2477: Alien Visitors

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Alien Visitors

Title text: Stay right there, we'll be back in a minute. We've just gotta brainstorm some new wonders. Have you all figured out gears yet? Yes? Crap.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by THAT ANCIENT ALIENS PERSON (GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS). Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This is a reference to the idea (which Randall satirizes) that aliens built the pyramids and Stonehenge, and the general incredulity aliens trying to help modern day society build pyramids would be met with.

In the comic, aliens arrive with the intention of building such monuments with their highly advanced technology, including some sort of tractor beam to lift the heavy stones. They are shocked to hear that humans accomplished the same thing thousands of years earlier with such simple tools as ramps.

Transcript

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

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Discussion

Good point, for those believing aliens help build the pyramids, if those aliens had already encountered say the MGM pyramid in Las Vegas, would they have helped people build a different kind of monument? Or it's1 stone pyramids regardless of the level of development? 172.70.34.164 01:08, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm surprised we don't have a Category:Aliens. 172.69.35.143 01:55, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Maybe we should? I found 37 pages when searching for Aliens... But who should put in the link on the relevant of those? --Kynde (talk) 09:40, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

But.. but.. everyone[citation required] knows that the pyramid shape is ideal for landing alien Mother Ships on top of! 141.101.98.244 07:04, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! Someone who knows what's up. Bischoff (talk) 07:29, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Could the "gears" in the title text be a reference to the Antikythera mechanism or something similar? 162.158.89.187 09:32, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I just think that Randall thinks gear is a pretty neat invention, that Aliens could have taught us. But these came too late --Kynde (talk) 10:00, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I think the lines emitting from the UFO in the second panel are not tractor beams but something like holographic projection. The pyramid and the stone cube are shown at different scales which indicates that these are not the real thing but images. Panel two depicts a "sneak preview" for the humans.

I think the pyramid is a picture (hologram) and the stone seems real and is held up by the tractor beam. I have amended the explanation and transcript with this. --Kynde (talk) 09:59, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Funny to see a mention of the Antikythera mechanism, as I recently read an article on it being digitaly reconstructed at UCL (based on found fragments and some text from the front and back side). 141.101.69.129 16:57, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the ancient Egyptians had a secret technology called "scaffold" to help raise the uppermost blocks where a sufficient ramp becomes impractical/impossible... but I'm not about to do the research to prove it to anyone, at 6am. I could be wrong, but I think it's just the "controversial" but obvious answer? ProphetZarquon (talk) 12:00, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm very surprised by the lack of imagination among these aliens. The most advanced tech they can think to offer us is gears? How about a printing press, or electricity, or the combustion engine? Something else is going on here that no one yet has mentioned. Is Randall telling us that the aliens are restrained from giving us too much because of the Prime Directive or something? --172.70.114.38 12:21, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Nah, I think they just go up the figurative "tech tree". Maybe the things your are mentioning are the next offers after gears? Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 13:13, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

either what Elektrizikekswerk said or it has other reasons. Especially combustion engine might just not be a thing to these aliens as it either was considered harmful (exploiting ressources, releasing toxic gases), or becuase fuels were not available in their world. So for energy they'd need to jump straigt to plasma or smth like that or some other ressources that are a big step ahead in complexity or just impossible on earth due to phyiscs. --Lupo (talk) 06:22, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

He he, the next comic just disproved that ;-) --Kynde (talk) 10:01, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Or how about leaving us one of your spaceships? WaxWamp (talk) 13:39, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Proposed next panel(s):

Megan: Gears? No, we've got those. How about clean energy?

Cueball: Well, we kind of have that.

Megan: Okay, what about the flight tech of your space ship? How long did it take you to get here anyway? Do you have FTL?

Alien: Well, our multi-generational mother-ship is in orbit of your moon. We are basing our offers on what our astronomers observed just before the ship left our home planet.

Cueball: Wow! Can we get your telescope technology? To see our ancestors from over 3000 years ago and come over here based on what you saw?

Megan: Where are you guys from anyway? Please don't say Bernard's Star.

Nutster (talk) 15:12, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

We don't HAVE clean energy yet. We have several quite ineffective ways how to get clean energy from Sun, but attempts to replicate it are still full of problems ("we got slightly more energy from it than we put inside" is nice achievement, but not enough). -- Hkmaly (talk) 20:32, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure the Stonehenge timeline is appropriate - it's technically correct, but the impressive lintel structure was built between 2600-2400 BC on top of an older, less impressive construction; it's roughly contemporaneous with the Great Pyramid.172.69.63.63 14:23, 18 June 2021 (UTC)