Main Page

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!

We have an explanation for all 2 xkcd comics, and only 0 (0%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!

Latest comic

Go to this comic explanation

|< < Prev Comic #2925 (April 26, 2024)

Earth Formation Site

Title text: It's not far from the sign marking the exact latitude and longitude of the Earth's core.

Explanation

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

In this comic, Cueball stands in front of a sign that declares itself to be an historical location. Typically, these signs are placed at precise locations where historical and even mythological events happened (such as where battles have been fought, or where people of note were born, or resided, or accomplished something, or died). In some cases, multiple locations lay "claim" to events whose true locations are uncertain (or, of course, when events span multiple locations, such as where people resided). However, the event in question on the sign is the formation of the Earth which, due to the Sun's 225-million year long orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy and the movement of the galaxy itself through space relative to other objects, would not have occurred anywhere on Earth. The sign could maybe be referring to where the place of the formation of the Earth would be placed if it corresponded to current Earth coordinates, which would also be strange as the Earth formed in the center of the current Earth, so the sign could not be anywhere in the surface of Earth.

The date on the sign is also ridiculously precise, in keeping with the information usually found on historical markers but absurd in the context of the tens or hundreds of millions of years thought to be required for planet formation. It would require some specific definition of when the gradually-coalescing mass could be considered a planet, as well as the ability to determine when that mass met the definition. The date shown for the formation of the Earth, 4.45 billion years, also differs from the commonly accepted date, 4.54 (±0.05) billion years.

The title text refers to the 'coordinates of the Earth's core'. This is similar to signs marking specific latitudes, longitudes or other notable locations. But, since all coordinates, when superimposed on a globe, theoretically converge at the Earth's core, this reinforces the idea that no singular location can be picked as the exact location where the Earth formed.

Transcript

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

(Cueball is standing in front of a sign in a field of grass. The sign reads:)

HISTORICAL MARKER

EARTH FORMATION SITE

~ 4,450,000,000 BCE ~

At this location in the year 4,450,000,000 BCE, a cloud of dust and gas gravitationally collapsed to form the Earth.

Is this out of date? .

New here?

Last 7 days (Top 10)

Rank Score Pages Changes Username 1 44 32 71 Z1mp0st0rz 2 21 14 27 Charlie Spring 3 21 17 21 TheusafBOT 4 11 5 14 Asdf 5 9 6 9 Kynde 6 9 6 9 NiceGuy1 7 8 6 7 1234231587678 8 7 5 6 Bryce 9 7 5 6 Maplestrip 10 7 4 6 DKMell

Lots of people contribute to make this wiki a success. Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have just joined. You can do it too! Create your account 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 table of most recent xkcd comics and links to the rest, and the corresponding explanations. There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!

• If you see that a new comic hasn't been explained yet, you can create it: Here's how.

• We sell advertising space to pay for our server costs. To learn more, go here.

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 who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.

If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.