What If? 2 Summary

"How many people would it take to build Rome in a single day?" Dive into a world of offbeat questions tackled with serious scientific rigor, and prepare for surprising answers.

1. Shrinking Jupiter: Destruction in a Fireball

What if Jupiter was the size of a suburban house and landed on your street? Shrinking Jupiter might, at first, seem like an innocuous experiment. After all, its density is roughly that of water, and downsizing it might mean a less threatening presence. But the reality is far more explosive.

Jupiter, as it’s known, has a hot and intensely compressed core, held together by intense gravitational forces. Shrink it down to the size of a house, and all that gravity dissipates. This causes Jupiter’s incredibly hot and pressurized interior to expand outward in a violent explosion. The result? A localized fireball that obliterates everything in its immediate radius. But once the heat dissipates, the expanded gas cools rapidly, leaving behind a harmless cloud.

The takeaway: scaling celestial bodies down to Earthly proportions is a risky thought experiment. Jupiter may not blackhole your neighborhood, but it won’t make a great neighbor, either.

Examples

• A house-sized Jupiter would weigh approximately 2,500 tons, manageable in Earth terms but still hefty.
• Its dense, scorching interior would violently expand without its immense gravitational pressure.
• The aftermath would transform Jupiter into diffuse vapor that floats off harmlessly.

2. Galactic Nations: Earth Divided Among the Stars

Imagine if every country’s borders didn’t stop on land but extended infinitely into the galaxy. Who would control most of the Milky Way? According to the stars, Southern Hemisphere countries like Australia would hold the prime real estate.

This is because the Earth’s alignment points the Northern Hemisphere away from the galactic core, favoring a Southern Hemisphere view of this bustling region of the universe. As the galaxy and Earth rotate, countries like Australia, South Africa, and Chile would claim significant galactic domains. Meanwhile, the Northern Hemisphere might command regions featuring unique celestial phenomena, like the black hole Cygnus X-1.

This scenario reveals our Earthly borders’ insignificance when projected onto the vastness of space and highlights natural advantages based on geography.

Examples

• Southern Hemisphere nations would “own” parts of the galactic core due to Earth’s positioning.
• Northern Hemisphere countries would claim outer-disk features like Cygnus X-1, a star-eating black hole.
• Stars like 47 Ursae Majoris, with known orbiting planets, could fall under New Jersey’s jurisdiction for minutes daily.

3. Building Rome in a Day: Almost Possible with Billions

We’ve all heard the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” But, theoretically, could it have been? The math says yes—with the help of the world’s billions of people.

Using estimates of construction costs and times, building Rome’s infrastructure from scratch would take 2 billion hours of work. If every one of the Earth’s 8 billion people pitched in, the city could go up in just 15 minutes. However, recreating Rome’s artistic and architectural masterpieces, like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, complicates things. Factoring in such detail would stretch the effort to about two and a half hours for a synchronized global workforce.

This playful question shows how human collaboration (and suspension of logistical issues) can yield impressive results.

Examples

• Basic construction of modern Rome costs around 90 billion USD and would take about 10-15 years.
• Achieving similar labor in 15 minutes would require the full global population working simultaneously.
• Artistic details like frescoes increase the task to a whopping 20 billion labor hours in total.

4. Living at the Bottom of the Ocean

Imagine standing at the ocean's deepest point, the Mariana Trench, inside an indestructible glass tube. At 36,000 feet below sea level, you’d experience extreme cold—unlike deep mines that heat up the closer they are to Earth’s core. And while you’d see very little light for most of the year, the twice-annual passage of the sun directly overhead would briefly brighten the trench floor.

If escape becomes necessary, opening a small, controlled tap to let seawater in (rather than a flood) would let you ride an upward current slowly and safely. Speeding things up instead would result in fatal velocities, underscoring the challenges of this thought experiment.

Examples

• At nearly freezing temperatures, the trench contrasts the heat of deep mines.
• Letting seawater in gradually can create lift, but uncontrolled water would rocket upwards at Mach 1.3.
• A “giant plunger” could keep the water below you as you ascend safely.

5. Eating a Cloud: The Airy Challenge

Clouds are just water and air, but trying to consume one would pose difficulties. If you try, you'll end up swallowing lots of air, which your body won’t process well. Instead, you’d burp the air back out, creating more clouds from the moisture that escapes.

To truly eat a cloud, you’d need a way to extract its water. A cloud the size of a small house contains 2-3 liters of water, which your stomach can handle in one go. It’s an odd thought experiment that makes us reconsider our interactions with the very atmosphere above us.

Examples

• Air ingested with the cloud would escape your stomach as new clouds when burped out.
• Extracting water directly from clouds could condense their volume into something edible.
• A house-sized cloud holds about the same liquid volume as a large water bottle.

6. Everest's Snowball Effect

Rolling a snowball from the top of Mount Everest sounds like a recipe for an enormous creation. Unfortunately, Everest’s dry, fluffy snow doesn’t stick, so your snowball would likely stay the same size. Even if snow were sticky, physics limits how large a snowball could grow before it collapses under its own weight.

But as the giant snowball disintegrates into smaller ones, an avalanche becomes the bigger concern. What starts as an innocent roll down snowy paths could lead to destructive cascading snow disasters.

Examples

• Dry snow atop Everest doesn’t support growth for rolling snowballs.
• Sticky snow might create a 10-20 meter-wide ball before it collapses.
• Avalanches could form as disintegrating snowballs tumble down.

7. The Galactic Commute: Space’s Unreachable Justice

Crimes committed on distant planets might technically fall under earthly jurisdictions, as determined by galactic alignments. But any legal action would be thwarted by the time constraints—to travel 40 light years to New Jersey would take millennia.

This whimsical overlap of cosmic and human systems highlights the absurdity of imposing Earth ideas on an unimaginably large universe.

Examples

• Some star systems align with US jurisdictions for minutes daily.
• Trips to enforce laws might outlast civilizations themselves.
• Cosmic distances mock human constructs like jurisdiction.

8. Spaghetti for 8 Billion People

Feeding Rome’s theoretical workers would take enormous quantities of spaghetti. A meal for billions underscores both humanity’s remarkable capacity for coordination and our need for resources.

The logistics of mass catering reveal yet another layer of complexity in bringing absurd ideas to life—it’s not just the task, but the systems needed to support it.

Examples

• Each human might eat one plateful; in total, billions of servings are needed.
• The supply chain for spaghetti production becomes crucial for such efforts.
• Coordinating worldwide cooking and delivery would highlight human potential.

9. Lessons in Thinking Big

Absurd questions like these push the boundaries of imagination while offering insights into science, physics, and even human collaboration. Exploring "what if" scenarios sharpens our analytical thinking and expands creativity.

These explorations aren’t just fun; they show how science intersects with curiosity to answer questions no one else dares to ask.

Examples

• Complex math models simplify imaginative scenarios into understandable outcomes.
• Fun experiments like eating clouds connect science to everyday concepts.
• Each “silly” question reveals surprising truths about our world.

Takeaways

1. Embrace curiosity even about “silly” things—it can uncover unexpected knowledge.
2. Use hypothetical scenarios to enhance problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
3. Explore science and math in unconventional ways to keep learning enjoyable.