This former intelligence officer-turned-president took Russia from a defeated Cold War relic to the most feared superpower in Eurasia. Now Vladimir Putin, who many have...
Jupiter is the king of moons. With 95 of them orbiting the gas giant, some are so large they rival planets in size. But what would it actually be like to live on one of...
With nearly eight billion people on the planet, things can feel pretty crowded. Let’s make things a bit tighter by housing every single person on Earth in one giant...
What would happen if you took the most energetic light source in the Universe and smashed it into a massive gravitational monster? Well, you might reverse the flow of...
There’s something approaching from the distance that you can’t stop. It can completely destroy cities and kill tens of thousands of people. It looks like...
Imagine waking up on a version of Earth where the sky glows yellow, the air scorches your lungs, and the ground melts your shoes. That is what life would look like if...
12. THE SUN IS A GIANT BALL OF FIRE Did you know that the Sun isn’t really on fire? No. Our Sun isn’t a raging bonfire in the center of the Solar System...
Forget everything you know about the United States of America. It is not united anymore, but divided into several independent nations. No, this isn’t the result of...
The digital age is well and truly upon us. And in recent years, there’s no development more talked about than Bitcoin. Forget about dollars, pounds, and euros...
How do you distinguish between past, present, and future? Is there really an order to time? Does it only move forward? Does it move in any direction at all? Stop...
Could a black hole devour us all one day? There are millions of them out there just waiting. And if we happened to make a black hole accidentally, well, you better...
Do you find the dark unsettling? Have you ever watched the big game on your refrigerator? With all the conveniences of modern living available in your pocket, or at the...
In space, no one can hear you scream. But just because sound can’t travel in the vacuum of space doesn’t mean that the planets and our Sun don’t make noise. What would...
What if in a stunning move, Russia, one of the largest energy producers on Earth, decided to cut itself off from the world? This heavily armed dictatorship has declared...
Every year, our planet makes one full trip around the Sun. And while that means we’re already moving at breakneck speeds, we’re about to ramp that speed up. Like, way up...
Imagine a white picket fence around a white house, with a white driveway and a white car. And it’s not just your house that’s white. It’s also the road...
We visit a lot of planets here on WHAT IF, but K2-141b is the most extreme one yet. Are you ready to jump on board this one-way space shuttle? If you’d rather stay...
What if climate change was taken to the absolute extreme and the entire planet’s ice melted?
President Donald Trump has tested positive for COVID-19. Trump is 74 years old, and not to mention overweight. Advanced age and obesity are two factors that put someone...
1. The Great Red Spot Isn’t Alone Everyone has heard of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm so enormous it could swallow Earth whole. It has raged for centuries, fueled by...
