explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3043: Muons

2025-05-14T14:31:05Z

162.158.111.134:

Article needs improvement by somebody with a clear understanding of special relativity, and somebody with a clear understanding of muons.
Are there actually two classes of muons or is it a joke? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.55.81|172.68.55.81]] 22:19, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

:No, not two classes; [https://web.mit.edu/lululiu/Public/8.13/Muons/muons.pdf see Figure 5 on p. 3 here]. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.243|172.70.206.243]] 01:43, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
::It sounds possibly like the article and comic together are saying that the muons we measure on earth are those that were going so fast that their time and distance are stretched so that they do not decay before reaching us. That non-relativistic muons decayed in the upper atmosphere. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.84|162.158.63.84]] 03:13, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
::Correct, even if their velocities are not bimodal, you can absolutely divide them into two classes based on whether they decay before reaching the surface. I am pretty sure that's what's intended here. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.23.136|172.68.23.136]] 03:42, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I websearched around and found an old video from COSMUS showing an air shower with differently colored particles flying off. It looks like the COSMUS site is broken nowadays, but in archive.org I found it mentioned that the muons were red in the video. I saw some red particles decaying quickly like the behavior of smoke or fire or steam, and others firing toward the ground. I added a first paragraph with what I learned exploring. I'm sad the COSMUS site from the university of chicago seems down for years. They publicly modeled so many air showers and more. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.189|162.158.159.189]] 04:26, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

: The Doppler Effect will sound like the Sega logo sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dIXw0OEtk4

;AI

Fed the comic image into two AIs: Gemini and Claude. These are their explanations; please tell me which is better:

Gemini:

:This xkcd comic (#2885) is a humorous take on the concept of time dilation from Einstein's theory of special relativity, specifically as it applies to muons.

:Here's a breakdown:

:The Setup: The comic explains that muons, subatomic particles created in the upper atmosphere, have very short lifespans. Normally, they would decay before reaching the Earth's surface. However, because they travel at speeds close to the speed of light, time dilation occurs.

:Time Dilation: According to special relativity, time passes slower for objects moving at high speeds relative to a stationary observer. This means that from our perspective on Earth, the muons' internal clocks tick slower, allowing them to travel further before decaying.

:The Joke: The comic takes this scientific concept and applies it to pronunciation. The presenter is shown drawing out the word "muons" ("MUUUUUUOOOONS") to emphasize the elongated time experienced by the fast-moving particles.

:The Punchline: The caption "PHYSICS TIP: REMEMBER TO ADJUST YOUR PRONUNCIATIONS TO ACCOUNT FOR TIME DILATION" is the punchline. It's a humorous exaggeration, suggesting that we should literally pronounce words differently depending on the relative speed of the objects they describe.

:In essence, the comic is a clever play on words that combines a complex physics concept with a mundane everyday activity (pronunciation). It highlights the counterintuitive nature of special relativity in a lighthearted way.

:Here's why this might be tricky to explain on explainxkcd:

:It's concise: The joke is very compact and doesn't require a lot of background information beyond a basic understanding of time dilation.
:It's visual: The drawn-out "MUUUUUUOOOONS" is crucial to the humor, and it's difficult to fully capture that in a purely textual explanation.
:It's somewhat self-explanatory: The comic itself does a good job of setting up the joke and delivering the punchline.

Dunno why it thinks this is comic 2885.

Claude:

:The comic is explaining how muons (subatomic particles) created in the upper atmosphere are able to reach Earth's surface despite their short half-lives.
:The humor comes from the way "muons" is written with stretched-out letters ("MUUUUUOOOOONS"), which is a play on time dilation in special relativity.
:Time dilation is a real physics phenomenon where time moves slower for objects moving at very high speeds relative to a stationary observer. This is why fast-moving muons can survive longer than their normal half-life would suggest - from their perspective, due to time dilation, less time has passed.
:The comic suggests, as a "physics tip," that you should stretch out your pronunciation of words to account for time dilation - as if the word itself experiences the same relativistic effects as the particle it describes.

:It's a particularly nerdy physics joke because it combines accurate physics (muons really do reach the surface due to time dilation) with a playful misapplication of the concept to human speech. The stick figure appears to be teaching or presenting this concept, complete with what looks like equations on a board, making it feel like a legitimate physics lesson with a humorous twist.
:This is characteristic of xkcd's style of humor, which often combines accurate scientific concepts with absurdist interpretations. {{unsigned|AK24Ammit|23:35, 27 January 2025}}

:Claude's is better, by far. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.215.54|172.70.215.54]] 01:49, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
::I think they're both surprisingly good. But wouldn't it be more timely to ask DeepSeek, the new Chinese AI that's tanking US tech stocks? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:17, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I tried, but...
::::<code>As of my knowledge cutoff in October 2023, I cannot provide specific details about XKCD comic #3043, as it does not exist yet. XKCD comics are released incrementally, and the latest comic I am aware of is #2817 ("Nighttime Stories"). If #3043 has been released after October 2023, I recommend checking the official XKCD website (https://xkcd.com) or its explainer site (https://www.explainxkcd.com) for details. If you have a specific question about muons or XKCD's style of humor, feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to help!</code>
:::''Yeah.'' [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 11:47, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
:::: personally, I took the less direct approach to asking for the explanation. Instead of asking the AIs “explain xkcd #3043”, I fed the actual image in and asked them to explain it. Please try that with DeepSeek, and let’s see how its wiki skills hold up! [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 23:22, 8 February 2025 (UTC)
::Both obviously AIs (without being told), with AI tells. Gemini 'hallucinating' that it was perhaps refering to [[2885: Spelling]] is nothing like the very different equivalent human errors, for example.
::Very good efforts, if they effectively OCRed and image-processed almost everything (before wandering off to thei caucus of webscraped material, from which to esoterically form their response), can't deny that. But must have been prompted by something along the lines of "The comic <url> doesn't have a good explainxkcd explanation, please discuss", from the obvious referencing that would be meta in an actual article context by ourselves.
::Whatever the circumstance, I predict that either attempt would have been heavily touched up (if not entirely rewritten), if put in the main page. (I mean, practically all human input does, too, but for different reasons...) Gemini would probably tend to be cut down, Claude added to, but a mix of both for each. Maybe they don't have the pride in being original author, like a human, but one always has to learn that any you do have will inevitably be shattered. (I take it as a compliment if I provide enough of a surviving skeletal structure to see my initial idea of a narrative flow preserved in largely remixed wordings until the point at which it generally settles down.)
::Yes, impressive(ish). But not yet [[810: Constructive|Mission Accomplished]]. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.144|172.71.241.144]] 16:38, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

The point is that we observe muons that have time slowed down coming from the sky. Cueball is differentiating normal muons from muons that appear to have time slowed down for them, by slowing down his speech when referring to the slowed muons. It's a strange idea, refering to something that has time slowed for it. It's not something one often does outside fantasy. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.168|162.158.158.168]] 04:41, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Patrick Blackett won the Nobel Prize in 1948 by making the first observation of the creation of a nortcele. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.59.137|172.69.59.137]] 20:27, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
: What is this comment about, please? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.72|162.158.63.72]] 15:16, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
::The only notable reference online to the word "nortcele" is the name of an Indian tech company. From the Nobel site: Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett. Nobel Prize in Physics 1948. Prize motivation: “for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation.” I would recommend deleting [[Special:Contributions/172.69.59.137|172.69.59.137]]'s comment if they fail to return in a timely manner to explain or defend it. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 21:06, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

:::Read it backwards! Nortcele is kind of an "inverted electron", and Patrick Blackett did important research on positrons, so the comment is quite fitting. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.134|162.158.111.134]] 14:29, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3043: Muons

2025-05-14T14:29:57Z

162.158.111.134:

Article needs improvement by somebody with a clear understanding of special relativity, and somebody with a clear understanding of muons.
Are there actually two classes of muons or is it a joke? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.55.81|172.68.55.81]] 22:19, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

:No, not two classes; [https://web.mit.edu/lululiu/Public/8.13/Muons/muons.pdf see Figure 5 on p. 3 here]. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.243|172.70.206.243]] 01:43, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
::It sounds possibly like the article and comic together are saying that the muons we measure on earth are those that were going so fast that their time and distance are stretched so that they do not decay before reaching us. That non-relativistic muons decayed in the upper atmosphere. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.84|162.158.63.84]] 03:13, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
::Correct, even if their velocities are not bimodal, you can absolutely divide them into two classes based on whether they decay before reaching the surface. I am pretty sure that's what's intended here. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.23.136|172.68.23.136]] 03:42, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I websearched around and found an old video from COSMUS showing an air shower with differently colored particles flying off. It looks like the COSMUS site is broken nowadays, but in archive.org I found it mentioned that the muons were red in the video. I saw some red particles decaying quickly like the behavior of smoke or fire or steam, and others firing toward the ground. I added a first paragraph with what I learned exploring. I'm sad the COSMUS site from the university of chicago seems down for years. They publicly modeled so many air showers and more. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.189|162.158.159.189]] 04:26, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

: The Doppler Effect will sound like the Sega logo sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dIXw0OEtk4

;AI

Fed the comic image into two AIs: Gemini and Claude. These are their explanations; please tell me which is better:

Gemini:

:This xkcd comic (#2885) is a humorous take on the concept of time dilation from Einstein's theory of special relativity, specifically as it applies to muons.

:Here's a breakdown:

:The Setup: The comic explains that muons, subatomic particles created in the upper atmosphere, have very short lifespans. Normally, they would decay before reaching the Earth's surface. However, because they travel at speeds close to the speed of light, time dilation occurs.

:Time Dilation: According to special relativity, time passes slower for objects moving at high speeds relative to a stationary observer. This means that from our perspective on Earth, the muons' internal clocks tick slower, allowing them to travel further before decaying.

:The Joke: The comic takes this scientific concept and applies it to pronunciation. The presenter is shown drawing out the word "muons" ("MUUUUUUOOOONS") to emphasize the elongated time experienced by the fast-moving particles.

:The Punchline: The caption "PHYSICS TIP: REMEMBER TO ADJUST YOUR PRONUNCIATIONS TO ACCOUNT FOR TIME DILATION" is the punchline. It's a humorous exaggeration, suggesting that we should literally pronounce words differently depending on the relative speed of the objects they describe.

:In essence, the comic is a clever play on words that combines a complex physics concept with a mundane everyday activity (pronunciation). It highlights the counterintuitive nature of special relativity in a lighthearted way.

:Here's why this might be tricky to explain on explainxkcd:

:It's concise: The joke is very compact and doesn't require a lot of background information beyond a basic understanding of time dilation.
:It's visual: The drawn-out "MUUUUUUOOOONS" is crucial to the humor, and it's difficult to fully capture that in a purely textual explanation.
:It's somewhat self-explanatory: The comic itself does a good job of setting up the joke and delivering the punchline.

Dunno why it thinks this is comic 2885.

Claude:

:The comic is explaining how muons (subatomic particles) created in the upper atmosphere are able to reach Earth's surface despite their short half-lives.
:The humor comes from the way "muons" is written with stretched-out letters ("MUUUUUOOOOONS"), which is a play on time dilation in special relativity.
:Time dilation is a real physics phenomenon where time moves slower for objects moving at very high speeds relative to a stationary observer. This is why fast-moving muons can survive longer than their normal half-life would suggest - from their perspective, due to time dilation, less time has passed.
:The comic suggests, as a "physics tip," that you should stretch out your pronunciation of words to account for time dilation - as if the word itself experiences the same relativistic effects as the particle it describes.

:It's a particularly nerdy physics joke because it combines accurate physics (muons really do reach the surface due to time dilation) with a playful misapplication of the concept to human speech. The stick figure appears to be teaching or presenting this concept, complete with what looks like equations on a board, making it feel like a legitimate physics lesson with a humorous twist.
:This is characteristic of xkcd's style of humor, which often combines accurate scientific concepts with absurdist interpretations. {{unsigned|AK24Ammit|23:35, 27 January 2025}}

:Claude's is better, by far. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.215.54|172.70.215.54]] 01:49, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
::I think they're both surprisingly good. But wouldn't it be more timely to ask DeepSeek, the new Chinese AI that's tanking US tech stocks? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:17, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I tried, but...
::::<code>As of my knowledge cutoff in October 2023, I cannot provide specific details about XKCD comic #3043, as it does not exist yet. XKCD comics are released incrementally, and the latest comic I am aware of is #2817 ("Nighttime Stories"). If #3043 has been released after October 2023, I recommend checking the official XKCD website (https://xkcd.com) or its explainer site (https://www.explainxkcd.com) for details. If you have a specific question about muons or XKCD's style of humor, feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to help!</code>
:::''Yeah.'' [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 11:47, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
:::: personally, I took the less direct approach to asking for the explanation. Instead of asking the AIs “explain xkcd #3043”, I fed the actual image in and asked them to explain it. Please try that with DeepSeek, and let’s see how its wiki skills hold up! [[User:AK24Ammit|AH24Ammit]] ([[User talk:AK24Ammit|talk]]) 23:22, 8 February 2025 (UTC)
::Both obviously AIs (without being told), with AI tells. Gemini 'hallucinating' that it was perhaps refering to [[2885: Spelling]] is nothing like the very different equivalent human errors, for example.
::Very good efforts, if they effectively OCRed and image-processed almost everything (before wandering off to thei caucus of webscraped material, from which to esoterically form their response), can't deny that. But must have been prompted by something along the lines of "The comic <url> doesn't have a good explainxkcd explanation, please discuss", from the obvious referencing that would be meta in an actual article context by ourselves.
::Whatever the circumstance, I predict that either attempt would have been heavily touched up (if not entirely rewritten), if put in the main page. (I mean, practically all human input does, too, but for different reasons...) Gemini would probably tend to be cut down, Claude added to, but a mix of both for each. Maybe they don't have the pride in being original author, like a human, but one always has to learn that any you do have will inevitably be shattered. (I take it as a compliment if I provide enough of a surviving skeletal structure to see my initial idea of a narrative flow preserved in largely remixed wordings until the point at which it generally settles down.)
::Yes, impressive(ish). But not yet [[810: Constructive|Mission Accomplished]]. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.144|172.71.241.144]] 16:38, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

The point is that we observe muons that have time slowed down coming from the sky. Cueball is differentiating normal muons from muons that appear to have time slowed down for them, by slowing down his speech when referring to the slowed muons. It's a strange idea, refering to something that has time slowed for it. It's not something one often does outside fantasy. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.168|162.158.158.168]] 04:41, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Patrick Blackett won the Nobel Prize in 1948 by making the first observation of the creation of a nortcele. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.59.137|172.69.59.137]] 20:27, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
: What is this comment about, please? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.72|162.158.63.72]] 15:16, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
::The only notable reference online to the word "nortcele" is the name of an Indian tech company. From the Nobel site: Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett. Nobel Prize in Physics 1948. Prize motivation: “for his development of the Wilson cloud chamber method, and his discoveries therewith in the fields of nuclear physics and cosmic radiation.” I would recommend deleting [[Special:Contributions/172.69.59.137|172.69.59.137]]'s comment if they fail to return in a timely manner to explain or defend it. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 21:06, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Read it backwards! Nortcele is kind of an "inverted electron", and Patrick Blackett did important research on positrons, so the comment is quite fitting. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.134|162.158.111.134]] 14:29, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3046: Stromatolites

2025-02-04T20:25:22Z

162.158.111.134:

Yay, another Beret Guy appearance! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 03:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I'm trying to remember Bloom County and the penguin (Opus) or Snoopy by Schulz because of the last panel. Shrug. Prolly both. Warm is good. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.208|172.70.175.208]] 06:08, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:Add Zonker to this list? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.39|108.162.245.39]] 17:29, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:: Zonker Harris, yes! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.106|172.70.175.106]] 18:16, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

How can anybody be related to rock formations? Stomatolites are not organisms, they are the product of organisms. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.88|141.101.105.88]] 08:12, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:This might be one of Randall's weaker offerings in terms of scientific accuracy. I think that "stromatolites" as here used refers to the cyanobacterial component of stromatolites, which is the component detected in ancient fossils and is the one responsible for oxygen-evolving photosynthesis (responsible for what was perhaps the {{w|Great_Oxidation_Event|first global environmental catastrophe}} - an element of ancestry of which it might be wise not to boast). Modern stromatolites have both cyanobacteria (ancestors of plastids) and alpha-proteobacteria (ancestors of mitochondria) in their microbial mats, and it's reasonable to assume that alpha-proteobacteria were present in the fossils. So the "cousins" would be of cyanobacteria in the stromatolites, not the stromatolites themselves (in which both were, presumably, cohabiting). Beret Guy also appears to be confused about the proposed sequence of events leading to the origins of mitochondria and eukaryotic cell nuclei. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.39|108.162.245.39]] 17:29, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:I've seen the surviving microbial mats in Australia referred to as "stromatolites" as well.[[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 12:39, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I wonder if he is related to any specific dinosaurs or whether he bypassed that branch of the tree completely. 09:48, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I think there's a joke (or at least a reference) here about the relatedness of life. All currently-known organisms are related by descent from a common ancestor, which in English makes us all cousins, of various distances. Mitochondria in plants and animals, for instance, must descend from the same bacterium-like organism that became an endosymbiont in a proto-eukaryote.[[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 12:39, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:Since mitochondria and chloroplasts were both originally distinct organisms that were absorbed into the host cells, that makes most modern life descendants of cannibals. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:37, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
::By that logic, eating pretty much any food except salt (and maybe dairy?) is cannibalism. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.70.87|172.68.70.87]] 16:09, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I immediately thought of [https://fabpedigree.com/ Fabulous Pedigree], which ''does'' include ancestry (and side-branches) going back to (and past) mitochondria, though from a quick check it doesn't seem to specifically include stromatolites. Obviously the listing has lots of (mostly implied) gaps. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.217.72|162.158.217.72]] 13:55, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Beret Guy is emulating Pooh-Bah in The Mikado: "I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule."[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.190|172.69.33.190]] 19:07, 4 February 2025 (UTC)NickM

== The [[What If? chapters|What If? article index]] project ==

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure if you noticed the banner of the site, but for the last few weeks a group of [[Talk:What If? chapters|incredibly talented editors]] have been redesigning the [[What If? chapters|'''index of ''What If?'' articles''']] from the ground up. Among other things, we've merged two huge tables, added a TON of additional info, created complex templates, and made [[What If? chapters|dozens and dozens of other improvements]]. I believe that, as a wiki, we should have a complete and detailed index of all what if? articles, [[List of all comics (full)|just like we do for the comics]], and we're getting so close to that goal! We mostly only need to add the missing explanations, improve the existing ones, and add the questions and answer summary from the books (plus other things).

We would love your help (especially if you have the first book)! We've prepared a [[What If? chapters|to-do list]] at the top of the page, containing everything that needs to be done, if you're interested. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:00, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

==Clicking and clicking and clicking==

I've added a bit about the length of time it would need to take to click that far back in the past. I'm sure I have got the amount out by several orders of magnitude, so I would appreciate it if anyone fancies a go at estimating how long Beret Guy would have taken. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.27|172.71.241.27]] 10:49, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
: [[2608: Family Reunion]] estimates about 50 billion generations to the MRCA with plants; this would have taken about a century at a speed of 15 clicks per second. Bacteria reproduce extremely fast - or at least modern ones do - which could easily add a few trillion generations (and a few thousand years of clicking) on the bacterial side of the ancestry. In other words, "thousands of years" is likely an overestimate but not ''that'' much of one. (Obviously the time becomes very feasible if Beret Guy used a site that summarized the ancestry.) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.134|162.158.111.134]] 20:25, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

3016: Cold Air

2024-11-27T11:34:28Z

162.158.111.134: added a mention of the last part of the comic.

{{comic
| number = 3016
| date = November 25, 2024
| title = Cold Air
| image = cold_air_2x.png
| imagesize = 713x283px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = We also should really have checked that the old water tower was disconnected from the water system before we started filling it with compressed air.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a 204 atm COMPRESSED BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Tornadoes generally create winds of about 40-400 mph [https://www.weather.gov/ffc/fujita] (about 60-640 km/h) which causes damage to buildings. Cueball proposes a method to essentially blow tornadoes away from cities by keeping enough "tornado repelling" air in a tank. It is not clear if the compressed air will be used to "blow away" the whole tornado, to try to exactly counteract the tornado itself (through applied counter-rotation) or to remove the conditions that cause the development of the tornado's system. The last of these is heavily implied, as replacing any troublesome hot and humid air will remove the conditions required to invoke a nascent tornado. Whether this would work is questionable, since it's precisely the mixing of warm and cold air that produces the swirling motion that creates tornadoes. Rather than dissipating the threat, the very act of displacement could create atmospheric mixing and tornado-generating turbulence in its own right. Several years later, Cueball admits that (for one reason or another) this plan increased wind damage instead of decreasing it.

In a compressed air system, peak pressure is considered about 40 bar [https://www.directindustry.com/prod/kaeser-kompressoren/product-4742-24559.html] (about 500 psi). Cueball proposes keeping the tank at 6 times that pressure to properly counteract the tornado. The title text confirms that at least one tower is a repurposed water tower, which, if using 16 inch pipes as [https://www.waterworld.com/home/article/14071043/the-perfect-pipe is common], would produce much stronger winds than those of the tornado, because flow speed is inversely proportional to the diameter of the pipes and even a "wide" 16 inch pipe is very narrow for this purpose indeed.

The formula for the velocity of a fluid (air is considered a fluid in physics) is V=√(2*P/ρ) where V is the velocity, P is the pressure, and ρ is the density of the fluid. The density of the fluid is given by the formula ρ=P/(RT) for a given constant R and a Temperature T. In this case, ρ is [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=3000psi%2F%280.287kj%2F%28kg+Kelvin%29*21C%29 0.245 g/cm^3] assuming room temperature, meaning the V=√(2*3000psi/ 0.245 g/cm^3)[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=sqrt%282*%283000psi%29%2F%280.245+g%2Fcm%5E3%29%29 =410.9 m/s], which is just under 1500 km/h, almost three times faster than the max speeds of the tornados Cueball is trying to prevent.

In addition, the specification that the air is to be kept dry & cold will almost certainly require the installation of dehumidification & refrigeration systems on the tanks at great expense, since most major North American cities are located near large bodies of water and tornado season (spring) is usually warm and moist (especially for Southern cities such as Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga, etc.). The resulting greenhouse-gas emissions from generating the extra electricity required to run these systems will almost certainly increase mean global temperatures, causing more water to evaporate into the atmosphere, making it even more humid, and therefore more likely that tornadoes will be formed.

Further, pressurised vessels are liable to bursting, an issue harder to mitigate the larger the internal volume. Cueball's proposal would put particularly large ones in the center of dense cities, creating the possibility for further damage. Especially, if the proposal diagram is to be believed, with the tank itself being twice the height of the tallest surrounding buildings (drawn to resemble skyscrapers, so probably tens of stories tall), being elevated high above them upon by base that also dwarfs them, and dominating the area and its skyline.

Finally, even if Cueball's air tanks produce winds no faster than a normal tornado, they are now being produced in the centers of heavily built-up areas, significantly increasing the potential for damage.

The result is a quadrupling in damage caused by wind, since now, not only are the tornadoes causing heavy winds, but the tanks — when functioning properly and when malfunctioning — are causing heavy winds too.

In the title text, it is revealed that the water tower they were using to store the compressed air was still plumbed in to the water mains. Given the pressure required for the tower to work properly against tornadoes and the fact that water is nearly incompressible, the pressure from the tower would have been nearly instantly transmitted into the water distribution system. The ''best'' case scenario would have been 'just' to have dangerously highly-pressurised water jetting into sinks, bathtubs and toilet cisterns whenever they were used; more severe consequences could be catastrophic failures of pipes and plumbing.

Using technology to disrupt tornadoes before they form was a plot element in Liu Cixin's novel ''{{w|Ball Lightning (novel)|Ball Lightning}}'', and [https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Weather_Modification_Net other works]. In reality, fringe scientist {{w|Prokop Diviš}} (1698-1765) proposed a weather-control machine to disrupt thunderstorms before they form.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball is in front of a diagram of a tornado with a pointer in his right hand. The diagram has arrows flowing from the bottom toward the tornado at the top, and from the tornado toward the rain below it.]
:Cueball: Tornado supercells are powered by the inflow of warm, moist surface air.

:[Cueball is now in front of a representation of his compressed air tank with a PSI of 3000 next to smaller buildings, appearing to be high-rise buildings or skyscrapers, on both sides of the tank.]
:Cueball: Compressed air tanks could produce artificial pools of cold, dry air on demand, disrupting tornado inflow to protect cities.

:[Cueball is in front of a line graph labeled "Wind Damage over Time". Wind damage has spiked constantly after a point on the graph labeled "Giant experimental compressed air tanks installed in the middle of every major city"). In a frame in the top left corner, there is a label:]
:Several years later:
:Cueball: In retrospect, I can see how my plan went wrong.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Tornadoes]]
[[Category:Line graphs]]