Where to stand in solar system

From XKCD, an illustration of the solar system’s solid surfaces stitched together. Best viewed large (if only to find the “all human skin” label). Randall Munroe is just the best, isn’t he?

• Randall Munroe
• space

What if What If? was a book?

Fantastic…Randall Munroe is turning his What If? web series into a book. Munroe explains:

As I’ve sifted through the letters submitted to What If every week, I’ve occasionally set aside particularly neat questions that I wanted to spend a little more time on. This book features my answers to those questions, along with revised and updated versions of some of my favorite articles from the site. (I’m also including my personal list of the weirdest questions people have submitted.)

Update: What If? the book is now out. Phil Plait has a rave review.

Look, I answer questions for a living, too, and Randall is really, really good at this. He finds weird little scientific ways to answer the questions, but it’s his extrapolations that kill me. I laughed a lot reading this book. Even better: I learned stuff reading this book. And you will too.

• books
• Randall Munroe
• science

The frequencies of humanity

Related to my post on the frequency of humanity is this post on XKCD on the various frequencies of events, from human births to dog bites to stolen bicycles.

• Randall Munroe
• science

Facebook of the Dead

For his latest What If? column, Randall Munroe tackles the question “When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?”

Based on the site’s growth rate, and the age breakdown of their users over time, there are probably 10 to 20 million people who created Facebook profiles who have since died.

That’s an incredible number; most tech startups would kill (well, not really but maybe…) for that many alive users.

• Facebook
• Randall Munroe

The Saturn V rocket, simplified

Randall Munroe of XKCD drew the Saturn V rocket (aka Up Goer Five) annotated using only the 1000 most common English words.

See also Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity In Words of Four Letters or Less.

• language
• NASA
• Randall Munroe
• space

Changing the color of the Moon with laser pointers

Hey, if Randall keeps writing them, I’m gonna keep posting links to them…today’s XKCD What If is “If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?”

Unfortunately, the laser energy flow would turn the atmosphere to plasma, instantly igniting the Earth’s surface and killing us all.

• lasers
• Moon
• physics
• Randall Munroe
• science

I didn’t expect the world to be so big

Today’s XKCD must have taken Randall several years to draw…if you click and drag, it goes on forever. Or not quite forever, but Dan Catt did some figuring and:

Ok, so the XKCD map printed at 300dpi is around 46 foot / 14 meters wide, half that at magazine 600dpi quality.

Here’s a better Google Maps-like way to explore the entire world.

• Dan Catt
• Randall Munroe
• XKCD

Radiation dose chart

With the assistance of a nuclear reactor operator, Randall Munroe came up with this handy radiation dose infographic. Doses recorded near the Fukushima plant compare to those from a single mammogram or dental x-ray. A note on how to use this chart:

If you’re basing radiation safety procedures on an internet PNG image and things go wrong, you have no one to blame but yourself.

(via df)

• Fukushima
• infoviz
• Randall Munroe

There and back again

A wonderful character interaction map of the Lord of the Rings trilogy drawn by Randall Munroe. Here’s just a little part of it:

• infoviz
• maps
• Randall Munroe
• The Lord of the Rings