The answer he gave was half an adult, or a 10-year-old.
Of course, this is not something that comes out of nowhere, and the author estimates that a Tyrannosaurus rex weighs about the same as an elephant.
There is no way to verify the specific metabolism, so I used ordinary mammals to estimate it for the time being, so that the Tyrannosaurus rex had to burn 40,000 calories a day.
And an 80-kilogram adult, the energy is about 110,000 calories, and the next thing is simple addition and subtraction.
And that's not all, the author even thoughtfully gave some extended answers, saying that a person in New York City can probably feed 1000 Tyrannosaurus rex.
And if you want the Tyrannosaurus rex not to eat people, there are many restaurants on the earth, take McDonald's as an example, each McDonald's can make about 1245 burgers a day, which is converted into 600,000 calories.
That means feeding 80 burgers to each Tyrannosaurus rex a day, and a McDonald's shop can feed a dozen Tyrannosaurus rex.
And there is another question that impresses Shichao, that is: Suppose there is a pipe that can drain the water in the sea into space, how long will it take to drain the earth?
Because even if the brain hole has been opened to outer space, this brother's answer is still convincing with reason.
The author grasped the key point that there is a pressure difference between space and Earth, and the water will be sucked away by the pipe, and also optimized the problem, assuming that the water is pumped directly to Mars, and the diameter of the pipe mouth is a little wider than the basketball court, according to this situation, the ocean will take hundreds of thousands of years to be pumped clean.
And before the oceans can be pumped out, the climate and ecosystems will collapse first, and people will be extinct.
Anyway, the website is full of popular science similar to brain holes, and recently, Randall also plans to make some popular science articles into videos, and the YouTube account has been updated with four videos in more than a month.
As for how these brain hole questions come about, there is an entrance to upload questions under each article, everyone can ask any outrageous questions, and the author will choose interesting and actionable questions to answer.
In addition, Randall not only updates popular science articles on the website, but also regularly organizes specific articles into books, such as what if has been published twice so far.
And the reviews of the book are also not bad, there are also Chinese translations in China, and the Douban score is also above 8 points.
And behind all this, it is inseparable from the author Randall · Monroe's brains are working, and his own story is actually quite exciting, he was born in physics, and he also worked at NASA for a while.
And Randall's nonsensical characteristics have been shown when he was studying, and when he doesn't want to listen to lectures, he likes to draw some computer, math, and science-related stickman cartoons.
He also synced the works to a special website and gave them the name "xkcd", which, according to Randall's own words, was also randomly typed in order not to be defined, and to focus on painting whatever he wanted.
Later, when he didn't have the inspiration to draw comics, he would write nonsensical popular science articles.
As for why this kind of popular science is being done, there is really no lofty reason, as Randall said in a previous interview: just enjoy the process of answering these nonsensical questions.
He wanted to answer some students' questions about "how powerful is the explosion of the Eye of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings".
Up to now, Randall has really made a name for himself on the road of "outrageous problem" science popularization.
Related series of books, Bill Gates has personally stamped and recommended it, and the New York Times and The Guardian have also published popular science articles in it many times, and they have been nominated for three Hugo Awards.
Some netizens even believe that this can be called the modern Bible of scientists.
In the end, Shichao wants to say that although the problem is outrageous and out of tune, Randall's rigor and rationality in analyzing the problem are real.
It can be said that the most outrageous questions are used to give everyone the most down-to-earth science and share the most hardcore scientific spirit.
In addition, who didn't ask some strange questions when they were young, but most of the responses the children got were "go aside, don't think about these things." ”
Shichao also hopes that there will be more and more science popularizers like Randall, and everyone can also bravely ask what if, because every imaginative question may be waiting for a scientific and rigorous answer.