Difference between revisions of "848: 3D"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Revision as of 02:42, 3 December 2012

3D
The LINACs in the glasses frames can barely manage one MeV. You should've gone to the screening at CERN.
Title text: The LINACs in the glasses frames can barely manage one MeV. You should've gone to the screening at CERN.

Explanation

String theory hypothesizes that there are many more than 3 dimensions, it's just that we can't see the rest because they're "rolled up." A common metaphor is an ant on a tightrope--it has two degrees of freedom, one along the rope and one around it, but from far away we can only see one.

So Black Hat Guy released his 2D movie about string theory in "3D", and claimed that the third dimension was there--just too small to see.

Transcript

[People are lined up to see a movie.]
Premiering Tonight:
String Theory:
An expose
Presented In 3D!
[The people are in a dark theater, fiddling with their glasses.]
???

[The people approach black hat guy, who's sitting at a desk.] Megan: Your movie was a ripoff. Cueball: It wasn't 3D at all! Black Hat: Was too. Black Hat: It's just that the third dimension is tightly rolled up and too small to observe at normal energies.


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Discussion

As of August 3, 2013, the title text has not been explained. Could someone explain it, please?108.28.72.186 23:50, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

6241509647120.4 MeV = 1 joule = one ampere through a resistance of one ohm for one second.

Presumably they were unable to deal with the energy output of the film.

I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 19:24, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Someone should add somewhere that this comic appears 2D on http://xk3d.xkcd.com/848/. 173.245.48.107 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

And also that the second panel of this strip is in (a pretty good, shaded 2D approximation of) 3D. Hence, "presented in 3D", could refer to the perplexed audience at the presentation. 108.162.219.65 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

And the "ant on a tightrope" analogy was used in the TV series Stranger Things, to explain the other dimensions of the "Upside Down". Brenda (talk) 19:19, 7 July 2018 (UTC)