We all have those thoughts, the ones that come to us in the small hours of the night. Who am I? Why are we here? What if my cellphone ran on vacuum tubes instead? Randall Munroe has the answer to, well, only one of those questions, but also the answers to a whole bunch of others collected together into What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Yes, that is a T-Rex eating an airplane. In the excerpt below Munroe examines what it would take to haul an average sized human in a chair over Australia's tallest skyscraper, using only the power of pigeons. Lots and lots of pigeons. Penguin Random HouseExcerpted from What If? 2 by Randall Munroe. Copyright © 2022 by Randall Munroe. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.How many pigeons would it require in order to lift the average person and a launch chair to the height of Australia’s Q1 skyscraper?In a 2013 study, researchers at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics led by Ting Ting Liu trained pigeons to fly up to a perch while wearing a weighted harness. They found that the average pigeon in their study could take off and fly upward while carrying 124 grams, about 25 percent of its body weight.The researchers determined that the pigeons could fly better if the weights were slung... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2022-09-18 15:00:37 UTC ]
Penguin Random House is set to acquire the book publishing assets of F+W Media following the media company’s bankruptcy, with the effects on F+W's UK division unclear. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-06-17 19:21:17 UTC ]
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Special interest magazine publisher F+W Media is due back in Delaware bankruptcy court Monday afternoon, where the company is expected to present the winning bidders emerging from an auction of its remaining media assets, the latest step in a process that began when the company filed for... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2019-06-17 16:16:56 UTC ]
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Publisher’s review of How They Rule the World, accused of prejudice in its coverage of the Rothschilds, finds book ‘robust’ but not antisemiticPenguin has undertaken a “thorough” review of one of its books, Spanish colonel Pedro Baños’s How They Rule the World, after allegations of antisemitism... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-06-11 13:01:12 UTC ]
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