When Keira was four years old, she told her father she wanted a billion-story building. Instead of just laughing it off, he started thinking about why it couldn't be done, and turned to Randall Munroe's What If? project (previously at Neatorama) to ask about the nuts and bolts of the idea. So why can't we build a billion-story building? First, there's the instability of architecture as we know it, and then there's the expense. But those are just the beginning. The real story is that people have a hard time imagining how many a billion of anything is, whether you are four years old or an educated adult. A building one hundred stories tall has its own problems; so imagine one a hundred million times taller. No, you can't. So Munroe whips up a theoretical billion-story tower so we can see how ridiculous the idea is, for so many reasons, ranging from elevators to the rotation of the earth.
Comments (0)