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Local Group

Title text: Cosmologists estimate the spaghetti strand to be about 200 septillion calories, though it could be higher depending on the nutritional value of dark matter.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a COSMIC SPAGHETTI BOWL - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

In less than 5 billion years into the future, the Andromeda Galaxy is expected to collide with the Milky Way. This comic suggests this will happen when both galaxies get into a kissing distance after having slurped the same cosmic spaghetti strand. This is a spoof of a famous scene in the movie Lady and the Tramp, where the titular dogs are eating spaghetti at an Italian restaurant. They happen to be eating the same strand from opposite ends, so they end up meeting in the middle and kissing. This scene was mentioned before in 2612: Lightsabers.

It's possible that this is also a reference to Pastafarianism, the spoof religion which claims that the universe was created by a "flying spaghetti monster". If both galaxies are eating one of the deity's "noodly appendages," they may be doing what the monster wishes, since one of the religion's holidays is about eating lots of pasta.

The title text figure of 200 septillion (2×10²⁶) calories for the Milky Way-Andromeda noodle equates to approximately 2500 calories per foot of noodle. This value makes sense only if Randall is referring to the physics/chemistry "small" calorie (= 4.184 joules) rather than the dietary "large" Calorie (= 4184 joules). Dietary Calories, also called kilocalories (kcal), would be the usual meaning in a food-related context like this one, but Randall was trained as a physicist and apparently used the small calorie here. Having 2.5 dietary Calories per foot is roughly correct for a noodle size between thin spaghetti and angel hair.

The nutritional value of dark matter refers to the fact that evidence of 'dark matter' is particularly found in cosmic filaments and the cosmic web, implying that such "cosmic spaghetti" would have an appreciable amount of dark matter "sauce" on it. But, because the exact nature of dark matter is unknown, it is likely even more difficult to identify the calorific content that it might provide. Note that these filaments are much larger structures than the Local Group of galaxies that includes the Milky Way and Andromeda.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Two galaxies, positioned on the left and right sides of the panel, are each eating a single noodle of spaghetti, originating from a bowl of spaghetti in between them.]

[Left galaxy:] Sluuurp

[Right galaxy:] Sluuurp

[Caption below the panel:]

Astronomers have determined that the Milky Way and Andromeda are currently slurping up the same strand of cosmic spaghetti, suggesting that in 5 billion years they will likely kiss.

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