{"id":75,"date":"2025-09-03T23:32:01","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T03:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/?p=75"},"modified":"2025-10-24T10:56:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T14:56:20","slug":"book-review-what-if","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: What If?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Have you read\u00a0<em>What If?<\/em>\u00a0 by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Randall_Munroe\">Randall Munroe<\/a>, the creator of the famous\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/xkcd.com\/\"><strong>xkcd<\/strong>\u00a0comics<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This book is unlike any traditional science text. Munroe takes the strangest, funniest, and sometimes downright ridiculous questions\u2014like&nbsp;<em>\u201cWhat would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?\u201d<\/em>\u2014and answers them with real science, math, and a healthy dose of humor. What makes it special is that you don\u2019t need to be a professional physicist or mathematician to enjoy it. The explanations are written in an approachable way, with clever stick-figure illustrations that keep things light while still making you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether you\u2019re a nerd who is deeply serious about STEM, or someone who leans more toward the arts and humanities,\u00a0<em>What If?<\/em>\u00a0 is the kind of book that works for everyone. It\u2019s perfect to pick up during a study break, when you\u2019re bored, or when you just want to see how science can be used to explore the absurd. It\u2019s entertaining, thought-provoking, and strangely inspiring\u2014it reminds us that curiosity, no matter how odd the question, can lead to fascinating insights about the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve had this book since 6th grade, and it\u2019s still one of my favorites on the bookshelf. No matter how many times I read it, I always stumble upon something new\u2014whether it\u2019s a quirky detail in the illustrations, a fresh perspective in the explanations that I didn\u2019t catch before, or even a \u201cwhat if\u201d question that I come up with myself, like\u00a0<em>what would it be like to play golf on Mars?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you read\u00a0What If?\u00a0 by Randall Munroe, the creator of the famous\u00a0xkcd\u00a0comics? This book is unlike any traditional science text. Munroe takes the strangest, funniest, and sometimes downright ridiculous questions\u2014like&nbsp;\u201cWhat would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?\u201d\u2014and answers them with real science, math, and a healthy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}