https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=172.68.132.59&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T20:41:23ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2262:_Parker_Solar_Probe&diff=1868832262: Parker Solar Probe2020-02-04T20:47:41Z<p>172.68.132.59: DEEEeeeeEEP</p>
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<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2262<br />
| date = January 31, 2020<br />
| title = Parker Solar Probe<br />
| image = parker_solar_probe.png<br />
| titletext = It will get within 9 or 10 Sun-diameters of the "bottom" (the Sun's surface) which seems pretty far when you put it that way, but from up here on Earth it's practically all the way down.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a DEEP FRIED ROBOTIC SOLAR PROBE ON A STICK. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
This is an informative comic meant to represent the relative distances of astronomical objects relative to the {{w|Parker Solar Probe}}. It also shows where the probe will be in 2025 if its mission continues going according to plan. <br />
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The Parker Solar Probe is a robotic spacecraft launched by NASA in 2018 with the mission of repeatedly probing and making observations of the outer corona of the Sun. It travels in an elongated orbit that passes close to the Sun and sometimes passes near Venus, arranged such that Venus nudges the orbit slightly in each pass to bring the probe's perihelion (the lower end of its orbit) closer and closer to the Sun. Two days before this comic was published {{w|Parker_Solar_Probe#Timeline|the probe again passed through perihelion}}, establishing new records for closeness to the Sun (11.6 million miles) and speed (244,225 mph).[https://blogs.nasa.gov/parkersolarprobe/2020/01/29/parker-solar-probe-completes-fourth-closest-approach-breaks-new-speed-and-distance-records/] By the end of the probe's planned lifetime in 2025, it will pass within 4.3 million miles (6.9 million km), or about 5 solar diameters, of the Sun's surface, at a speed of 430,000 mph (690,000 km/h).<br />
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{{w|Helios (spacecraft)|Helios 2}} was a solar probe launched in the 1976 that formerly held the records for closest man-made object to the Sun and fastest man-made object. Both records were surpassed by the Parker probe in 2018.<br />
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[[File:Animation of Parker Solar Probe trajectory.gif|thumb|right|Animation of Parker Solar Probe's trajectory from August 7, 2018 to August 29, 2025 <br />{{Color|magenta|Parker Solar Probe}} • {{Color|RoyalBlue|Earth}} • {{Color|Cyan|Venus}} • {{Color|Lime|Mercury}} • {{Color|#dbd81d|Sun}}]]<br />
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[[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] are standing on Earth. The way this diagram is drawn, they look like they could fall off Earth toward the Sun -- hence the comment "Careful!" -- though the joke is that in real life they would fall toward the center of the Earth, not toward the Sun. Also the surprise for many people is that it is much harder to reach the sun than Pluto. Because we already travel so fast here on Earth, and to reach the sun this speed has to be reduced, which is a larger speed difference than the one needed to escape the Sun's gravity well. If you could "fall" off Earth, you would just keep the approximately same distance to the Sun, but drifting slowly away from Earth.<br />
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The title text says the probe will get within 9 or 10 Sun-diameters of the Sun's surface. This is a bit of a mistake: it will actually get {{w|Parker Solar Probe|within that many Sun-''radii''}} -- only 4½ or 5 Sun-diameters. The distance from the Earth to the Sun is approximately 106 Sun-diameters.<br />
{|<br />
! Object <br />
! Perihelion <br />
|-<br />
| Earth <br />
| style="text-align:right;" | 147,095,000 km <br />
|-<br />
| Venus<br />
| style="text-align:right;" | 107,477,000 km<br />
|-<br />
| Mercury <br />
| style="text-align:right;" | 46,001,200 km<br />
|-<br />
| Helios 2 <br />
| style="text-align:right;" | 43,432,000 km<br />
|-<br />
| PSP (now) <br />
| style="text-align:right;" | 18,600,000 km<br />
|-<br />
| PSP (2025) <br />
| style="text-align:right;" | 6,900,000 km<br />
|-<br />
| Sun Radius<br />
| style="text-align:right;" | 696,342 km<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A tall, but very narrow box with Earth at the top, with Cueball and Megan standing precariously "on top" of Earth on each side of the center, trying to keep their balance. At the very bottom is shown a slice of the Sun. Between Earth and the Sun the two inner planets and two spacecraft are depicted with relation to their distance from the Sun. The spacecraft closest to the Sun is shown two times at different times, as it moves closer and closer to the sun. All 7 objects have labels close to them. The largest distance is between Venus and Mercury, with the Earth-Venus distance the second longest. The distances between the objects below Mercury are much shorter. There is a caption above the slim panel:]<br />
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<big>Looking down toward the Sun</big><br>and the Parker Solar Probe<br><br />
<small>(Distances are to scale, sizes are ''not'' to scale)</small><br />
<br />
:Earth<br />
::Cueball: ''Careful!''<br />
<br />
:Venus<br />
<br />
:Mercury<br />
<br />
:Helios 2 (1976)<br />
<br />
:Parker Solar Probe (today)<br />
<br />
:Parker Solar Probe (2025)<br />
<br />
:Sun<br><small>(Not to scale)</small><br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:Space probes]]</div>172.68.132.59https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1902:_State_Borders&diff=146775Talk:1902: State Borders2017-10-18T05:25:38Z<p>172.68.132.59: </p>
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<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
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Let's be honest- it should ''all'' be Canada. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.123|162.158.74.123]] 12:24, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
:Or... Indigenous people's land? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.232|108.162.216.232]] 04:27, 15 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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Could Arizona, New Mexico be a reference to Trump? Like, make the border straighter so it's easier to build a wall? [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 12:35, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
:More likely the joke is that conceding territory to Mexico is about the last thing Trump would do [[User:AnotherAnonymous|AnotherAnonymous]] ([[User talk:AnotherAnonymous|talk]]) 13:04, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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My first thought is to wonder if it would be possible to arrange the map such that all internal borders are "straight lines" that span the entire country, to satisfy as many criteria as possible:<br />
* The number of states remains unchanged<br />
** …and they all get to keep their capitals (probably quite difficult)<br />
*** …or (and?) each state manages to keep either its current population, land area, or coastline length<br />
* Or all internal borders are parallels or meridians<br />
* Or all states have the same land area<br />
** …or population; or population density<br />
* Or if you're allowing more (or fewer) states than the present layout, what's the greatest number of states possible such that they all contain at least one complete city?<br />
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Which of those criteria would be the most interesting challenge? And which could you construct an algorithm to solve?<br />
I really should refrain from trying to build those algorithms, because I'm supposed to be working --[[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 13:28, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
:I'd like to see what a map of the US would look like with each house gerrymandered by their legislative preferences... Borders everywhere, and wow what a nightmare of litigation it would generate as people cross from one district to another!<br />
:More to your query: I don't see any modifications you could make that would keep the population unchanged. Some people would inevitably end up in a different state.<br />
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:How about a map where every state has an equal number of spiders? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.232|108.162.216.232]] 04:39, 15 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
::Population as in number of people; not necessarily the same people. --[[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 10:28, 15 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
:::Oh... Hm, that doesn't sound very useful ''or'' aesthetically satisfying... I think mapping the regions where various spider populations dominate might be more interesting. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.232|108.162.216.232]] 10:46, 15 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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There are some great videos on YouTube about weird State boundaries. There are some REALLY weird oddities out there. Take for instance the "Give to Canada" piece - that's the Northwest Angle in Minnesota. It's really an accident that it ever ended up in the USA at all, and doesn't make any sense! [[User:Martini|Martini]] ([[User talk:Martini|talk]]) 13:40, 13 October 2017 (UTC)Martini<br />
:I wouldn't call the NW Angle an accident as much as a slightly illogical solution in order to maintain the terms of the original border agreement in the face of the Mississippi River's inconveniently located headwaters. My recollection is that it said roughly: the border goes west of <this> point until reaching the Mississippi river [which all parties assumed continued that far north]. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.40|108.162.216.40]] 14:13, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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I believe Randall's overall point is that though a large part of the individual United States have straight boundaries, especially in the West, or other features that are aesthetically pleasing, as in the S Carolina/Georgia/Florida coastline, there are a good number of internal inconsistencies. Many of these (most of the untagged "fixes") can be attributed to the concept that "Rivers make good logical boundaries", but even then, if you look closer, there are some really puzzling bits: <br />
* The "Give To Canada" bit of Minnesota is almost all Indian Reservation land, so that kind of makes sense...<br />
* The "Fix this thing" in Missouri is even stranger than it initially looks - while the notch in Arkansas is caused by the Mississippi River, there is a large bight of land in the middle of the Missouri-owned bit that is actually Kentucky (yes, there's an island of Kentucky that is separate from the main Kentucky state and entirely surrounded by Missouri)<br />
* Not edited, but equally odd is the dip Florida cuts into Georgia near the east coast - there's no apparent town or natural features there to cause that irregularity <br />
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I don't happen to think the Arizona/New Mexico bits are political commentary, just "the entire rest of the state is a box, make this a straight line, too." cleanup. I mean yes, it would make wall-building easier, theoretically, but the Chinese showed the world centuries ago that straight lines are not needed to build a big fricking wall. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.131|108.162.238.131]] 14:23, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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- While I agree it probably isn't conscious political commentary, its interesting that there are not places the border increases; always concessions, never gains. May take into account its easier to give than take territory? --[[User:Jgt|Jgt]] ([[User talk:Jgt|talk]]) 19:32, 13 October 2017 (UTC)--[[User:Jgt|Jgt]] ([[User talk:Jgt|talk]]) 19:33, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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I'm surprised Randall didn't suggest cleaning up Point Roberts as well [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington]. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.174|141.101.107.174]] 14:33, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
: Presumably the graphic designers are okay with that, since it maintains the 49th Parallel as a nice, tidy border. [[User:Wwoods|Wwoods]] ([[User talk:Wwoods|talk]]) 20:18, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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I'm shocked he didn't support fixing the Idaho/Wisconsin/Montana/Oregon border. That top part should be either given to Montana, or split between Washington and Oregon... I wonder if he left out certain things in order to avoid offending certain groups of people. Like suggesting that Rhode Island and Connecticut should probably be one state, or that Vermont and New Hampshire should be as well. [[User:Kashim|Kashim]] ([[User talk:Kashim|talk]]) 17:03, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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Some of the suggestions are ironic, for example Michigan's upper peninsula actually used to be part of the Wisconsin territory, but it was ceded to Michigan in exchange for the port of Toledo being ceded to Ohio. "why does Florida get Alabama's coastline" is actually because Alabama got part of Florida's coastline so it wouldn't be landlocked. The bit of Nevada that he wants to fix it so Nevada has territory along the Colorado River [[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.250|162.158.75.250]] 17:18, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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Nobody seems to have noticed that Delaware's curved northern border has been flattened (removing Wilmington). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.83|108.162.238.83]] 21:31, 13 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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One significant thing about this map is that, under this map, Hillary Clinton may have won the 2016 election. Citations needed, but I've seen it said that if the Upper Peninsula were moved from Michigan to Wisconsin and the Florida Panhandle were moved to Alabama, Clinton would have won Michigan and Florida, giving her an Electoral College majority. I don't think the Upper Peninsula has enough population to cost Michigan an electoral vote, and I think Florida would lose two electoral votes, putting Clinton exactly at the 270 needed to win. Perhaps the changes around Colorado and Nevada would make a difference, although there were also five faithless Clinton electors who might have voted for her if it would have made a difference. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.4|108.162.219.4]] 01:45, 14 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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* There's a tool out there that allows you to at least approximate these changes (you can move counties from one state to another. It's not perfectly straight lines.) http://kevinhayeswilson.com/redraw/ The changes that are potentially electorally-significant with respect to 2016 were: The Upper Peninsula to Wisconsin, the Florida panhandle largely to Alabama, the expansion of DE, expansion of RI, cleanup of WV/MD, and shifting of Long Island*. (Almost all the other changes occur in very unpopulated areas and involve states that were not particularly close in the last election.) I get a 277-261 Clinton victory on this map. As you note, the Upper Peninsula and Florida Panhandle shifts do change the outcomes in the remaining portions of MI and FL respectively. The change to WV and MD does not appear to change either state's results (I assigned Wheeling to Ohio, which only makes Ohio slightly redder). Expanding Delaware does not quite flip it red - the Maryland Eastern Shore and Virginia bay shore are not sufficient to change DE, although it became an extremely close race - Clinton won by 2,000 votes out of 1.4 million in the expanded state of Delmarva, so if Wilmington becomes part of PA, it probably moves DE and its now 4 electoral votes to Trump (273-265 in that scenario). The NYC area however is the catch here - depending on how it's sliced, it could cause Upstate New York to flip red and therefore flip the overall map back to a Trump victory. (New York north of the northern border of Westchester County is a Red State!). It doesn't appear to matter whether NYC itself ends up in CT, NJ, or divided between the two - adding a blue city to a blue state doesn't change the outcome much, aside from potentially varying the electoral vote sizes. The tool doesn't allow you to add a new state, but the State of Long Island's 2 extra EVs from a Senate seats would not change the overall outcome of the election either - if Westchester is part of Long Island State, Trump wins - if it remains in New York State, Hillary wins. As Westchester County Goes, so goes the White House --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.59|172.68.132.59]] 05:25, 18 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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Good curve! The curve is called the Georgia Bight, or less euphoniously, the South Atlantic Bight. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.76|162.158.63.76]] 03:34, 14 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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"'''Align to Grid'''" refers to the option to have icons snap to a grid on a Windows desktop. The idea is that the states become "aligned" like icons on a desktop. [[User:FakeCrash|FakeCrash]] ([[User talk:FakeCrash|talk]]) 17:59, 14 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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It would be really useful if this could link to somewhere that described why the various panhandles and oddities exist. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.247|162.158.154.247]] 21:04, 14 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_States_Got_Their_Shapes [[User:Silverpie|Silverpie]] ([[User talk:Silverpie|talk]]) 21:26, 15 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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They should be called geo-graphic designers [[User:Jaalenja|Jaalenja]] ([[User talk:Jaalenja|talk]]) 06:53, 15 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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Randall had no references to Trump here. Get over it.<br />
I mean really. Why does everybody think everything about the country has to do with Trump winning? [[User:Jacky720|That's right, Jacky720 just signed this]] ([[User talk:Jacky720|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Jacky720|contribs]]) 14:24, 15 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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For the sentence: "Many U.S. residents will be made to live in new states, and thus be required to pay different taxes and obey different state laws, and even root for different sports teams." It should be expanded to explain that people are indeed required to root for sports teams in the state they live in⸮ --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.133.234|172.68.133.234]] 21:11, 15 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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The map looks great, but you didn't include all 50 states.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.58.123|162.158.58.123]] 05:36, 16 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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[https://img<br />
ur.com/a/Tnjts I tried my hand at creating this map] [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.112|162.158.255.112]] 01:23, 16 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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In the "explanation" column of the grid the entry for Rhode Island says "Expanding Rhode Island eastward would reduce the number of land borders it has to two [...]" This confused me a great deal, and I triple-checked to confirm that Rhode Island currently has two land borders, so how would making it bigger <b>reduce</b> the number (which is currently two) to two? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.190|108.162.237.190]] 04:15, 16 October 2017 (UTC)<br />
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• Original writer - my bad for poor writing. I had the fact that Rhode Island's current border with Massachusetts has two clear lines on the mind: an east-west border to RI's north and a north-southish border to RI's east, with the latter being erased under the DT's proposals.<br />
<br />
A description of the change to the eastern Massachusetts/New Hampshire border is missing.<br />
<br />
The border between the Province of Québec and the States of New York and Vermont should also be straightened and aligned on the 45th parallel and, while we're at it, extended all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The Northeastern border would then be a nice straight line, like the Northwestern border. New Hampshire would lose its extreme Northern tip (not a big deal), and Maine all of its Northern territory (which is mostly uninhabited anyway).<br />
<br />
• He missed an opportunity regarding the {{w|Erie_Triangle}}.<br />
<br />
T for Texas, T for Tennessee: There is an actual [Horrors] OMISSION, given that he is correcting a surveying error in Tennessee, he should also correct the surveying error that put the New Mexico-Texas state line about 1 xkcd line-width too far west (as scaled on the map), unnecessarily expanding Texas.<br />
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With regards to the Alaskan panhandle section - to the best of my knowledge (and based on a quick online search) the capital of Alaska has always been in Juneau. It certainly has never been in Anchorage. There were several referendums over the past four decades to move the capital to Anchorage or near Anchorage; however, most were defeated. Also, the two (I think it was two?) that passed, were effectively defunded in the legislature.<br />
Also, most of us Anchoragites (damn, we need a better name for ourselves) would be more than happy to give Juneau to Canada... some of us would pay them to take it.</div>172.68.132.59https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1882:_Color_Models&diff=1447111882: Color Models2017-08-28T23:04:39Z<p>172.68.132.59: /* Explanation */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1882<br />
| date = August 28, 2017<br />
| title = Color Models<br />
| image = color_models.png<br />
| titletext = What if what *I* see as blue, *you* see as a slightly different blue because you're using Chrome instead of Firefox and despite a decade of messing with profiles we STILL can't get this right somehow.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
Randall is describing how his level of understanding of colors has changed by age. The chart starts with two tracks of understanding color.<br />
<br />
In grade school he learned about the primary colors, and the very simple model of colors, as shown in the left track. Mixing of color solids, as in painting (or finger painting being probably the earliest exposure to color mixing), is intuitive for a child. The process is subtractive, and the more colors you mix the darker and closer to black you get. Color is seen by the eyes when light bounces off the solid colors and becomes light of different wavelengths that the eye can then see. However at this level, things just "look" like different colors without understanding light's role.<br />
<br />
The right track is mixing of color light, as in prisms and light waves, where mixing colors is additive and the more you mix the lighter and closer to white you get. But this is without a real understanding of light bouncing off surfaces, and is limited to an understanding of different colors of light and how they mix. The first exposure in grade school is usually by shining white light through a prism to separate it into the different visible colors.<br />
<br />
The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process opponent color model] connects these two models, by explaining how different wavelengths of light are absorbed by different rods and cones in the eyes.<br />
<br />
The "complex multidimensional gamut" mentions two more models: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space CIE 1931] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space L*a*b*]. These are more detailed models based on the opponent color model, which precisely define how a particular color maps to the different channels that our eyes see.<br />
<br />
However, understanding how the eye sees color ''still'' isn't enough, because not every device can display all the colors your eye can see. Your laptop might have a different [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut color gamut] than your phone, and if you printed the page out, you might see yet another color. To handle this issue, web browsers use "color profiles", so that an image can be tagged with the color space it uses and the browser can handle it appropriately. Unfortunately, browsers do this inconsistently and not very well. The title text expands on this joke, implying that the reason for the "unknowable" answer above is that everyone's browser shows colors slightly differently.<br />
<br />
The "hyperdimensional four-sided quantum Klein manifold" is probably a joke. A "Klein manifold" is a Klein bottle. Randall is here projecting a "abstract multidimensional gamut" onto an even more complicated surface, presumably in order to eliminate the errors in color rendering caused by previous attempts to eliminate the errors in color rendering. The Klein bottle has to be projected into 4-D space for this to work, as it would otherwise intersect with itself. As the 4th dimension is time, the color space would probably change all the time. This seems to actually be "a thing" in that you could do it, but not a "thing" in that nobody has done it. A "Klein Quantum" is a kind of bicycle.<br />
<br />
Eventually it appears Randall has given up, hoping he won't have to deal with the difficulty in describing and understanding the concept of colors.<br />
<br />
The title text indicates that, despite the complexity and thoroughness of color models, the most common software on Earth can't get it right.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Needs arrows like a flowchart}}<br />
<br />
:Evolution of my understanding of color over time:<br />
<br />
:Grade school<br />
:|<br />
:| "Color" is...<br />
:| ...three primary colors mixed together<br />
:| ...a rainbow, and each color is a wavelength<br />
:| ...unknowable ("maybe what ''I'' see as blue, ''you'' see as...")<br />
:| ...three-ish primary colors mixed together (RGB/RYB/CMYK)<br />
:| ...a mix of infinite wavelengths filtered through three eye pigments<br />
:| [something about the opponent color model]<br />
:| ...an abstract multidimensional gamut (CIE 1931, L*a*b*, etc)<br />
:| ...an abstract multidimensional gamut filtered through inconsistently-implemented device color profiles<br />
:| ...a hyperdimensional four-sided quantum Klein manifold? Is that a thing?<br />
:| ...hopefully somebody else's problem.<br />
:|<br />
:Now<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>172.68.132.59https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1313:_Regex_Golf&diff=138722Talk:1313: Regex Golf2017-04-13T23:05:12Z<p>172.68.132.59: </p>
<hr />
<div>This is fairly simple fun little one.<br />
<br />
Regex is sort for regular expressions. A regular expression is a series of characters that denotes a search criteria. For example, you could write a regular expression that would search for anything that looks like an address (a la [http://www.xkcd.com/208/ comic 208]).<br />
<br />
Regex golf is a game in which you attempt to write a regular expression that will search through a list of items and bring back only those items that meet a certain criteria, but not anything else. The joke is that regular expressions are used to search text, but themselves are text strings. This means that you could write a regular expression that would look for another regular expression. You can then apply ''ad infinitum'', and the universe implodes or something.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Holshy|Holshy]] ([[User talk:Holshy|talk]]) 05:40, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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The last panel includes, of course, a regex "/(meta-)*regex golf/," which represents the phrase "regex golf" preceded by the phrase "meta-" up to ''infinite'' times.<br />
<br />
As a punchline, it also refers to Jamie Zawinski's well-known quote about regex,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Thus, the punchline is that the addition of meta layers to regex golf generates more problems for the programmer, but that was also the setup of the comic. So either the punchline is really weak—worth a chuckle if you got the above two references—or I missed the joke.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.63|199.27.128.63]] 06:22, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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Could anybody comment on the first regex? Do I get it right that<br />
beyond others it will match all strings that contain a "b"? I can hardly believe that is not the case for any star trek subtitle... [[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.194|173.245.53.194]] 06:54, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
:This is the case for all Star Trek Subtitles. Wikipedia's list of movies had no b. It'll match anything containing a word ending in ''m'', any word beginning with ''n'' or ''t'' that is not the first word, or any word with a ''b''. No Trek movies match. Oddly, so far as I can figure out, the regex in the first panel is wrong, in that it doesn't match the second Star Wars movie at all. And before you tell me prequels don't count, the sole purpose of "m " is to match The Phanto''m ''Menace.[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.138|199.27.128.138]] 07:10, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
Attack of[ t]he Clones (to be read plainly, not as a regular expression). [[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.107|173.245.53.107]] 07:29, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
:Ah, I thought it was ''The Clone Wars''. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.138|199.27.128.138]] 15:36, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
So, if I add an "e" to the "tn" and delete the "|b" I'm a better golf player than her? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.194|108.162.212.194]] 08:23, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
:Or you could just move the "b" into the "tn" group. --11:08, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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I got a sneak preview of this comic at about 6:34 EST...at first it appeared to be random text in a irc message, but with this comic it now makes sense to me. [[User:Verticalbar|Verticalbar]] ([[User talk:Verticalbar|talk]]) 09:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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'''Regex golf''' (c.f. {{w|Perl golf}}) is a programming competition / is a pastime of finding regular expression that matches one set of strings while matching none of the other set. See for example http://regex.alf.nu --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 11:03, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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The title text isn't exactly true... I haven't tried everything, but that regex doesn't match "gerald ford" at all. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.109|199.27.128.109]] 11:23, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
: Gerald Ford wasn't elected, he became President following Nixon's resignation.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.209|173.245.52.209]] 12:12, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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Inspired by regex.alf.nu, a reader built a page where the objective is to make a regular expression to match all Star Wars and no Star Trek: http://zegnat.github.io/xkcd1313/. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.127|173.245.53.127]] 14:00, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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I added a list of all US elected presidents and the part of the title regex they match. I used a python script to generate it, with input from [http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_candidates here], then I removed all presidents that do not match after finding they really weren't elected. There may still be superflous ones, that weren't elected but do match the regex, please check. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.49.64|173.245.49.64]] 14:29, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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Does anyone understand the final "No, I had those already"? Is it a reference to regexes in some way or could it be something like that there are infinite problems in life, even when not doing (Meta-)*-Regexes? --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.199|173.245.53.199]] 20:32, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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According to Peter Norvig (Director of research at google), one of the Regular Expression of Randall is wrong as demonstrated here : http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/xkcd1313.ipynb [[User:Mbussonn|Mbussonn]] ([[User talk:Mbussonn|talk]]) 20:47, 6 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
: It's happening. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.153|173.245.53.153]] 11:39, 7 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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"No one wins at [^ ]+ golf." [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.209|141.101.98.209]] 09:50, 7 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
: Gee, would that be "No one wins at \S+ golf."? [[User:IronyChef|IronyChef]] ([[User talk:IronyChef|talk]]) 23:57, 9 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
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Why does this say that it is Case Sensitive. As far as I can tell it would not work if that were true.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.59|108.162.219.59]] 02:28, 7 February 2014 (UTC)<br />
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"Note that if one included the animated film “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” it would be matched by “ [tn]”."<br />
- I don't see how this is true, since the T is at the beginning of the subtitle. If this matched, then surely so would all of the original series Star Trek films. {{unsigned ip|141.101.99.41}}<br />
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"I got infinite problems and a bitch ain,t one" 15:50, 29 August 2014 (UTC) {{unsigned ip|173.245.56.191}}<br />
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Looks like the algorithm is a bit outdated. It fails to match {{w|Star Wars: The Force Awakens|The Force Awakens}} but matches {{w|Star Trek Beyond|Beyond}}--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.51|108.162.212.51]] 17:57, 5 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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For the 2016 election, the regex predicts that a Democrat (either) will beat Donald Trump, who will win the Republican primaries. {{unsigned ip|141.101.106.233}}<br />
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I like that linked article, even though I'm not really into programming. Just noticed Norvig misspells Randall's last name as Monroe instead of Munroe.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.71|108.162.237.71]] 03:42, 15 March 2016 (UTC)<br />
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How would Trump work with this? <br />
EDIT: Hillary works but Trump doesn't. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.73|162.158.75.73]] 00:23, 14 November 2016 (UTC)<br />
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The article says that the Presidents Regex is now impossible to update after Trump's win over Hillary. However, if Hillary were to win in a future election, it would work again as per the rule stated above the list, wouldn't it? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.35|162.158.91.35]] 09:26, 3 April 2017 (UTC)<br />
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This isn't true either - there was already a presidential loser whose surname was Clinton (DeWitt Clinton, 1812). So presumably Hillary Clinton is likewise not considered in terms of regex eligibility. --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.59|172.68.132.59]] 23:05, 13 April 2017 (UTC)</div>172.68.132.59