Main Page

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki! We already have 6 comic explanations!

(But there are still 2932 to go. Come and add yours!)

Latest comic

Go to this comic

|< < Prev Comic #2938 (May 27, 2024)

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 in 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 might have been 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.

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.

New here?

You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes, memes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.

• If you're new to wikis like this, take a look at these help pages describing how to navigate the wiki, and how to edit pages.

• Discussion about various parts of the wiki is going on at Explain XKCD:Community portal. Share your 2¢!

• List of all comics contains a complete table of all xkcd comics so far and the corresponding explanations. The red links (like this) are missing explanations. Feel free to help out by creating them!

Rules

Don't be a jerk. There are a lot of comics that don't have set in stone explanations, feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.

If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.

Please only submit material directly related to—and helping everyone better understand—xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited.) Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users posting such are at risk of being blocked.

If you need assistance from an admin, feel free to leave a message on their personal discussion page. The list of admins is here.

Logo

Explain xkcd logo courtesy of User:Alek2407.