Astrophysics for Supervillains

Based on real questions from children, expert author Dr. Matt Bothwell has created a Supervillain Academy to teach astrophysics to middle graders.

“What happens if you throw someone into a black hole?”

“Could you crash the moon into the Earth?”

“If the sun explodes, would we all get vaporized?”

Discover the answer to these questions and many more in this fascinatingly morbid school, Dr. Matt Bothwell teaches astrophysics to young bad guys-in-training.

The facts about space are all well and good, but discovering that if you threw someone into a black hole, they would be spaghettified— stretched out long and thin before getting squashed smaller than an atom—is truly, fascinatingly gruesome.

Using a framing device of a “supervillain academy,” the readers start as new students on their first day at this school. The three overarching subjects—covering the solar system, galaxy, and universe—are different classes taught at the school. The “evil school” motif will allow for funny callout boxes and illustrations (a blackboard lesson showing “Top Ten Ways to Die in Space,” for example).