2310: Great Attractor
| Great Attractor |
 Title text: Living in the southern hemisphere was nice because I could jump extra high, but I like it here too. Besides, if I ever want to move back, I can just curl up in a ball and wait! |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a Greatly Attractive SpaceBORG9o. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. Needs reference to Dark Flow. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
People will often complain about falling out of bed as an indicator of having slept badly. The later sunset is often linked to worsened sleep [1]. However, Beret Guy didn't fall from the bed, he fell from the wall. While being able to figure out he's talking about his worsened sleep, Cueball is understandably confused, so Beret Guy clarifies.
Beret Guy is strongly affected by the Great Attractor, a large gravitational anomaly that influences the galaxies near it, but is difficult to observe directly. Beret Guy claims that the Great Attractor pulls on him unusually hard, which could be another one of his strange powers. This attraction, while not overpowering the gravity of the Earth, (he states that he can "Jump extra high" in the title text) affects his life greatly.
While "normal" people can probably (if uncomfortably) lie down on the top of a boundary wall, for Beret Guy his attraction to the Great Attractor means that, at various times, like now, he can lie on the vertical surface of any wall (external or internal) that is currently oriented in a fortuitous direction (i.e. facing north). He fell off the wall this morning due the Great Attractor being below him during daylight hours and on the horizon during night hours. Maybe because the day starts earlier in the summer, he fell down unexpectedly. Although the location of the Great Attractor should not be linked directly to daylight here on Earth.
He gives a short explanation of which Attractor he refers to (the space one) and why the Great Attractor affects him. According to his doctors it is apparently caused by the motion of galaxies and how many dimensions his bones have. Since having less than 3 spatial dimensions may lead to trouble, his bones may be existing in more dimensions than our normal 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time. Galactic motions normally have no significant effect on a person with 3-D bones.
Beret Guy then says that day-sliding season is near, due to the Great Attractor being at the horizon in the day, and offers to run errands for Cueball in the South, implying that he will be pulled towards the south during day-sliding season, and can run much faster in that direction.
Beret Guy is not standing straight up during this comic, he has one knee slightly bent towards Cueball in the first two panels. This is because it is evening (8:00 PM as Cueball states) and the Great Attractor is now coming near the horizon, where it will be during the night. So Beret Guy will be pulled towards the south, behind him in the comic, and thus leans away from the pull. In the final panel, when he leaves Cueball, moving right towards south and into the pull, he can bee seen sliding along the ground without walking. He leans a bit back to not stumble forward. His last sentence also indicates that he either speeds up or that he is a little uncertain on his feet altering his voice.
He mentions that at the moment during day-time the Great Attractor is beneath him so he can stand straight. He then just feels a little heavier (he will thus weigh more than another person with the same mass).
In the title text he says he liked living in the south because the Great Attractor was often above him, meaning he could jump higher with the help of its pull (and would weigh less than a normal person with same mass). Since he could jump, the force is clearly weaker than Earth's gravity, but still enough for him to easily slide over the ground when it is near the horizon. So he could likely win some high-jump or long-jump competitions if he chose the right time and place.
Being Beret Guy, he is never really unhappy, so he states that he also likes it here (in the north). But then he continues to comment on how easy it will be for him to get to the south. Because if he entirely stopped bracing himself against the pull by crouching into a more spherical shape, and just waited for the Great Attractor to get near the horizon again, then the pull would cause him to start rolling over the ground to some place with lower net gravitational potential, i.e. further south, where the Great Attractor will be more directly over his head.
A prior example of an xkcd character with alternate gravitational susceptibility is 417: The Man Who Fell Sideways, where a consistent off-vertical pull somehow applies (rather than one linked to a spot on the stellar sphere). In 1376: Jump Cueball floats sideways across the ground a bit above Earth, in a similar idea to being pulled sideways.
See also these other fictional examples of 'personalized' gravitational susceptibilities.
Beret Guy has previously been interested in strange attracting forces in the universe, in 502: Dark Flow, where he hoped it was his mom and wished she would pull on him. It was though not about the Great Attractor, and the force did not clearly affect him, although his love for his mom did affect two space probes, as mentioned in the title text.
More detail
Some of the humor of the comic has to do with the immense differences in scale between Beret Guy and the Great Attractor.
In very round numbers our own Milky Way galaxy is 150,000 - 200,000 light years across. It is just one of several galaxies in something called the Local Group, which is around 10,000,000 light years across. And the Local Group is itself in something called the Local Supercluster (also called the Virgo Supercluster), around 110,000,000 light years across. Each galaxy, each group, and each supercluster is not just a chance alignment, but is a gravitational coherent structure. And all this is just yet a part of the even larger Laniakea Supercluster in which also the Great Attractor is located, along with more than 100,000 other galaxies, in a region of space spanning more than 500 million light years.
Something unpredictable (hence "anomalous") is going on with the galaxies in the Local Supercluster (including our own). These galaxies are indeed accelerating away from one another as seen by their red shift. Hubble's Law predicts the expansion should be uniformly proportional to their distance from Earth and from one another. But for the Local Supercluster something is restricting the expansion. That something is, as "viewed" from Earth, somewhere in the direction of the Southern Triangle constellation but 250,000,000 light years distant, and has (but only since 1988) been termed the Great Attractor. The Great Attractor can't conveniently be seen at visible wavelengths, because that direction is the so-called Zone of Avoidance: the area of the night sky obscured by our own Milky Way.
Boiling this all down: something a quarter of a billion light years away that makes an anomalous blip in the local rate of expansion of the universe, and whose existence astronomers deduce only by X-ray observations of stellar red-shift, has large-scale effects on everyday gravitational forces uniquely experienced by Beret Guy. OK, now you can smile.
Transcript
- [Cueball and Beret Guy stand next to each other, talking. Beret Guy leans towards Cueball by bending down one knee.]
- Cueball: I can't believe it's still light out. It's 8:00 PM!
- Beret Guy: Seriously! This morning I fell off the wall.
- [In a frame-less panel with the same setting Beret Guy is looking and pointing to the right.]
- Cueball: Wait, why were you sleeping on the wall?
- Beret Guy: The Great Attractor is near the horizon at night right now.
- [Zoom in on Beret Guy, who hold one hand palm up towards Cueball who is speaking to him off-panel.]
- Cueball (off-panel): The Great Attractor?
- Beret Guy: Yeah! The space one.
- Beret Guy: It pulls on me extra hard. Doctors said it's something to do with galactic motion and how many dimensions my bones have.
- [Cueball is still standing as Beret Guy slides away to the right, while looking and leaning back towards Cueball. He holds his arms slightly out, to keep his balance. Lines behind him and at his feet indicates his motion, even if he is clearly not walking. In his last word the letters becomes italic after Good and the last three Ts becomes smaller and smaller than the previous letters.]
- Beret Guy: This time of year, it's below us all day, so I stand vertically. But day-sliding season is near!
- Beret Guy: Let me know if you have any errands to run to the south!
- Beret Guy: Goodniiighttt
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Is Beret Guy talking about the Great Attractor? or simply about the Sun? It would fit in Beret Guy's quirkiness to call the Sun "the Great Attractor". Also, I didn't even know there was actually something called the Great Attractor... 172.69.33.229 23:42, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Well, given that it's "below him all day" and on the horizion at night, it's probably not the Sun. Argis13 (talk) 23:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Has anyone (inc Randall) done an analyses on TGA similar to https://what-if.xkcd.com/25/ does for other things? 162.158.155.242 01:44, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
"The unexpected onset of summer daylight patterns may be further commentary on the ongoing COVID-19 measures and how they have affected perception of time." <-- what the heck is this even supposed to mean?
- It's not there any more, but it sounds like it might be a comment on how the sun is not really rising much earlier yet, and our sense of that is warped because we're staying inside so much 108.162.216.250 23:27, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
"Pull harder, Mom. I miss you." 172.69.34.150 08:07, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
- I have added 502: Dark Flow as it has some similarities, but it was not the great attractor in that comic. But also the first I though about. ;-) --Kynde (talk) 08:22, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
It currently says “Beret Guy is not standing straight up [...]. This is presumably due to the extra downwards force that the Great Attractor is currently exerting on him, so he has to exert more effort to hold himself upright and seems quite content”. Am I the only one who thinks this makes no sense? Beret Guy is going to sleep because the Great Attractor starts pulling him sideways. And if there was more force downwards, instead of sidewars, it would not help to bend the knee and stand tilted. If you have to carry heavy things, the easiest way is to put them on your head and stand as much vertical as possible (although this method is unpopular in some countries). 141.101.98.222 19:31, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
- It's not just you. I interpreted the final frame as him being dragged sideways. This fits with the movement lines along the side covering most of his body, and the "drag lines" left by his feet. His stance makes more sense if he's resisting a sideways force. It also fits better with the time, since the Great Attractor is said to currently be on the horizon at night, and it's 8PM when they are talking. 162.158.75.196 21:19, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
Whenever I am standing on a moving Bus or Train, I always bend the knee on my leading leg in order to counteract the inertia trying to force me forwards if the vehicle rapidly slows or stops [adjusting or resisting changes to my center of gravity]. If I tried to lead with a stiff leg I would topple forward. Beret Guy's stance would only work if he intends to slide on his feet. These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 04:26, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
But why does the Great Attractor pin Berret Guy to the wall, while it won't make him fly?Gunterkoenigsmann (talk) 07:07, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
- There is friction so if it is pulling hard enough the the south he could stay on a wall facing south. But it is also Beret Guy so maybe not think too much. --Kynde (talk) 08:22, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
- I just changed this, BTW. Obviously a wall with a south-facing side normally also has a north-facing side (if not infilled in some way, or built into a hillside) but it's definitely the latter you'd be reclining against with a southerly attraction in force. Unless I'm confused and you're going to tell me why. 162.158.159.90 19:38, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure the local Supercluster is called Laniakea, and Virgo is just a smaller supercluster within it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laniakea_Supercluster
- True has added this to the extra explanation. Great Attractor is withing than. --Kynde (talk) 08:22, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
The mysterious analyses of Dark Flow near the great attractor are consistent with Beret Guy's strange experience. Scientists have said it looks like the universe functions by different laws over there. 108.162.216.250 23:27, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
- Although the location of the Great Attractor should not be linked directly to daylight here on Earth.: Literally, no; but like everything else above Luna's orbit, the GA appears to circle the groundpounding observer at about the same rate as Sol. What's really meant by this sentence is obscure.
- But it is also Beret Guy so maybe not think too much.: Absolutely! Is our purpose to explain XKCD or only to lecture science with "just enough" pedantry? If the former, which implies the reader may not count such a rare character as a personal friend, it might be well to drop a word or two about Beret Guy's fantastic nature.
- Xiong (talk) 17:05, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
This might be a bit of a stretch, but was anyone else reminded of the "Silly Job Interview" sketch from Monty Python at the end? "Goooodniiiiight, ding ding ding ding!" 162.158.202.104 06:00, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
See also: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/482:_Height L-Space Traveler (talk) 14:45, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
