explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3166: Big and Little Spoons

2025-12-12T19:14:49Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Missed 2 other italic words!

{{comic
| number = 3166
| date = November 10, 2025
| title = Big and Little Spoons
| image = big_and_little_spoons_2x.png
| imagesize = 662x259px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Are you the annoying spoon or the sleepy spoon?
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Spooning}} is the intimate (and sometimes, but not always, sexual) act of laying down so that one's fore is directly up against the back of another person. A common colloquial term for people in this position is to refer to the two participants as "big spoon" (the one behind) and "little spoon" (the one in front). Cueball points out that the colloquialism does not have any basis in reality due to how spoons nest; commonly, spoons of the the same size will form a relatively uniform stack (which may be handy with a full complement of {{w|cutlery}} that is stored together in functional groups), while the spoons of differing sizes would rest awkwardly due to the different curvature in their handles and bowls, and the neck between.

There are some exceptions, such as a {{w|File:Swedish Measuring Spoon Set.jpeg|measuring spoon ''set''}}, or one-person camping set (perhaps small spoon, large spoon, plus knife and fork; or involving [[419: Forks and Spoons|hybrid]] {{w|Combination eating utensils|flatware}}), where one of each type is deliberately designed to be nested/packed against the others in a particular order. Occasionally, same sized spoons of a given design do not nest neatly, due to the design resulting in differing front and back profiles.

The last panel reveals that he is {{tvtropes|ExiledToTheCouch|sleeping on the couch}}, presumably because of his nitpickery regarding the colloquialism. From another room, someone else — presumably Megan — realizes that he is addressing anyone who is listening about this, and expresses annoyance that he hasn't let the matter go. Cueball merely insists that he's ''right'', indicating [[386: Duty Calls|his refusal]] to let the matter slide. His insistence on being right in this case is apparently more important to him than spooning; instead he's alone on the couch and forked.

The title text asks whether you are the annoying spoon or the sleepy spoon, which, in this context, most likely means to ask whether you are like Cueball (who is being considered annoying) or like his sleepy partner.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:[Close up shot of Cueball's head and neck. Cueball is facing the left and has his arm raised.]
:Cueball: Some people like to be the big spoon.

:[Cueball's face and neck are still the only elements visible. Cueball is facing the right now and has lowered his hand.]
:Cueball: Some people like to be the little spoon.

:[A big spoon sitting atop a little spoon and a little spoon sitting atop a big spoon are depicted.]
:And some brave truth-tellers point out that the metaphor makes no sense because different-sized spoons don't nest right '''''either''''' way. You nest '''''same'''''-sized spoons.

:[Cueball is lying alone on a couch.]
:Cueball: ...and apparently '''''we''''' sleep on the couch.
:[Voice from outside the panel:]
:Voice: Why are you '''''still''''' going on about the spoon thing?
:Cueball: Because I'm '''''right!'''''

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Sex]]

3166: Big and Little Spoons

2025-12-12T19:13:35Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Change italic words to both italic and bold

{{comic
| number = 3166
| date = November 10, 2025
| title = Big and Little Spoons
| image = big_and_little_spoons_2x.png
| imagesize = 662x259px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Are you the annoying spoon or the sleepy spoon?
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Spooning}} is the intimate (and sometimes, but not always, sexual) act of laying down so that one's fore is directly up against the back of another person. A common colloquial term for people in this position is to refer to the two participants as "big spoon" (the one behind) and "little spoon" (the one in front). Cueball points out that the colloquialism does not have any basis in reality due to how spoons nest; commonly, spoons of the the same size will form a relatively uniform stack (which may be handy with a full complement of {{w|cutlery}} that is stored together in functional groups), while the spoons of differing sizes would rest awkwardly due to the different curvature in their handles and bowls, and the neck between.

There are some exceptions, such as a {{w|File:Swedish Measuring Spoon Set.jpeg|measuring spoon ''set''}}, or one-person camping set (perhaps small spoon, large spoon, plus knife and fork; or involving [[419: Forks and Spoons|hybrid]] {{w|Combination eating utensils|flatware}}), where one of each type is deliberately designed to be nested/packed against the others in a particular order. Occasionally, same sized spoons of a given design do not nest neatly, due to the design resulting in differing front and back profiles.

The last panel reveals that he is {{tvtropes|ExiledToTheCouch|sleeping on the couch}}, presumably because of his nitpickery regarding the colloquialism. From another room, someone else — presumably Megan — realizes that he is addressing anyone who is listening about this, and expresses annoyance that he hasn't let the matter go. Cueball merely insists that he's ''right'', indicating [[386: Duty Calls|his refusal]] to let the matter slide. His insistence on being right in this case is apparently more important to him than spooning; instead he's alone on the couch and forked.

The title text asks whether you are the annoying spoon or the sleepy spoon, which, in this context, most likely means to ask whether you are like Cueball (who is being considered annoying) or like his sleepy partner.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:[Close up shot of Cueball's head and neck. Cueball is facing the left and has his arm raised.]
:Cueball: Some people like to be the big spoon.

:[Cueball's face and neck are still the only elements visible. Cueball is facing the right now and has lowered his hand.]
:Cueball: Some people like to be the little spoon.

:[A big spoon sitting atop a little spoon and a little spoon sitting atop a big spoon are depicted.]
:And some brave truth-tellers point out that the metaphor makes no sense because different-sized spoons don't nest right ''either'' way. You nest ''same''-sized spoons.

:[Cueball is lying alone on a couch.]
:Cueball: ...and apparently '''''we''''' sleep on the couch.
:[Voice from outside the panel:]
:Voice: Why are you '''''still''''' going on about the spoon thing?
:Cueball: Because I'm '''''right!'''''

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Sex]]

3155: Physics Paths

2025-10-16T12:37:40Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix typo

{{comic
| number = 3155
| date = October 15, 2025
| title = Physics Paths
| image = physics_paths_2x.png
| imagesize = 433x663px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If nothing else, that reasoning definitely overturns syllogisms.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a BOT trying to prove its value. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
[[Cueball]] wishes to validate his existence as a person. To do this, he turns to {{w|Albert Einstein}} as a role model, and attempts to replicate his success by making a revolutionary scientific discovery. After an indeterminate amount of time passes, Cueball laments that he has failed. At this point, the comic diverges into two timelines; one in which Cueball takes a healthy outlook on his failure, and one in which he falls into a self-destructive mode of thinking.

The first path (the "Healthy Path") has Cueball muse that perhaps this was a poorly-thought-out test of his value. The healthy path establishes that Cueball doesn't need a physics-overturning insight to have value. On the other hand, the "Path of Ruin" has Cueball angrily yell that the establishment must be stopping his insight from overturning physics. The path of ruin has Cueball take the idea that to have value, you must have a critical insight as constant. Thus, since, he has value, he must have an insight that overturns physics, and thus the establishment must be suppressing it.

Einstein had more than one "major insight". His "{{w|annus mirabilis papers}}" covered the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the special theory of relativity, and mass-energy equivalence, all published in 1905. The fourth of these is a consequence of the third (though still a major development in its own right), but the first three are about essentially-unrelated areas of physics, and represent significant new understanding of them. The third, titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", is the one that can be said to have 'overturned' physics as it introduced the concept of {{w|special relativity}}. Special relativity made unnecessary the concept of {{w|Luminiferous aether}} for the propagation of light, a substance which had been disproven by the {{w|Michelson–Morley experiment}} but which had left the previous system of classical physics unable to explain why light behaved as it did. The theory of special relativity was also one of the great {{w|unification of theories in physics}}. The first unification was by Isaac Newton, whose law of universal gravitation unified physics (gravity as observed on Earth) with astronomy (the motion of planets) at a time when the two subjects were considered different fields. The second unification was by James Clerk Maxwell, who produced equations unifying the behavior of electricity and magnetism. With the paper on special relativity, Einstein unified space and time, showing that gravity was actually a result of spacetime bending, and not a force solely dependent on the mass of two objects, as classical physics assumed. Incredibly, less than two months after publishing the third great unification, Einstein's fourth paper, titled "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", produced the fourth great unification, when it introduced the equation E=mc2 and unified mass and energy. This unparalleled achievement of two fundamental breakthroughs in physics is why Einstein is held in such high regard to this day, to the point that his last name as a {{w|Mononym}} is synonymous with intelligence, insight, and greatness. Indeed the Annus Mirabilis Papers remain the foundation of modern physics.

The title text mentions {{w|syllogism}}, a logic deduction from two propositions. An example of a syllogism is: All scientists that overturn physics are valuable. Einstein overturned physics. Therefore, Einstein is valuable. Since Cueball gets it the other way around, one could say he overturned syllogisms.

The path of ruin seems a nod to John Baez's classic [https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html Crackpot Index]. xkcd has mocked the idea of the physics community suppressing new ideas before, such as in [[675: Revolutionary]], [[2113: Physics Suppression]], or the "science thought police" in [[955: Neutrinos]]. This is also the second consecutive comic about Einstein in some way after [[3154: Physics Insight]].

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[Panel 1, Cueball has one hand out]

Cueball: Einstein had an Insight that overturned physics,
thus proving his value.

:[Panel 2, Cueball has one hand on his chin]

Cueball: I hope I have value. Ill try to have an insight that overturns physics, to check.

:[arrow pointing down with the caption below in between]

Time passes

:[arrow pointing down to Panel 3, which has Cueball with both of his hands out and up]

Cueball: On no! My insight didn't overturn physics! But I don't think I'm worthless...

:[Arrow from Panel 3 on the left labeled "Healthy path" points to a panel with Cueball with his hands on his chin:]

Cueball: Maybe this was not a well-thought-out test of my value.

:[Arrow from Panel 3 on the right labeled "Path of ruin" points to a panel with Cueball with his finger out and pointing up:]

Cueball: The establishment must be '''''suppressing''''' my insight!

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

Talk:3145: Piercing

2025-09-24T17:10:10Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Title Text reference?

Woah, new comic just barely as I refreshed? I must be so cool! [[User:Willintendo|Willintendo]] ([[User talk:Willintendo|talk]]) 20:43, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Being "old enough" doesn't mean much, I'm afraid. I saw a very young child in a puschair (not sure what age... probably pre-verbal, though she responded to my friendly waggly-wave of fingers with a close enough gesture in return) with a flashy ear-piercing stud the other day, which was probably her mother's choice to impose upon her. (Not quite FGM/circumcision level of parental imposition, but certainly not consensual.) [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 20:44, 22 September 2025 (UTC)
:There are some cultures that traditionally pierce the ears within a few days of birth, on the theory that it's more painful when they're older. The American Association of Pediatrics doesn't have a problem with this as long as it's done safely. In the US, I think it's more common to wait until they're at least 12 years old and make the decision themselves. That's probably what Randall is thinking of. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:57, 22 September 2025 (UTC)
: Part of that is because earlobes can grow unevenly, placing an early piercing in a weird spot. By the teenage years, this is less likely to happen. [[Special:Contributions/50.52.119.169|50.52.119.169]] 22:03, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Is there a new long distance boring project that has happened or is being planned that this comic is in reference to? I was hoping there would be some mention on this page? I can't find any likely candidates in a quick Google search. Any ideas? [[Special:Contributions/38.175.130.234|38.175.130.234]] 22:34, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

The piercing is going rather deep into hot stuff, according to the image (do we have estimates?). Being "old enough" might be implying that enough time has passed for the hot stuff to cool down so that it can finally be safely pierced (do we have estimates?). --[[Special:Contributions/88.113.67.59|88.113.67.59]] 05:33, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
: By my guesstimate, the entry and exit points are about 700 km (435 mi for imperialists) apart and the ring diameter is twice of that. The section of the ring that is subterran could be 10% of the ring's diameter, so it's 140 km or 87 mi and the ring extends into space by about 1260km, smashing nicely all satellites that don't have a near-equatorial orbit. Maybe we could integrate a space elevator into it? Although I doubt that Gospodin P. will allow that project, because it would totally smash their Kola Superdeep record. But I think the Russians are safe for now, either our tech or Earth will have to mature a bit more until we can successfully drill into the mantle [[Special:Contributions/195.49.224.20|195.49.224.20]] 08:07, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
::Here's a diagram to estimate it. Randall's earth surface isn't very circular unfortunately, so I flipped the image to make it symmetric and took the largest extent. I get a depth of 10% of the earth's radius, so 637km/396mi, and distance between entry and exit spans about 26 degrees of the earth's circumference, so about 2900km/1800mi. [[User:Mtcv|Mtcv]] ([[User talk:Mtcv|talk]]) 08:41, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
[[File:xkcd3145_measured.png|300px]]
:::That seems within measurement error of the length of the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel, which is a similar long-distance lithospheric piercing.[[Special:Contributions/107.128.213.247|107.128.213.247]] 08:59, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
:::Thanks. At 600 km depth, according to [https://opentextbc.ca/geology/chapter/9-2-the-temperature-of-earths-interior/] it should be nearly 2000 °C, so gold and silver rings are out of question, but if Daddy pays, why not have diamond rings, or hafnium carbonitride. Besides temperature, the piercing will face pressure and stress, but hey, if Earth is old enough, it should have grown out of such things. --[[Special:Contributions/130.233.188.240|130.233.188.240]] 09:35, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have rings - why shouldn't we? [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 08:16, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
: The outer planets' rings aren't piercings -- they're hula hoops. --[[Special:Contributions/208.59.176.206|208.59.176.206]] 14:03, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
:: SO unfair!!! I hate you!!! [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 15:01, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
::: It will build character. You will understand when you are older. --[[Special:Contributions/88.113.67.59|88.113.67.59]] 15:26, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

I thought the lava mentioned in the Title Text was more a metaphor for bleeding than for inflammation. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 17:10, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

3111: Artificial Gravity

2025-07-04T21:00:10Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix typo: boss -> bone

{{comic
| number = 3111
| date = July 4, 2025
| title = Artificial Gravity
| image = artificial_gravity_2x.png
| imagesize = 423x365px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Low gravity can cause bone loss, so we're pleased to report that, since we initiated capsule motion, the number of bones in each crew member has been steadily increasing.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created BY NASA. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
The human body will experience slow but adverse side effects in a low gravity environment, such as a spaceship taking an interplanetary or interstellar voyage. Many prototype designs have been introduced to combat this, both in science fiction and real life, and one of the most common is to use inertia and centrifugal force to simulate the effects of gravity on the crew.

[[Cueball]] introduces a design where the crew quarters are a large shaking pod. [[Ponytail]] immediately sees problems with this approach, and asks if the shaking pod can be replaced with a much safer and more stable spinning wheel — a common sight in speculative spaceship designs. Cueball concedes his agreement, but claims the crew are going to be stuck with shaking pod design anyway. In fact he reveals that the plans are not in the design stage as was implied, but that the ship has already been built and launched, and Ponytail's fears about the design are already being demonstrated.

The title text discusses a real side effect of low gravity environments: a form of bone density loss known as {{w|Spaceflight osteopenia}}. The title text speaker claims that "the number of bones in each crew member has been steadily increasing" — this is because the shaking, and subsequent multiple impacts, are breaking the crew members' bones. The broken pieces of bone are then being counted as separate bones.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[Cueball and Ponytail are standing near a blueprint of a spacecraft, with Cueball pointing at the blueprint.]
:Cueball: To produce artificial gravity during the voyage, the crew capsule is kept in constant motion.
:Ponytail: Wouldn't it make more sense to spin it instead of shaking it, so the acceleration is steadier?
:Cueball: ...Listen. You, I, and the crew all wish we'd thought of that before launch.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Space]]

3104: Tukey

2025-06-25T21:16:33Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Year is not in italic font

{{comic
| number = 3104
| date = June 18, 2025
| title = Tukey
| image = tukey_2x.png
| imagesize = 392x276px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Numbers can be tricky. On the day of my 110th birthday, I'll be one day younger than John Tukey was on his.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic gives a quote by {{w|John W. Tukey}}, an American mathematician and statistician, from his paper called ''The Future of {{w|Data analysis|Data Analysis}}'', where he discusses the importance of facing uncertainty. A stripped-down version of his quote could be formulated as:

{{Quote|It is far better to have ''an approximate answer to the right question'' than ''an exact answer to the wrong question''.}}

[[Randall]] then gives Tukey's age as 110.000 years (that is, 110 years to three decimal places) — a very precise answer to the question of "how old is Tukey?" However, when it comes to his birthday, arguably the right question in this context, he only gives the approximate answer of "sometime this week". Tukey was born on Wednesday, June 16, 1915, 110 years and 2 days before the release of this comic on Wednesday, June 18, 2025. Since he died in 2000, it can be debated whether he has a birthday this week!

Since the comic was two days (or 0.54% of a year) late compared to Tukey's actual birthday, three decimal places of zero is actually inaccurate on the day of the comic's release, when he was 110.005 years old. However, sometime during that week he was exactly 110.000 years old — the joke being that he gives a very precise age, but not the exact time when this answer was accurate.

The title text states that Randall would be one day younger than Tukey would be on his 110th birthday. Tukey's 110th birthday (on Monday) marked 40,178 days since his birth. Randall's 110th birthday ([[1179: ISO 8601|2094-10-17]]) will occur 40,17'''7''' days after his birth, due to having only passed through {{w|Gregorian calendar|27 leap-days}} (the first in 1988, the latest in 2092) instead of Tukey's 28 instances (from 1916 to 2024, inclusive).

There are multiple different definitions of the year, however. The one most applied to birthdays is "a whole year has passed when it's the same calendar day", but the usual scientific/mathematical value is the tropical year of 365.2422 days (the time between the same two equinoxes) which smears the leap day across four years (which might impact the last digit of the calculation), and also the sidereal year of 365.2564 days (the time it takes the Sun to return to the same place in the sky), which differs due to {{w|Axial precession|precession of the equinoxes}}. The difference between the tropical and sidereal calculations over 110 years is about 1.5 days, so for this alternative definition of the year, we get a different answer for which day is 110, but it still remains "this week". There's also the average length of a year in the {{w|Gregorian calendar}} (the calendar in use now), which averages 365.2425 days over the 400-year cycle of the calendar. Tukey suggests we shouldn't get hung up on this, but those who happen to be born on 29th February may disagree.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Transcribed by an idiot. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:[Text formatted as a block quote]

:"Far better an approximate answer to the ''right'' question, which is often vague, than an ''exact'' answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise."

:John W. Tukey
:''The Future of Data Analysis'' (1962)

:Caption below the comic:
:Happy approximate birthday to John Tukey, author of my favorite statistics quote, who was born 110.000 years ago sometime this week.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Statistics]]

3103: Exoplanet System

2025-06-18T21:47:30Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix spelling error

{{comic
| number = 3103
| date = June 16, 2025
| title = Exoplanet System
| image = exoplanet_system_2x.png
| imagesize = 623x447px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Sure, this exoplanet we discovered may seem hostile to life, but our calculations suggest it's actually in the accretion disc's habitable zone.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Explanations for the planets are incomplete and some categories are missing. [[explain xkcd:Editor FAQ#table|Do NOT create a table]], unless it is impossible to convey that information without it.}}
{{w|Exoplanet}}s are planets outside the Sun's {{w|Solar System}}. As astronomers discover more and more of these, they are finding all kinds of weird and unexpected examples, often with unusual and interesting physical properties, necessitating the introduction of new categorisations to describe them. Here, [[Randall]] presents a depiction of a hypothetical star system containing many exoplanets of different exotic types. Most of these are entirely imaginary, and some are outright nonsensical.

A number of the planet descriptions reference the potential habitability. This attracts a lot of attention, particularly in the media and popular imagination, both because it suggests a higher potential for finding extraterrestrial life of a form we might more easily recognise, and because such planets might potentially be examined as candidates for future {{w|space colonization}}. Unfortunately, for many hopefuls, there are a number of specific conditions required for Earth life to survive, and there are many possible ways for space to be inhospitable to life. As a result, most exoplanets that have been discovered have conditions that make it nearly impossible for humans to survive, and difficult for any life form as we know it to exist. The examples here illustrate (in an exaggerated fashion) some of the many frustrations astronomers face when analyzing planets and getting their hopes up, only to discover the planets they found are, sadly, nothing like Earth.

There are a total of 19 planets in the comic. Here are the explanations for each planet, in order of how far they are from the star:

;  Giant planet orbiting so close that it's actually rolling on the star's surface
: {{w|Giant planet}}s are often gravitationally pulled close to their star. Here, the planet is literally touching the star, which, given both bodies' gaseous makeup, should cause them to merge.

;  Hot Jupiter
: A {{w|Hot Jupiter}} is typical terminology used in analyzing exoplanets, generally depicting a {{w|gas giant}} (of a size similar to our {{w|Jupiter}} or {{w|Saturn}}) which orbits in a much closer/hotter orbit than our own. Hot Jupiters are easier to detect than many other types of exoplanets, due to both their gravitational effect on their stars and their dimming effect on their stars when they pass in front of it.

;  Planet that may actually be in the habitable zone, according to a very optimistic modeling paper by some desperate postdocs
: The {{w|habitable zone}} of a star is the range at which water is liquid. Notably, planets in the habitable zone are seen as options for colonization by humanity, which would mean greater funding for research. As such, researchers will go to great lengths to determine as many habitable planets as they can.

;  There's a pulsar here but it's probably fine
: A {{w|pulsar}} is a {{w|neutron star}} which emits beams of radiation while spinning very fast. The intensity of this radiation makes it extremely difficult for any form of life to exist in the system. This is in addition to the {{w|gravitational instability}}, and excess heat that the pulsar would produce. The mass of a neutron star, this close to the visible star, means that any planets could not be simply in orbit around the latter. This lends a substantial level of irony to the "probably fine" comment. Also, it means that this system is technically a {{w|binary star}}. Also neutron stars are remnants of a {{w|Supernova}} explosion, which means it is actually unlikely there would be any planets left this close to the stars. And even if they could have survived they would have been sterilized.

;  A waterworld paradise with beautiful oceans and warm— wait, no, we just got new measurements, it's a hellish steam oven
: In any scientific field, new information may turn previously established knowledge on its head. Exoplanet research is no different, and a planet that at first seems to be habitable might turn out to be an incredibly deadly {{w|steam world}}. An example of this can be found in our own solar system with {{w|Venus}}, which was known to have clouds as early as the 1700s and was speculated to be habitable — but later, in the 1960s, those clouds were found to be made of steaming hot {{w|sulfuric acid}}.

;  Planet that could be habitable, if there's a form of life that hates water but loves acid and being on fire
: Scientists remain open to the possibility that life might form from different conditions than those found on Earth. That said, the speculation that life on this planet must "love acid and being on fire" is more than a little sarcastic. Possibly to a reference to the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|30|Interplanetary Cessna}}'', in which Randall points out that the atmosphere on Venus is pretty survivable at 55km, except for the sulfuric acid, and way too hot at the surface.

;  Mini Neptune
: "Jupiter" and "Neptune" are rough size/mass categories for gas giants with a mass similar to Jupiter versus {{w|Neptune}}/{{w|Uranus}}. A {{w|mini-Neptune}} would be smaller than Neptune, possibly small enough not to be a gas giant at all.

;  Lukewarm Jupiter
: A humorous extrapolation of Hot Jupiters, assuming that there are other named types of Jupiters. The French Wikipedia has [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_ti%C3%A8de an article on warm Jupiters].

;  Planet whose atmosphere is confirmed to contain atoms
: With interstellar distances, it is inevitable that some planets will be hard to get a read on. Here, the astronomers can only confirm the planet has an atmosphere, not what it is made of or how thick it is. If it has an atmosphere at all, there are very few options ''except'' for that to be composed of atoms.
:Possibly in reference to headlines about exoplanets whose atmospheres contain molecules that may indicate biological life, but extrapolated to comedic levels of vagueness. A similar 'too cautious' approach to the data can be seen in [[2359: Evidence of Alien Life]].

;  Earthlike data artifact
: An {{w|Artifact (error)|artifact}} in this context is any error where it looks like something exists when it actually doesn't. This may be caused by faults in the equipment, or by other activity that looks similar to a planet signal. In this case the astronomers thought they detected an {{w|Earth-like planet}}, only to discover it was a data artifact. There have been several such cases already, for example {{w|Gliese 581g}}, which was considered to be the most Earthlike planet discovered at the time, before more detailed analysis concluded it didn't exist. Either that, or it has turned out that {{w|Simulation_hypothesis|Earth itself is a data artifact}}, which would raise {{w|Epistemology|epistemological}} questions about the whole endeavour of studying the universe.

;  Cold Jupiter
: Implicitly the opposite of a "Hot Jupiter" described above. Used here as another extension of the "Hot Jupiters" running gag, "Cold Jupiters" is occasionally used in real astronomy but is fairly informal. The French Wikipedia has [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_froid an article on cold Jupiters].

;  Potentially habitable void
: It seems that the part of this system that would be ideal for habitable planetary conditions does not actually contain any planets. This would make it much harder to actually inhabit (the notional inhabitants would have to build a world to live on, and would have nowhere to easily locate themselves while the building was in progress), to the implied frustration of the astronomers. Confusingly, the illustration of the void is as a patch that crosses several of the planetary orbits. Since it cannot remain a void if a planet passes through it, this suggests it is an object (or rather a lack of objects) that orbits in its own right. This is not normally how habitable zones work — they are usually a span of potential orbits, forming a {{w|Annulus (mathematics)|ring}} (or {{w|Spherical shell|shell}}) around the star. Additionally, this region is positioned right between Cold Jupiter and Hot Mars, implying that it is in between hot and cold, and between gaseous and rocky, being closer to Earth conditions.

;  Hot Mars
: Continuing the joke on Hot Jupiter. This assumes that if there's hot Jupiters, there must be a "hot" variant of every planet, including {{w|Mars}}.

;  Faint dust cloud that will cause several papers to be retracted
: This is in reference to the {{w|astronomical transit}} method of discovering planets by measuring periodic dips in brightness of the central star, done by missions like the {{w|Kepler space telescope}}. It turns out that not all variations in brightness are caused by planets, much to the disappointment of overeager data analysts and science news reporters; see, for example, {{w|Fomalhaut b}}, a former proposed exoplanet that turned out to be a dust cloud, or {{w|Tabby's Star}}, a star with odd irregular dimming pattern likely due to a dust cloud which was briefly thought by some to be an alien megastructure.

;  Either a gas giant or a fist-sized rock, depending upon which calibration method you use
: Scientific instruments, including telescopes, must be calibrated in various ways, and different calibration methods can lead to different corrections applied to raw data and hence different values for calibrated data. This is exaggerated in the comic to make a raw observation emerge from the calibration correction process as two objects of vastly different size - a range of uncertainty between tens of thousands of kilometers and a few centimeters, perhaps nine orders of magnitude. This is not particularly precise, even for a [[2205: Types of Approximation|cosmologist]]. Also, a "fist-sized rock" would be impossible to detect around a distant star using current technology; it would be difficult to spot {{w|Russell's teapot|something of this size}} around {{w|Sun|''our own'' star}}.

;  Mini Pluto
: {{w|Pluto}} is already significantly smaller than most planets, thus its designation as a "{{w|dwarf planet}}". A "mini Pluto" suggests an exoplanet that shares most of Pluto's features, but is somehow ''even smaller''.

;  Wet Saturn
: May be a reference to the 'fact' that "Saturn would float in water" {{w|Saturn#Physical characteristics|due to its density}}. The difficulty of finding a practical way to test this notwithstanding, perhaps someone managed it with this planet.

;  Planet whose surface may host conditions suitable for rocks
: As with the above planet whose atmosphere "contains atoms," this planet is too difficult to get a read on, and the measurements are still so vague that it's unknown whether this planet is a rocky planet or a gas/{{w|ice giant}}. This is also a play on the holy grail of exo-planet research -- finding a planet whose surface hosts conditions suitable for ''life''. It's not impossible that that would involve [https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Horta living rocks], but that would impose a {{w|Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry#Silicon_biochemistry|different set of environmental restrictions}} from those for the carbon-based life we're familiar with.

;  Somehow this whole system is smaller than the orbit of Mercury?!
: No planet, or anything other than an orbital path, shown. But apparently an indicator that all the rest of the given orbits (for Jupiter-likes, Mars-likes, dust clouds, etc., and even semi-inconvenient pulsars) exist within a planetary system that is ''extremely'' compact, fitting into a volume of space the size of that between our Sun and the orbit of its nearest planet, {{w|Mercury}}.

: This is likely a reference to the fact that many exoplanets located so far have been in even tighter orbits around their star than Mercury is with the Sun. It is worth noting, however, that this is likely to be observational bias, as large and tightly orbiting planets have a significantly larger (and hence easier to identify) effect on their parent star. There are likely many small and more distantly orbiting exoplanets that we are simply unable to observe effectively at this time.

: This is also likely a reference to the fact that the majority of stars in our galaxy are red dwarf stars, which are much cooler and dimmer than our sun. This means that the habitable zone and a wide range of solar irradiance can be found within a smaller radius from the star.

; Title text
: The title text mentions a planet within an {{w|accretion disk}}, which means that the planet is passing through material inspiraling into some significantly more massive object and is likely inspiraling itself from resistive effects of passing through said material. Nevertheless, the researcher speaking assures us that the planet is in the disk's habitable zone, implying it is a worthwhile option for colonization. This is despite the observed location being likely temporary as the planet's orbit inspirals closer and closer to the central object, to say nothing of the likely constant bombardment of debris and potential radiation depending on how massive the central object is and how dense the accretion disk is.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|This transcript sucks because I used AI, but it's a start. Feel free to discard it.}}

:[Central diagram showing a star with various planets and objects orbiting around it, with labels and descriptions connected by dotted lines:]

:[Label pointing to a large planet very close to the star:]

:Giant planet orbiting so close that it's actually rolling on the star's surface

:[Label pointing to a small object near the star:]

:Hot Jupiter

:[Label pointing to a small object:]

:Mini Neptune

:[Label pointing to a planet in the middle distance:]

:Planet that could be habitable, if there's a form of life that hates water but loves acid and being on fire

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Cold Jupiter

:[Label pointing to a circled area:]

:Potentially habitable void

:[Label pointing to another planet:]

:Hot Mars

:[Label pointing to a planet:]

:Planet that may actually be in the habitable zone, according to a very optimistic modeling paper by some desperate postdocs

:[Label pointing to a small object:]

:There's a pulsar here but it's probably fine

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:A waterworld paradise with beautiful oceans and warm-- wait, no, we just got new measurements, it's a hellish steam oven

:[Label pointing to a small object:]

:Mini Pluto

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Lukewarm Jupiter

:[Label pointing to a planet:]

:Planet whose atmosphere is confirmed to contain atoms

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Earthlike data artifact

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Wet Saturn

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Either a gas giant or a fist-sized rock, depending which calibration method you use

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Faint dust cloud that will cause several papers to be retracted

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Somehow this whole system is smaller than the orbit of Mercury?!

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Planet whose surface may host conditions suitable for rocks

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Exoplanets]]

3103: Exoplanet System

2025-06-18T21:45:33Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Add additional detection effect to gas giant stars

{{comic
| number = 3103
| date = June 16, 2025
| title = Exoplanet System
| image = exoplanet_system_2x.png
| imagesize = 623x447px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Sure, this exoplanet we discovered may seem hostile to life, but our calculations suggest it's actually in the accretion disc's habitable zone.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Explanations for the planets are incomplete and some categories are missing. [[explain xkcd:Editor FAQ#table|Do NOT create a table]], unless it is impossible to convey that information without it.}}
{{w|Exoplanet}}s are planets outside the Sun's {{w|Solar System}}. As astronomers discover more and more of these, they are finding all kinds of weird and unexpected examples, often with unusual and interesting physical properties, necessitating the introduction of new categorisations to describe them. Here, [[Randall]] presents a depiction of a hypothetical star system containing many exoplanets of different exotic types. Most of these are entirely imaginary, and some are outright nonsensical.

A number of the planet descriptions reference the potential habitability. This attracts a lot of attention, particularly in the media and popular imagination, both because it suggests a higher potential for finding extraterrestrial life of a form we might more easily recognise, and because such planets might potentially be examined as candidates for future {{w|space colonization}}. Unfortunately, for many hopefuls, there are a number of specific conditions required for Earth life to survive, and there are many possible ways for space to be inhospitable to life. As a result, most exoplanets that have been discovered have conditions that make it nearly impossible for humans to survive, and difficult for any life form as we know it to exist. The examples here illustrate (in an exaggerated fashion) some of the many frustrations astronomers face when analyzing planets and getting their hopes up, only to discover the planets they found are, sadly, nothing like Earth.

There are a total of 19 planets in the comic. Here are the explanations for each planet, in order of how far they are from the star:

;  Giant planet orbiting so close that it's actually rolling on the star's surface
: {{w|Giant planet}}s are often gravitationally pulled close to their star. Here, the planet is literally touching the star, which, given both bodies' gaseous makeup, should cause them to merge.

;  Hot Jupiter
: A {{w|Hot Jupiter}} is typical terminology used in analyzing exoplanets, generally depicting a {{w|gas giant}} (of a size similar to our {{w|Jupiter}} or {{w|Saturn}}) which orbits in a much closer/hotter orbit than our own. Hot Jupiters are easier to detect than many other types of exoplanets, due to both their gravitational effect on their stars and their dimming effect on their stars when they pass in front of it.

;  Planet that may actually be in the habitable zone, according to a very optimistic modeling paper by some desperate postdocs
: The {{w|habitable zone}} of a star is the range at which water is liquid. Notably, planets in the habitable zone are seen as options for colonization by humanity, which would mean greater funding for research. As such, researchers will go to great lengths to determine as many habitable planets as they can.

;  There's a pulsar here but it's probably fine
: A {{w|pulsar}} is a {{w|neutron star}} which emits beams of radiation while spinning very fast. The intensity of this radiation makes it extremely difficult for any form of life to exist in the system. This is in addition to the {{w|gravitational instability}}, and excess heat that the pulsar would produce. The mass of a neutron star, this close to the visible star, means that any planets could not be simply in orbit around the latter. This lends a substantial level of irony to the "probably fine" comment. Also, it means that this system is technically a {{w|binary star}}. Also neutron stars are remanentes of a {{w|Supernova}} explosion, which means it is actually unlikely there would be any planets left this close to the stars. And even if they could have survived they would have been sterilized.

;  A waterworld paradise with beautiful oceans and warm— wait, no, we just got new measurements, it's a hellish steam oven
: In any scientific field, new information may turn previously established knowledge on its head. Exoplanet research is no different, and a planet that at first seems to be habitable might turn out to be an incredibly deadly {{w|steam world}}. An example of this can be found in our own solar system with {{w|Venus}}, which was known to have clouds as early as the 1700s and was speculated to be habitable — but later, in the 1960s, those clouds were found to be made of steaming hot {{w|sulfuric acid}}.

;  Planet that could be habitable, if there's a form of life that hates water but loves acid and being on fire
: Scientists remain open to the possibility that life might form from different conditions than those found on Earth. That said, the speculation that life on this planet must "love acid and being on fire" is more than a little sarcastic. Possibly to a reference to the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|30|Interplanetary Cessna}}'', in which Randall points out that the atmosphere on Venus is pretty survivable at 55km, except for the sulfuric acid, and way too hot at the surface.

;  Mini Neptune
: "Jupiter" and "Neptune" are rough size/mass categories for gas giants with a mass similar to Jupiter versus {{w|Neptune}}/{{w|Uranus}}. A {{w|mini-Neptune}} would be smaller than Neptune, possibly small enough not to be a gas giant at all.

;  Lukewarm Jupiter
: A humorous extrapolation of Hot Jupiters, assuming that there are other named types of Jupiters. The French Wikipedia has [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_ti%C3%A8de an article on warm Jupiters].

;  Planet whose atmosphere is confirmed to contain atoms
: With interstellar distances, it is inevitable that some planets will be hard to get a read on. Here, the astronomers can only confirm the planet has an atmosphere, not what it is made of or how thick it is. If it has an atmosphere at all, there are very few options ''except'' for that to be composed of atoms.
:Possibly in reference to headlines about exoplanets whose atmospheres contain molecules that may indicate biological life, but extrapolated to comedic levels of vagueness. A similar 'too cautious' approach to the data can be seen in [[2359: Evidence of Alien Life]].

;  Earthlike data artifact
: An {{w|Artifact (error)|artifact}} in this context is any error where it looks like something exists when it actually doesn't. This may be caused by faults in the equipment, or by other activity that looks similar to a planet signal. In this case the astronomers thought they detected an {{w|Earth-like planet}}, only to discover it was a data artifact. There have been several such cases already, for example {{w|Gliese 581g}}, which was considered to be the most Earthlike planet discovered at the time, before more detailed analysis concluded it didn't exist. Either that, or it has turned out that {{w|Simulation_hypothesis|Earth itself is a data artifact}}, which would raise {{w|Epistemology|epistemological}} questions about the whole endeavour of studying the universe.

;  Cold Jupiter
: Implicitly the opposite of a "Hot Jupiter" described above. Used here as another extension of the "Hot Jupiters" running gag, "Cold Jupiters" is occasionally used in real astronomy but is fairly informal. The French Wikipedia has [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_froid an article on cold Jupiters].

;  Potentially habitable void
: It seems that the part of this system that would be ideal for habitable planetary conditions does not actually contain any planets. This would make it much harder to actually inhabit (the notional inhabitants would have to build a world to live on, and would have nowhere to easily locate themselves while the building was in progress), to the implied frustration of the astronomers. Confusingly, the illustration of the void is as a patch that crosses several of the planetary orbits. Since it cannot remain a void if a planet passes through it, this suggests it is an object (or rather a lack of objects) that orbits in its own right. This is not normally how habitable zones work — they are usually a span of potential orbits, forming a {{w|Annulus (mathematics)|ring}} (or {{w|Spherical shell|shell}}) around the star. Additionally, this region is positioned right between Cold Jupiter and Hot Mars, implying that it is in between hot and cold, and between gaseous and rocky, being closer to Earth conditions.

;  Hot Mars
: Continuing the joke on Hot Jupiter. This assumes that if there's hot Jupiters, there must be a "hot" variant of every planet, including {{w|Mars}}.

;  Faint dust cloud that will cause several papers to be retracted
: This is in reference to the {{w|astronomical transit}} method of discovering planets by measuring periodic dips in brightness of the central star, done by missions like the {{w|Kepler space telescope}}. It turns out that not all variations in brightness are caused by planets, much to the disappointment of overeager data analysts and science news reporters; see, for example, {{w|Fomalhaut b}}, a former proposed exoplanet that turned out to be a dust cloud, or {{w|Tabby's Star}}, a star with odd irregular dimming pattern likely due to a dust cloud which was briefly thought by some to be an alien megastructure.

;  Either a gas giant or a fist-sized rock, depending upon which calibration method you use
: Scientific instruments, including telescopes, must be calibrated in various ways, and different calibration methods can lead to different corrections applied to raw data and hence different values for calibrated data. This is exaggerated in the comic to make a raw observation emerge from the calibration correction process as two objects of vastly different size - a range of uncertainty between tens of thousands of kilometers and a few centimeters, perhaps nine orders of magnitude. This is not particularly precise, even for a [[2205: Types of Approximation|cosmologist]]. Also, a "fist-sized rock" would be impossible to detect around a distant star using current technology; it would be difficult to spot {{w|Russell's teapot|something of this size}} around {{w|Sun|''our own'' star}}.

;  Mini Pluto
: {{w|Pluto}} is already significantly smaller than most planets, thus its designation as a "{{w|dwarf planet}}". A "mini Pluto" suggests an exoplanet that shares most of Pluto's features, but is somehow ''even smaller''.

;  Wet Saturn
: May be a reference to the 'fact' that "Saturn would float in water" {{w|Saturn#Physical characteristics|due to its density}}. The difficulty of finding a practical way to test this notwithstanding, perhaps someone managed it with this planet.

;  Planet whose surface may host conditions suitable for rocks
: As with the above planet whose atmosphere "contains atoms," this planet is too difficult to get a read on, and the measurements are still so vague that it's unknown whether this planet is a rocky planet or a gas/{{w|ice giant}}. This is also a play on the holy grail of exo-planet research -- finding a planet whose surface hosts conditions suitable for ''life''. It's not impossible that that would involve [https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Horta living rocks], but that would impose a {{w|Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry#Silicon_biochemistry|different set of environmental restrictions}} from those for the carbon-based life we're familiar with.

;  Somehow this whole system is smaller than the orbit of Mercury?!
: No planet, or anything other than an orbital path, shown. But apparently an indicator that all the rest of the given orbits (for Jupiter-likes, Mars-likes, dust clouds, etc., and even semi-inconvenient pulsars) exist within a planetary system that is ''extremely'' compact, fitting into a volume of space the size of that between our Sun and the orbit of its nearest planet, {{w|Mercury}}.

: This is likely a reference to the fact that many exoplanets located so far have been in even tighter orbits around their star than Mercury is with the Sun. It is worth noting, however, that this is likely to be observational bias, as large and tightly orbiting planets have a significantly larger (and hence easier to identify) effect on their parent star. There are likely many small and more distantly orbiting exoplanets that we are simply unable to observe effectively at this time.

: This is also likely a reference to the fact that the majority of stars in our galaxy are red dwarf stars, which are much cooler and dimmer than our sun. This means that the habitable zone and a wide range of solar irradiance can be found within a smaller radius from the star.

; Title text
: The title text mentions a planet within an {{w|accretion disk}}, which means that the planet is passing through material inspiraling into some significantly more massive object and is likely inspiraling itself from resistive effects of passing through said material. Nevertheless, the researcher speaking assures us that the planet is in the disk's habitable zone, implying it is a worthwhile option for colonization. This is despite the observed location being likely temporary as the planet's orbit inspirals closer and closer to the central object, to say nothing of the likely constant bombardment of debris and potential radiation depending on how massive the central object is and how dense the accretion disk is.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|This transcript sucks because I used AI, but it's a start. Feel free to discard it.}}

:[Central diagram showing a star with various planets and objects orbiting around it, with labels and descriptions connected by dotted lines:]

:[Label pointing to a large planet very close to the star:]

:Giant planet orbiting so close that it's actually rolling on the star's surface

:[Label pointing to a small object near the star:]

:Hot Jupiter

:[Label pointing to a small object:]

:Mini Neptune

:[Label pointing to a planet in the middle distance:]

:Planet that could be habitable, if there's a form of life that hates water but loves acid and being on fire

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Cold Jupiter

:[Label pointing to a circled area:]

:Potentially habitable void

:[Label pointing to another planet:]

:Hot Mars

:[Label pointing to a planet:]

:Planet that may actually be in the habitable zone, according to a very optimistic modeling paper by some desperate postdocs

:[Label pointing to a small object:]

:There's a pulsar here but it's probably fine

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:A waterworld paradise with beautiful oceans and warm-- wait, no, we just got new measurements, it's a hellish steam oven

:[Label pointing to a small object:]

:Mini Pluto

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Lukewarm Jupiter

:[Label pointing to a planet:]

:Planet whose atmosphere is confirmed to contain atoms

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Earthlike data artifact

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Wet Saturn

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Either a gas giant or a fist-sized rock, depending which calibration method you use

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Faint dust cloud that will cause several papers to be retracted

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Somehow this whole system is smaller than the orbit of Mercury?!

:[Label pointing to another object:]

:Planet whose surface may host conditions suitable for rocks

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Exoplanets]]

Talk:3102: Reading a Big Number

2025-06-15T16:05:58Z

Ianrbibtitlht: LOL

avrayter [[User:Avrayter|Avrayter]] ([[User talk:Avrayter|talk]]) 12:27, 13 June 2025 (UTC) how do you add links

Is the final character a 6, or is it a theta? [[Special:Contributions/2A02:F6E:A36E:0:F0F1:E624:A18C:EDC2|2A02:F6E:A36E:0:F0F1:E624:A18C:EDC2]] 14:05, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
: The across line is curvy, so most likely a "6". [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 14:14, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

I would have to fire any programmer that output hex in lowercase (or put commas in triplets for hex). [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 14:14, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
: You may be firing about half of the programmers then :) I don't think there is a rule here, both forms are common, but I guess that there are holy wars to fight. [[Special:Contributions/90.73.80.27|90.73.80.27]] 15:41, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
::I don't care how it is stored in source code, either decimal, hex, binary, etc., upper or lower is fine. The output on screen, if hex, should always be in upper case. If grouped, hex is in groups of 4 and never commas. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 12:58, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

r/unexpectedfactorial Randall Monroe, shame on you!

Surely this is just one line of a CSV file... [[Special:Contributions/86.144.197.52|86.144.197.52]] 15:51, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
: That is actually a strong justification!! I'd like to see the headers, tho xD
: Also an unusual and possibly broken CSV. 000 values are uncommon (they are usually just 0), and the " (or <nowiki>''</nowiki>) may be used for quoting. There is no way to tell how it will parse as CSV is not a well defined format. There is a standard, RFC 4180, but it is not always followed. [[Special:Contributions/90.73.80.27|90.73.80.27]] 18:03, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
: could be CSFWV = comma-separated-and-fixed-width-values where the values are also 0-padded so that it works in both their CSV parsers and their fixed-width parsers for compatibility. [[Special:Contributions/74.202.210.170|74.202.210.170]] 19:19, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Remember, kids: always end your strings with a NUL [[Special:Contributions/93.36.184.28|93.36.184.28]] 15:56, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

By my reckoning, if you set a 78RPM record playing, and waited for it to have spun the amount of arcseconds specified (by that point in the "number", you'd be waiting a tad over 7 ''billion'' times the current age of the universe. I might have erred by a magnifude or three (forgot if I divided number of days down to get number of years, etc, and I much prefer to work with Long Scale billions, so maybe I did it slightly wrong when working with the inferior kind), but... Well, it doesn't really matter ''quite'' so much, I suspect. ;) [[Special:Contributions/82.132.246.216|82.132.246.216]] 17:11, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

I remember, years ago, seeing calculators using single quotes as thousands-separators. But never a double-quote. Interestingly, the C++ standard (as of the 2014 release) permits single-quote characters as an arbitrary digit separator for numeric literals. They are ignored by the compiler, but can be useful for making code more readable (e.g. every 3 decimal digits or every 4 hex digits). See also https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/integer_literal.html. [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 19:02, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Apart from the quotation mark, this still matches [my hex number regex](https://stackoverflow.com/a/76696505/6743127). [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 19:22, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Oooh, looks like an IPv9 address, but they're using ',' instead of '🕴️' to separate triplets for some reason. The clusters with an extra leading 0 indicate that they're in octal instead of base64. -- [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 21:26, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Randall, how in tarnations did you find out my password? 08:38, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

If you turn #c2ef46 into a color https://www.perbang.dk/rgb/c2ef46/, it's a brilliant lime green. [[User:Dogman15|Dogman15]] ([[User talk:Dogman15|talk]]) 10:05, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
: If you add the decimal representation of the RGB color, you get 503 - awfully close to 504.[[User:Lopped|Lopped]] ([[User talk:Lopped|talk]]) 14:38, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Wait, why does the table jump straight from billions to quadrillions? Where's trillions? Is this an error or one of those UK-vs-US-billion situations?
[[Special:Contributions/185.231.139.156|185.231.139.156]] 18:34, 14 June 2025 (UTC) Oh! It's because the comic doesn't comment on the 'trillions' comma. I get it now. It's 'cause I'm dumb.[[Special:Contributions/185.231.139.156|185.231.139.156]] 18:37, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
:LOL, nice recovery! [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 16:05, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

I always start at the right and work to the left. So then when I actually start reciting what the number is, I know if it's quintillions – or whatever – that I'm dealing with. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 11:01, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

3102: Reading a Big Number

2025-06-15T16:02:54Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix typo

{{comic
| number = 3102
| date = June 13, 2025
| title = Reading a Big Number
| image = reading_a_big_number_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x438px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = [desperately] Maybe this is from some country where they use commas as decimal points, and also as digit separators after the decimal, and also use random other characters for decoration???
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently by An Accidentally Escaped Quotation Mark. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This comic expresses [[Randall]]'s reactions to reading {{w|large number}}s. It starts with normal digits and commas you would find in a large number, but gradually becomes more and more chaotic. It turns out that this is not a number at all, but some sort of printing error in whatever Randall is reading.

The very start of the comic is a bit absurd. In most cases, you can tell that a number like this is very large because of how long it is when written out; you wouldn't have to completely reinterpret it at the end of ''every'' group of digits. However, to tell exactly which "-illion" the number falls into, you would have to count the groups, and the scale of such a large number would grow less familiar as you try to keep track of how large it even is. Certain sizes of numbers tend to show up in specific contexts, like {{w|astronomy}}. So, rather than literally showing Randall's developing thoughts on the evidently massive size of this number, the comic also shows how he tends to interpret numbers at each possible "-illion" scale. See detailed explanation of Randall's thoughts in the [[#Table of thoughts|table]] below, where the title text is also explained.

There are a few possible explanations for seeing a number like this appear in a software application. It may have appeared due to an out-of-bounds read operation where the computer tries to interpret unrelated data as text. Another possible explanation is misuse of the {{w|printf}} function in the {{w|C programming language}}. If strings passed to printf do not contain a {{w|null byte}} to terminate the string, it will go further into memory, again into unrelated data. Or the programmer might have several printf statements back to back, forgetting that printf doesn't add newlines (like the println function in other programming languages), so all their debug information gets printed on the same line. If the alternating grouping into 4 and 3 digits and the double quote are left aside, it is possible that the whole number is hexadecimal and even bigger than its size indicates at first.

==Table of thoughts==
{| class="wikitable"
! Number fragment !! Thought !! Explanation
|-
| 54 || 54! Great! I know that number. Solid start. || 54 is a number with some real-world familiarity for most people. It is small enough to appear on digital clocks, and has enough factors to be listed on standard multiplication tables as 6 × 9.

Randall pretending to reckon with the start of such a large number is probably meant to draw attention to the meaninglessness of doing so. Unless the exact value is somehow important, most readers wouldn't find much of a meaningful difference between "54 zillion" or "over 50 zillion", or even "zillions and zillions". In practice, the brain {{w|Approximate number system|can only approximate}} numbers this large; the {{w|Just-noticeable difference|threshold needed to tell the difference}} between the amounts that they represent is too high. Randall expresses a similar sentiment once he gets to the trillions and quadrillions.
|-
| ,000 (thousand) || Oh, a comma and some zeros. Cool. Must be at least 54 thousand. || Underselling how long the number is with the "at least a thousand", but is a fair thought from the POV of not being able to know how long the number is.
|-
| ,000 (million) || A second comma! I wonder if we're talking population or money. || Excitement from how large the number must be. {{w|Population}}s (like the number of people in a region) and large sums of money are both often measured in millions.
|-
| ,000 (billion) || Yikes! If this is money, it's a lot of money. || Three commas means a number in the billions. That's a lot of money for one person to have. Big decisions by large corporations, such as {{w|megamerger}}s, are often measured in billions of dollars in costs.
|-
| ,000,000 (quadrillion) || Why am I reading this? Whatever this number is, I'm not going to be able to visualize it. || Five commas is a number in the quadrillions. At this point the number is too big for human minds to comprehend.
|-
| ,000 (quintillion) || All right, either someone made a unit conversion error or this is one of those incomprehensible astronomy numbers. || Astronomy often deals with extremely large numbers due to the incredible scale of the universe. For example, the distance to the Andromeda galaxy in kilometers could be numbered in quintillions. Alternatively, the person calculating the number made a mistake. Regarding the unit conversion there has recently been a comic about such a thing in [[3065: Square Units]] and similar mistakes have been used in [[2585: Rounding]].
|-
| ,0000 (!?) || Oh no. Is this a misplaced comma or an extra zero? I guess we'll see if the next group has two zeros or three. If it's two, we can at least hope the digits are right. || Commas are placed every three digits in {{w|Decimal separator#Digit grouping|typical western usage}} (although not necessarily in various other {{w|Indian numbering system#Decimal formatting|cultures}}), so something is wrong. However, it might simply be that someone misplaced the comma to the right, meaning that this group has four digits and the next one would likely have two (the next comma in the 'correct' place). If the next group is three, then either the commas are now ''all'' misplaced or possibly someone/something just doubled up a zero by accident. A mistake of any kind makes one think that the number may not actually be accurate but, if the former, at least it might just be a relatively unimportant transposition.
|-
| ,0000 || Oh no. || A second group of four zeroes means it's not a typo. Something is seriously wrong. Note that some countries like [https://www.aceninja.sg/insights/2025/01/01/understanding-chinese-cultural-nuances-numerals China] or [https://www.kanpai-japan.com/learn-japanese/how-to-count-in-japanese Japan] (where 4-digit groupings are common) or [https://www.cuemath.com/numbers/indian-place-value-chart/ India] (which uses a unique 2- and 3-digit mixed system) may use non 3-digit groupings, but have their own rules for number groupings.
|-
| ,054 || What is happening. || Big numbers are normally rounded, so it's very strange to see a non-zero value this far down in the place values. Also, "54" matches the digits at the start of the number so it could indicate the number was copied incorrectly. The non-zero digits here imply that all of the digits so far, including the zeroes, are {{w|significant figures}}; the number is not only extremely large, but implausibly precise with at least 30 sig figs. By way of comparison, the diameter of the observable universe is about 4.4 × 1026 m, and if that measurement had 30 sig figs, it would be precise to about half a millimeter.
|-
| ,000"000 || Someone messed up real bad. || The arcsecond mark " (more properly written as a {{w|double prime}} symbol, ″) indicates that this number is an angle or a distance in inches. For an angle, even accounting for how small an arcsecond is (1/3600th of a degree), this angle would be a huge number of rotations. As for inches, it would represent a distance much larger than the observable universe, though it is uncommon to use customary units like inches in conjunction with large numbers.

Alternatively, this could be "to-the-11th-power" (…00011 000…), which would make the already extremely large number extremely ridiculously big.

This could also be a sign of bad copy-pasting, where the quotation mark " was accidentally copied along with the large number but not with a matching one. Or if this number was being printed from a computer program, the mark may be a sign that the closing quote around a computer string was accidentally {{w|Escape character|escaped}}, causing it to be interpreted as a literal written quote mark character to be included in the string, rather than a special symbol marking the end of the string.
|-
| ,00c2ef46 || Someone messed up real bad and I hope it wasn't me. || Numbers normally only use the digits 0–9. The presence of the letters c, e, and f suggests that this number is written in {{w|hexadecimal}}, or {{w|Radix|base}} 16, where going up one place represents multiplying by sixteen instead of ten. Instead of ten possible digits for each place, there need to be sixteen: after 9, you count A, B, C, D, E, F, before carrying over to 10. Hexadecimal is mostly used by computers, so Randall, as a programmer, might be worried that the hexadecimal appearing is his fault. Seeing a long string of unexpected characters may indicate a memory bug, such as a ''{{w|buffer overflow}}''. These bugs can lead to crashes, data corruption, and security vulnerabilities, which Randall would rather not be responsible for.

If not for the c and f, the letter e could also be read as {{w|E notation}}, a shorthand for {{w|scientific notation}} in many calculators and computer programs. There, "e" means "times ten {{w|to the power of}}", so …00e46 (= …00 × 1046) would add 46 more zeros to the value of the preceding number. However, usually the number would be {{w|Normalized number|normalized}} to have a single digit before a decimal part, changing any extra digits into a bigger {{w|Power of 10|exponent of ten}}, such as 5.4e84 (= 5.4 × 1084). The point of normalization is to make it easier to compare the magnitudes of very large and very small numbers, so that the reader doesn't need to count digits in the first place.
|-
| (title text) || [desperately] Maybe this is from some country where they use commas as decimal points, and also as digit separators after the decimal, and also use random other characters for decoration??? || In the United States, UK, India, China, Korea, Japan, and other countries, the dot is used to separate the integer part of a number from its fractional part. However, most of mainland Europe and South America uses the comma for this purpose. In some places, one may also see the period used to group digits. Since the final number is unreadable and potentially infinite, this implies that Randall has, naturally, made up an explanation instead of trying to figure out what was really happening.
|-
|}

==Transcript==
:[A large number is written along the middle of the panel. Above and below the number there are 10 labels, (5 above and 5 below), and from each label a small curved line points to a part of the number. There is a heading above the top labels:]
:<big>Thought process while reading a big number:</big>

:[The number is continuing off the edge of the comic to the right, the last digit is missing about a third:]
:'''<big>54,000,000,000,000,000,000,0000,0000,054,000"000,00c2ef46</big>'''

:[The labels are listed below in the reading order as from where the small lines are pointing on to the number, so both those above and below the number, not first all those above. Text in the brackets indicate where on the number the line is pointing:]

:[To the first two numbers before the first comma, label above the number:]
:54! Great! I know that number. Solid start.

:[To the first zero after the first comma, label below the number:]
:Oh, a comma and some zeros. Cool. Must be at least 54 thousand.

:[To the second comma, label above the number:]
:A second comma! I wonder if we're talking population or money.

:[To the third comma, label below the number:]
:Yikes! If this is money, it's a '''''lot''''' of money.

:[To the fifth comma, label above the number:]
:Why am I reading this? Whatever this number is, I'm not going to be able to visualize it.

:[To the sixth comma, label below the number:]
:All right, either someone made a unit conversion error or this is one of those incomprehensible astronomy numbers.

:[To the middle of a group of four zeros after the seventh comma, label above the number:]
:Oh no. Is this a misplaced comma or an extra zero? I guess we'll see if the next group has two zeros or three. If it's two, we can at least hope the digits are right.

:[To the middle of a group of four zeros after the eighth comma, label below the number:]
:Oh '''''no'''''.

:[To the last two numbers of the three digits after the ninth comma, label below the number:]
:What is happening.

:[To a quotation mark, where the eleventh comma should have been, label above the number:]
:Someone messed up real bad.

:[To the first number in a group with mixed alphanumeric numbers, where the thirteenth comma should have been, label below the number:]
:Someone messed up real bad and I hope it wasn't me.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

3093: Drafting

2025-05-23T19:58:27Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Fix grammar

{{comic
| number = 3093
| date = May 23, 2025
| title = Drafting
| image = drafting_2x.png
| imagesize = 317x518px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = A 5% efficiency gain at the cost of a 99% efficiency loss
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a bot that should not have tried this. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This is another one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category: Tips|Tips]], this time an Aerospace tip.

{{w|Drafting (aerodynamics)|Drafting}} is an aerodynamic technique where one moving object follows another one closely to reduce drag by using the first objects {{w|slipstream}}. It is used in various sports, most prominently {{w|cycling}}.

The comic explores the idea of using drafting for rockets and states that while it theoretically works, it isn't really recommended.

The title text gives more details on this, claiming that there is an efficiency gain of 5% through drafting via the general mechanism, it also comes with a 99% loss, likely because a drafting rocket would almost certainly be annihilated by the leading rocket.

Generally, this could be understood because land transportation is based on traction (pulling yourself along a surface via friction). At higher speeds (above 60km/h), the dominant force becomes wind drag. {{w|Energy-efficient driving}} at these higher speeds can be improved by drafting behind another vehicle. This doesn't apply to rockets because they do not move themselves via friction but rather via Newton's third law (throwing stuff backwards). This means that the front rocket would just push the back rocket against its own thrust (among other bad effects).

==Transcript==
:[A rocket with two boosters is launching going towards the top right corner. It has a two-stage core and two boosters, and they produce three flames from their exhaust and beneath these flames is a large exhaust plume fanning out behind the rocket most of the way towards the bottom of the panel. A smaller rocket is following the first rocket. It is very close to the first rocket, so most of the smaller rocket is inside the exhaust plume from the larger rocket. The smaller rocket does not have boosters, but still produces three smaller flames from its exhaust. Beneath these flames the smaller rocket also leaves a large but slimmer exhaust plume that exits the panel at the bottom left corner.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Aerospace tip: Although the technique reduces atmospheric drag for many types of vehicles, you should '''''never''''' try to improve rocket launch efficiency through drafting.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Tips]]
[[Category:Rockets]]

3092: Baker's Units

2025-05-22T03:35:45Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix grammar

{{comic
| number = 3092
| date = May 21, 2025
| title = Baker's Units
| image = bakers_units_2x.png
| imagesize = 349x310px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 169 is a baker's gross.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a baker's bot. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

A {{w|Dozen#Baker's_dozen|baker's dozen}} is 13 units of bakery goods, as opposed to the normal dozen meaning 12. That tradition began when salesmen in medieval times had to pay penalties (in some regions, draconian ones) when customers were sold one item short, or not enough weight. To avoid the customer complaints and the penalty, bakers added a safety margin that allowed them to still serve a dozen in a hurry: If a miscount happens the baker would have given out twelve rolls just as ordered; if no miscount happens the baker is just short of one inexpensive item).

Randall proceeds to apply this principle to other things comprised of 12 units, some with bizarre results:
* Imperial feet are 12 inches long; a baker's foot would be 13 inches long.
* Noon is 12:00 o'clock ("twelve hundred hours/Juliett" in 24-hour {{w|24-hour clock#Military time|military parlance}}); baker's noon would be 1 o'clock PM ("thirteen hundred hours", etc).
* Dodecahedra have 12 faces ("dodeca" = "twelve"). The best-known kind of {{w|dodecahedron}} is the regular dodecahedron, a {{w|Platonic solid}} whose faces are regular pentagons (the shape that most {{w|Dice#Polyhedral dice|d12}}s take the form of), but there are others such as the {{w|rhombic dodecahedron}} and {{w|Pyritohedron#Pyritohedron|pyritohedron}}. Baker's ones are tridecahedra with triangles, squares and pentagons (which are not Platonic solids and cannot be used as dice due to having multiple face types), rendering dice-based games unbalanced.
* Years have 12 months; a baker would celebrate New Year's Eve on January 31 (meaning that their New Year would shift forward each year).
* Octaves are comprised of 12 half-steps (a half-step is the distance between F and F#). A baker’s octave would have 13 half-steps (corresponding to a minor ninth) and cause problems in musical composition, as octaves (of the baker’s variety) would be dissonant, instead of being consonant. However, Randall's example is actually a ''major'' ninth, with ''fourteen'' half-steps. If he wanted thirteen half-steps, Randall could have used D♭ instead of D or drawn a bass clef instead of a treble clef.
* Trial juries in the Anglo-Saxon law tradition ({{w|Common Law}}) consist of 12 peers. The baker’s jury has 13 peers. This might be considered to make little practical difference, though it does mean that (in situations where a jury is allowed to present a majority verdict instead of requiring unanimity), the odd number of jurors would prevent exact ties. (Note that {{w|Trial by jury in Scotland|Scottish juries}}, in particular, start with the expectation of there being 15 jurors, and may well end up reduced to 13 or even 12.)
* The {{w|Flag of Europe}} has 12 stars forming a circle (as a symbol of harmony); unlike in the US flag, the stars do not represent member states. The flag was first adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955, when it already had 13 members - today there are over 40. The European Communities adopted the Flag of Europe in 1986 before the EC turned into the European Union. A 13th star (or a bread roll) could potentially be added to the baker's EU flag nevertheless without major damage to the symbol. Thirteen stars in a circle is associated with the {{Betsy Ross flag}}, the first US flag.
* Magnesium is the element with the ordinal number 12, aluminum is number 13 and a very different material.{{Citation needed}} "Baker's magnesium" actually has more applications in baking (namely, tinfoil, which is actually made of aluminum, not tin).
* In the title text, 144 (12x12) is a gross. 169 (13x13) would be a baker's gross, an addition of not just one but 25 units.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Math]]

Talk:3088: Deposition

2025-05-13T15:26:40Z

Ianrbibtitlht: deposition

--[[Special:Contributions/104.23.175.13|104.23.175.13]] 02:56, 13 May 2025 (UTC)')DROP TABLE Talk:3088:_Deposition;
:well done. no notes. [[user talk:lett‪herebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 03:58, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

--Stephen Hawking did about the same thing, throwing a party for time travellers. But nobody came. (also yes thats an undertale reference :D )--[[Special:Contributions/104.23.175.41|104.23.175.41]] 06:36, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Futurama reference? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.54|162.158.91.54]] 03:56, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
:[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_Inspection Lethal Inspection]], a Futurama episoded with Inspector No 5.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.194.187|172.68.194.187]] 07:40, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

This is definitely a comic that ''does'' have "set-in-stone explanations." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.81|162.158.155.81]] 06:40, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

I genuinely want to do this. Can anyone tell where I could find good locations, ones where rocks are likely to be preserved like in this comic? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.184|162.158.134.184]] 07:13, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

"Deposition", as in the title, can mean either taking sworn evidence (in a legal context) or depositing material (in a geologic context). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.179|172.68.54.179]] 07:49, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
:This would be typical of Randall's propensity for double meanings! I think it needs to be added to the explanation. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 11:10, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
::It doesn't really have anything to do with anything in the comic, though. It would be no more relevant than commenting that e.g. 'margin' can also relate to page layouts, or 'might' can relate to the amount of power someone has. The explanations are going to get very long and confusing if we start calling out all the alternative meanings of every single word used in them.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.229.139|172.68.229.139]] 13:39, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
:::I understand your point, but in this case I think one could view Ponytail's written message as a sworn statement of sorts, in addition to it also being a "deposition" in the rock substrate. I think Randall intended it as a double-meaning, as he does many times. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 15:26, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

It's really cool that we see these aliens in these crafts. If you look at the other times aliens have shown up in XKCD they appear to be generally the same aliens, or just a UFO, and this is an interesting synthesis of the two. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.27.180|172.68.27.180]] 14:13, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Related to No. 6 in https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1476:_Ceres? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.3.30|172.68.3.30]] 10:18, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

It's also possible that the last panel is underwater, the shale hasn't been raised, and the beings aren't using antigravity. That would make it harder to use the shovel and pick, though. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 14:44, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3088: Deposition

2025-05-13T11:10:17Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Comment on deposition

Talk:3072: Stargazing 4

2025-04-06T02:33:08Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Add response

Is it not possible and even likely, due to the simplistic nature of the dialog here, that the falling stars here in fact have nothing to do with black holes and merely refer to "falling stars"?
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.150.67|172.68.150.67]] 19:11, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
:I think they have to do with stars falling in to the black hole. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.17.125|172.69.17.125]] 00:53, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

First comic explanation I've done. This is... somewhat harder than what I expected. [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 02:46, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

To be clear, the comic says grains of sand on Earth's *beaches* which presumably excludes deserts and such. I think another joke with that panel might be that Earth has more sand than just the beaches.
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.31|108.162.212.31]] 03:21, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Randal is rarely wrong. Have we seen TDEs (tidal disruption events) for Sag A* or only for other supermassive black holes? --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.242.247|172.70.242.247]] 07:44, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't think the voice in the title text should be identified with Randall. Furthermore it is said that we haven't seen a star fall into a black hole, which is different from a TDE. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.102.194|172.71.102.194]] 08:23, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

She's back. SHE'S BACK!!!! /ref [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 09:10, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

This feels like Cunk on Space [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.123|141.101.99.123]] 11:06, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Indeed we never saw a TDE for Sag A* provided context for that --[[User:Trimutius|Trimutius]] ([[User talk:Trimutius|talk]]) 11:13, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

In the last panel and title text, Megan states it's hilarious when "stars" fall into black holes, that they can't leave Yelp reviews, and that she has a list of stars she hopes are next to fall in. Is it possible she's now conflating Hollywood stars (movie/TV personalities) with the celestial bodies? Like she has a list of entertainment personalities she bears a grudge against and wishes they would leave the country (or universe)? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.154|172.70.126.154]] 11:54, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Pat
:I myself had that very thought, thinking that this statement might be a double-entendre that refers to some people. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 02:33, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

3072: Stargazing 4

2025-04-05T21:26:48Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix grammar

{{comic
| number = 3072
| date = April 4, 2025
| title = Stargazing 4
| image = stargazing_4_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x386px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = We haven't actually seen a star fall in since we invented telescopes, but I have a list of ones I'm really hoping are next.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BAD YELP REVIEW. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This is the fourth comic in the [[:Category:Stargazing|Stargazing]] series, and it followed [[2274: Stargazing 3]] that came out five years before. That was the longest stretch between two comics in the series so far.

The host [[Megan]] begins the introduction by referencing rude {{w|Yelp}} reviews of her stargazing lessons. The reviewers doubt that she is actually a qualified astronomer due to how simplistic her lessons are; they claim she is just saying the words that come to mind.

Then she states that there are over 20 stars in the sky and some of them are over the age of 100. Both of these statements are true, but extreme understatements. A few thousand stars are visible to the unaided eye under good viewing conditions. Stars are typically billions of years old. Though in a city there could be less than 20 stars visible even in a clear night; in a normal stargazing session the event should though be moved to a place with as little light pollution as possible. [[1556: The Sky|Daylight or clouds]] may further reduce visible stars. Although, given the unprofessional nature of Megan's lessons, there is no guarantee that it does not take place in a city.

Megan states that our galaxy is huge and that there are more grains of sand in the {{w|Milky Way}} than grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches. This is a parody of the common saying that there are more stars in the visible universe than grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. Since the Earth's sand is a subset of all of the galaxy's sand, and there are more planets with sand other than Earth (such as Mars), there are unquestionably more grains of sand in the Milky Way than on Earth. Tangentially, it is unclear whether the stars outnumber Earth's sands, as shown here: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-stars-outnumber-the-sands-of-earths-beaches/ Do Stars Outnumber the Sands of Earth’s Beaches?] and here: [https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-ever-lasting-question-more-sand-or-stars/ The ever-lasting question: more sand or stars?]. Also, the original quote was all the sand on Earth, not just on the beaches. Megan adds a helpful hint, calling a beach a big wet sandbox.

She then finishes the lesson by correctly saying that there is a black hole in the center of our galaxy ({{w|Sagittarius A*}}), and that stars sometimes fall in and get consumed by the black hole. When stars come too close to black holes, they experience a {{w|tidal disruption event}} (TDE), where a star is pulled apart by the black hole after exceeding its {{w|Roche limit}}. This creates streams of material that orbits the black hole and forms an accretion disk, that will eventually be consumed by the black hole or ejected in jets.

She adds her personal opinion on this fact saying that such events are "hilarious" and proceeds by saying that it's okay to laugh at the fate of those stars as the gravity of the black hole will prevent any signals from those stars escaping. This is due to black holes' immense gravitational attraction that prevents even light from escaping. In Megan's case the most important consequence of this fact is that anyone on planets around such stars cannot leave Yelp reviews if they hear her laughing. Thus, they cannot add to those that mock her lesson.

However, as the Roche limit of a black hole is always greater than its {{w|Schwarzschild radius}}, reviews made just after the star begins spaghettification could still escape the black hole. Not only do stars not use any kind of human-made technology,{{citation needed}} but any information regarding the app Yelp has yet to reach any star near Sagittarius A*, and will only reach it in 27 thousand years. It is much more likely that someone living on one of the star's planets would try to leave a comment on Yelp, not the star itself. But the same issues with distances would of course apply. It also seems unlikely that any planet would still be following a star when it first gets that close to a super massive black hole.

In the title text Megan claims that we haven't actually seen a star fall into a black hole (or ''the'' black hole that she is describing) since we invented telescopes. In reality, over a hundred TDEs have been discovered in a variety of wavelengths, including by the Hubble telescope. The way title text is phrased though she might have meant fall into specifically Sagittarius A*, and while it is true that we haven't observed any star fall into our closest supermassive black hole, the {{w|Sagittarius_A*#Discovery_of_G2_gas_cloud_on_an_accretion_course|G2 gas cloud on an accretion course}} was discovered in 2002. Megan also apparently has a list of stars she would like to see fall into the black hole. But she can keep hoping as humans at this time have no way of changing the orbit of any star. So unless she is hoping for one (or more) of the closer stars to fall in next, she is unlikely to experience success based on her list.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[The background is black, Megan is in front of three others, Cueball and Ponytail to the left, and White Hat to the right. Megan is drawn in white while the background characters are in grey.]
:Megan: Welcome back to Stargazing.
:Megan: According to some ''incredibly'' rude Yelp reviews, I'm "not informative" and "can't possibly be an astronomer" and "just kind of say words as they occur to me."
:Megan: I guess some losers just hate cool space facts!

:[The sky is white, the floor is black, Megan is pointing at the sky. Hairy, a Megan-like woman (with a longer hair), Cueball, and Ponytail are on the left, White Hat and Hairbun are on the right. All of the characters are drawn in black.]
:Megan: Anyway, that dot is a "star."
:Megan: There are over 20 stars in the sky, and some of them are more than 100 years old.

:[The background is black again, the panel zooms in on Megan's face.]
:Megan: Our galaxy is huge.
:Megan: You know the beach? That big wet sandbox?
:Megan: Well, there are more grains of sand in the Milky Way than in all Earth's beaches combined.
:Off-panel voice to the left: Wow.
:Off-panel voice to the right: ...Wait.

:[The background is still in black, Megan is in front of others and has her finger raised, Ponytail is left of Megan, White Hat and Hairbun on the right. Megan is again drawn in white while the background characters are in grey.]
:Megan: The galaxy has a black hole at the center.
:Megan: Sometimes stars fall in, which is ''hilarious''.
:Megan: Don't worry, it's okay to laugh. The gravity prevents signals from escaping, so they can't leave Yelp reviews.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Stargazing]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Stargazing]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]

3065: Square Units

2025-03-19T21:58:01Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Add "per day"

{{comic
| number = 3065
| date = March 19, 2025
| title = Square Units
| image = square_units_2x.png
| imagesize = 545x678px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The biggest I've seen in a published source in the wild is an 80-fold error in a reported distance, which I think came from a series of at least three unit conversions and area/length misinterpretations.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SQUARE AREA DEFOLIATION BOT - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, [[Megan]] has found an insect species on her phone that devours one square inch of grass per day. This unit gets misinterpreted until [[Hairbun]] tells other people that it devours an area of grass equal to two times the land area of Australia per day. This is similar to the premise of [[2585: Rounding]].

This gross error is the result of repeatedly misinterpreting the number of square units as the side length of a square, thus increasing the described area by the power of two. The chain also involves converting between an imperial unit and a metric unit, alternating, thus introducing smaller rounding errors even while switching which measurement is "a single square with sides of a certain distance" and which is "the number of squares that are each of unit length". The upshot is that, while each statement has two roughly similar measurements of area, the chain of misunderstanding ends up claiming ever larger relative expanses. The later participants in this chain also clearly forget to sanity-check their figures, blithely informing others that an individual insect is effectively consuming impossibly huge quantities of food, and travelling enormous linear distances every day to do so.

The title text tells us that [[Randall]] once found an 80-fold error in a reported distance in a published source.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Arrows point to each consecutive panel.]
:[Megan is looking at her phone, with Cueball standing next to her.]
:Megan: This newly-described insect can devour up to a square inch of grass per day.
:Cueball: Oh, neat.
:[Cueball is speaking to Ponytail.]
:Cueball: ...it eats a square inch, or 6 cm², of grass per day...
:[Ponytail is speaking to Hairy.]
:Ponytail: ...a 6-centimeter (2½ inch) square of grass, or 36 cm²...
:[Arrows now point to each consecutive conversion.]
:Written out of panel: ...a 36 centimeter square, or over a square foot...
:Written out of panel: ...a square foot, or 900 cm²...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 cm (30 foot) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a 30 foot square of grass (900 square feet)...
:Written out of panel: ...a 900 foot square, or almost 20 acres...
:Written out of panel: ...20 acres (8 hectares, or 80,000 square meters)...
:Written out of panel: ...an 80,000 meter (80 km) square...
:Written out of panel: ...a square 80 km wide, or roughly 2,500 square miles...
:Written out of panel: ...a 2,500-mile square, or twice the land area of Australia, per day...
:[An arrow points from the last conversion to the last panel.]
:[Hairbun is looking at her phone, with White Hat, Danish and Blondie standing next to her.]
:Hairbun: Did you hear about this insect that defoliates the entire land area of Australia twice a day?
:White Hat: Gosh!
:Danish: Wow.
:Blondie: I hope at least it's contained there...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]

3064: Lungfish

2025-03-18T00:01:39Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix typo - developnent to development

{{comic
| number = 3064
| date = March 17, 2025
| title = Lungfish
| image = lungfish_2x.png
| imagesize = 317x403px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I know having so many base pairs makes rebasing complicated, but you're in Bilateria, so shouldn't you at LEAST be better at using git head?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a COPY OF COPY OF COPY OF COPY OF LUNGFISH - more information on lungfish if necessary, less information if not. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{w|Lungfish}} (the class ''Dipnoi'') have the largest known {{w|genome}} among the {{w|vertebrate}}s (155 billion {{w|base pair}}s), and the third-largest known genome of all species. The comic relates this to a common issue when editing documents or coding, where the author accidentally makes changes to {{w|Fork (software development)|two separately created versions of documents}}, when they meant to only edit one, which can result in changes to both (or all) resulting documents functionally essential parts of the completed project, or at least present as development artefacts in the 'final' product. This may happen if documents are sent for review (or updating) to different editors, or at different times, and the changes from the earlier one(s) aren't properly integrated with the later one(s). The comic posits that Lungfish has a habit of doing this with its own genome, making both genes essential and increasing the amount of base pairs. When Cueball confronts Lungfish about this bad habit of mismanaging files, Lungfish dismisses him by saying he'll just "buy more storage". This is likely alluding to when people are faced with an increasing number of files on their storage media, they just buy more storage, either by adding another media drive or paying additional monthly fees for online storage (ex: [https://www.apple.com/ca/icloud/ iCloud] or [https://one.google.com/about/plans Google Drive]).

For anyone curious about the science, it's important to note that [https://www.science.org/content/article/odd-fish-has-30-times-much-dna-humans-new-record-animals this is absolutely not why lungfish have a large genome]; while some organisms do contain many copies of genes as a diversification strategy, this mostly occurs only in some plants and single-celled eukaryotes. Lungfish have roughly the same number of genes as a human (and likely slightly fewer), and the large size of the lungfish genome is likely due to poor transposon control causing their chromosomes to fill up with junk.

The names of the "files" reference several things about computer files:
* Older versions of Windows, when copy-and-pasting a file within the same folder, would automatically append "Copy of" to the start of the filename, resulting in a file named "Copy of [Document]". (This was previously referenced in the title text of [[1459: Documents]].) If ''that'' file was then copied, it would be likewise appended, thus producing "Copy of Copy of [Document]". (Newer versions of Windows instead add "- Copy" to the end of the filename, which produces the same effect but keeps things in roughly the same order when sorted by name.) Google Docs automatically adds "Copy of ''x''" to documents when copied.
* Numbered labels in brackets can be produced by a couple different actions:
** If multiple files are highlighted and a Rename action is performed, all of the files will be given the same name with a numeric designator, starting with the one clicked on for the Rename action and then proceeding from the top of the list down as originally sorted. For example, if three files named "Alpha", "Beta", and "Gamma" are highlighted, and the user right-clicks on "Gamma" and renames it to "Alphabet", then "Gamma" will be renamed to "Alphabet (1)", followed by "Alphabet (2)" [formerly Alpha] and "Alphabet (3)" [formerly Beta].
** If a copied file is pasted multiple times in the same folder, it will also receive number labels in the same format.
* Some users will keep older drafts of a file in case of a need to revert back to an older version; this can be done with a number label (i.e. "v1", "v2", etc.) or a proper word (i.e. "draft", "edited", etc.) at the user's discretion. This can be useful if it's discovered an edit breaks something important, or in the event that a mistaken save action loses data, but it can also lead to file hoarding.

The file names "Copy of Copy of Gene v3 (Newest) (2)" and "Copy of Copy of Gene v3 (Final) (2)" suggest a very poorly-organized filesystem - and a tendency to copy-paste unnecessarily - on the part of the lungfish, which certainly explains why it keeps editing multiple documents instead of a single one.

The title text further compares the biology of lungfish to managing versions of files in a popular version control system called {{w|Git}}, which includes a facility called [https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/git-head/ "head"] that assists in keeping track of the latest available version of a particular project resource, across all updating and forking. Rebasing, in Git, is the act of moving changes from one file branch to another, which Cueball says is complicated due to the large amount of base pairs. {{w|Bilateria}} is a clade of animals characterized by embryonic bilateral symmetry, giving their bodies distinguishable "head" and "tail" ends. Since this applies to lungfish, Cueball says the lungfish should at least know how to use the "head" branch with Git.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball is standing on the end of a wooden dock looking down at the ocean. A lungfish is sticking its head out of the water close to the dock and looking at Cueball.]
:Lungfish: It turns out I've been editing both '''''Copy of Copy of Gene v3 (Newest) (2)''''' and '''''Copy of Copy of Gene v3 (Final) (2)''''' so now I can't delete either one.
:Cueball: You have '''''got''''' to stop doing this.
:Lungfish: It's fine, I'll just buy more storage.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Why lungfish have such enormous genomes

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Version Control]]

Talk:3063: Planet Definitions

2025-03-16T13:33:57Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Fix typo

The one currently posted has Pluto highlighted in the second box and not highlighted in the first box. Too hard to tell if it's trolling or a genuine mistake. :-D

:Apparently a mistake since it's fixed now. [[User:HughNo|HughNo]] ([[User talk:HughNo|talk]]) 19:59, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

And the first one also has a moon hilighted instead I think?? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.5|162.158.126.5]] 15:59, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

:Was about to write the same. The coloring in the first two lines arund Pluto seem wrong (or mistankingly switched). --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.222.246|172.71.222.246]] 16:17, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

This, this is the hill I will die on. I was radicalised by this paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.15285 Moons Are Planets: "Scientific Usefulness Versus Cultural Teleology in the Taxonomy of Planetary Science"]
In short; planets are what planetary scientists study. Round things with the *good stuff*: atmospheres, oceans, volcanoes (of lava or water ice) (see diagram page 53).
Pluto, Titan, Ceres, Io and Europa are all in the sweet spot where you're not so small you're just a lump of rocks who happen to be stuck together into a lump, and not so large you're just a mostly undifferentiated mass of fusing hydrogen/helium plasma.
And it's consistent with our pre-20th Century understanding of what a planet is, whereas the IAU definition is trying to preserve 19th Century astrology. An amazing read and a strong recommend for anyone who cares about this subject. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.138|172.69.79.138]] 16:45, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Does this sort of count as pi-related for pi day? [[User:TomtheBuilder|TomtheBuilder]] ([[User talk:TomtheBuilder|talk]]) 17:04, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:he doesn't do themed comics anymore 😔 [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 17:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:: Sure he does. [[2962]] and [[2969]] weren't too long ago. Seems like it, though. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.222|172.71.182.222]] 03:31, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:::I don't understand either the "he doesn't do themes" bit, or the full nature of the reply, frankly. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.122|172.68.205.122]] 22:52, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I was somewhat disappointed to get to the end of the table without seeing either an astrology or Sailor Moon joke. -- [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 18:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Is it possible that Uranus is marked under "Empiricist" because of the "Randall has seen Uranus" joke? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.42.178|172.70.42.178]] 18:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

The "{{w|Classical planet|Classical Planets}}" should be 7, including the Sun and the Moon.
:The average distance of the orbit of the Moon around the Earth must be slightly farther away than the orbit of the Sun around the Earth, since the Moon lags behind the Sun a little more each day, but the orbits must cross or we would never have a solar eclipse :P [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 19:41, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Wouldn't the Regolithic one depend on the exact definitions of "dirt", "ice", and "covered"? It seems that an argument could be made that the giant planets also count there but have a much thicker atmosphere on the outside, and disqualifying because of the atmosphere could exclude others like Earth depending on the exact threshold used. [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 19:08, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Has Randall not seen the sun before?
:I'm impressed that he has seen Uranus (unless that actually is a joke), especially if he saw it unaided (apparently it actually can be barely seen with the naked eye if the conditions are incredibly good). [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 19:36, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Could the sun be classified as a "world"? --[[User:MothWaves|MothWaves]] ([[User talk:MothWaves|talk]]) 19:43, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:I assumed he meant "seen directly with my eyes", so that a photograph would not count, but looking through a telescope during an astronomy night at the local University would count. And he hasn't looked *closely* at the Sun, because of the need for eye protection. [[User:JimJJewett|JimJJewett]] ([[User talk:JimJJewett|talk]]) 23:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Technically, spacecraft have landed on Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn. Just not in a survivable manner. [[User:Redacted II|Redacted II]] ([[User talk:Redacted II|talk]]) 19:37, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Have we really not sent anything directly into the Sun yet? [[User:JimJJewett|JimJJewett]] ([[User talk:JimJJewett|talk]]) 23:51, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
::The most "into the Sun" we've done is [https://science.nasa.gov/mission/parker-solar-probe/ the Parker Solar Probe], and it hasn't attempted to 'land' there (apart from that being effectively impossible, even beyond the likes of Cassini's final fall "onto" Saturn). It's also ''very hard'' to even send things into the Sun, because the direct method would need you to send a craft from Earth backwards at the same speed as the Earth orbits forwards (or very close to that), otherwise all you can do is fall ''past'' it and loop back up again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.94|162.158.74.94]] 01:00, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:No one even knows if Jupiter and Saturn have a *land* to land on. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 14:54, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
::Sstill subject to further study, but the crushed and burnt (and probably unrecognisable) remains of the probes will be 'landed' (or floating on top of any layer that they're ultimately more buoyant than) down there, somewhere (unless they're totally ablated away, but there'll probably be ''some'' fragments of hi-tech metal frame, even if no circuit boards or metal foils survive) Should there be a form of life in existence down in the depths of the gas-giant's mass, with any curiosity to them, I imagine they'll be wondering what this new variety of 'space rain' is, that's totally unlike the usual ex-asteroidal/cometish stuff that they must occasionally get punching down through from the inaccessible upper reaches above their native environment. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.68|162.158.74.68]] 19:59, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the Pluto error in Traditionalist and Modernist images were fixed. I now see Pluto highlighted in traditionalist and Pluto unhighlighted in Modern. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.7.91|172.68.7.91]] 19:44, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

indeed, it seems fine now, i removed my earlier comment--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.233.116|162.158.233.116]] 23:06, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

//Jean-Luc Margot wrote a serious planet definition proposal// in 2024 as a starting point for community conversations and welcomes feedback. In 2019 I wrote a small article myself on planet and moon classes simply by size. //Mondklassen "wwwahnsinn"// (in German).
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.108|162.158.159.108]] 19:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm disputing that there has never been a formal definition of "planet" prior to 2006 - the ancient Greek definition of "wandering [relative to seemingly-fixed stars] points of light in the night sky" seems formal enough to me. I marked it {{tl|actual citation needed}}. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.73|198.41.227.73]] 19:52, 14 March 2025‎
: I've reworded the sentence to say "in modern times" so we aren't making unfounded and likely-incorrect claims about antiquity. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.73|198.41.227.73]] 21:19, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone else strongly dislike the term '''natural satellite''' replacing ''moon''? Under the new nomenclature, only Earth's moon is 'the Moon'. All other moons are now merely natural satellites. Phobos, Deimos, Ganymede, are no longer considered moons. My biggest problem with the new definition is that planets themselves are natural satellites of stars. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.225|172.71.182.225]] 20:13, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

It seems likely that the Saturnian moon highlighted in the Maritime definition is Titan, since it has liquid seas and lakes on its surface. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.6.5|172.69.6.5]] 21:54, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:I've noted in the Transcript that (despite apparently being ''identical'' pre-highlight drawings in all other ways, or at least very consistently reproduced), Saturn is given one moon ''most'' of the time, but two moons on occasion. Similarly, Uranus's moons (spread from upper-right to lower-left) do-or-do-not include the dot (in one case suffering a highlighting) moving across the face of the planet. From an analytical perspective, I'm wondering if Randall did indeed copypaste the 'normal' iillustration, but then have to manually add in "whoops, I forgot I need to highlight a further item thaat I haven't already drawn" into some of the established copies, touching up where necessary (and maybe where still not necessary too). ...But I'm not sure it matters what he did or did not do. It's just an observation about the result. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.190|172.69.79.190]] 23:03, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Yeah, Titan's present in all the diagrams, and a second moon of Saturn shows up when highlighting is necessary. The bonus "Marine Biologist" planet is clearly Enceladus, but the bonus "Judgemental" planet doesn't line up with it: presumably it's one of Saturn's other moons. Which one? My wild guess is Iapetus. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.150.27|172.68.150.27]] 01:48, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Great explanation, thank you, but was it really necessary to include a snide dig at Baby Boomers? Not a BB myself - I'm gen X, if we're using those facile labels - but surely we don't need to encourage intergenerational resentment and conflict. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.116|172.68.174.116]] 03:22, 15 March 2025 (UTC) 
As a historian, I strongly disagree with the snide definition of tradition. (No, not a BB.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.212.132|162.158.212.132]] 07:40, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:That's a direct quote from a prior comic, that whoever wrote it in the first placce ysed, so I've rewritten it to perhaps ''not'' look quite so much like some editor's own grudge/snidiness (which it may or may not be, but not without Randall giving justifiable precedent to say it). Maybe can be tweaked further, but it might be a shame to lose the inter-comic referential humour that (regardless of tone) is staple for this site. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.109|162.158.74.109]] 12:25, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
::I wrote it. No snideness intended. I thought the connection was topical. Unfortunately, thanks to the "Okay boomer" phenomenon, any reference to the generation comes across as condescending. The "Tradition" strip was published in 2011, and the phrase rose to popularity in 2019. It, like [[36]], is just one of those things that is not standing the test of time. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.47.89|172.70.47.89]] 20:22, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I believe we're currently missing part of the joke in the mouseover text. Not only is Earth now a star because of human fusion, it's also no longer a planet, because, due to human satellites and spacecraft, it no longer clears its orbit.
[[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.42|198.41.227.42]] 06:20, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Isn't the usual singular of criteria criterion? According to my dictionary, a criterium is a type of cycling race.--[[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.100|172.71.26.100]] 09:46, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:Indeed. Maybe a thinko, though, rather. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.139|172.69.79.139]] 11:06, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I am curious why only one of the Galilean moons counts as pretty, and I wonder which one (either Ganymede or Callisto, given where its drawn). They are all pretty to me, I like how surprisingly distinct they look from one another.
[[User:Terdragontra|Terdragontra]] ([[User talk:Terdragontra|talk]]) 13:18, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Re title text: With the launch of the JWST, Earth has no longer cleared its orbital neighborhood, right? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.176.57|172.70.176.57]] 14:27, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I tend to go by an expansive definition myself, considering all dwarf planets "planets" in my eyes. But I'm not like, arguing with the IAU's definition, this is just how I prefer to think of them, because dwarf planets are really cool. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.140|172.70.126.140]] 19:35, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

In the title text explanation, there's no mention of the inclusion of the phrase about Earth clearing its orbital neighborhood. I think this has something to do with all of our man-made satellites that have not been cleared from Earth's orbital neighborhood. Does anyone else think that's an important part of the title text and needs to be explained? [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 13:33, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

== Citations ==

I added a bunch of Wikipedia citations. I went by the WP rule (citation needed) of linking the first non-parenthesized instance of a word/phrase. That does make for some awkward things, like lists with only some of the items linked, and the {{w|natural satellite|moon}} link in a mention under '''Simplistic''' rather than on the more relevant '''Lunar'''.
–[[User:P1h3r1e3d13|P1h3r1e3d13]] ([[User talk:P1h3r1e3d13|talk]]) 22:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

'''Round vs Spheroidal'''
According to the "simplistic" definition, the rings themselves (also round) are separate planets. If the simplistic definition had merely been "spheroidal" rather than "round", they would not be. I'd love to see a version of the chart where Saturn is green, but the rings are white. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.99.166|172.71.99.166]] 23:36, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

'''"Modern" vs "Current"'''. Does anyone feel frustrated when people confuse "modern", "contemporary", and "current"? "Modern" is post-1500, "contemporary" is the age someone lives in, and "current" is 'today'. Throughout 75 years of the modern era, Pluto 'was' considered a planet. Is anyone willing to shift non-canonical usage of "modern" to "current" in the article? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.95.28|172.71.95.28]] 15:59, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3063: Planet Definitions

2025-03-16T13:33:13Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Orbital neighborhood?

The one currently posted has Pluto highlighted in the second box and not highlighted in the first box. Too hard to tell if it's trolling or a genuine mistake. :-D

:Apparently a mistake since it's fixed now. [[User:HughNo|HughNo]] ([[User talk:HughNo|talk]]) 19:59, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

And the first one also has a moon hilighted instead I think?? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.5|162.158.126.5]] 15:59, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

:Was about to write the same. The coloring in the first two lines arund Pluto seem wrong (or mistankingly switched). --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.222.246|172.71.222.246]] 16:17, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

This, this is the hill I will die on. I was radicalised by this paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.15285 Moons Are Planets: "Scientific Usefulness Versus Cultural Teleology in the Taxonomy of Planetary Science"]
In short; planets are what planetary scientists study. Round things with the *good stuff*: atmospheres, oceans, volcanoes (of lava or water ice) (see diagram page 53).
Pluto, Titan, Ceres, Io and Europa are all in the sweet spot where you're not so small you're just a lump of rocks who happen to be stuck together into a lump, and not so large you're just a mostly undifferentiated mass of fusing hydrogen/helium plasma.
And it's consistent with our pre-20th Century understanding of what a planet is, whereas the IAU definition is trying to preserve 19th Century astrology. An amazing read and a strong recommend for anyone who cares about this subject. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.138|172.69.79.138]] 16:45, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Does this sort of count as pi-related for pi day? [[User:TomtheBuilder|TomtheBuilder]] ([[User talk:TomtheBuilder|talk]]) 17:04, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:he doesn't do themed comics anymore 😔 [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 17:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:: Sure he does. [[2962]] and [[2969]] weren't too long ago. Seems like it, though. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.222|172.71.182.222]] 03:31, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:::I don't understand either the "he doesn't do themes" bit, or the full nature of the reply, frankly. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.122|172.68.205.122]] 22:52, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I was somewhat disappointed to get to the end of the table without seeing either an astrology or Sailor Moon joke. -- [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 18:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Is it possible that Uranus is marked under "Empiricist" because of the "Randall has seen Uranus" joke? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.42.178|172.70.42.178]] 18:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

The "{{w|Classical planet|Classical Planets}}" should be 7, including the Sun and the Moon.
:The average distance of the orbit of the Moon around the Earth must be slightly farther away than the orbit of the Sun around the Earth, since the Moon lags behind the Sun a little more each day, but the orbits must cross or we would never have a solar eclipse :P [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 19:41, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Wouldn't the Regolithic one depend on the exact definitions of "dirt", "ice", and "covered"? It seems that an argument could be made that the giant planets also count there but have a much thicker atmosphere on the outside, and disqualifying because of the atmosphere could exclude others like Earth depending on the exact threshold used. [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 19:08, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Has Randall not seen the sun before?
:I'm impressed that he has seen Uranus (unless that actually is a joke), especially if he saw it unaided (apparently it actually can be barely seen with the naked eye if the conditions are incredibly good). [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 19:36, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Could the sun be classified as a "world"? --[[User:MothWaves|MothWaves]] ([[User talk:MothWaves|talk]]) 19:43, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:I assumed he meant "seen directly with my eyes", so that a photograph would not count, but looking through a telescope during an astronomy night at the local University would count. And he hasn't looked *closely* at the Sun, because of the need for eye protection. [[User:JimJJewett|JimJJewett]] ([[User talk:JimJJewett|talk]]) 23:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Technically, spacecraft have landed on Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn. Just not in a survivable manner. [[User:Redacted II|Redacted II]] ([[User talk:Redacted II|talk]]) 19:37, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Have we really not sent anything directly into the Sun yet? [[User:JimJJewett|JimJJewett]] ([[User talk:JimJJewett|talk]]) 23:51, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
::The most "into the Sun" we've done is [https://science.nasa.gov/mission/parker-solar-probe/ the Parker Solar Probe], and it hasn't attempted to 'land' there (apart from that being effectively impossible, even beyond the likes of Cassini's final fall "onto" Saturn). It's also ''very hard'' to even send things into the Sun, because the direct method would need you to send a craft from Earth backwards at the same speed as the Earth orbits forwards (or very close to that), otherwise all you can do is fall ''past'' it and loop back up again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.94|162.158.74.94]] 01:00, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:No one even knows if Jupiter and Saturn have a *land* to land on. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 14:54, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
::Sstill subject to further study, but the crushed and burnt (and probably unrecognisable) remains of the probes will be 'landed' (or floating on top of any layer that they're ultimately more buoyant than) down there, somewhere (unless they're totally ablated away, but there'll probably be ''some'' fragments of hi-tech metal frame, even if no circuit boards or metal foils survive) Should there be a form of life in existence down in the depths of the gas-giant's mass, with any curiosity to them, I imagine they'll be wondering what this new variety of 'space rain' is, that's totally unlike the usual ex-asteroidal/cometish stuff that they must occasionally get punching down through from the inaccessible upper reaches above their native environment. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.68|162.158.74.68]] 19:59, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the Pluto error in Traditionalist and Modernist images were fixed. I now see Pluto highlighted in traditionalist and Pluto unhighlighted in Modern. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.7.91|172.68.7.91]] 19:44, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

indeed, it seems fine now, i removed my earlier comment--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.233.116|162.158.233.116]] 23:06, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

//Jean-Luc Margot wrote a serious planet definition proposal// in 2024 as a starting point for community conversations and welcomes feedback. In 2019 I wrote a small article myself on planet and moon classes simply by size. //Mondklassen "wwwahnsinn"// (in German).
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.108|162.158.159.108]] 19:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm disputing that there has never been a formal definition of "planet" prior to 2006 - the ancient Greek definition of "wandering [relative to seemingly-fixed stars] points of light in the night sky" seems formal enough to me. I marked it {{tl|actual citation needed}}. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.73|198.41.227.73]] 19:52, 14 March 2025‎
: I've reworded the sentence to say "in modern times" so we aren't making unfounded and likely-incorrect claims about antiquity. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.73|198.41.227.73]] 21:19, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone else strongly dislike the term '''natural satellite''' replacing ''moon''? Under the new nomenclature, only Earth's moon is 'the Moon'. All other moons are now merely natural satellites. Phobos, Deimos, Ganymede, are no longer considered moons. My biggest problem with the new definition is that planets themselves are natural satellites of stars. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.225|172.71.182.225]] 20:13, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

It seems likely that the Saturnian moon highlighted in the Maritime definition is Titan, since it has liquid seas and lakes on its surface. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.6.5|172.69.6.5]] 21:54, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:I've noted in the Transcript that (despite apparently being ''identical'' pre-highlight drawings in all other ways, or at least very consistently reproduced), Saturn is given one moon ''most'' of the time, but two moons on occasion. Similarly, Uranus's moons (spread from upper-right to lower-left) do-or-do-not include the dot (in one case suffering a highlighting) moving across the face of the planet. From an analytical perspective, I'm wondering if Randall did indeed copypaste the 'normal' iillustration, but then have to manually add in "whoops, I forgot I need to highlight a further item thaat I haven't already drawn" into some of the established copies, touching up where necessary (and maybe where still not necessary too). ...But I'm not sure it matters what he did or did not do. It's just an observation about the result. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.190|172.69.79.190]] 23:03, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Yeah, Titan's present in all the diagrams, and a second moon of Saturn shows up when highlighting is necessary. The bonus "Marine Biologist" planet is clearly Enceladus, but the bonus "Judgemental" planet doesn't line up with it: presumably it's one of Saturn's other moons. Which one? My wild guess is Iapetus. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.150.27|172.68.150.27]] 01:48, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Great explanation, thank you, but was it really necessary to include a snide dig at Baby Boomers? Not a BB myself - I'm gen X, if we're using those facile labels - but surely we don't need to encourage intergenerational resentment and conflict. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.116|172.68.174.116]] 03:22, 15 March 2025 (UTC) 
As a historian, I strongly disagree with the snide definition of tradition. (No, not a BB.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.212.132|162.158.212.132]] 07:40, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:That's a direct quote from a prior comic, that whoever wrote it in the first placce ysed, so I've rewritten it to perhaps ''not'' look quite so much like some editor's own grudge/snidiness (which it may or may not be, but not without Randall giving justifiable precedent to say it). Maybe can be tweaked further, but it might be a shame to lose the inter-comic referential humour that (regardless of tone) is staple for this site. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.109|162.158.74.109]] 12:25, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
::I wrote it. No snideness intended. I thought the connection was topical. Unfortunately, thanks to the "Okay boomer" phenomenon, any reference to the generation comes across as condescending. The "Tradition" strip was published in 2011, and the phrase rose to popularity in 2019. It, like [[36]], is just one of those things that is not standing the test of time. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.47.89|172.70.47.89]] 20:22, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I believe we're currently missing part of the joke in the mouseover text. Not only is Earth now a star because of human fusion, it's also no longer a planet, because, due to human satellites and spacecraft, it no longer clears its orbit.
[[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.42|198.41.227.42]] 06:20, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Isn't the usual singular of criteria criterion? According to my dictionary, a criterium is a type of cycling race.--[[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.100|172.71.26.100]] 09:46, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:Indeed. Maybe a thinko, though, rather. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.139|172.69.79.139]] 11:06, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I am curious why only one of the Galilean moons counts as pretty, and I wonder which one (either Ganymede or Callisto, given where its drawn). They are all pretty to me, I like how surprisingly distinct they look from one another.
[[User:Terdragontra|Terdragontra]] ([[User talk:Terdragontra|talk]]) 13:18, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Re title text: With the launch of the JWST, Earth has no longer cleared its orbital neighborhood, right? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.176.57|172.70.176.57]] 14:27, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I tend to go by an expansive definition myself, considering all dwarf planets "planets" in my eyes. But I'm not like, arguing with the IAU's definition, this is just how I prefer to think of them, because dwarf planets are really cool. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.140|172.70.126.140]] 19:35, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

In the title text explanation, there's no mention of the inclusion of the phrase about Earth clearing its orbital neighborhood. I think this has something to do with all of our man-made satellites that have not been cleared from Eath's orbital neighborhood. Does anyone else think that's an important part of the title text and needs to be explained? [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 13:33, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

== Citations ==

I added a bunch of Wikipedia citations. I went by the WP rule (citation needed) of linking the first non-parenthesized instance of a word/phrase. That does make for some awkward things, like lists with only some of the items linked, and the {{w|natural satellite|moon}} link in a mention under '''Simplistic''' rather than on the more relevant '''Lunar'''.
–[[User:P1h3r1e3d13|P1h3r1e3d13]] ([[User talk:P1h3r1e3d13|talk]]) 22:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

'''Round vs Spheroidal'''
According to the "simplistic" definition, the rings themselves (also round) are separate planets. If the simplistic definition had merely been "spheroidal" rather than "round", they would not be. I'd love to see a version of the chart where Saturn is green, but the rings are white. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.99.166|172.71.99.166]] 23:36, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

'''"Modern" vs "Current"'''. Does anyone feel frustrated when people confuse "modern", "contemporary", and "current"? "Modern" is post-1500, "contemporary" is the age someone lives in, and "current" is 'today'. Throughout 75 years of the modern era, Pluto 'was' considered a planet. Is anyone willing to shift non-canonical usage of "modern" to "current" in the article? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.95.28|172.71.95.28]] 15:59, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

3063: Planet Definitions

2025-03-15T02:09:21Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ add italics in multiple rows

{{comic
| number = 3063
| date = March 14, 2025
| title = Planet Definitions
| image = planet_definitions_2x.png
| imagesize = 653x1435px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Under the 'has cleared its orbital neighborhood' and 'fuses hydrogen into helium' definitions, thanks to human activities Earth technically no longer qualifies as a planet but DOES count as a star.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|The explanation is too short.}}

This comic addresses the {{w|IAU definition of planet|controversy of whether of Pluto is a planet}} and explores many definitions, most of them humorous/nonsensical, of what a planet could be.

;Traditionalist: {{w|Pluto}} is a planet (9 planets)
:In modern times, there was {{w|IAU definition of planet#Background|no formal definition of a "planet"}} prior to 2006. However, it was generally accepted as a colloquialism that there were nine planets around the {{w|Sun}}, Pluto included (starting with Pluto's discovery in 1930 ([[988|Tradition]] is whatever Baby Boomers grew up with). As more sophisticated methods of mapping the {{w|Solar System}} were developed and {{w|Eris (dwarf planet)|Eris}} was discovered to be even more massive than Pluto, it became clear to astronomers that a more standardized definition was needed. In 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) published their formal redefinition of a "planet" to require a planet to be gravitationally dominant within its orbit, disqualifying Pluto (and Eris) which is now considered a "dwarf planet." This has been subject to push back from countless people, including [https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.15285 some planetary scientists], but in numbers mostly nostalgic laypeople dissatisfied with Pluto being "demoted" or otherwise relegated.

;Modern: Pluto is not a planet (8 planets)
:When the IAU redefined what a planet is in 2006, Pluto no longer qualifies as a planet. (since it wasn't able to clear its neighborhood around its orbit) Using the modern definition of a planet, only eight celestial objects qualified.

;Expansive: Dwarf planets are planets (17+ planets)
:It is likely that since the term "dwarf planet" contained "planet" in its name, Randall considered those as also planets under this category.
:It is also likely that the number of planets includes the ones that are considered planets and the ones that are considered to have compacted into fully solid bodies, {{w|Dwarf planet#Most likely dwarf planets| as defined by Grundy ''et al.'',}} those being {{w|Ceres (dwarf planet)|Ceres}}, Pluto, Eris, {{w|Makemake}}, {{w|Haumea}}, {{w|Gonggong (dwarf planet)|Gonggong}}, {{w|Quaoar}}, {{w|Orcus (dwarf planet|Orcus}} and {{w|Sedna (dwarf planet)|Sedna}}.

;Ultratraditionalist: Only the classical planets are planets (5 planets)
:The {{w|classical planets}} are objects found and considered by the Greek astronomers in classical antiquity to be considered planets. Their definition of "planet" considered visible objects that move across the sky relative to the fixed stars. There are seven classical planets, but if one were to only consider the ones that fall under the IAU's definition of a planet (this being ''less'' traditional), then there would only be five. (The Sun and the {{w|Moon}} would be disqualified)

;Condescending: Only giant planets are planets; the rest are big {{w|asteroid}}s (4 planets)
:This definition may refer to the {{w|giant planets}}, planets much larger than the {{w|Earth}}. Only the four outer planets fall under this definition.
;Simplistic: Anything gravitationally round is a planet (37+ planets)
:Using the Wikipedia {{w|list of gravitationally rounded objects of the Solar System}}, there are 37 objects listed. That includes the Sun, 8 planets, 9 dwarf planets and 19 {{w|Natural satellite|moon}}s.

;Grounded: Only objects a spaceship has landed on are planets (10 planets)
:This list includes objects in the Solar System that a spacecraft has {{w|List of landings on extraterrestrial bodies| performed a soft landing on}}. The list includes {{w|Venus}}, Earth, {{w|Mars}}, the Moon, {{w|Titan (moon)|Titan}}, {{w|433 Eros|Eros}}, {{w|25143 Itokawa|Itokawa}}, {{w|162173 Ryugu|Ryugu}} and {{w|101955 Bennu|Bennu}}. Notably, {{w|comet}} landings are not included in the list.

;Regolithic: Anything covered in dirt and ice and stuff is a planet (infinite)
:This list excludes the {{w|Gas Giant}}s and the {{w|Ice Giant}}s. The list would likely include dwarf planets, asteroids, moons and comets. This is effectively the opposite of the "condescending" definition: every object in the solar system is included in one definition or the other (except for the Sun).

;Lunar: You can't be a planet if you don't have a moon (12+ objects)
:Only some objects in the solar system have known and acknowledged moons orbiting them. The value given may be {{w|List of natural satellites| the number of planets and dwarf planets}} that have moons, when excluding {{w|Haumea}} for not reaching {{w|hydrostatic equilibrium}} despite having moons. The Sun is excluded because its satellites are not moons, because ... oh, look, a Squirrel!

;Solipsistic: Earth is the only planet (1 planet)
:{{w|Solipsism}} is the idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. Randall extrapolated this idea to mean that only one's own planet that they are standing on is sure to exist.

;Judgemental: Only the prettiest ones are planets (6 planets)
:This list is likely formulated from Randall's own perception of the prettiest planets in the Solar System. Strangely, seven objects are highlighted:
* Earth
* Jupiter
* One of Jupiter's moons (unclear)
* Saturn
* One of Saturn's moons (unclear, possibly Titan)
* Neptune's moon (probably Triton)
* Pluto

;Empiricist: Only worlds that I, author of this table, have personally seen are planets (12 planets)
:This list may refer to the celestial objects in the Solar System that have been made visible at night, probably using with an optical telescope (a hobbyist one, perhaps Randall's, or from time borrowed on a major institutional installation). Jupiter's {{w|Galilean moons|four largest moons}} are technically visible but hard to distinguish due to Jupiter's brightness, while Neptune is too faint to see with a naked eye. Apparently Randall has also seen Uranus. This is fairly rare, since it usually requires a telescope pointed in just the right direction. Technically [https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/how-see-uranus-in-night-sky Uranus ''is'' visible to the naked eye] under the very best viewing conditions, but these conditions are rare and it again requires knowing exactly where to look.

;Marine biologist: Only objects with oceans are planets (6+ planets)
:This list includes Earth, {{w|Europa (moon)|Europa}}, {{w|Ganymede (moon)|Ganymede}}, {{w|Callisto (moon)|Callisto}} and {{w|Enceladus}}.

;Maritime: Only objects with ''surface'' oceans are planets (2 planets)
:In the comic Earth and a Saturnian moon, likely Titan, are highlighted. Earth is the only body known in the solar system to have liquid water on the surface significant enough to be called an ocean. The highlighted moon of Saturn is most likely Titan due to its liquid seas of methane and nitrogen.

;Universalist: They're all planets (infinite)
:This list claims that all objects are planets.

;Existantialist: What if {{w|outer space|space}} ''itself'' is a planet??? (Duude)
:This list is different from the list above as it claims that all of space, rather than only the objects existing in space, are planets. The interjection ''Duude'' expresses one's amazement at this 'revelation' and replaces the number count.

;Spiteful: ''Only'' Pluto is a planet (1 planet)
:This list is a malicious play on the demotion of Pluto by demoting all other planets except Pluto instead, leaving Pluto as the only planet in the Solar System.

;(title text) {{w|Star}}: Earth is a star (2 stars)
:In May 1934, Mark Oliphant, Paul Harteck and Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory, published an intentional deuterium fusion experiment, and made the discovery of both tritium and helium-3. This is widely considered the first experimental demonstration of fusion. Randall considers that this makes Earth fall into the category of a star due to the human-induced ability for Earth to fuse hydrogen into helium using nuclear fusion.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A table with 3 columns, the headers labelled "Definition", "# of planets", and "Solar system" and 17 rows.]
:[In each row, the first column has a single word, in bold, and a descriptive sentence, the second column has a digit or other 'value', the third column is a drawing of the Solar system, featuring various bodies and a selection of moons: The Sun, Mercury, Venuse, Earth + The Moon, Mars + two moons (Phobos and Deimos), a small selection of Asteroid Belt bodies (Ceres and other smaller examples), Jupitor + four moons (likely Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto), a ringed Saturn + usually one moon (probably Titan) or two (Enceladus?), Uranus + four or five moons (likely to be Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon, but one of these over the face of Uranus only in some versions of the image), Neptune + one moon (probably Triton), Pluto + one moon (Charon), four more plutoid/Kuiper Belt objeccts (probably Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong and Eris, in distance order), the first two of them with distinct moons indicated (entirely dependent upon which main objects they are).]
:[Each row's illustrated solar system has indivudal combinations of green highlights applied to the otherwise repeated diagram.]
:[Row 1: Definition:] Traditionalist: Pluto is a planet [Number:] 9 [Highlit: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto]
:[Row 2: Definition:] Modern: Pluto is not a planet [Number:] 8 [Highlit: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune]
:[Row 3: Definition:] Expansive: Dwarf planets are planets [Number:] 17+ [Highlit: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres (in Asteroid Belt), Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and the further main bodies]
:[Row 4: Definition:] Ultratraditionalist: Only the classical planets are planets [Number:] 5 [Highlit: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn]
:[Row 5: Definition:] Condescending: Only giant planets are planets; the rest are big asteroids. [Number:] 4 [Highlit: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune]
:[Row 6: Definition:] Simplistic: Anything gravitationally round is a planet [Number:] 37+ [Highlit: The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, The Moon, Mars, Ceres (without other asteroids), Jupiter + moons, Saturn and Titan, Uranus and its moons, Neptune and its moon, Pluto and the four further dwarf planets]
:[Row 7: Definition:] Grounded: Only objects a spaceship has landed on are planets [Number:] 10 [Highlit: Venus, Earth, The Moon, Mars, five (non-Ceriese) asteroids and Titan]
:[Row 8: Definition:] Regolithic: Anything covered in dirt and ice and stuff is a planet [Number:] [infinity symbol] [Highlit: Mercury, Venus, Earth, The Moon, Mars, Ceres and across all other asteroids from the Asteroid Belt, the moons of Jupiter, the moon(!) of Saturn, the moons of Uranus, the moon of Neptune, Pluto and Charon, all remaining dwarf planets and their moons]
:[Row 9: Definition:] Lunar: You can't be a planet if you don't have a moon [Number:] 12+ [Highlit: Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and three(!) of the other dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt]
:[Row 10: Definition:] Solipsitic: Earth is the only planet [Number:] 1 [Highlit: The Earth]
:[Row 11: Definition:] Judgemental: Only the prettiest ones are planets [Number:] 6 [Highlit: The Earth, Jupiter and one of its moons (not identified), Saturn, one of ''two'' Saturnian moons in this image and Pluto]
:[Row 12: Definition:] Empiricist: Only worlds that I, author of this table, have personally seen are planets [Number:] 12 [Highlit: Mercury, Venus, The Earth, The Moon, Mars Jupiter and its four moons, Saturn and Uranus]
:[Row 13: Definition:] Marine biologist: Only objects with oceans are planets [Number:] 6+ [Highlit: The Earth, three Jovian moons, the two illustrated Saturnian moons]
:[Row 14: Definition:] Maritime: Only objects with ''surface'' oceans are planets [Number:] 2 [Highlit: The Earth and Titan]
:[Row 15: Definition:] Universalist: They're all planets [Number:] [infinity symbol] [Highlit: All drawn objects, including The Sun and all moons]
:[Row 16: Definition:] Existantialist: What if space ''itself'' is a planet??? [Word:] ''Duude'' [Highlit: The whole third column cell]
:[Row 17: Definition:] Spiteful: ''Only'' Pluto is a planet [Number:] 1 [Highlit: Pluto]

==Trivia==
*The 'Judgemental' definition has 7 colored objects instead of the labelled 6.
*[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/6/66/20250314195557%21planet_definitions_2x.png The initially released version of the comic] had two errors that were later fixed:
**The 'Traditionalist' definition had Neptune's satellite {{w|Triton (moon)|Triton}} colored instead of Pluto.
**The 'Modern' definition had Pluto colored as a 9th planet. It appears that the images for 'Traditionalist' and 'Modern' were swapped.
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]
[[Category:Comics edited after their publication]]

3062: Off By One

2025-03-12T21:11:28Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Fix error in transcription

{{comic
| number = 3062
| date = March 12, 2025
| title = Off By One
| image = off_by_one_2x.png
| imagesize = 202x337px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It does come at the small cost of a LOT more off-by-40-or-50 errors.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by 40-50 BOTS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In programming, {{w|off-by-one errors}} are very common. An off-by-one error is an error where the value of a variable differs from the intended or expected value by 1. This can arise from a number of sources, including mistakenly using a ≤ (less than or equals) comparison where a < (less than) comparison was needed, or vice versa (or ≥ / >); confusion between zero- and one-based indexing of arrays in code, either by convention or by definition in the code; or fencepost errors (needing the number of values in the range, say, 4 to 6, inclusive, but using 6 - 4 = 2 as the number instead of 3).

[[Cueball]] has attempted to combat off-by-one errors by introducing off-by-40-to-50 errors, which is arguably even worse{{cn}} and may actually lead to off-by-39-to-51 errors, depending on whether "between" here is inclusive or exclusive. For example, when trying to loop over an array, it will miss many elements, not just possibly the endpoints. It may also completely leave the bounds of the array, causing out-of-bounds errors.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Cueball faces Megan and Hairy. Cueball points towards a computer behind him]

:Cueball: Any time an integer is stored or read, its value is adjusted upward or downward by a random amount between 40 and 50.

:[Caption below the panel]
:My new language almost completely eliminates off-by-one errors.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Programming]] [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

3061: Water Balloons

2025-03-11T17:10:35Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix typo

{{comic
| number = 3061
| date = March 10, 2025
| title = Water Balloons
| image = water_balloons_2x.png
| imagesize = 578x713px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Update: The physics department has recruited an astronomer who studies meteor fireballs.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT SHORT CIRCUITING DUE TO A WATER BALLOON - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The comic graphs the mass vs the lifetime of three objects: {{w|meson}}s, {{w|water balloon}}s and {{w|planet}}s. Mesons, which are subatomic particles, have a very low mass and a very short lifetime, as they naturally decay into other fundamental particles.{{Actual citation needed}} "Flying water balloons" are depicted as having a mass centered around 1 kilogram, but the area outlined covers a very broad range of mass (from grams to hundreds of kilos), and a lifetime centered around 1 second (but the area outlined covers from fractions of a second to a couple of hours), indicating the approximate amount of time that a water balloon survives after being thrown through the air. (Not all water balloons break on impact, and some are thrown directly into someone's face, thus flight time would be very short.) Finally, planets have a very large mass and a very long lifetime, as they tend to exist for billions of years.

This comparison is somewhat absurd because the objects being compared - mesons, water balloons, and planets - do not have much in common.

The text below the image states that meson particle physicists and planetary scientists are usually evenly matched in water balloon fights, as water balloons are outside of the area of expertise of both departments. In real life, water balloon fights are completely unrelated to particle physics or planetary science. They may also be not directly related to various other academic disciplines, though one might assume that more generalized physicists might study similar objects with the mass and lifetime of water balloons (if not water balloons themselves!), and other topics of education might also confer an 'advantage' (for example, biologists may study similarly-sized bodies of creatures, whilst chemists may monitor chemical reactions that could take an equivalent time to complete). This all suggests that deep specialization in a field of study deprives a normal person of their basic aptitude to perform in more 'everyday' activities, but at least it equally disadvantages each of the two teams of researchers and makes for a more satisfyingly [[1819: Sweet 16|competitive match-up]] than with one team clearly far more proficient than the other.

The title text overturns this by stating that "The physics department has recruited an astronomer who studies meteor fireballs". This is likely referring to the fact that meteors are closer to water balloons in terms of their mass and lifetime than either mesons or planets, so having an astronomer with this area of expertise would be advantageous in a water balloon fight against scientists who study either of the latter. While "space rocks" that become meteors may have been around for approximately the age of the solar system (and longer than at least some planets), and may then sit on/beneath the ground for anything up to geologically significant lengths of time, being an actual meteor (and a flaming one, at that) implies we're only considering the period of time the space-rock is traveling through the Earth's atmosphere, specifically ending before it becomes a meteorite. This is a period of time that may be anything from a few seconds (the normal upper limit to the visible 'fireball' stage) to ''possibly'' a minute or two (starting from its first shallow-angle grazing of the atmosphere until it finally lands/burns up/passes back out of the atmosphere). Thus, by one team bringing in a more capable player (especially one arguably more closely aligned to their opponents), they apparently now have an {{wiktionary|ringer#Noun 4|unfair advantage}}.

Other absurd uses of linear regression are seen in [[605: Extrapolating]], [[1204: Detail]] and [[2893: Sphere Tastiness]].

==Transcript==
:[Graph with Y axis using an arrow indicating mass from 10-30 kg to 1030 kg on a logarithmic scale and X axis, also on a logarithmic scale labeled "Lifetime" running from 10-20 to 1020 seconds.]

:[There are three elliptical blobs on the graph, one on the lower left corner labeled "Mesons" another on the upper right corner labeled "Planets", and the last one in the middle (1kg mass, 1s lifespan) labeled Flying water balloons. There are two bidirectional arrows pointing from the center blob to the two other blobs.]

:[To the left of the chart are Cueball and Ponytail. Ponytail is throwing a water balloon, and Cueball is dodging from one. To the right are Megan and Hairy. Megan is preparing to throw a water balloon, and Hairy is slipping in a puddle of water, with a water balloon having landed near his foot with a "Sploosh!".]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:In the annual water balloon fight, meson particle physicists and planetary scientists are usually evenly matched, since they're both equally far outside their areas of expertise.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Extrapolation]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Games]]

3058: Tall Structures

2025-03-04T05:13:16Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix typo

{{comic
| number = 3058
| date = March 3, 2025
| title = Tall Structures
| image = tall_structures_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x430px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Briefly set a new record for tallest human-made structure by getting my knit sweater snagged on the skydiving plane door as I jumped and not noticing until I'd landed.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT ON TOP OF A SPACE ELEVATOR - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This is a comparison of various tall buildings and structures, ranging from the pyramid of Giza to the Burj Khalifa. [[Randall]]'s definition of a structure is apparently any artificial object that has continuous extent from the ground to some height.

The buildings are sorted by height. The tallest structure, as Randall claims, is an {{w|aerostat}} balloon, which significantly exceeds the height of the Burj Khalifa.

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"
|-
! Name !! Height !! {{w|List_of_tallest_buildings_and_structures#History|Tallest structure}} !! Explanation
|-
| {{w|Great Pyramid of Giza|The Great Pyramid}} (Giza) || 137 m (449.5 ft) || style="text-align:center" | 2570 BC–1311 AD || A famous pyramid built c. 2570 BC
|-
| {{w|The Shard}} (London) || 309.6 m (1,016 ft) || style="text-align:center" | – || A pyramid shaped skyscraper
|-
| {{w|Eiffel Tower|The Eiffel Tower}} (Paris) || 330 m (1,083 ft) || style="text-align:center" | 1889–1930 || A wrought-iron lattice tower named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel
|-
| {{w|Empire State Building|The Empire State Building}} (New York) || 443.2 m (1,454 ft) || style="text-align:center" | 1931–1967 || An art-deco office tower often seen in media
|-
| {{w|CN Tower|The CN Tower}} (Toronto) || 553.3 m (1,815 ft) || style="text-align:center" | – || A communication and observation tower in Canada
|-
| {{w|The Clock Towers}} (Mecca) || 601 m (1,972 ft) || style="text-align:center" | – || A hotel complex featuring the largest clock in the world
|-
| {{w|KRDK-TV mast|KRDK-TV Mast}} (North Dakota) || 630 m (2,060 ft) || style="text-align:center" | – || Current tallest structure in the United States ({{w|KVLY-TV mast|KVLY-TV mast}} was previously taller)
|-
| {{w|Shanghai Tower}} (Shanghai) || 632 m (2,073 ft) || style="text-align:center" | – || Tallest skyscraper in China
|-
| {{w|Tokyo Skytree}} (Tokyo) || 634.0 m (2,080 ft) || style="text-align:center" | – || Tallest tower in the world
|-
| {{w|Merdeka 118}} (Kuala Lumpur) || 678.9 m (2,227 ft) || style="text-align:center" | – || A skyscraper with diamond-shaped facades
|-
| {{w|Burj Khalifa}} (Dubai) || 828 m (2,717 ft) || style="text-align:center" | 2007–present || Tallest structure in the world
|-
| Some random {{w|aerostat}} that happens to be operating today || ~1,280 m (4,200 ft) (Depicted) {{w|Tethered Aerostat Radar System#System|~4,600 m (15,000 ft)}} (Actual) || style="text-align:center" | Varies || An aerostat is a lighter-than-air aircraft that can be tethered to the ground. This is the main joke of the comic, as as long as it is tethered to the ground and is higher than the Burj Khalifa, it could be considered the tallest man-made "building". However, the comic underestimates how high tethered aerostats can actually fly.
|}

The joke in the title text is that Randall once skydove out of an airplane wearing a knit sweater. The sweater caught on the airplane door, and presumably unravelled as he descended. When he reached the ground, the long thread that extended up to the plane (typically 8,000 to 14,000 feet above the ground) set a temporary record for the tallest structure. This is not realistically feasible, since knit tops usually only use around 1000 m (3280 ft) of yarn if knit using thin fingerling weight yarn. However, a sweater knit at a T-shirt density could in fact use over 2000 m (6561 ft) of yarn, which (assuming it hasn't started felting) is enough to extend to skydiving height.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Labels below structures shown in a black silhouette, from left to right, shortest to tallest:]
:The Great Pyramid (Giza)
:The Shard (London)
:The Eiffel Tower (Paris)
:The Empire State Building (New York)
:The CN Tower (Toronto)
:The Clock Towers (Mecca)
:KRDK-TV Mast (North Dakota)
:Shanghai Tower
:Tokyo Skytree
:Merdeka 118 (Kuala Lumpur)
:Burj Khalifa (Dubai)
:Some random aerostat that happens to be operating today

:[Caption below the panel:]
:The Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest artificial structure, but only on days when no one is flying a high-altitude balloon aerostat.

{{comic discussion}}

3052: Archive Request

2025-02-23T17:21:44Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Add explanation of underlined text within screen text

{{comic
| number = 3052
| date = February 17, 2025
| title = Archive Request
| image = archive_request_2x.png
| imagesize = 346x481px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = They just want researchers in the enclosure to feel enriched and stimulated. ('The Enclosure' is what archivists call the shadowy world outside their archives in which so many people are trapped.)
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Archived by an ENCLOSED RESEARCHER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Research sometimes involves looking up old data in an archive, and old data is often not stored in a modern standard of file format. It may either be an older standard, largely forgotten and no longer catered for, or a choice of original archival format that made sense only within the organisation itself; either way, being a proprietary internal or licensed third-party format that lost (or never gained) wider support in the world at large. Unless the archive's contents are periodically re-examined, and up-converted into more contemporary standards in a timely manner, they might not be able to provide the data the researcher needs in a convenient way. The comic shows [[Cueball]] facing several issues that can happen with archived data:
* The data is stored as paper records, which will have to be scanned into a digital format.
* The data is being sent as a CD-ROM instead of being emailed or shared online, so it will take time to arrive. Also, most computers sold today do not come with a CD or DVD drive so the researcher might need to use another computer, or buy an external CD drive, to read it.
* It will take 10 business days (about 2 weeks) to process the request, plus shipping time.
* The data is not being sent in a common format for scanned documents, such as PDF, but a proprietary format that needs special software to decode.
* The decoder software only runs on Windows 98 or XP, versions of Windows which are no longer supported by Microsoft, and cannot even be installed on most modern computers,{{Actual citation needed}}requiring a very old computer or the installation of a virtual machine. This often happens when old software is no longer supported by the manufacturer, so it cannot be updated to work on newer versions of Windows. This will add to the difficulty for the researcher to decode the data when they get it.

Normally, the reason for data coming in deprecated formats would be that it is held within a legacy system that was built around those formats. However, since these records are having to be scanned from paper in the first place, the rest seems to simply be inserting extra complication unnecessarily. The records could simply be scanned and shared using current systems and formats. This is borne out by the caption and the title text.

In zoos, captive animals need {{w|behavioral enrichment}} to promote physiological and psychological well-being - to keep them active and reduce stress and harmful behaviors. One common method is to provide food or treats encased in such a way that the animal has to exert effort to open/destroy the enclosure. The intention is to mimic the natural pattern of having to work to get to food, with the challenge and effort providing fulfillment and distraction, in addition to receiving food. The comic humorously suggests that archivists are doing the same thing as zookeepers - providing intellectual stimulation for the researcher by forcing them to jump through hoops in order to get their data. The title text suggests that archivists live in their world of archives and see the rest of the universe outside it as a cage that's trapping the rest of us. This is perhaps a reference to {{w|Allegory of the cave|Plato's Cave}}, a philosophical question about what it means to perceive reality. Randall [[876: Trapped|has enjoyed]] poking fun at the idea before.

In libraries and archives, catalog enrichment means adding useful data to the catalog, including scans of the table of contents or the whole book. Many institutions have already digitized large parts of their collection. Researchers can then download a scan directly from the online catalog, just by clicking on a link.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[A side view of Cueball, sitting on a wheeled office chair, at a desk with a laptop on it and his hands on the laptop. A jagged line comes from the laptop screen presumably representing text on the computer screen from an online page, with the underlined text representing a hyperlink to another online page.]
:Computer: To request data from the archives, fill out this form. The pages will be scanned, encoded to CD-ROM, and mailed to you within 10 business days.
:Computer: Download the decoder for our proprietary format here (Requires Windows 98® or XP®)
:Cueball: ''Ugh, fine...''

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Archivists actually have everything in digital repos now, but they still do this to provide enrichment for researchers, the way zoos hide food for animals in hard-to-open boxes.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Animals]]

3051: Hardwood

2025-02-15T05:16:21Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Fix typo

{{comic
| number = 3051
| date = February 14, 2025
| title = Hardwood
| image = hardwood_2x.png
| imagesize = 273x350px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = They may technically have been softwoods at some point, but they definitely aren't now.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a CARBONIFEROUS FLOORING - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Home remodelers, whether contractors or do-it-yourselfers, can seek to remove layers of modifications to restore some previous condition. An example is to remove carpeting or other floor covering to restore an earlier, perhaps original, condition of the house. Original flooring made of hardwood (oak, maple, etc.) panels, perhaps deprecated by earlier homeowners for comfort or style reasons, can be prized by later homeowners as tastes or fashions change.

In this comic, the remodeler, in this case a contractor, is trying to convince a homeowner (a Cueball) that a prized hardwood floor underlies whatever flooring is currently installed. The joke is that the 'hardwood floor' is actually a fossiliferous coal seam from {{w|Carboniferous|300-350 million years before present}}. This 'floor' probably lies several tens to hundreds of meters (yards) below the foundation of the house, making it impractical, and probably prohibitively expensive, to reach, especially in the context of a 'normal' home remodeling project.

The title text refers to the fact that the {{w|Carboniferous#Plants|plants}} typical of the Carboniferous period of Earth's history would all be classified as {{w|Softwood|"softwoods"}} at best; flowering plants ({{w|Flowering plants|angiosperms}}), the principal source of "hardwoods", would not appear on Earth in any significant numbers for another 220 million years. The joke is that the Carboniferous "softwoods" are all hard now, because they have become petrified and are, essentially, rocks.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

So you're saying that if we tear up these layers, there's hardwood flooring under here?

...I mean, sort of...

{{comic discussion}}

3035: Trimix

2025-01-09T13:15:12Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Remove extra blank line

{{comic
| number = 3035
| date = January 8, 2025
| title = Trimix
| image = trimix_2x.png
| imagesize = 436x259px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = You don't want the nitrogen percentage to be too high or you run the risk of eutrophication.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a FLOATING TRIMIX SCUBA DIVER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
{{w|Trimix (breathing gas)|Trimix}} is a gas used in {{w|SCUBA}} tanks that consists of {{w|helium}}, {{w|oxygen}}, and {{w|nitrogen}}. Trimix comes in some standard ratios between the component gases, depending on the required diving depth, for example 21/35/44 (percentage oxygen/helium/nitrogen), 18/45/37 and 15/55/30 for increasing depth. Helium safely substitutes a portion of the nitrogen to minimize nitrogen's narcotic effects at greater depths, and to ease the effort required for breathing, as merely reducing the nitrogen ratio in an oxygen/nitrogen mix will increase oxygen to levels that, at the pressures that exist at depth, {{w|Oxygen toxicity|creates other dangers}} (hence why the Trimix ratios also provide slightly lower proportions of oxygen). This comic suggests that, if the ratio of helium to nitrogen/oxygen is too high, a diver will float away before reaching the water to start a dive, as their tank of air starts behaving just like a sufficiently buoyant helium balloon. Divers rarely mix their own blends, so this would be the fault of the supplier who filled the tank from which the cylinder is filled. It would also be impossible to disproportionately breathe more of the non-helium, changing the ratio, although the way the comic depicts the tank only just starting to float ''might'' suggest that it is somehow being adjusted to the 'wrong' ratio as we watch.

The reason a helium balloon [[585: Outreach|creates lift]] is that it can inflate. The balloon has a thin and expandable layer, weighing almost nothing, that allows the intrinsically less dense gas to take up space at not much more than atmospheric pressure. The total weight of the filled balloon is less than the total weight of the air it displaces, thus creating {{w|buoyancy}}. A SCUBA tank is made of metal, is heavy and cannot inflate in anything like normal circumstances.{{cn}} Even with a {{w|vacuum balloon|perfect vacuum inside it}} (if that were possible) it would still weigh more than the equivalent volume of air. You would simply increase that weight if you pumped helium, or ''any'' kind of gas, into it. An inflating helium balloon also gets heavier, but this is more than compensated for by the greater increase in volume. The more you pumped into a rigid metal tank, the denser and heavier it would get, and it will never be able to create any degree of additional lift.

The real reason SCUBA divers need to be careful with the amount of helium is to not get too little (or too much) oxygen for the intended depth and pressure, as well as reducing the troublesome nitrogen.

The title text asserts that a trimix diver whose gas mix contains an excess of nitrogen runs "the risk of eutrophication". The term {{w|Eutrophication|eutrophication}} describes the process by which nutrients ("fertilizers") accumulate in an environment, typically a body of water, leading to consequences that are often unfortunate for inhabitants or users of that environment. The human body is an ecosystem, but one that is not typically subject to eutrophication, due to its manner of acquiring and jettisoning nutrients. Moreover, the nitrogen in trimix is diatomic elemental nitrogen, not the {{w|Nitrogen_fixation|"fixed"}} nitrogen that serves as a component of eutrophication. The diver would not breathe "fixed" nitrogen unless nitrogen-fixing bacteria were somehow incorporated into the SCUBA gear, a complex feature of dubious utility.

[[Randall]] addressed the question "how much helium is needed to lift a human body" in a [https://what-if.xkcd.com/62/ What if?] article. Helium has also featured in comics [[2766: Helium Reserve]] and [[2972: Helium Synthesis]].

==Transcript==
:[In a single frame five images of Cueball is shown as a kind of a cartoon event sequence, with each image a later time in the process. The first image to the left shows Cueball standing by the shore of a body of water. He is wearing SCUBA gear, goggles, breathing tubes, SCUBA tanks with a small H logo on it on his back, and swimming flippers, which almost touch the water.]

:[In the next four images he has the same equipment on, but with changes. It should be seen as he is still at the edge of the water, but that is not drawn in the next four depictions of Cueball.]

:[In the second image to the right of the first, Cueball's SCUBA tank is beginning to float upwards, so the end that is not teetered to Cueball move out and up, as shown with three small lines beneath the tank.]

:[In the third image the SCUBA tank is now floating above Cueball's head and the strings pull his arms a bit upwards. Cueball has turned his head looking up at the tank floating above and behind his head. Again three small lines beneath the tank indicates it is moving upwards.]

:[In the fourth image Cueball is now being lifted up, so his feet are now off the ground and he is tilting forward. The tank is now pointing it's bottom almost straight up and Cueball is looking down with his arms out the each side as the tank pulls him up. Two lines on either side of the tank indicate that it now wobbles above him as it lifts him up.]

:[In the fifth and last image the SCUBA tank is now pulling a dangling Cueball high above the ground, above his head's height in the first image. The tank is now turned so it points it's bottom to the left with lines on either side indicating wobbling motion. Cueball is floating as lying prone a bit bended on the middle as the tanks straps pulls him up. At this point he yells:]
:Cueball: ''Help!''

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Trimix SCUBA divers need to be careful not to let the helium percentage get too high.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

3029: Sun Avoidance

2024-12-27T04:39:13Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix typo

{{comic
| number = 3029
| date = December 25, 2024
| title = Sun Avoidance
| image = sun_avoidance_2x.png
| imagesize = 311x403px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = C'mon, ESA Solar Orbiter team, just give the Parker probe a LITTLE nudge at aphelion. Crash it into the sun. Fulfill the dream of Icarus. It is your destiny.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SANTA BOT FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (SKILL ISSUE). Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The comic shows the end of a table of human missions, both terrestrial and space-based, ranked by how far they stayed away from the {{w|Sun}}.

The vast majority of these missions have been on Earth, a few on the Moon, and most of the rest in Earth orbit, so about 157 million km from the Sun. There have also been 8 probes sent to the outer planets; they could be at the top of the list if this were shown, but only if they started by flying directly away from the Sun, at at time when the Earth was farthest from the Sun. Else they would have been closer to the Sun at the start than all missions on Earth when Earth was farthest. It is not how far away the mission ends but how close it comes at closest approach to the Sun.

Most space probes try not to get too close to the Sun, because it's extremely hot{{Citation needed}} and their equipment (especially the electronics) are not designed to work at such temperatures and radiation levels. If they have to venture into the inner Solar System, either because the mission is to an inner planet or other body there or to use {{w|gravity assist}} of Mercury or Venus, mission planners will design the trajectory so it remains tens of millions of kilometers away from the Sun, to minimize the Sun's effect on the spacecraft.

This comic was posted the day after December 24, 2024, when the {{w|Parker Solar Probe}} made its closest approach to the Sun. As a result, it has set a new record for the worst failure in solar avoidance. This mission needs to be really close to the Sun so it can make close-up analysis of its corona and magnetic field. It has been engineered with special solar shields to protect it from the extreme heat and radiation.

Obviously the joke is to mischaracterize Parker's impressively close approach to the Sun as a failure to avoid it. Earth and everything on it travel at an {{w|Earth's orbit|average of 29.78 km/s}} in a direction 90 degrees to the direction of the Sun, and the majority of this "sideways" relative velocity must be shed to bring Parker's orbit closer to the Sun. Just to bring a mass of approximately 17 metric tons directly to an orbit crossing Mercury requires a rocket the size of the [https://launchercalculator.com/?rocket=NS1 Saturn V stack]. Parker masses about forty times that and it's Christmas 2024 perihelion was just 6.1 million kilometers versus Mercury's 46 million kilometers. The Parker mission designers needed an extremely ''high'' degree of skill to plot a course with very minor adjustments that resulted in the seven gravity assists from Venus that were needed to get this close to the Sun — and should rank well above all the missions that went nowhere near the Sun and therefore showed no skill avoiding it.

The next closest mission that's still in operation (the {{w|Helios (spacecraft)|Helios}} missions ended in 1985) is the {{w|European Space Agency}}'s {{w|Solar Orbiter}}. The title text jokes that it should nudge Parker so it crashes into the Sun fulfilling the supposed dream of {{w|Icarus}}, a character from Greek mythology who flew too close to the Sun using wings crafted by his father {{w|Daedalus}}, and fell into the sea because the beeswax in the wings melted. Flying too close to the Sun is a saying that relates to Icarus, whose dream may have been to fly even closer to the Sun (or just so high that he was), but the 'reality' was instead a fall ''out'' of the sky and into the sea, making the title text somewhat metaphorically mixed.

The title text additionally suggests that the Solar Orbiter could be repurposed to nudge the Parker Probe into a Sun-striking trajectory, as their orbits do technically overlap, although it would take some time (and very precise operation) to coordinate the Orbiter such that it could somehow send the Probe into a full terminal Sun-dive to cement its position as being the closest mission to the Sun (or, in terms of the comic, aquiring a "last place" position in Sun-avoidance that can only ever be equalled, and never overtaken). But it would be difficult to accomplish the feat, as the mission had not been designed with this degree of capability in reserve, and it would not be easy to give the amount/timing of nudge needed without potentially damaging/destroying both craft.

Note that falling into the Sun, starting from Earth, needs almost as much effort as it would take to launch a probe ''from'' the surface of the Sun (assuming one could be) and out into Earth's orbit, which might involve reversing the {{w|Gravity assist|gravitational slingshots}} used to save some effort. The possible advantage for a Sun-destined probe is that it can end by taking advantage of {{w|aerobraking}} in its {{w|Stellar atmosphere|thickening atmosphere}}, but this would mean surviving higher tempereratures for even longer than Parker probe is designed to hopefully withstand; it would take further development to have a probe with a good chance of surviving long enough to make useful studies all the way up to not missing the Sun at all, or could only be considered as beyond the end of any practical mission.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Header:] Sun Avoidance Skill Leaderboard

:[A table with three columns, all with underlined headers.]
:Rank
:Mission
:Sun Nearest Miss
:[First 'row', 'Rank', is of extra height and over several lines, using vertical and horizontal ellipses between the two endpoints to indicate a range of ranks in the first column, the first visible digit of the larger number being cut off by the left frame edge:] 1. ⋮ … ⋮ 4303857.
:[Across both the 'Mission' and 'Sun Nearest Miss' columns, the first row has some text spread across two lines, within a framing pair of large square brackets to match the Rank range:] All other expeditions in human history
:[A simple row, with all three columns separately populated, the first columns Rank number is also cut off across the first visible digit.]
:4303858.
:Mariner-10
:69.0 million km
:[Another row, likewise.]
:4303859.
:Helios 1
:46.4 million km
:[Another row.]
:4303860.
:BepiColombo
:45.8 million km
:[Another row, with a yet more significant Ranking digit now partly visible due to non-proportional spacing, itself being cut off in the stead of the now fully visible next digit.]
:24303861.
:Messenger
:45.3 million km
:[Another row, back to the original pre-cutoff.]
:4303862.
:Solar Orbiter
:43.8 million km
:[Another row.]
:4303863.
:Helios 2
:43.3 million km
:[Final row.]
:4303864.
:Parker
:6.17 million km

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Congratulations to the Parker Solar Probe for setting a new record for "Worst Job Avoiding the Sun."

==Trivia==
This comic was released on Christmas Day of 2024, but makes no reference to Christmas. This year marks the first time in xkcd's 20 year history (of releasing comics around Christmas), that there have been no [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comics]] released during those days. Also all nine times before this year, when a release day fell on Christmas Day, that comic has always been about Christmas.

It might explain why this comic was released on Christmas Day instead of a Christmas comic, if [[Randall]] found the accomplishments of the Parker Solar Probe more interesting than Christmas itself. It would not be the first accomplishment mentioned on or around Christmas, however, with the others having been given a seasonal spin.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Space probes]]

3028: D&D Roll

2024-12-27T04:30:45Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix typo

{{comic
| number = 3028
| date = December 23, 2024
| title = D&D Roll
| image = dnd_roll_2x.png
| imagesize = 312x313px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Under some circumstances, if you throw a D8 and then a D12 at an enemy, thanks to the D8's greater pointiness you actually have to roll a D12 and D8 respectively to determine damage.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a D20 FORGED IN THE CAVES OF A BOT. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is a scene from a tabletop roleplaying game, probably {{w|Dungeons & Dragons}}. In [[3015: D&D Combinatorics]], the same people, [[Cueball]], [[Megan]], [[Ponytail]], [[White Hat]] and [[Knit Cap]], are seated playing D&D in the same seats, where Cueball seems to represent [[Randall]].

Here Cueball announces "I roll D20... 18," referring to rolling a 20-sided die and getting the relatively high score of 18, presumably while in a fight with a {{w|kobold (Dungeons & Dragons)|kobold}} (a small reptilian humanoid creature in D&D.) The {{w|gamemaster|Dungeon Master}}, Ponytail, responds that the kobold is unaffected, but humorously suggests using a sword instead, pointing out the absurdity of trying to defeat an enemy by rolling dice at them. (Ponytail was also the gamemaster in the previous D&D comic).

Cueball made the mistake of assuming that Ponytail would understand which of his weapons or other {{w|melee}} attacks he intended to use, but she had no way of knowing that, so she decided to gently tease him about the omission. This is a common mistake, and being gently made fun of is a common result. The player will usually be allowed to state the specific attack intended and roll again.{{cn}}

Alternately, DMs may take umbrage at a player's presumption to roll dice for actions before being asked to, and this could be interpreted as a chiding. Sometimes rolls are not necessary in cases where success is automatic (the kobold is effectively helpless) or impossible (the kobold is magically immune to physical attacks), although it should be the DM's own choice whether to still test for a meaningful critical [https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Critical_failure failure] or [https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Critical_hit success], despite it being an apparently foregone conclusion of either kind. There are also other circumstances where the required dice is(/are) different ''in this instance'' from that which the player may assume. From a practical perspective, if the performed rolling of the dice is not required (or correctly composed) for the DM's purposes, they can choose to ignore it and/or ask for some other roll(s) to be made. It may then be the player that might be most upset by having rolled a 'good' roll that has been 'wasted', on the principle that they would have liked it to have it happen later, when it actually mattered, despite this being statistically irrelevant, assuming that the DM doesn't keep any such details mysteriously hidden.

However, the possibility exists that the players' characters have actual dice, such as those which were role-played as being produced in [[244: Tabletop Roleplaying]]. The title text suggests that if you literally threw dice as weapons, an eight-sided die (D8) would do more damage than a twelve-sided die (D12) because of its {{w|Dice#Common variations|pointier shape}}, so ironically, you might need to roll the D12 to determine the D8's damage and vice versa, in "some circumstances."

===Background===
When attacking an enemy in D&D, regardless of the weapon used, the attack starts with a d20 roll to see if it lands a solid hit. If a sufficiently high (or in the earliest editions, sufficiently low) number is rolled, the attack hits, and then further dice (chosen depending on the weapon's form and any magic it might possess) are rolled to determine damage. Before any dice can be rolled at all, however, the player must declare which enemy they are attacking and what with. This is trivial if the attacking character always uses the same weapon and is facing a single enemy, but becomes an important question if the fight is more complex. Consider a case where there are two kobolds present, one wearing plate armor while the other has only a loincloth on (the armor requiring a better d20 roll to defeat), and the player carries both a greatsword (dealing heavy general damage) and the magical "Icepick of Instant Kobold Death" (normally ignored but in this case very useful) and also has magic item that can shoot a destructive [https://5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/scorchingRay.htm ''Scorching Ray'']. There are also certain weapons that deal subpar damage on a typical attack, but trigger a powerful extra effect on a very good roll such as 18, making it even more important to specify which weapon one is using before making the roll.

By D&D 5.0 rules, a stone hurled from a sling does [https://5e.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#simpleWeapons 1d4 bludgeoning damage]. A sling bullet typically weighs [https://5e.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/equipment.htm#tableAdventuringGear 3/40 pound (1.2 oz, 35 g)], a plausible weight for a normal-sized die made of a moderately dense material. Presumably, an object of similar weight that's thrown "by hand" rather than with a sling would do less damage, though a heavier object might do similar damage (albeit with less range). The D&D 3.5 spell [https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magicStone.htm ''Magic Stone''] enhances ordinary small stones so they do 1d6+1 damage when hurled, or 2d6+2 when striking undead creatures. So depending on the setup, a D&D character throwing a die at an enemy could theoretically cause considerable harm, but would normally be much better served with an intentionally crafted weapon.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, White Hat, and Knit Cap are sitting around a table in a tabletop gaming session. Both Cueball and Knit Cap are sitting in office chairs at the ends of the table, with Cueball leaning forward and holding his hand above the table and Knit Cap leaning back on her arm. Behind the table, Megan sits to the left of Ponytail and White Hat to the right. They are both looking at Ponytail, while Ponytail is looking at Cueball. Objects such as dice, miniatures, a map, and papers are on the table.]
:Cueball: I roll D20... 18.
:Ponytail: The kobold is unaffected.
:Ponytail: Honestly, I don't know why you thought dice would help. You should probably try a sword or something instead.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Knit Cap]]
[[Category:Games]]

3024: METAR

2024-12-16T04:13:51Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix grammar

{{comic
| number = 3024
| date = December 13, 2024
| title = METAR
| image = metar_2x.png
| imagesize = 640x360px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In the aviation world, they don't use AM/PM times. Instead, all times are assumed to be AM unless they're labeled NOTAM.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT WITH NO SIGNIFICANT OTHER :( (OTHER THAN AN A380). Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In aviation, the {{w|METAR}} (Meteorological Aerodrome Report) is used to give pilots a brief overview of the current meteorological conditions at the airport. The METAR follows a specific structure and makes heavy usage of abbreviations, which makes it hard to read for anyone not familiar with it. The comic makes fun of that by assuming meaning of the words based on what non-aviation people might think the different elements of the METAR report may represent. The METAR in the comic is fairly alarming, describing dangerously fast winds, a possible tornado, freezing volcanic ash (in New York!), lightning, and impossibly high atmospheric pressure.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Code !! Real Meaning !! According to the comic
|-
| METAR
| Type: Meteorological Aerodrome Report
| The comic assumes that this is just a spelling error and it should be "meter"
|-
| KNYC
| Station ID: 4 character identifier; for an airport, this would be the {{w|ICAO airport code|ICAO code}}. In this instance the identifier represents the automated weather station at Belvedere Castle in Central Park, NYC. Airport, weather, and radio station call signs share a common heritage.
| "Station ID", which is actually correct, although people unfamiliar with METAR-reporting stations could presume that this is an AM radio broadcaster's name.
Among AM radio stations, KNYC is not a current call-sign (though {{w|WNYC}} is, and indeed serves New York City), but (among the 'western' subset of US stations) currently {{w|KNCY (AM)|KNCY}} serves the area around Omaha, Nebraska (being based in Nebraska City), and {{w|KYCN}} covers Wheatland, Wyoming.
|-
| 251600Z
| Time of observation: 25th day of the month at 4 PM UTC. Z is not part of the time, but simply global shorthand for {{w|Military time zone|"Zulu" time}}, i.e. {{w|Coordinated Universal Time|UTC}}. Normally most stations would report at a particular time every hour, in this particular case either 15:51 or 16:51 would apply, but more frequent reports are made during unusual and rapidly changing weather events (as may be the situation, in this case).
| Misreading the "Z" as a 2, resulting in a nonsensical time. Hours greater than 24 are sometimes used to indicate a time after midnight, e.g., in Japan 17~25h means from 5 P.M. to 1 A.M. the following day. A normal METAR does not use more than 24 hours, instead incrementing the day, so 25 hours further adds to the nonsensical nature of the interpretation.
|-
| 18035G45KT
| Wind direction and speed: Wind direction 180° (directly from the south, degrees based on 0°=magnetic north), speed 35 knots, gusting to 45 knots. This is quite stormy weather.
| Instead of interpreting the first 5 digits as direction and speed, it is assumed that it is one big number and the G45 stands for the time span in which this was observed with "G" standing for "good". 18,035 knots is an unrealistically high wind speed, faster than orbital velocity; the {{w|jet stream}} typically contains the highest winds on Earth, and may reach about 250 knots.
|-
| 6SM
| In weather reports related to aviation, "6SM" stands for 6 statute miles of visibility, meaning that objects can be seen clearly up to 6 miles away.<ref>https://weather.cod.edu/notes/metar.html#:~:text=6SM%2DVisibility,SM)%20up%20to%2010%20SM.</ref> This indicates clear enough weather to fly without instruments; the value has a max range of 10SM.
| The comic interprets "6SM" to humorously mean a "Size '''6 Sm'''all".
|-
| VCFCFZVA
| In the vicinity (VC): funnel cloud (FC) and freezing (FZ) volcanic ash (VA). This sounds somewhat unusual for New York City.{{Citation needed}}
| A riff on the repeated letters which give off the impression the string is constructed by random keypresses on the keyboard, as exemplified by a [[1689: My Friend Catherine|cat on the keyboard]]. There is a long history of this problem, as well as [http://bitboost.com/pawsense/ attempted solutions].
This string may or may not actually look like the pattern of characters that a walking cat could produce (and be reliably detected). All the letters are in a cluster at the lower left of the (QWERTY) keyboard, with some adjacently paired characters perhaps indicative of stepping on multiple keys and other neighbouring keys having been stepped over, not uncommon of an oblivious feline wandering across your desk. But the repeated cluster of "CFCF", and other implied paw-press events, seem less likely to emerge even from a rapid quadrupedal gait. A more casual stroll would likely also create single-character duplications, unless the keyboard repeat delay was set unnaturally high.
|-
| +BLUP
| Heavy (+) blowing (BL) unknown precipitation (UP)
| Riffing on the fact that it looks like an onomatopoetic word
|-
| NOSIG
| No significant change is expected to the reported conditions within the next 2 hours
| The comic assumes that the transmitter of the METAR report wants the receivers to know that they do not have a significant other, which the comic finds sad. The observer could be trying to abuse the METAR report as a dating platform.
|-
| LTG OHD
| Lightning overhead
| OHD is interpreted as "overheard" instead of "overhead", indicating that they did not observe it themselves and instead just overheard people talking about it.
|-
| A3808
| Altimeter setting: (calculated) air pressure at {{w|Mean_sea_level|mean sea level}} at the airport is 38.08. The value of 38.08 inHg is extremely high. The standard atmospheric pressure used in aviation is 29.92 inHg; the highest recorded surface pressure on Earth was 32.01 {{w|Inch_of_mercury|inches of mercury (inHg)}}<ref>https://learn.weatherstem.com/modules/learn/lessons/125/18.html</ref> ("A" for inHg, used primarily in USA, Canada and Japan; "Q" would indicate a value in hPa). This is used to adjust the altimeter in the aircraft to the local air pressure, instead of using the standard setting used in higher air spaces.
| The comic says that the observer saw an {{w|Airbus_A380|Airbus A380-800}}, a very large passenger plane. Note: The {{w|List_of_ICAO_aircraft_type_designators|ICAO aircraft type code}} for the Airbus A380-800 is A388 and not A3808.
|-
| RMK
| Beginning of the section with remarks
| Remarkable. A comment about the A380.
|-
| AO2
| The weather station is automated (A) and has a precipitation discriminator (O2), which can tell the difference between liquid and frozen precipitation.
| A reference to the {{w|fan fiction|fanfic}} site [https://archiveofourown.org/ Archive of Our Own], often abbreviated as AO3 ('''A'''rchive '''o'''f '''O'''ur '''O'''wn, or AOOO). It's nonsensical to describe this site as having a precipitation discriminator.{{Citation needed}}
|-
| SLP130=
| {{w|Sea_level_pressure|Sea-level pressure}} is 1013.0 hPa (approx. 29.91 inHg). The equal sign signifies the end of the METAR.
| "SLP" interpreted as abbreviation for sleepy, the numbers as a time, and the = sign as "around" (maybe confused with ≈)
|-
|
|
|-
| NOTAM (title text)
| Not part of a METAR report, but instead another aviation abbreviation. It stands for {{w|NOTAM|Notice to Air Missions}} (previously Notice to Airmen).
| Parsed as "not A.M.", indicating that a given time is to be interpreted as P.M. While AM and PM are indeed not used in aviation, as the comic says, they use a 24-hour clock system, not an "A.M.-by-default" 12-hour clock system.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:Decoding a METAR report:

:[A METAR report is shown with annotations. The report is:]

:<code>METAR KNYC 251600Z 18035G45KT 6SM VCFCFZVA +BLUP NOSIG LTG OHD A3808 RMK A02 SPL130=</code>

:[The annotations are:]

:* <code>METAR</code> "METER" (Usually misspelled)
:* <code>KNYC</code> Station ID
:* <code>251600Z</code> Time (25:16:002)
:* <code>18035G45KT</code> Wind speed has been 18,035 knots for a good 45 minutes now
:* <code>6SM</code> Observer is a size 6 small
:* <code>VCFCFZVA</code> Sorry, the station cat walked on the keyboard
:* <code>+BLUP</code> Weird noise the sky made earlier
:* <code>NOSIG</code> Observer has no significant other :(
:* <code>LTG OHD</code> We overheard someone saying there was lightning
:* <code>A3808</code> Hey look, an Airbus A380-800!
:* <code>RMK</code> Remarkable!
:* <code>A02</code> Fanfic Archive equipped with a precipitation sensor
:* <code>SLP130=</code> Observer got sleepy around 1:30

==Trivia==
The actual last three KNYC METAR strings, that were generated at about the actual time of publication, were:
KNYC 131651Z AUTO VRB03KT 10SM CLR M01/M14 A3066 RMK AO2 SLP374 T10061144 $
*''New York, Central Park : 13/Dec/2024, 16:51 UTC (11:51am local time) : Fully Automated Report : Variable wind, no more than 3 knots : 10 (or more) statute miles visibility : No clouds below 12,000 ft (3,700 m) : −1 °C (about 30 °F), dew point at −14 °C (about 7 °F) : Altimeter at 30.66 inHg (1038.3 hPa) : Precipitation discriminator present : Sea-level pressure at 1,037.4 hPa (30.63 inHg) : Temperature -0.6 °C (conversion from exactly 31 °F) , dew point -14.4 °C (from exactly 6 °F) : Maintenance check required (indicated by dollar sign)''
KNYC 131751Z AUTO 10SM CLR 00/M16 A3066 RMK AO2 SLP374 T00001156 10000 21028 56006 $
*''New York, Central Park : 13/Dec/2024, 17:51 UTC (12:51pm local time) : Fully Automated Report : (no wind measured) : 10 (or more) statute miles visibility : No clouds below 12,000 ft (3,700 m) : 0 °C (about 32 °F), dew point at −16 °C (about 3 °F) : Altimeter at 30.66 inHg (1038.3 hPa) : Precipitation discriminator present : Sea-level pressure at 1,037.4 hPa (30.63inHg) : Temperature ±0.00 °C (from exactly 32 °F), dew point -11.56 °C [sic, -11.67 °C would be from exactly 11 °F] : 6 hour maximum 0.00 °C (32 °F) : 6 hour minimum -10.28 °C (from 13.5 °F) : 3 hour pressure tendency, falling by 0.6 millibars (0.018 inHg) : Maintenance check required''
KNYC 131851Z AUTO 10SM CLR 00/M16 A3066 RMK AO2 SLP377 T00001156 $
*''New York, Central Park : 13/Dec/2024, 18:51 UTC (1:51pm local time) : Fully Automated Report : (no wind measured) : 10 (or more) statute miles visibility : No clouds below 12,000 ft (3,700 m) : 0 °C (about 32 °F), dew point at −14 °C (about 7 °F) : Altimeter at 30.66 inHg (1038.3 hPa) : Precipitation discriminator present : Sea-level pressure at 1,037.7 hPa (30.64 inHg) : Temperature -0.6 °C (from exactly 31 °F), dew point -11.56 °C [sic, again probably from +11 °F] : Maintenance check required ''







==References==
{{reflist}}
[https://e6bx.com/metar-decoder/ ''Actual'' Metar Decoder]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Aviation]]
[[Category:Emoji]]

3022: Making Tea

2024-12-11T21:53:49Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix grammar

{{comic
| number = 3022
| date = December 9, 2024
| title = Making Tea
| image = making_tea_2x.png
| imagesize = 690x291px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = No, of course we don't microwave the mug WITH the teabag in it. We microwave the teabag separately.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Microwaved by a BRITISH PERSON RAGING OVER TEA MADE FROM THE GREAT LAKES - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
{{w|Tea}} is exceptionally popular in the United Kingdom (although [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gpll9l535o decreasingly so], and not as serious a business as in {{w|Japanese tea ceremony|Japan}} and {{w|Chinese tea culture|China}}). Virtually every home has an electric kettle as a standard appliance for boiling hot water (used to make tea, coffee, soup powders, instant mash, etc) and teapots and other related crockery can be found in many cupboards, or even on a shelf in full display, whether or not regularly used. British people are perceived as taking tea seriously, having very specific and strongly held opinions on the proper way to make tea. In contrast, tea (especially hot tea) is less commonplace in the United States of America (Randall's native country) and owning tea-making equipment is probably far less common than having coffee-makers and/or juicers of various kinds. While some US households have kettles that can be put on a stove top, many do not have any specific device to boil water. As a result, when Americans need a cup of hot water — for tea or otherwise — the options are usually to use a pan on the stove, or to simply microwave a mug of water (the latter probably being more common in modern times). {{w|Instant hot water dispenser|Instant hot water taps}} are also common in many homes, water coolers, and public drinking fountains in the US; they are being marketed for "high-end kitchens" in the UK, in particularly fancy multi-function taps (US: 'faucets'), but the British are still somewhat reluctant to accept the 'mixer tap' concept, and probably will take quite some time to accept that tea-appropriate boiling water can be obtained directly from the sink's plumbing.

British people are stereotyped as taking genuine offense to microwaved water, believing it to be an objectively incorrect way to make tea. Randall mocks this stereotype through exaggeration, saying British people would be significantly less offended by someone stealing {{w|Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom|the Crown Jewels}} and using those for tea-making than they would be by tea made with a cup of microwaved water.

===Methods mentioned===
;Making it in a kettle
:Perhaps an intentional misnomer. Water may be ''boiled'' in a kettle, but the tea itself is made in a separate {{w|teapot}}, with loose or bagged tea-leaves, ready for pouring into any number of {{w|teacup}}s, {{w|mug}}s or {{w|vacuum flask|thermos flask}} as required. Making tea actually ''in'' the kettle, by placing the tea in with the water and then boiling it, would be considered ''very'' bad form (and likely void your warranty), and render the kettle less useful for its other purposes. Making the boiling water in a kettle, however, is standard practice (occasionally a {{w|Water heating|potable water geyser}} or similar may be available), leaving the tea-making process to occur in the teapot (as above) or the drinking vessel (as below). Randall may be suggesting that the spectacle of someone making tea directly in a kettle would be so bizarre that a British onlooker would in their bafflement completely forget to be angry about it, but the absence of a data point for the historically standard method "making it in a teapot" could suggest more that he's accidentally written "in a kettle" when he meant "with a kettle".

;Boiling water in a pot, steeping in a mug
:Identical to the basic boiling process above, except using a pot (commonly called a 'saucepan' in the UK) on the stove, rather than a kettle. This is slightly less convenient than using a kettle (since the pan often lacks a dedicated spout for pouring, and either whistle, which the steam sounds when the water boils, or the automatic cut-off found on most electric kettles), but is otherwise functionally identical. Nonetheless, the comic notes that Brits would take mild offense, considering it to be inferior to using a kettle.
:To confuse matters, British people would normally take '{{wiktionary|pot#Noun|pot}}' (in the specific context of tea-making) to be [https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/one+for+the+pot short for 'teapot']. However, a ceramic teapot should ''never'' be directly heated in the manner of a pan or a kettle. It should be filled with recently boiled (but not boiling) water, ''ideally'' after an initial small splash of hot water is swirled around it to 'condition' the teapot and then the requisite number of teabags (or quantity of tealeaves) dropped in.

;Making it in a chalice and ampulla stolen from the Crown Jewels
:A {{w|chalice}} is an ornate type of cup; an {{w|ampulla}} is a type of flask or bottle. Both are typically now terms used in relation to objects used in ritual. Randall is likely drawing a parallel here with the ritualism and particularity with which some people surround the making of tea and its associated artefacts.
:The {{w|Crown_Jewels_of_the_United_Kingdom|Crown Jewels}} are a set of items belonging to the British monarchy, including ceremonial items and clothing using in royal coronations. These items have both major cultural significance, due to their historical connection with the monarchy, and major objective value, as many of them are heavily jeweled and/or made of precious metals. To steal items from these collection for the purpose of tea-making would obviously be both highly criminal and highly disrespectful. The ampulla referenced is used to anoint the monarch with oil during the coronation ceremony and the chalice may refer to a {{w|Eucharist|Communion vessel}}, giving them religious significance as well.
:More importantly for many, though, this would be incorrect tea-ware. The gold or silver chalices and gold ampulla are doubtful as being of suitable materials for British tea-making (as opposed to using cast iron, stainless steel, silver-plate, robust ceramics and/or fine china, for various stages of the process) and there'd definitely be some complaints that it does not taste like a proper cuppa. To use such objects to make tea would simply {{wiktionary|not cricket|not be cricket}}.

;Microwaving a mug
:As mentioned above, heating water in a microwave, for any purpose, is considered acceptable and common in the US. To do so to make tea is considered uncommon and borderline heretical in the UK. The reasons for this are difficult to pin down. Some argue that the microwave doesn't allow proper control over the water temperature (which is considered vital for proper tea-making), but this position is questionable at best. Others raise the danger of superheating water which might boil over when the tea bag is added, but this is likely a highly overblown concern. Some people even argue that microwaving changes the quality or composition of the water in some way, but there's very little science to back that up.
:Another disputed theory for the difference in approach surrounds convenience. Electric kettles and microwaves are both highly efficient methods of heating water with electricity, but electric kettles in the UK tend to draw significantly more power than either US kettles or microwaves (due, in part, to higher main voltage in the UK grid). As a result, UK kettles can heat an equivalent volume of water significantly faster than can microwaves. When making a single cup, the difference is unlikely to be significant, but when making tea for a whole family, or for guests (as is much more common in the UK), using a microwave would be much less convenient.
:Ultimately, though, the difference probably comes down to an accident of culture. Most likely, the preparation of tea simply has a sense of tradition and ritual in Britain, and using a microwave feels crass, modern, and completely disconnected from the cultural associations of tea. It may also feel wrong because it inverts the expectation that the hot water is poured over the tea, requiring instead that the tea be submerged in the water. Meanwhile, electric kettles have simply never really caught on in the US.
:The title text continues with this theme, by reassuring us that the microwaved mug doesn't have a teabag in it (analogous to the 'boiling tea-kettle' version). It then strays into farce, though, by suggesting it is separately microwaved. There is no obvious reason to microwave a teabag. Microwave ovens heat water molecules almost exclusively, and tealeaves (and bag) should be dry before use, with no water molecules to heat. The wrongheadedness of this claim does little but provoke a skeptic's doubts about how utterly perverse this colonial variation on tea-making has become.

===Other tea controversies===

Other sources of controversy in the {{w|A Nice Cup of Tea|correct way to make tea}} are not covered in the comic, or hidden behind the other 'obvious errors'. Perhaps primary among these is the question of the difference between making (and steeping) the tea in a teapot and pouring the water over a teabag in a mug.

The former tends to be a more formal method, to serve in polite company, ''or'' from the traditional need to prepare a large volume of tea for an indeterminate number of recipients and refills, such as in a canteen/cafeteria situation, where the 'pot' stays hot for almost as long as the supply lasts. A prepared teapot of tea allows a fairly consistent 'brew' that is readily poured out into teacups (or mugs) as and when required, and can be readily topped up if an increase in the supply is needed.

The latter method relies upon individual teabags or loose-leaf tea in an individual infuser, and lets each recipient leave the tea in for as long as they personally prefer (or end up having to), which reflects more individual flexibility. Again, this splits between 'high' and 'low' class use. The infamous "builders' tea" often has the teabag left in for a long time (even during drinking), with plenty of milk and sugar, to perhaps produce an increasingly dense brew as the workman concerned takes opportune sips as he (usually) can during his work. Conversely, the trend in more stylish restaurants and tearooms tends to be to supply each customer their teacup together with an individual small vessel of freshly boiled water (rarely more than one or two cups-worth) and the recipient's choices of bagged tea (including fruit/herbal) and additions (milk, or equivalent, lemon, etc, plus sweeteners of all kinds), letting them prepare their own infusion exactly in their own way; this is often presented with an air of 'continental sophistication', but may bemuse and confuse the more down-to-Earth British tea-drinker used to their home method, as does the choice of dozens of fancy coffees from a barista when they'd be happy enough with a decent "instant coffee".

Further noting the issue of whether the milk (not obligatory, but decisively traditional) should be put in ''before'' the tea (or teabag!) is also often considered {{tvtropes|SeriousBusiness|Serious Business}}...

In [https://www.foodandwine.com/why-you-should-add-salt-to-tea-8549735 January of 2024], Michelle Francl, Ph.D., a chemistry professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, suggested to put a pinch of salt into tea, saying that the sodium in salt blocks the bitter taste of tea. This prompted a great outcry by [https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/jan/24/perfect-cup-of-tea-needs-a-pinch-of-salt-and-squeeze-of-lemon-says-us-chemist?scrlybrkr=361c99cc The Guardian] and a statement by the US embassy on X (Twitter): “Today's media reports of an American Professor's recipe for the 'perfect' cup of tea has landed our special bond with the United Kingdom in hot water … We want to ensure[sic] the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain's national drink is not official United States Policy. And never will be. ... The US embassy will continue to make tea in the proper way – by microwaving it."

==Transcript==
:[A line chart is shown. Above the chart are, from top to bottom, a heading, a subheading, and an arrow pointing right with a label above. On the line there are four labeled tick marks, with the labels written beneath the line. A small curved line is going from each label to below their tick. The first two ticks are close together on the far left side of the graph, the third is approximately in the center, and the fourth is on the far right side of the graph.]
:<big>Ways of Making Tea</big>
:By how angry British people get when Americans do them
:More angry
:Making it in a kettle
:Boiling water in a pot, steeping in a mug
:Making it in a chalice and ampulla stolen from the Crown Jewels
:Microwaving a mug

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Rankings]]

1388: Subduction License

2024-12-07T04:23:40Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix grammar

{{comic
| number = 1388
| date = June 30, 2014
| title = Subduction License
| image = subduction_license.png
| titletext = 'Dude, why can't you just be a normal roommate?' 'Because I'm coming TOWARD you!'
}}

==Explanation==
In {{w|structural geology}}, {{w|subduction}} is the mechanism by which one {{w|tectonic plate}} disappears under another. This process usually creates a {{w|mountain range}} on the second tectonic plate, as that starts to ride over the first and the surface geology is rucked and folded upwards. Also, water entrained in the subducting plate may rise into the second plate and provokes {{w|volcanism}}, often resulting in a {{w|volcanic arc}}.

In this comic, [[Beret Guy]] is very happy because he has just received his ''subduction license'', which may be a play on the business term ''{{w|licensed production|production license}}''. His roommate [[Cueball]] very reasonably asks him: ''Your what?'' But instead of answering him, Beret Guy begins to move towards him in their small room. It turns out that the license has literally enabled him to initiate subduction, seemingly at any point of his choosing and at anomalous speed, or else allowed him to perform an existing ability he had not previously felt he could legally use. As he slides slightly towards Cueball, he slowly sinks under the floorboards of the room, and in this process he creates a small mountain range on the floor. In the end, much to Cueball's consternation, these mountains turn his desk and chair over. Cueball physically falls out of the frame in the final panel, where Beret Guy is already halfway down beneath the floor. This would not be possible in real life.{{Citation needed}}

The title text plays on the double meaning of the word "normal", which Cueball means in the sense of "like most people, not strange," but which Beret Guy interprets in the geological sense. While subduction occurs when two plates crash into each other, a {{w|normal fault}} occurs when two plates are moving away from each other. Here, "normal" is used in the sense of "perpendicular," as the result of a normal fault is often that part of the crust moves vertically downward, forming a {{w|graben}}.

A similarly atypical license was mentioned previously in [[410: Math Paper]]. Puns on geological terms (including types of faults) were previously made in [[1082: Geology]].

This comic was featured in a page of [[Thing Explainer]] as part of the explanation of the ''Big flat rocks we live on''. Only the last three panels were used, probably because the words in the first panel were way too uncommon for the book - see more details [[Thing_Explainer#References_to_comics|here]].

Subduction was again mentioned in [[1829: Geochronology]].

==Transcript==
:[Beret Guy is looking at some mail he has received while Cueball is at his computer desk at the other side of the room.]
:Beret Guy: Sweet! I finally got my subduction license!
:Cueball: Your what?

:[Beret Guy starts sinking into the ground, causing it to ripple.]
:Cueball: ...What are you doing?

:[Beret Guy sinks further, forming a miniature mountain range in front of him. Cueball is frantically trying to keep his computer steady as his desk tilts.]
:Cueball: ''Stop it! Stop it!''

:[Beret Guy is waist-deep, and snow caps have formed on the mountains. Cueball is falling backwards from his desk and out of his chair, and the monitor unplugs itself from his computer.]
:Cueball: ''Augh!''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Strange powers of Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Geology]]

Talk:3010: Geometriphylogenetics

2024-11-12T05:04:57Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Congratulations

Does the phrase "maximum likelihood" have any relationship to phylogenetics? [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 03:01, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
: {{w|Computational_phylogenetics#Maximum_likelihood|Profoundly so}}. Most contemporary analyses, especially of large datasets, use either maximum-likelihood methodologies or Bayesian inference (q.v.). I will see if I can say something coherent and comprehensible about this in the explanation. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.147.58|172.71.147.58]] 03:30, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
::If it was you who added the explanation for the title text, nicely done! [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 05:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:3010: Geometriphylogenetics

2024-11-12T03:01:12Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Question on phrase

3010: Geometriphylogenetics

2024-11-12T02:57:01Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix grammar

{{comic
| number = 3010
| date = November 11, 2024
| title = Geometriphylogenetics
| image = geometriphylogenetics_2x.png
| imagesize = 316x391px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = There's a maximum likelihood that I'm doing phylogenetics wrong.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by an UNUSUALLY POINTY CIRCLE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{w|Phylogenetics}} is the relationships between different species evolutionarily. Through evolution, affected by the environment or social factors, one species may over a great length of time diverge into two new, different species. These two new species still share a common ancestor, the original species, and therefore are more closely related than a species not sharing this common ancestor. For instance, although humans and dogs share a common ancestor, we share a much more recent common ancestor with apes: on a phylogenetics chart, this would be shown by the human and ape branch connecting quickly, and then further down the line this joint branch would connect to the common ancestor of dogs.

Geometriphylogenetics is a play on words, combining "{{w|geometry}}" with "phylogenetics" and insinuating it is the phylogenetics of shapes. The chart Randall made shows the relationships between shapes as they evolved from "common ancestors". Shapes such as triangles and squares didn't actually evolve from older, now-extinct shapes (citation needed?), which is what the title text might be saying. The caption states that triangles are actually more closely related to circles than squares, proven by genetic analysis. This is shown on the chart by triangles having a closer common ancestor than squares.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[A tree diagram, or a cladogram is shown, consisting of lines that branch off from left to right, starting with one horizontal line on the left. Eight results are shown on the right: ellipse on Path 1, circle on Path 2, triangle on Path 3, parallelogram on Path 4, trapezoid on Path 5, square on Path 6, rectangle on Path 7, and a pentagon on Path 8. The paths are listed in order top to bottom.]
:[Path 3 and the triangle are bold black, while the other branches are dimmer. The paths are connected as follows: Path 2 and 3 are connected, then both connect together to Path 1; Path 4 and 5 are connected, as are Path 6 and 7, and these two paths are connected altogether; Path 8 is then connected to the branch containing Paths 4 to 7. All of Paths 1 to 3 are then connected to Paths 4 to 8, the branches all culminating in a single line on the left.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:The phylogenetic revolution continues:
:Triangles were long believed to be related to squares, but genetic analysis proves that they are actually very pointy circles.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Geometry]]
[[Category:Biology]]

3007: Probabilistic Uncertainty

2024-11-04T20:58:29Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Fix typo

{{comic
| number = 3007
| date = November 4, 2024
| title = Probabilistic Uncertainty
| image = probabilistic_uncertainty_2x.png
| imagesize = 474x385px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = "One popular strategy is to enter an emotional spiral. Could that be the right approach? We contacted several researchers who are experts in emotional spirals to ask them, but none of them were in a state to speak with us."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a HOPEFUL BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is about the difficulty of dealing with 50/50 odds, and is likely inspired by the upcoming American election. The odds of the election as shown by many media sources are close to 50/50, which is the third scenario shown in the comic.

{| class="wikitable"
!Odds
!How to think about it?
!Explanation
|-
| Good outcome more likely || Recognize that the bad outcome is possible, but be reassured that the odds are in your favor ||
|-
| Bad outcome more likely || Prepare for the bad outcome while remembering that the future isn't certain and hope is justified ||
|-
| Precisely 50/50 || ????? N/A ???? || {{w|N/A}} stands for "not available", "no answer", "not applicable" or "not assessed".
|}
The title text is a joke about emotional spirals - naturally, the emotional spiral experts would be emotionally spiralling. Or, they could be experts that are in an emotional spiral.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[A table titled "Coping With Probablistic Uncertainty", with two columns labeled "Scenario" and "How to think about it in an emptionally healthy way". The boxes in the Scenario column contains text followed by a rectangle split into two parts; the left part is a smiley face, the right part is a frowny face.]

Row 1, column 1: "Good outcome more likely". The smiley face portion of the rectangle is about 75%.
Row 1, column 2: "Recognize that the bad outcome is possible, but be reassured that the odds are in your favor".

Row 2, column 1: "Bad outcome more likely". The smiley face portion of the rectangle is about 25%.
Row 2, column 2: "Prepare for the bad outcome while remembering that the future isn't certain and hope is justified".

Row 3, column 1: "Precisely 50/50". The rectangle is split in half.
Row 3, column 2: "????? N/A ????"
{{comic discussion}}

3002: RNAWorld

2024-10-24T02:27:14Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Remove unnecessary "the"

{{comic
| number = 3002
| date = October 23, 2024
| title = RNAWorld
| image = rnaworld_2x.png
| imagesize = 275x345px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Disney lore: Canonically, because of how Elsa's abiogenesis powers work, Olaf is an RNA-only organism.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by ELSA MAKING RNA - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic humorously conflates {{w|biology}} and {{w|Disney World}}. Disney World is one of a franchise of theme parks with attractions based on various {{w|Walt Disney Company|Disney}} movies, while {{w|RNA world hypothesis}} is a proposed origin of life, in which RNA acts both as the genetic material and {{w|Ribozyme|the enzymatic machinery needed to copy it.}}

{{w|Ariel (The Little Mermaid)|Ariel}} is the titular character from {{w|The Little Mermaid (1989 film)|The Little Mermaid}}. In the film she likes to collect human artifacts; the comic replaces this with collecting {{w|nucleotides}}, the basic building blocks of {{w|DNA}} and {{w|RNA}}.

{{w|Ratatouille (film)|Ratatouille}} is a film about a French rat named Remy who dreams of becoming a gourmet chef. The comic conflates the soup that a chef might create for patrons to eat with "{{w|primordial soup}}", the environment that's believed to have existed on the early Earth when the processes of life began.

{{w|Elsa (Frozen)|Elsa}} is one of the lead characters from the {{w|Frozen (2013 film)|Frozen}} movies. In the film she has the magical ability to control ice and snow, and she used this power to make the snowman {{w|Olaf (Fozen)|Olaf}} come to life. The comic equates this with the original emergence of life on Earth ({{w|abiogenesis}}, or life from non-life) through {{w|ribozyme}} synthesis. Ribozymes are RNA molecules that, similarly to enzymes made of protein, catalyze biochemical reactions, such as the splicing of RNA during gene expression.

The title text continues this by saying that since Elsa's ability is based on ribozymes, Olaf's machinery of life must be based only on RNA, not DNA. This fits in with the theme of RNA World. Olaf generally appears to be (by mass) mostly just snow but, in common with various ideas about {{w|Comet nucleus#%22Dirty snowball%22|the makeup of cometary ice}} (and the role played by them in 'seeding' the young Earth with organic molecules), might well be thoroughly imbued with carbon-rich compounds ''other'' than those inherent in his carrot nose, coal buttons, and basic twig/stick elements. "Canonically" refers to {{w|Canon (fiction)|fictional canon}} (in this case Disney fiction), "the body of works taking place in a particular fictional world that are widely considered to be official or authoritative."

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball, Ponytail, Jill, and another child (wearing Mickey/Minnie ears) are walking through an amusement park. Cueball has a water bottle and a backpack, Ponytail is looking at a map or a brochure with a helix structure shown on one page, Jill has a small stuffed toy, and the other child has a popsicle. Cueballs, Megans, and Hairys can be seen in the background in gray. There are also a drop tower, a roller coaster, a shop, and a hot air balloon in the background.]
:Ponytail: Okay, kids, now that Ariel is done collecting nucleotides for Ratatouille’s primordial soup, let’s go watch Elsa initiate runaway ribozyme synthesis!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Disney’s RNAWorld

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Disney]]

3000: Experimental Astrophysics

2024-10-19T04:31:50Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix spelling

{{comic
| number = 3000
| date = October 18, 2024
| title = Experimental Astrophysics
| image = experimental_astrophysics_2x.png
| imagesize = 317x490px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Our experiment will be expensive, but we believe it will produce important spin-offs, especially if we manage to hit the sun from the right angle.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a THORNE-ŻYTKOW BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A Thorne-Zytkow Object is an object theorized by Kip Thorne And Anna Zytkow, Which is, a red giant or red supergiant with a neutron star at it's core. There have been no confirmed sightings, but HV2112 In the small Magellican cloud (SMC) and HV 11417 Are both strong candidates.
The reason that nobody would grant money for this, is mainly common sense. First, you would need to find a neutron star and bring it here, which would cost tons, as we have no tech that does this already, and second, having a neutron star anywhere near the solar system, would most likely destroy the entire solar system.
{{Citation needed}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Cueball is standing on a circular stage in front of a poster. The poster shows two stars, one much larger than the other. The smaller star has an arrow pointing to it to the center of the large star.]
:Cueball: A Thorne-Żytkow object is a hypothesized nested star—a red giant with a neutron star inside it.
:Cueball: So far, no TŻOs Have been definitively observed, but your grant could help us change that.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:We're struggling to get funding for our project to slingshot a neutron star into the sun.:

{{comic discussion}}

3000: Experimental Astrophysics

2024-10-19T04:31:16Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix spelling

{{comic
| number = 3000
| date = October 18, 2024
| title = Experimental Astrophysics
| image = experimental_astrophysics_2x.png
| imagesize = 317x490px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Our experiment will be expensive, but we believe it will produce important spin-offs, especially if we manage to hit the sun from the right angle.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a THORNE-ŻYTKOW BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A Thorne-Zytow Object is an object theorized by Kip Thorne And Anna Zytkow, Which is, a red giant or red supergiant with a neutron star at it's core. There have been no confirmed sightings, but HV2112 In the small Magellican cloud (SMC) and HV 11417 Are both strong candidates.
The reason that nobody would grant money for this, is mainly common sense. First, you would need to find a neutron star and bring it here, which would cost tons, as we have no tech that does this already, and second, having a neutron star anywhere near the solar system, would most likely destroy the entire solar system.
{{Citation needed}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Cueball is standing on a circular stage in front of a poster. The poster shows two stars, one much larger than the other. The smaller star has an arrow pointing to it to the center of the large star.]
:Cueball: A Thorne-Żytkow object is a hypothesized nested star—a red giant with a neutron star inside it.
:Cueball: So far, no TŻOs Have been definitively observed, but your grant could help us change that.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:We're struggling to get funding for our project to slingshot a neutron star into the sun.:

{{comic discussion}}

2997: Solar Protons

2024-10-12T04:01:54Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix differing sentence structure

{{comic
| number = 2997
| date = October 11, 2024
| title = Solar Protons
| image = solar_protons_2x.png
| imagesize = 647x783px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If any of you want to meet some cool local oxygen atoms, I can introduce you!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT RUNNING ON PROTONS INSTEAD OF ELECTRONS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is referencing the solar storm that hit the earth on Thursday night before the comic. A result of the storm was that {{w|northern lights}} were visible across much of the northern United States ([https://i.hypercone.us/?f=41e91d plus London]), including Massachusetts where Randall lives. The northern lights normally occur much farther north, making this a rare and spectacular occurrence. The rare color background of this panel is an idealized depiction of the northern lights.

The solar protons referenced are hydrogen nuclei ejected from the sun after their electrons were stripped. Since a hydrogen nucleus is just a single proton, once its electrons are removed the resulting ion is just a proton. These protons, being positively charged, interact with earth's magnetosphere, and the resulting excitation of atoms in the atmosphere causes them to emit light in the form of aurora. In the northern hemisphere the aurora is called aurora borealis (Latin for "northern dawn") and in the southern hemisphere it is called aurora australis (Latin for "southern dawn").

[[Beret Guy]] here takes on the task of giving the protons a cordial welcome to Earth, where they will spend the forseeable future. He has set up a sign to welcome them, presumably because he normally does not see the northern lights. His sign notes that they will love being part of the atmosphere, since if the light of the aurora is being emitted it means that the protons are interacting with other atoms in the atmosphere. The sign also invites them to try creating water. Water consists of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms sharing an electrons each with the oxygen. Since the solar protons are just hydrogen nuclei, they can form water by interacting with oxygen atoms or hydroxide ions (OH-). Scientists believe that solar wind [https://physicsworld.com/a/did-the-solar-wind-create-earths-water/ frequently creates water] by interaction of the hydrogen nuclei with oxygen. However, the mechanism proposed involves solar wind first creating hydroxide from compounds in asteroids and space dust, and then another proton joining to make water. As most of the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere consists of O2 molecules (two bound oxygen atoms) it is not clear if solar protons could create water in the atmosphere with the northern lights as opposed to later, but only via various other intermediate atmospheric/geological/biological interactions which might take up hydrogen (ionised or otherwise).

The title text references water formation by saying that Beret Guy can introduce the solar protons/hydrogen nuclei to cool oxygen atoms. In reality hydrogen nuclei from the solar wind do not need an introduction{{Citation needed}}, but instead form bonds with oxygen when they impact oxygen or hydroxide due to their great speed.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Colorful aurora in the starry night sky, with colors ranging from red at the top to green at the bottom]
:[Black silhouette of Beret Guy standing on a grassy field, next to a sign to the right that reads (in light-greenish text on black):]
:Welcome Solar Protons!
:You'll love being part of our atmosphere!
:There's so much to do here. Try forming water!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]

2997: Solar Protons

2024-10-12T03:59:43Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ Fix punctuation

{{comic
| number = 2997
| date = October 11, 2024
| title = Solar Protons
| image = solar_protons_2x.png
| imagesize = 647x783px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If any of you want to meet some cool local oxygen atoms, I can introduce you!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT RUNNING ON PROTONS INSTEAD OF ELECTRONS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is referencing the solar storm that hit the earth on Thursday night before the comic. A result of the storm was that {{w|northern lights}} were visible across much of the northern United States ([https://i.hypercone.us/?f=41e91d plus London]), including Massachusetts where Randall lives. The northern lights normally occur much farther north, making this a rare and spectacular occurrence. The rare color background of this panel is an idealized depiction of the northern lights.

The solar protons referenced are hydrogen nuclei ejected from the sun after their electrons were stripped. Since a hydrogen nucleus is just a single proton, once its electrons are removed the resulting ion is just a proton. These protons, being positively charged, interact with earth's magnetosphere, and the resulting excitation of atoms in the atmosphere causes them to emit light in the form of aurora. In the northern hemisphere the aurora is called aurora borealis (Latin for "northern dawn") and in the southern hemisphere it is called aurora australis ("southern dawn" in Latin).

[[Beret Guy]] here takes on the task of giving the protons a cordial welcome to Earth, where they will spend the forseeable future. He has set up a sign to welcome them, presumably because he normally does not see the northern lights. His sign notes that they will love being part of the atmosphere, since if the light of the aurora is being emitted it means that the protons are interacting with other atoms in the atmosphere. The sign also invites them to try creating water. Water consists of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms sharing an electrons each with the oxygen. Since the solar protons are just hydrogen nuclei, they can form water by interacting with oxygen atoms or hydroxide ions (OH-). Scientists believe that solar wind [https://physicsworld.com/a/did-the-solar-wind-create-earths-water/ frequently creates water] by interaction of the hydrogen nuclei with oxygen. However, the mechanism proposed involves solar wind first creating hydroxide from compounds in asteroids and space dust, and then another proton joining to make water. As most of the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere consists of O2 molecules (two bound oxygen atoms) it is not clear if solar protons could create water in the atmosphere with the northern lights as opposed to later, but only via various other intermediate atmospheric/geological/biological interactions which might take up hydrogen (ionised or otherwise).

The title text references water formation by saying that Beret Guy can introduce the solar protons/hydrogen nuclei to cool oxygen atoms. In reality hydrogen nuclei from the solar wind do not need an introduction{{Citation needed}}, but instead form bonds with oxygen when they impact oxygen or hydroxide due to their great speed.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Colorful aurora in the starry night sky, with colors ranging from red at the top to green at the bottom]
:[Black silhouette of Beret Guy standing on a grassy field, next to a sign to the right that reads (in light-greenish text on black):]
:Welcome Solar Protons!
:You'll love being part of our atmosphere!
:There's so much to do here. Try forming water!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]

2993: Ingredients

2024-10-03T04:25:32Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Fix typo

{{comic
| number = 2993
| date = October 2, 2024
| title = Ingredients
| image = ingredients_2x.png
| imagesize = 417x473px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Add main-belt asteroids to taste.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BETTER PLANET - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic jokes that it is possible (and intended) to use the 5 largest moons in the solar system, treating them as ingredients, to create a “better” planet, that has the “coolest features”.
The title text takes it further, treating asteroids as a “to-taste” ingredient in this “recipe”.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[There is a large blotchy sphere that looks like the result of several moons squished together.
Arrows are pointing to the different surfaces on the sphere with 4 labels:]

:Sulfur chemistry from Io

:Cool oceans from Europa

:Hydrocarbons from Titan

:Ganymede and Callisto (filler)

Caption underneath image:

:Scientists now think the five biggest outer solar system moons are actually just ingredients; we're supposed to combine them to create a single Mars-sized planet that's cooler than any of them.

{{comic discussion}}

2989: Physics Lab Thermostat

2024-09-24T12:44:28Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Explanation */ We don't need to disparage a portion of our readers

{{comic
| number = 2989
| date = September 23, 2024
| title = Physics Lab Thermostat
| image = physics_lab_thermostat_2x.png
| imagesize = 264x296px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Hopefully the HVAC people set it to only affect the AIR in the room.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOLTZMANN BRAIN - Given the calculations mentioned in the comment, it would seem that the thermostat works normally in the way that turning it clockwise will increase the temperature. This should be mentioned and some kind of calculation like the one mentioned in comments section could be added for clarity/reference. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

A thermostat is often used to regulate the operation of heating and/or cooling for a room. This may take the form of a simple dial, graduated by desired temperature values marked Celsius or Fahrenheit. Typically a person is expected to know what sort of temperature they will find comfortable, to have heating/cooling effects kick in as the wall-device detects a temperature more than a certain amount below/above that ideal. The basic design of a physical wall-mounted dial might relate the relative position of the dial against the current state of a {{w|Bimetallic strip#Thermostats|bimetallic coil}}, switching {{w|Bang–bang control|on or off}} the relevent systems once conditions locally drift away from the chosen ideal.

In this comic, the thermostat is installed in a physics lab, with those that work there clearly being expected to be familiar with the {{w|Boltzmann constant}}, a more fundamental method of measuring temperature which relates the average kinetic energy of a particle in a gas with the temperature of that gas. The Boltzmann constant is defined as 1.380649 × 10^-23 J/K (joules per kelvin).

Thus Randall imagines a physics lab having a dial that can alter the constant between 1.418 x 10^-23 J/K and 1.351 x 10^-23 J/K. If the average kinetic energy of gas particles remains constant when moving the dial, then changing the Boltzmann constant would change how this average energy is measured in {{w|kelvin}} (and therefore {{w|Conversion of scales of temperature#Comparison of temperature scales|any other measure}} of temperature), thus "changing the temperature". The equation is E=kT where k is the Boltzmann constant. Notice that if E is the same, lowering k implies a raised T, so the thermostat 'works' as intended. Rather than controlling the nature of the airflow into the lab (or convection heaters/coolers around it), it might be implied that this applies the effect directly across the whole lab at a fundamental level. Changing one of the fundamental constants of thermodynamics would have dangerous effects.{{acn}} 

There have previously been control panels for properties of the universe in [[1620: Christmas Settings]] and [[1763: Catcalling]].

Because the Boltzmann constant is primarily concerned with the nature of temperature within gas, the titletext expresses concern that it might not only be applied to the air (hence the capital letters) in the room. Aside from the possibility that those responsible for the {{w|heating, ventilation, and air conditioning}} (a.k.a. HVAC) of the room could perhaps directly enhance or suppress the temperature in all the solids and liquids within the room, in unknown and not necessarily conducive ways, there may also be a secondary joke in which {{w|high voltage}} forms of {{w|alternating current}} (also refered to as HVAC) are influenced, in the related but distinct use of the measure for '{{w|Boltzmann constant#Thermal voltage|thermal voltage}}'.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[A black circular dial is shown with a white indicator line at the upper right. The label above the dial, enclosed in a rectangular box, says:]
:Local Boltzmann Constant
:[The two extremes of the dial are labeled as follows, the first value on the left and the second value on the right:]
:1.418 x 10-23 J/K
:1.351 x 10-23 J/K
:[The indicator line is pointing to a position on the dial somewhere around 1.375 x 10-23 J/K.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Physics Lab Thermostat

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Physics]]

2983: Monocaster

2024-09-11T15:02:04Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Add to transcript

{{comic
| number = 2983
| date = September 9, 2024
| title = Monocaster
| image = monocaster_2x.png
| imagesize = 536x673px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = My competitors say the tiny single tiny caster is unsafe, unstable, and offers no advantages over traditional designs, to which I say: wow, why are you guys so mean? I thought we were friends!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a LAPTOP-CONTROLLED HAMSTER BALL - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A caster, also spelled castor, is a small unpowered wheel attached to a swiveling base. They are typically found on carts and heavy appliances that need to be pushed around by people on a regular basis.

Randall has proposed a variant of the skateboard with only one caster on the bottom, the titular "monocaster." He claims this fills an untapped hole in the market, which is filled with plenty of vehicles with one large wheel like unicycles, or multiple small wheels like roller skates, but none with only a single small wheel.

The joke depends on the caster's obvious impractically in this role: the hole in the market was open ''for a reason''. A single caster is effectively useless, forcing all the weight of a person on a single swiveling point. The rider has no way to propel themselves besides pushing off the ground, and will almost certainly lose their balance immediately upon trying. The other designs on the market were all designed specifically to solve this problem: the unicycle's larger wheel and pedal drive make balancing in motion much less dangerous, while multi-wheeled vehicles give more points of contact with the ground.

The title text extends the joke by listing the disadvantages mentioned above, but not providing a rebuttal.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[A chart picturing many wheeled vehicles with a caption below the chart window. The vertical axis is labeled "Wheel Diameter", logarithmic from 1cm to 5m. The horizontal axis is labeled "Number of wheels", logarithmic from 1 to 16. From top left to bottom right, there is a person with a cap, seated in a circle, labeled "1920s monowheel", a monster truck with a skull and a lightning bolt on the side, a lorry (truck), a Cueball on a unicycle moving back and forth, a Cueball on a bicycle, a car, a Cueball using a Onewheel, a Cueball on a child's "Big Wheel" tricycle, a Cueball on a quad, a Cueball standing on a scooter, a Cueball standing on a board with one small wheel bellow, circled and labeled with two question marks, a three-wheel scooter, a skater, a Cueball using three-wheel skates, labeled "three-wheel skates", a Cueball crouching and using skates, and a small Cueball using shoes with wheels (Heelys) moving forward.]
:Caption: My new monocaster board fills a key gap in the wheeled vehicle market.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Characters with hats]]
[[Category:Skateboard]]

2981: Slingshots

2024-09-06T12:04:07Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Tick or Cross description

{{comic
| number = 2981
| date = September 4, 2024
| title = Slingshots
| image = slingshots_2x.png
| imagesize = 397x420px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In my reboot, Dennis the Menace was just trying to send Mr. Wilson a nice comet, but accidentally wiped out his dinosaur garden.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a WRIST ROCKET SMUGGLED INTO MASSACHUSETTS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The {{w|Slingshot|slingshot}} (in this comic, styled "Regular Slingshot") is a hand-held device used for accelerating small projectiles, such as stones or steel balls. In an {{w|Sling (weapon)|earlier form}}, the concept had existed since ancient times, and has been used for personal defense and for hunting game such as squirrels, birds and {{w|Goliath|Philistines}} through skillful use of its mechanical advantage and rotation. The more modern "forked stick and elastic" version (known as a catapult, in the UK) acts by a pull-back-and-release action, and has become associated with youthful recklessness (or an outright tendency towards vandalism), but is also the basis of manufactured sport/hunting devices as well as the more organic child-made contraptions.

The '''gravitational''' slingshot, or {{w|Gravity_assist|gravity assist}}, is not a device but a term used to describe how gravity may alter the path of an object in space, such as a spacecraft or an asteroid. A gravitational slingshot generally involves a small object passing by a much more massive object, which turns the smaller object's trajectory, trading momentum and kinetic energy between the two bodies. The smaller object can undergo a large change in velocity, "paid for" (in the sense of conserving the momentum and energy of the system) with a negligible change in the velocity of the more massive body.

This comic humorously compares the two, in tabular format.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!
! Regular slingshot
! Gravitational slingshot
|-
! Used for hunting
| ✓
| X
|-
! Used for sport shooting
| ✓
| X
|-
! Used for spacecraft propulsion
| X
| ✓
|-
! Large online enthusiast community
| ✓
| ✓
|-
! May have caused dinosaur extinction
| Probably not
| Maybe
|-
! Used by Dennis the Menace to terrorize Mr. Wilson
| ✓
| Not yet, but I'm pitching a reboot
|}

The first four categories accurately reflect reality. As a hunting tool (and as an offensive weapon), recent designs have been claimed to propel a projectile with [https://www.uslawshield.com/tactical-slingshots-mere-toy/ more force than .22 and .38 caliber pistols]. Consequently, several communities have prohibited the possession of such slingshots, which may be called "wrist rockets". The state of Massachusetts, where cartoonist Randall resides, is one of those communities. Gravitational slingshots would be inefficient and overkill for such purposes, as well as being difficult to achieve sufficient accuracy and specificity.

Conversely, gravitational slingshots are a useful way to change the velocity of a spacecraft without having to use large amounts of fuel, whereas building a regular slingshot capable of propelling a spacecraft is likely to be impractical - not to mention the destructive/fatal consequences, to vehicle and cargo, of near-instantaneous acceleration to useful speeds, such as the Mach33 required for an object at sea level to escape Earth's gravity, especially when there's an atmosphere present.

Both types of slingshot excite interest among many people who may form online communities to discuss them, but for quite different reasons, and the size of overlap between these communities is uncertain.

The fifth category ventures into the absurd, at least with respect to "regular" slingshots, which did not exist (so far as we know) at the time of the {{w|Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinction_event|Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event}}. (Humans, which invented them, did not exist at that time. Use of slingshots would therefore require some other contemporaneous intelligent species to have invented them, or some kind of {{w|A_Sound_of_Thunder|time}} {{w|A_Gun_for_Dinosaur|travel}}.) However, it is likely that the event resulted from the impact of a space-rock that was perturbed into an Earth-crossing orbit by a planet such as Jupiter, given at least a minor gravitational slingshot on its way to eventually crashing into the Earth.

The sixth category references the long-running comic and cartoon character {{w|Dennis_the_Menace_(U.S._comics)|Dennis the Menace (USA)}}, in which the titular character unintentionally harasses neighbor Mr. Wilson with (regular) slingshots and other devices and behaviors. In Randall's projected reboot of the franchise, which is elaborated on in the title text, Dennis trades his regular slingshot for a gravitational slingshot. By miscalibrating his ammunition, or the force of his slingshot, he turns a demonstration ("a nice comet") into a destructive event (the loss of Wilson's dinosaur garden). The reference is to the relative size and velocity of the space objects responsible for, respectively, comets and "meteors" versus asteroid impacts.

This is very similar to [[2844: Black Holes vs Regular Holes]].

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|May yet be better Transcript-Format changes. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[A table grid with two columns and six rows.]
:[Two column labels placed above the respective columns, six row labels to the left of the respective rows. Each table cell contains a tick for "Yes", a cross for "No", or a note.]

::[Column 1:] Regular slingshot
::[Column 2:] Gravitational slingshot

:[Row 1:] Used for hunting
::[Tick]
::[Cross]
:[Row 2:] Used for sport shooting
::[Tick]
::[Cross]
:[Row 3:] Used for spacecraft propulsion
::[Cross]
::[Tick]
:[Row 4:] Large online enthusiast community
::[Tick]
::[Tick]
:[Row 5:] May have caused dinosaur extinction
::Probably not
::Maybe
:[Row 6:] Used by Dennis the Menace to terrorize Mr. Wilson
::[Tick]
::Not yet, but I'm pitching a reboot

==Trivia==
The "Dennis the Menace" that the [[Randall]] refers to, familiar to those in the US, is not to be confused with the ''other'' long-running comic and cartoon character from the UK, also called {{w|Dennis the Menace and Gnasher|Dennis the Menace}}, who has a surprisingly similar premise and identical date of creation but is more wilfully disruptive and capable of far more 'cartoonish' behaviour (which might well include planetary-scale fork-stick slingshots/catapults). {{w|Mark Hamill}} is a fan of the British character (possibly from his time filming the original Star Wars films in the local studios), and also has some experience with (fictional) disruption of planets by {{w|Death Star|constructed weapons}}.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category: Charts]]
[[Category: Space]]
[[Category: Dinosaurs]]

Talk:2981: Slingshots

2024-09-05T21:03:53Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Looks great

We don't put tables in the transcript, which is supposed to be screen-readable. Tables are not screen-readable. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 04:25, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:I now see the hidden "Tables are bad?" content in the incomplete transcript notice! Cute! [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 04:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
::anybody want to change the transcript? not too confident on how to write it. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 17:06, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:::Given it a go. Could add "regular column" and "gravitational column" pre-descriptors to each subsequent pair of row elements, or go the other way and remove the [Row N] bit. Also chose to use the [label]s of [Tick] and [Cross] in place of the 'fancy' characters; could have gone with [Ticked], [Marked with a tick], [Affirmed], etc, but this seemed sensible. Obviously still open for editing.
:::If I'd have started from scratch, I would have used the (previously identical) table-markup version in the Explanation but have put the "Yay/Nay/freetext" explanation in there with it. But that's not to say that it doesn't look fairly ok (if not better?) in the paragraph-by-paragraph treatment as it currently is, with the table there as visual repeat only.
:::YMMV on all aspects of my choice/complicit acceptance, naturally. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.143|172.69.194.143]] 18:20, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
::::Looks great! Thanks. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 21:03, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

We should clarify that it's the American Dennis and not the British one. There are differences, which I learned the hard way :( [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.184|172.69.43.184]] 06:48, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:I expanded (and moved to a Trivia section) the interesting facts of this coincidence. (And I didn't add [https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2010/10/18/the-odd-case-of-dennis-the-menace/ this link there], but maybe it's of "not even Trivia" interest, so you can have it here instead.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.37|172.70.86.37]] 10:53, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm really surprised that "regular slingshot" is "no" for spacecraft instead of something like "not yet". [[User:SystemParadox|SystemParadox]] ([[User talk:SystemParadox|talk]]) 09:46, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:There's definitely spring-type "delivery systems" (analogues of the elastic slingshots, arguably) which hasten the detatchment of items on a multi-launch 'racked' delivery system. There's also the (proposed, SFAIK not yet tried in anger) rotating-tether release system, akin to biblical sling(shot)s, that would actually be what the gravitational slingshot is most similar to by pure analogy.
:If we ever get a space-elevator and 'drop' things off from the counterweight station, then that would effectively be a biblical slingshot on a planetary scale. (If we time the drop right, or very wrong, with a heavy enough load or even most of the counterweight itself, such that it ends up eventually impacting Earth or any other inhabited lump of rock, it could well also be a matter of a ''planetary'' slingshot with effects on a ''biblical'' scale!) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.37|172.70.86.37]] 10:53, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Gravitational slingshot & Used for Sport shooting would also be a "not yet".
Imagine a couple of millenia from now, where gravitational slingshoting is a sport, and is called shooting for one of many reasons.
ok, fair. It's a stretch. But I felt I had to mention it.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.222.142|162.158.222.142]] 12:45, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
: In Futurama they use Gravitational slingshot for [https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Leo_Wong%27s_%22Miniature%22_Golf_Course "Miniature" golf]

This comic comes the same week as the release of a movie called Slingshot about the gravitational kind.

Isn't David supposed to be using a sling in his fight with Goliath, not a slingshot? That is, a long bit of material that you can use to throw a projectile with higher velocity? There seems to be similar confusion in describing a slingshot as using "mechanical advantage and rotation". A slingshot doesn't really involve rotation, nor does it involve mechanical advantage, really. Mechanical advantage is force amplification, right? And most slingshots don't amplify force, they simply are better than human bodies at delivering that force while moving quickly - that is, they amplify power. Maybe that's splitting hairs. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.71.102|172.68.71.102]] 14:52, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
: I see now that the text has been edited, distinguishing a sling as "an earlier form" of the slingshot. I still don't think that's accurate. They both accelerate a projectile, but they're not at all the same mechanism. Slingshots store deformation energy, and slings store kinetic energy. If we're talking ancient weapons that a slingshot is comparable to, it's far more like a bow than it is a sling. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.22.58|172.71.22.58]] 15:16, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:: Indeed, the [https://www.etymonline.com/word/slingshot etymologists] tell us that "hand-held implement for throwing stones" is the original meaning of the word "sling", and it dates to 1300. Whereas "slingshot", with "hand catapult" given as a synonym (implying the cleft-stick version), dates only from 1849. The etymologists also tell us that, by the 14th century, "sling" had acquired the additional meaning of "loop for carrying heavy objects", and, by the 18th century, "cloth for suspending an injured arm". These meanings, I argue, gained prominence, while the sling (weapon) fell out of favor, in armies and in language. I daresay that a person with deir arm in a sling would shudder at the prospect of that arm being hurled at an oncoming foe. It appears to me that, at least in the USA where I reside, "slingshot" is now applied to both the "hand catapult" and the "sling (weapon)" to avoid confusion with the sling (object carrier). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.23.190|172.68.23.190]] 15:42, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
::: I'm also in the US, but slingshot to me specifically evokes something where you store and release elastic energy. People often *hear* sling and think it's referring to a slingshot, because they're unfamiliar with an actual sling (weapon). Although slingshot and sling are certainly etymologically related, they are not technologically related. You might argue that a "gravitational slingshot" is a misnomer, in that its arc around a body is more akin to a sling than to a slingshot, I suppose. But a sling is not an earlier form of the "regular slingshot" in this comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.31.46|172.71.31.46]] 16:56, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:::: See the excellent comment below. Instances of this sort of thing abound, porque Inglés es loco. Even in the sciences. A cylindrical, motile structure responsible for motion of, or circulation of water currents around, eukaryotic cells is termed a "flagellum" if it's moving sperm, or a "cilium" if it's moving phlegm on the surface of the trachea. There is no structural or functional difference between the "flagellum" and the "cilium" of these cells, but there are plenty between the "flagellum" of sperm cells and the "flagellum" found on some bacterial cells. However, an attempt to use a common term ({{w|Undulipodium|undulipodium}}) for the common structure was shouted down. The preference was to retain imprecise terms that were understood by some of the people some of the time, rather than trying to adopt a precise term that was understood by nobody. Vox populi, vox Dei. Even if it's illogical. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.41.181|162.158.41.181]] 19:32, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:: I come from where the Y-Stick-with-rubber-'bowstring' is termed a catapult, and always associated "slingshot" as being the "shot" (projectile) that was slung (either in a David/Golith 'swung sling' or a Dennise The Menace 'pulled elastic' version), where actually deliberately manufactured/harvested beforehand (typically cast lead, as per muskets, or else specific riverbed pebbles) for consistency of mass and convenience of size rather than just relying upon randomly available rocks and stones grabbed from the ground-clutter as and when needed.
:: But when I went looking for references, it seems there's a general merging of terms (apparently also "pea-shooter", among others, although I'd say ''that'' was a short blowpipe/thick straw that a dried pea or pea-sized wad of mashed up paper can be quickly expelled from just by lung-power). And while some 'catapults' might also be the slung type, with the neolithic-era "stout cords and cradle" design, generally the comic-book type (rather than full blown onagers, mangonels or trebuchets) match what both UK and US alternatives of Dennis tend to use, so clearly that's what Randall is talking about. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.27|172.70.91.27]] 17:23, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I vote we use gravitational slingshots to hunt stray probes. Anyone wanna try taking down Voyager I? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.90.237|172.69.90.237]] 14:57, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:If we fire at Voyager I (or II, especially) and perhaps ''miss'', we then likely set a new record for fastest/furthest object sent out into the universe by man. Win-Win! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.27|172.70.91.27]] 17:23, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Talk:2981: Slingshots

2024-09-05T04:33:12Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Cute

Hi [[Special:Contributions/172.71.150.236|172.71.150.236]] 03:02, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:Hi [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.5|172.70.210.5]] 04:27, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
We don't put tables in the transcript, which is supposed to be screen-readable. Tables are not screen-readable. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 04:25, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:I now see the hidden "Tables are bad?" content in the incomplete transcript notice! Cute! [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 04:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Talk:2981: Slingshots

2024-09-05T04:25:51Z

Ianrbibtitlht: No tables in transcript

Hi [[Special:Contributions/172.71.150.236|172.71.150.236]] 03:02, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

We don't put tables in the transcript, which is supposed to be screen-readable. Tables are not screen-readable. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 04:25, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

2980: Lava Lakes

2024-09-03T04:11:22Z

Ianrbibtitlht: /* Transcript */ Insert em dash in final panel transcript

{{comic
| number = 2980
| date = September 2, 2024
| title = Lava Lakes
| image = lava_lakes_2x.png
| imagesize = 709x272px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Hey, golf balls float on lava, so this should make recovering them from the hazards easier.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A GOLF BALL <s>FLOATING ON</s> MELTING IN THE 6TH LAVA LAKE (FORMER MINIGOLF COURSE) - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The comic shows [[Megan]] and [[Black Hat]] talking about lava lakes in volcanoes, when Megan mentions a common myth that in the craters of every volcano, there's a lava lake. She points out that there are really only around five lava-filled volcano craters in the world right now. Black Hat responds to this by creating a new one on a nearby golf course. However, given that Megan was still waiting when Black Hat came back, the attention span of most people is shorter than the time it takes lava lakes to form,{{citation needed}} and that sane people do not build golf courses directly over active volcanoes,{{Citation Needed}} Black Hat would've needed to dig at least 8 kilometers of earth within a very short timespan, which is impossible for a normal human being.{{citation needed}} Also, since this action was prompted by Megan's remark, Black Hat could not have built or moved anything capable of making a lava lake to the golf course beforehand.

The title text mentions that golf balls will float on lava, making recovering them from hazards easier. The density of a normal golf ball is about 1.13 grams per cubic centimeter, which is significantly less than the 2.4 ~ 2.9 grams per cubic centimeter of lava. It would be
very easy to retrieve golf balls from lava because of this, if it were not for the fact that lava is hot.{{Citation Needed}} Lava is around 800 C, while golf balls melt at ~80 C, making retrieving the burnt/melted/boiling/evaporated golf balls from said lava quite difficult.

These may be the 5 volcano lakes that the comic references ({{w|Lava_lake#List_of_volcanoes_having_displayed_past_or_present_lava_lake_activity|source}}):
* {{w|Erta Ale}} in Ethiopia
* {{w|Mount Erebus}} on Ross Island, Antarctica
* Kīlauea {{w|Halema%CA%BBuma%CA%BBu|Halemaʻumaʻu}} on Hawaiʻi (Big Island)
* {{w|Mount_Nyiragongo|Nyiragongo}} in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
* {{w|Mount Michael}} on Saunders Island, South Sandwich Islands

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Megan and Black Hat are talking, with Megan holding up one hand towards Black Hat]
:Megan: People think volcano craters are full of lava, but that’s rare. There are only five or so lava lakes in the world right now.

:[Black Hat puts one hand up to his chin]
:Black Hat: Interesting.

:[Black Hat walks out of frame off to the right]

:[Megan stands while three distinct sound effects come off-panel from the right]
:Rumble
:Crash
:BOOOOM

:[Black Hat walks back into frame]
:Megan: What did you—
:Black Hat: There are six now.
:Off-panel voice to the right: Why is the golf course erupting!?

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Volcanoes]]

Talk:2979: Sky Alarm

2024-09-01T14:16:49Z

Ianrbibtitlht: Alarm Italics in Transcript?

♫♪ Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me... ♪♫ :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:55, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I've tried to do just this by subscribing to a channel promisingly named "AstroAlert", which then proceeded to spam me 500 times per day with messages about a random meteor on the opposite part of the world. Woe. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.110.200|162.158.110.200]] 05:15, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
:Hence the need for this alarm, to keep it LOCAL, :) That's the thing, any such thing needs a LOCATION, to limit results to what is locally relevant to each person. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:19, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

This comic seems super simple, so I added as muc( explanation as I can think of... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:19, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Local58 moment 💔

[[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.138|172.70.85.138]] 11:27, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

With that device, no work is ever going to be done again... D: [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.24|108.162.221.24]] 11:36, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

There is a nice site called [https://apod.nasa.gov/ Astronomy Picture of the Day] that is like this. Alas, it is "A cool space thing happened three days ago - sorry you missed it". --[[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 11:41, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like it needs a sky dome camera system (like they made for immersive filmimg) on the roof coupled with statistical analysis (mistakenly aka AI) to recognise and record 'interesting' things, coupled with localised alerts for known phenomena. A product for someone? [[User:RIIW - Ponder it|RIIW - Ponder it]] ([[User talk:RIIW - Ponder it|talk]]) 11:46, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Most cool astronomical events don't come up so suddenly that you need an alarm. We know about eclipses years in advance, meteor showers recur annually, comets have months of warning, and unusual auroras are usually known a few days early. Anything sudden will probably also be short-lived, so by the time you get outside it will be over. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:26, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Seems like there should be a name for these alerts, like "Amber Alert" for missing children. I nominate "Neil Alert" -- it should probably use Neil deGrasse Tyson's voice. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:28, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Since the characters in the comic are the same as in the previous ISS comic, I like to think that they're in the ISS and Megan is getting ready to do an EVA (ignore the fact that such a desk wouldn't make sense, or the walking, or that prepping for the EVA would probably take well over a full orbit) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.223.93|172.71.223.93]] 17:58, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Dang, we really cleaned up all the incomplete explanations, didn't we?
Either that, or someone just went around and removed all the tags [[User:New editor|New editor]] ([[User talk:New editor|talk]]) 19:50, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Does anyone know of anything like this? Something that will tell me about things like upcoming meteor showers, comets, auroras, etc. the day before, rather than hearing about it the day after from people who somehow knew about it? To this day I still have no idea how people find out about these things before they happen

I previously changed the words from the alarm in the Transcript to italics, but I wasn't convinced that the noises from the alarm were also italicized. I see someone else changed them to italics as well, but I wonder if anyone else is of the same mind as myself. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 14:16, 1 September 2024 (UTC)