https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=BunsenH&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T09:32:42ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2911:_Greenland_Size&diff=338222Talk:2911: Greenland Size2024-03-26T17:43:13Z<p>BunsenH: 1:1</p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
<br />
Anyone else really wanting to know the radius for which the title text is true? I got [[356]]'d<br />
[[User:Rxy|Rxy]] ([[User talk:Rxy|talk]]) 20:28, 25 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
<br />
New life goal: Go to the poles, find the ring that is mapped to-scale, and color it. Require all satellite maps to be modified to add this stripe of color. [[User:PotatoGod|PotatoGod]] ([[User talk:PotatoGod|talk]]) 22:37, 25 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This is clearly based on Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) which discusses a map made at a scale of 1:1. [[User:Take The A Train To Watertown|Take The A Train To Watertown]] ([[User talk:Take The A Train To Watertown|talk]]) 22:49, 25 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Which latitude of Greenland is 1660miles across? I'm noodling around and can find a spot in the northern part which is - more or less - 1660*km* wide, but nothing close to that number in miles. {{unsigned ip|172.68.144.140|23:01, 25 March 2024}}<br />
<br />
Hmm. First time making a comment here, thought that the title text was referencing that the Mercator projection goes to infinity at the poles, and there would be a ring where the map’s unseen parts is 1:1 to the real world. {{unsigned ip|172.71.214.100|01:40, 26 March 2024}}<br />
<br />
Yeah, I think the explanation is wrong; there is a ring around the poles which is the same size on the map as it is in real life, because the mercader projection stretches it out. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.150.50|172.71.150.50]] 05:49, 26 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I'm amazed at how nitpickingly annoying Cueball can get with respect to mapmaking. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.38|162.158.134.38]] 08:42, 26 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
<br />
"there is a ring around the poles which is the same size on the map" - in standard Mercator projection 1m wide map would need to be kilomenters if not thousands km high to show 1m ring on poles. Usually cutout is at 80-85 latitude {{unsigned ip|162.158.102.110|12:12, 26 March 2024}}<br />
<br />
The latitude band would actually be one Earth's radius (6,378 km) high on the map. {{unsigned ip|172.69.223.158|12:36, 26 March 2024}}<br />
<br />
I'm slightly tempted to add a list of possible uses for a 1:1 scale map of the world. All that I'm coming up with are essentially about its being a ginormous sheet of paper, with its being a ''map'' being irrelevant. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 17:43, 26 March 2024 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2911:_Greenland_Size&diff=3382072911: Greenland Size2024-03-26T15:51:17Z<p>BunsenH: In this case, I think the CN is very weak</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2911<br />
| date = March 25, 2024<br />
| title = Greenland Size<br />
| image = greenland_size_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 262x304px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = The Mercator projection drastically distorts the size of almost every area of land except a small ring around the North and South Poles.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a GREEN LAND FOR ANTS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
Because the Earth is curved, all flat maps have some distortion. (A common comparison is flattening an orange peel, which cannot be done without tearing and wrinkling it.) Different {{w|map projection}}s can distort different {{w|Map projection#Metric properties of maps|metric properties}}, such as distances, areas, and angles, while leaving others intact. It can be desirable to preserve different metrics in different applications.<br />
<br />
The {{w|Mercator projection}}, depicted in the comic, prioritizes depicting correct angles. This allows for easy course planning at sea, and makes shapes fairly accurate. In exchange, Mercator is often criticized for distorting size: distances near the poles look larger than the same distance near the {{w|equator}}. A common complaint is that {{w|Greenland}} appears as big on the map as {{w|Africa}}, when Africa actually has 14 times as much area as Greenland. When these size distortions are presented out of context, they can create bias and misconceptions about different places.<br />
<br />
[[Cueball]]'s dialogue leads the reader to expect this complaint. However, instead of comparing ''relative'' sizes of two landmasses within the map, [[Cueball]] compares the ''absolute'' sizes of the depiction of Greenland and the actual Greenland. On a typical world map, Greenland might be centimeters or inches across. Judging from the human characters, the mapped Greenland in this comic might be 10 cm across. In real life, Greenland is about 650 miles or 1,050 km across from east to west ([//britannica.com/place/Greenland source]). Cueball deems this difference misleading, presenting it as a failure of this specific map or projection.<br />
<br />
Of course, this is absurd. The purpose of any map is to present information much more compactly so that it is easy to read and interpret. Any actual-size world map would have to be the size of the Earth's surface, in which case it would have few uses. In addition, if a map includes a {{w|Scale (map)|scale}}, it is easy to use the ratio to calculate the actual size of the places depicted.<br />
<br />
The title text is about the fact that a horizontal line on a worldwide Mercator projection corresponds to a line of latitude. Most lines of latitude are thousands of miles (kilometers) long, but they become smaller and smaller approaching the poles, and in fact there ''is'' a line of latitude in a small-diameter circle around each pole whose length would equal the width of the map that Cueball is looking at. If Cueball's map were 1 m wide, then this line of latitude would be at 89.999998568° N or S - that is, the line of latitude there would be one circle for each of the poles with a circumference of 1 m.<br />
<br />
A map at a scale of 1:1 was discussed in {{w|Lewis Carroll}}'s "{{w|Sylvie and Bruno Concluded}}":<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
''"What a useful thing a pocket-map is!" I remarked.''<br><br />
''"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"''<br><br />
''"About six inches to the mile."''<br><br />
''"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"''<br><br />
''"Have you used it much?" I enquired.''<br><br />
''"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
The same idea was expanded in {{w|Jorge Luis Borges}}'s "{{w|On Exactitude in Science}}".<br />
<br />
Mercator projections have been mentioned previously in [[977: Map Projections]], [[2082: Mercator Projection]], and [[2613: Bad Map Projection: Madagascator]].<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Cueball and White Hat are looking at a world map on the wall showing a Mercator projection, with Cueball gesturing with his hand towards the map.]<br />
:Cueball: This map is really misleading about the size of Greenland.<br />
:Cueball: It's actually '''''much''''' bigger than that - it's hundreds of miles across.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Maps]]<br />
[[Category:Geography]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2911:_Greenland_Size&diff=3381872911: Greenland Size2024-03-26T04:09:20Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ Few uses.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2911<br />
| date = March 25, 2024<br />
| title = Greenland Size<br />
| image = greenland_size_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 262x304px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = The Mercator projection drastically distorts the size of almost every area of land except a small ring around the North and South Poles.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a GREEN LAND FOR ANTS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
Because the Earth is curved, all flat maps have some distortion. (A common comparison is flattening an orange peel, which cannot be done without tearing and wrinkling it.) Different {{w|map projection}}s can distort different {{w|Map projection#Metric properties of maps|metric properties}}, such as distances, areas, and angles, while leaving others intact. It can be desirable to preserve different metrics in different applications.<br />
<br />
The {{w|Mercator projection}}, depicted in the comic, prioritizes depicting correct angles. This allows for easy course planning at sea, and makes shapes fairly accurate. In exchange, Mercator is often criticized for distorting size: distances near the poles looks larger than the same distance near the {{w|equator}}. A common complaint is that {{w|Greenland}} appears as big on the map as {{w|Africa}}, when Africa actually has 14 times as much area as Greenland. When these size distortions are presented out of context, they can create bias and misconceptions about different places.<br />
<br />
[[Cueball]]'s dialogue leads the reader to expect this complaint. However, instead of comparing ''relative'' sizes of two landmasses within the map, [[Cueball]] compares the ''absolute'' sizes of the depiction of Greenland and the actual Greenland. On a typical world map, Greenland might be centimeters or inches across. Judging from the human characters, the mapped Greenland in this comic might be 10 cm across. In real life, Greenland is about 650 miles or 1,050 km across from east to west ([//britannica.com/place/Greenland source]). Cueball deems this difference misleading, presenting it as a failure of this specific map or projection.<br />
<br />
Of course, this is absurd. The purpose of any map is to present information much more compactly so that it is easy to read and interpret. Any actual-size world map would have to be the size of the Earth's surface, in which case it would have few uses. In addition, if a map includes a {{w|Scale (map)|scale}}, it is easy to calculate the actual size of the places depicted.<br />
<br />
The title text is about the fact that a horizontal line on a worldwide Mercator projection corresponds to a line of latitude. Most lines of latitude are thousands of miles (kilometers) long, but they become smaller and smaller approaching the poles, and in fact there ''is'' a line of latitude in a small-diameter circle around each pole whose length would equal the width of the map that Cueball is looking at. If Cueball's map were 1 m wide, then this line of latitude would be at 89.999998568° N or S - that is, the line of latitude there would be one circle for each of the poles with a circumference of 1 m.<br />
<br />
A map at a scale of 1:1 was discussed in {{w|Lewis Carroll}}'s "{{w|Sylvie and Bruno Concluded}}":<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
''"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"''<br><br />
''"About six inches to the mile."''<br><br />
''"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"''<br><br />
''"Have you used it much?" I enquired.''<br><br />
''"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Mercator projections have been mentioned previously in [[977: Map Projections]], [[2082: Mercator Projection]], and [[2613: Bad Map Projection: Madagascator]].<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Cueball and White Hat are looking at a world map on the wall showing a Mercator projection, with Cueball gesturing with his hand towards the map.]<br />
:Cueball: This map is really misleading about the size of Greenland.<br />
:Cueball: It's actually '''''much''''' bigger than that - it's hundreds of miles across.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Maps]]<br />
[[Category:Geography]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2906:_Earth&diff=3376762906: Earth2024-03-19T04:44:10Z<p>BunsenH: Undo revision 337546 by B for brain (talk) page is less than a week old, and still being edited</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2906<br />
| date = March 13, 2024<br />
| title = Earth<br />
| image = earth_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 364x472px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Just think of all the countless petty squabbles and misunderstandings, of all the fervent hatreds, over so insignificant a thing as the direction and duration of a rocket engine firing.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a HAUNTED MOON - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
[[File:Pale Blue Dot.png|200px|right|thumb|The ''Pale Blue Dot'' image from Voyager 1. Earth is the "pale blue dot" halfway up the rightmost color band.]]<br />
At first sight, this appears to be the famous {{w|Carl Sagan}} commentary, upon the ''{{w|Pale Blue Dot}}'' image of Earth, a picture taken by the {{w|Voyager 1 probe}} in 1990 (at that time 6 billion kilometers away) but having been transmitted back to Earth to be appreciated as one of the most iconic 'photos of Earth from space', along with ''{{w|Earthrise}}'' and ''{{w|The Blue Marble}}''. Sagan's written, and later spoken, words evoke how the lives of all of us are somehow confined to barely more than a single pixel's-worth of existence upon an already zoomed-in view of space.<br />
<br />
From the caption, however, it appears that 'Carl' is not looking at an image. Instead it is a spacecraft window. The minute apparent size of the Earth is as a result of the spacecraft being very far from Earth. This is an unintended consequence of an attempt to deorbit from {{w|low Earth orbit}} (i.e. not more than 2000 kilometers from the Earth's surface, from which the Earth should still mostly fill any view that points towards it). Rather than transitioning from LEO into a re-entry trajectory, somehow the vessel and crew have been sent into a ''much'' higher-reaching orbit, if not into a solar or extra-solar trajectory. And it is apparently Carl's fault. The speech is thus not an inward view of where we all are, but an outward look at somewhere that all the crew (unwillingly, and against all recent expectations) are ''not''.<br />
<br />
<!-- NOT SURE IF THIS NEW PARAGRAPH IS NEEDED. "BLUE MARBLE" ALREADY MENTIONED (AS SEPARATE), AND WE ALREADY HAVE REFERENCED CORE INFLUENCES AND MORE. THOUGH MAYBE SOMEONE CAN RE-USE/RE-EDIT SOME OF IT? -- This comic is not (although it appears as to the uneducated pre-astronomer who watches [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Foreman_(comedian) map men]) a reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble Blue Marble] image taken on the moon. The most common distribution of this image has been cropped to remove most of the empty space, and rotated so [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14Gtm2Z_70 north was up]. --><br />
The title text continues with the traditional tone of the speech, only to become an implicit attempt to claim that it wasn't quite as drastic an error as it actually seems to have been.<br />
<br />
The very same words (or as far as they go), but in the more traditional situation of an informative lecture, were previously used in [[1246: Pale Blue Dot]].<br />
<br />
=== The scale of the error ===<br />
<br />
The comic's distance from Earth is unlikely to be anywhere near that of Voyager 1, and would not be being seen portrayed by the same 1500mm high-resolution narrow-angle camera as took the alluded-to image. The apparent size of Earth, compared with Carl at his window, would depend a lot on the actual 'camera' geometry/position for the scene. For comparison, however, the Earth seen from the Moon is slightly under four times the diameter of the Moon as seen from the Earth, or perhaps nearly the size of a clenched fist, held at arm's length. This implies (unless the scene uses a particularly wide-angled lens, close to Carl and the window) that the vessel's position is now ''significantly'' beyond the orbit of the Moon.<br />
<br />
The ''absence'' of a clearly visible Moon, which would have a near-identical phase to the illuminated Earth and could easily be the second brightest object in the scene, is therefore best explained by it being no more than a sub-pixel object, indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness of space, somewhere within thirty Earth diameters (and thus [[2205: Types of Approximation|approximately]], in this image, pixels) of the visible Earth. This could include being sufficiently in conjunction/opposition to Earth to blend in, or be obscured by it.<!-- Note just for those who pass by this source: This excludes the 'out there' humorous possibility that the badly-done manouver did not effect the spacecraft, so much as it somehow sent the *Earth* out of its position, leaving the ship (and the Moon, and more than half of all other satellites?) still technically continuing more or less their prior Earth-orbits - which are now technically various solar ones... (BunsenH:)This could be a remake of {{w|Space: 1999}}. (OP:)Indeed, but actually turned up several notches! --><br />
<br />
The general lack of other visible stars, etc, would be explained by the exposure being tuned to not wash out the illuminated internal view, and not being set up for useful astronomical shots, though may then set another range of useful limits on what magnitude of reflected sunlight must still arrive from Earth in order to remain visible.<!-- Additional bonus note: This would depend upon the effective Earth-phase, Earth-albedo (e.g. ocean/land/ice-cap as prime reflector), the actual levels of the running lights by the 'cupula' viewing window and possible lower-dynamic-range capabilities/adjustments to the resulting image by the hypothetical 'comic camera', perhaps other details. On top of it being more governed by Rule Of Funny than *strict* reality, I suggest that making the actual calculation would be more troublesome than it's worth. Right? --><br />
<br />
The orbital speed in low-earth orbit is ~8km/s. Escape speed is ~11km/s. So to reentry the spacecraft must do a retrograde burn of some hundreds m/s, while to escape it must do a prograde burn of ~3km/s. So it must have been quite an error (~10 times bigger and in the opposite direction).<br />
<br />
=== The "pale blue" dot ===<br />
Although it might initially look like a white dot, the comic truly has used a pale blue color for the dot that represents Earth, with the color used in the "2x" version of the image seeming to be 0xBDCFF4.<br />
<br />
This can be interpreted as predominently a very light gray, with an extra hint of green and a bigger hint of blue. Or redefined as an {{w|HSL and HSV|HSV}} triplet of of 220.4 (a greenish-blue hue), 22.5% (relatively unsaturated) and 95.7% (very bright), all consistent with how the sunlit side of an Earthlike world would look with large oceans, vast swathes of terrestrial vegetation and atmospheric clouds, necessarily abstracted down to a very limited number of pixels.<br />
<br />
Looking at {{w|File:Pale_Blue_Dot.png|an actual example of the 'original'}}, seems to give a possible RGB of 0x95B39E (which gives: hue of 138, i.e. a 'bluish-green'; saturation level of 16.8%; brightness value of 70.2%), which is of course also consistent with the above assumptions about Earth. But all such images are of course ultimately derived as a composite of the data from [https://pds-rings.seti.org/voyager/iss/inst_cat_na1.html#filters eight separate 'filters'], which don't neatly fit into the {{w|RGB color model}}, and always subject to various kinds of post-processing and image conversion techniques.<!-- Maybe someone can find an actual 'original original' from NASA/JPL/whoever, or even the original eight 'raws'..? --><br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Carl Sagan (drawn Cueball like but with flat hair) is standing in front of a black screen with a tiny pale blue dot in the middle. He indicates the screen by holding out his right hand palm up towards the screen. He is speaking to someone off-panel, who replies from a star burst on the right edge of the panel.]<br />
:Carl: Look again at that dot. That's home. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives...<br />
:Carl: On a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.<br />
:Off-panel voice: We '''''know,''''' Carl.<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Carl Sagan was '''''not''''' making us feel better about how badly he'd messed up the low Earth orbit reentry burn.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]<br />
[[Category:Space]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2906:_Earth&diff=3374882906: Earth2024-03-15T16:28:24Z<p>BunsenH: parse 0xBDCFF4 into grey, green, and blue</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2906<br />
| date = March 13, 2024<br />
| title = Earth<br />
| image = earth_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 364x472px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Just think of all the countless petty squabbles and misunderstandings, of all the fervent hatreds, over so insignificant a thing as the direction and duration of a rocket engine firing.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a HAUNTED MOON - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
[[File:Pale Blue Dot.png|200px|right|thumb|The ''Pale Blue Dot'' image from Voyager 1. Earth is the "pale blue dot" halfway up the rightmost color band.]]<br />
At first sight, this appears to be the famous {{w|Carl Sagan}} commentary, upon the ''{{w|Pale Blue Dot}}'' image of Earth, a picture taken by the {{w|Voyager 1 probe}} in 1990 (at that time 6 billion kilometers away) but having been transmitted back to Earth to be appreciated as one of the most iconic 'photos of Earth from space', along with ''{{w|Earthrise}}'' and ''{{w|The Blue Marble}}''. Sagan's written, and later spoken, words evoke how the lives of all of us are somehow confined to barely more than a single pixel's-worth of existence upon an already zoomed-in view of space. Although it might look like a white dot, the comic actually has used pale blue color for the dot representing Earth, with the color used in the "2x" version of the image being 0xBDCFF4. (This can be parsed as 0xBDBDBD — a lightish gray — plus 0x12 of green and 0x37 of blue.)<br />
<br />
From the caption, however, it appears that 'Carl' is not looking at an image. Instead it is a spacecraft window. The minute apparent size of the Earth is as a result of the spacecraft being very far from Earth. This is an unintended consequence of an attempt to deorbit from {{w|low Earth orbit}} (i.e. not more than 2000 kilometers from the Earth's surface, from which the Earth should still mostly fill any view that points towards it). Rather than transitioning from LEO into a re-entry trajectory, somehow the vessel and crew have been sent into a ''much'' higher-reaching orbit, if not into a solar or extra-solar trajectory. And it is apparently Carl's fault. The speech is thus not an inward view of where we all are, but an outward look at somewhere that all the crew (unwillingly, and against all recent expectations) are ''not''.<br />
<br />
<!-- NOT SURE IF THIS NEW PARAGRAPH IS NEEDED. "BLUE MARBLE" ALREADY MENTIONED (AS SEPARATE), AND WE ALREADY HAVE REFERENCED CORE INFLUENCES AND MORE. THOUGH MAYBE SOMEONE CAN RE-USE/RE-EDIT SOME OF IT? -- This comic is not (although it appears as to the uneducated pre-astronomer who watches [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Foreman_(comedian) map men]) a reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble Blue Marble] image taken on the moon. The most common distribution of this image has been cropped to remove most of the empty space, and rotated so [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14Gtm2Z_70 north was up]. --><br />
The title text continues with the traditional tone of the speech, only to become an implicit attempt to claim that it wasn't quite as drastic an error as it actually seems to have been.<br />
<br />
The very same words (or as far as they go), but in the more traditional situation of an informative lecture, were previously used in [[1246: Pale Blue Dot]].<br />
<br />
=== The scale of the error ===<br />
<br />
The comic's distance from Earth is unlikely to be anywhere near that of Voyager 1, and would not be being seen portrayed by the same 1500mm high-resolution narrow-angle camera as took the alluded-to image. The apparent size of Earth, compared with Carl at his window, would depend a lot on the actual 'camera' geometry/position for the scene. For comparison, however, the Earth seen from the Moon is slightly under four times the diameter of the Moon as seen from the Earth, or perhaps nearly the size of a clenched fist, held at arm's length. This implies (unless the scene uses a particularly wide-angled lens, close to Carl and the window) that the vessel's position is now ''significantly'' beyond the orbit of the Moon.<br />
<br />
The ''absence'' of a clearly visible Moon, which would have a near-identical phase to the illuminated Earth and could easily be the second brightest object in the scene, is therefore best explained by it being no more than a sub-pixel object, indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness of space, somewhere within thirty Earth diameters (and thus [[2205: Types of Approximation|approximately]], in this image, pixels) of the visible Earth. This could include being sufficiently in conjunction/opposition to Earth to blend in, or be obscured by it.<!-- Note just for those who pass by this source: This excludes the 'out there' humorous possibility that the badly-done manouver did not effect the spacecraft, so much as it somehow sent the *Earth* out of its position, leaving the ship (and the Moon, and more than half of all other satellites?) still technically continuing more or less their prior Earth-orbits - which are now technically various solar ones... (BunsenH:)This could be a remake of {{w|Space: 1999}}. (OP:)Indeed, but actually turned up several notches! --><br />
<br />
The general lack of other visible stars, etc, would be explained by the exposure being tuned to not wash out the illuminated internal view, and not being set up for useful astronomical shots, though may then set another range of useful limits on what magnitude of reflected sunlight must still arrive from Earth in order to remain visible.<!-- Additional bonus note: This would depend upon the effective Earth-phase, Earth-albedo (e.g. ocean/land/ice-cap as prime reflector), the actual levels of the running lights by the 'cupula' viewing window and possible lower-dynamic-range capabilities/adjustments to the resulting image by the hypothetical 'comic camera', perhaps other details. On top of it being more governed by Rule Of Funny than *strict* reality, I suggest that making the actual calculation would be more troublesome than it's worth. Right? --><br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Carl Sagan (drawn Cueball like but with flat hair) is standing in front of a black screen with a tiny pale blue dot in the middle. He indicates the screen by holding out his right hand palm up towards the screen. He is speaking to someone off-panel, who replies from a star burst on the right edge of the panel.]<br />
:Carl: Look again at that dot. That's home. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives...<br />
:Carl: On a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.<br />
:Off-panel voice: We '''''know,''''' Carl.<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Carl Sagan was '''''not''''' making us feel better about how badly he'd messed up the low Earth orbit reentry burn.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]<br />
[[Category:Space]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2906:_Earth&diff=337487Talk:2906: Earth2024-03-15T16:18:18Z<p>BunsenH: </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 />
I originally read the caption as "how badly ''we'd'' messed up", which... changes Sagan's tone somewhat. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.155.54|172.71.155.54]] 08:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
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At first I thought the joke was that the rocket firing had somehow gone so catastrophically badly that the entire Earth had literally been reduced to dust. [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 08:37, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:I also had this notion at first. That after the failed burn Earth had been destroyed... But I think not so anymore. So thx explain xkcd. ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:43, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
<br />
So, according to explainxkcd, that’s a ''square'' “spacecraft window”?? Why have we never seen a square spacecraft window in any other context, ever? Did Randall screw up that badly in the original comic, or was it a previous explainxkcd editor who screwed up here? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.60|172.70.214.60]] 08:58, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:I'm not sure what you're on about and why anyone has to have screwed up. Why can't it be a rectangular (we don't know it's square) spacecraft window? [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 09:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
::This is very clearly a triangle shaped window in a very elongated spaceship [[User:Whimsical|Whimsical]] ([[User talk:Whimsical|talk]]) 11:24, 14 March 2024 (UTC) <br />
::: Maybe it is part of a huge spider-shaped window? (I home people here will remember that meta-reference to What If) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.94.208|172.71.94.208]] 12:28, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
::::This picture from the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola_(ISS_module)#/media/File:Tracy_Caldwell_Dyson_in_Cupola_ISS.jpg Cupola] module of the ISS has trapeze like windows. But the one behind the astronaut could easily have been a rectangle from what can be seen in the picture. So to argue that this window could not have been shot the same is just silly. Of course it was important to the joke that you did not realize it was a window until reading the caption. Also if this space craft has held up to go so far form Earth with living inhabitants it is obviously not a space ship in use today! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:43, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:::::There is precedent with the [https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/990677/view/crew-at-window-of-space-shuttle-discovery-2006 Space Shuttle] (aft flight-deck window, others were round, the 'forward flight-deck' ones were of course the main flight/piloting ones with awkward quadrilateral shapes and pesky instrument panels where none are in the comic). The windows in the Shuttle were actually a weight issue (certainly, at first, they were plain (chunky!) glass, and added a ''lot'' of weight to the design.<br />
:::::Also look at {{w|File:Blue Origin M7.jpg|Blue Origin's capsule}} for more current design that could end up eventually on an orbital/extra-orbital vessel. Although Crew Dragon is more conservative, and {{w|File:MACES in Orion mock-up.jpg|Orion's interior}} looks like it isn't so big (while Starship's eventual window configuration might eventually be vastly more conservative than the Dan Dare/Flash Gordon aesthetic of the concept imagery).<br />
:::::So... Possible, but depends upon the design needs for the craft (fully space-capable whilst ''intended'' to undergo re-entry, is all we really know). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.92|172.70.90.92]] 16:13, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
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In my mind is the scene in C.S. Lewis's religious novel Out of the Silent Planet, where an English philologist, Ransom, is abducted by criminals into outer space and meets aliens. In chapter fifteen, a wise sorn tries to figure out which planet Ransom is from. Probably Thulcandra, the garbage planet of the Solar System. Ransom doesn't like the sound of that, but the sorn gets out something that isn't a telescope and he shows Thulcandra to Ransom, and yup, that's us. Lewis writes it better. I don't know if Carl Sagan had read this. --Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@gmail.com [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.75|141.101.99.75]] 13:12, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:Hoo boy, yep that book (and its sequel) are beyond even Narnia in their religious symbolism (though the later environmentalist movements could definitely find an allegory in them, too, not sure how intended that was, in CSL's time, some time before a practical Gaia Hypothesis/etc). I can imagine Randall knows of the book (though clearly more influenced by Sagan in a direct lineage). Not entirely sure Sagan will have taken interest in that genre, nor taken the above to heart. Probably no more than his genuine scientific and rhetoric interests, which may be sufficient genesis for his own coined meme. But that's just my gut feeling. i.e. Worthy of note, but not directly (or singly-indirectly) connected. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.153|172.70.85.153]] 14:20, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:: The Gaia Hypothesis is also religious, so it makes sense that it could be written into C. S. Lewis. Protecting the environment is important, but Mother Nature is basically a deity for misanthropes. {{unsigned ip|162.158.155.91|14:02, 15 March 2024}}<br />
:::It ''can'' be believed religiously, and is named after a goddess, but also can be used to describe the (long-term) self-regulating interactions of the various elements of biomes and atmos/geos-/pedospheres that interact, in a more scientific way. (Some people religiously believe in evolution as God's "fire and forget" Creationist act to get us from the very start of Genesis until Revelations, for example, but it doesn't stop a strictly agnostic scientific analysis of natural selection getting us here, with or without writings that describe everything in traditional concepts that may not ''necessarily' be entirely accurate - but sustained "God's chosen people" in ways that mattered... to put just one teleological spin on it.)<br />
:::It can just be considered a more complex (and entirelg natural) global thermostat. Which might have difficulty dealing with people lighting unexpected fires in the middle of their bedrooms (e.g.), and can't stop them burning their own house down if they start a runaway effect that it has no power to stop, but ''normally'' it can counteract variations of temperature by eventually adjusting the heating/cooling elements. Or, I suppose, decides that a hotter/colder house is better, so long as there are still some pot-plants that will thrive under the new conditions (until nudged back by other effects).<br />
:::...that's simplistic, as an analogy, and in key ways 'not really correct', but it starts to reflect the no-god-needed tenet of the general idea. (Not sure I have confidence in "it'll be alright", but I would say it has better chance than "''we'll'' be alright", as we aren't vital to 'keep things going'. In fact, once we're gone then anything that remains will get its own chance to nudge conditions to a new equilibreum.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.232|141.101.98.232]] 15:23, 15 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
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The color for the blue dot seems to be around #B6C8EB. --[[User:1234231587678|1234231587678]] ([[User talk:1234231587678|talk]]) 15:18, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:Zooming in, the central pixel is definitely #ABBBDC (a very easy color to hand type), with some artifacts around it of varying shades of grey. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.59.184|172.69.59.184]] 20:58, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
::I think we're discussing different versions of the two images. The single central pixel of the dot in the "regular-sized" image on the xkcd site, "earth.png" (364 x 472 pixels), is now #B5C6E9, while the ''six'' central pixels in the 2x image, "earth_2x.png" (728 x 945 pixels), are #BDCFF4. The "regular-sized" version here, "363px-earth_2x.png" (363 x 471 pixels) has a single central pixel, #ABBBDC, while the large image on *this* site, "545px-earth_2x.png" (545 x 707 pixels), has ''two'' central pixels, #BDCFF4. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 22:33, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
I'd say he nailed Sagan's hair... [[User:Inexplicable|Inexplicable]] ([[User talk:Inexplicable|talk]]) 19:11, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
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Carl may *claim* to have messed up, but I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't aim the rocket for deep space, given half a chance.<br />
:Sounds about right. It's Carl Sagan... and besides, who ''wouldn't'' want the opportunity to venture into the final frontier? (Also, please remember to sign your post next time.) [[User:OmniDoom|OmniDoom]] ([[User talk:OmniDoom|talk]]) 23:40, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
::Um. "Spend a little while in LEO then go home and live out the rest of your life" vs. "spend a little while much further out, in the company of a few people who ''really resent you'', then die unpleasantly"? I'd go with the former. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 16:18, 15 March 2024 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2906:_Earth&diff=337457Talk:2906: Earth2024-03-14T22:33:04Z<p>BunsenH: image versions?</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 />
I originally read the caption as "how badly ''we'd'' messed up", which... changes Sagan's tone somewhat. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.155.54|172.71.155.54]] 08:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
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At first I thought the joke was that the rocket firing had somehow gone so catastrophically badly that the entire Earth had literally been reduced to dust. [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 08:37, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:I also had this notion at first. That after the failed burn Earth had been destroyed... But I think not so anymore. So thx explain xkcd. ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:43, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
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So, according to explainxkcd, that’s a ''square'' “spacecraft window”?? Why have we never seen a square spacecraft window in any other context, ever? Did Randall screw up that badly in the original comic, or was it a previous explainxkcd editor who screwed up here? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.60|172.70.214.60]] 08:58, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:I'm not sure what you're on about and why anyone has to have screwed up. Why can't it be a rectangular (we don't know it's square) spacecraft window? [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 09:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
::This is very clearly a triangle shaped window in a very elongated spaceship [[User:Whimsical|Whimsical]] ([[User talk:Whimsical|talk]]) 11:24, 14 March 2024 (UTC) <br />
::: Maybe it is part of a huge spider-shaped window? (I home people here will remember that meta-reference to What If) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.94.208|172.71.94.208]] 12:28, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
::::This picture from the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola_(ISS_module)#/media/File:Tracy_Caldwell_Dyson_in_Cupola_ISS.jpg Cupola] module of the ISS has trapeze like windows. But the one behind the astronaut could easily have been a rectangle from what can be seen in the picture. So to argue that this window could not have been shot the same is just silly. Of course it was important to the joke that you did not realize it was a window until reading the caption. Also if this space craft has held up to go so far form Earth with living inhabitants it is obviously not a space ship in use today! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:43, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:::::There is precedent with the [https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/990677/view/crew-at-window-of-space-shuttle-discovery-2006 Space Shuttle] (aft flight-deck window, others were round, the 'forward flight-deck' ones were of course the main flight/piloting ones with awkward quadrilateral shapes and pesky instrument panels where none are in the comic). The windows in the Shuttle were actually a weight issue (certainly, at first, they were plain (chunky!) glass, and added a ''lot'' of weight to the design.<br />
:::::Also look at {{w|File:Blue Origin M7.jpg|Blue Origin's capsule}} for more current design that could end up eventually on an orbital/extra-orbital vessel. Although Crew Dragon is more conservative, and {{w|File:MACES in Orion mock-up.jpg|Orion's interior}} looks like it isn't so big (while Starship's eventual window configuration might eventually be vastly more conservative than the Dan Dare/Flash Gordon aesthetic of the concept imagery).<br />
:::::So... Possible, but depends upon the design needs for the craft (fully space-capable whilst ''intended'' to undergo re-entry, is all we really know). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.92|172.70.90.92]] 16:13, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
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In my mind is the scene in C.S. Lewis's religious novel Out of the Silent Planet, where an English philologist, Ransom, is abducted by criminals into outer space and meets aliens. In chapter fifteen, a wise sorn tries to figure out which planet Ransom is from. Probably Thulcandra, the garbage planet of the Solar System. Ransom doesn't like the sound of that, but the sorn gets out something that isn't a telescope and he shows Thulcandra to Ransom, and yup, that's us. Lewis writes it better. I don't know if Carl Sagan had read this. --Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@gmail.com [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.75|141.101.99.75]] 13:12, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:Hoo boy, yep that book (and its sequel) are beyond even Narnia in their religious symbolism (though the later environmentalist movements could definitely find an allegory in them, too, not sure how intended that was, in CSL's time, some time before a practical Gaia Hypothesis/etc). I can imagine Randall knows of the book (though clearly more influenced by Sagan in a direct lineage). Not entirely sure Sagan will have taken interest in that genre, nor taken the above to heart. Probably no more than his genuine scientific and rhetoric interests, which may be sufficient genesis for his own coined meme. But that's just my gut feeling. i.e. Worthy of note, but not directly (or singly-indirectly) connected. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.153|172.70.85.153]] 14:20, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
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The color for the blue dot seems to be around #B6C8EB. --[[User:1234231587678|1234231587678]] ([[User talk:1234231587678|talk]]) 15:18, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
:Zooming in, the central pixel is definitely #ABBBDC (a very easy color to hand type), with some artifacts around it of varying shades of grey. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.59.184|172.69.59.184]] 20:58, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
::I think we're discussing different versions of the two images. The single central pixel of the dot in the "regular-sized" image on the xkcd site, "earth.png" (364 x 472 pixels), is now #B5C6E9, while the ''six'' central pixels in the 2x image, "earth_2x.png" (728 x 945 pixels), are #BDCFF4. The "regular-sized" version here, "363px-earth_2x.png" (363 x 471 pixels) has a single central pixel, #ABBBDC, while the large image on *this* site, "545px-earth_2x.png" (545 x 707 pixels), has ''two'' central pixels, #BDCFF4. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 22:33, 14 March 2024 (UTC)<br />
I'd say he nailed Sagan's hair... [[User:Inexplicable|Inexplicable]] ([[User talk:Inexplicable|talk]]) 19:11, 14 March 2024 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2906:_Earth&diff=3374402906: Earth2024-03-14T18:18:25Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ Space: 1999</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2906<br />
| date = March 13, 2024<br />
| title = Earth<br />
| image = earth_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 364x472px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Just think of all the countless petty squabbles and misunderstandings, of all the fervent hatreds, over so insignificant a thing as the direction and duration of a rocket engine firing.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a BLUE MARBLE THAT HAS BEEN CROPPED AND ROTATED - Can someone comment on the color of the dot (which color has been used?) It is hard to see but clearly it is not white. This has been mentioned but can someone find out which color has been used? Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
[[File:Pale Blue Dot.png|200px|right|thumb|The ''Pale Blue Dot'' image from Voyager 1. Earth is the "pale blue dot" halfway up the rightmost color band.]]<br />
At first sight, this appears to be the famous {{w|Carl Sagan}} commentary, upon the ''{{w|Pale Blue Dot}}'' image of Earth, a picture taken by the {{w|Voyager 1 probe}} in 1990 (at that time 6 billion kilometers away) but having been transmitted back to Earth to be appreciated as one of the most iconic 'photos of Earth from space', along with ''{{w|Earthrise}}'' and ''{{w|The Blue Marble}}''. Sagan's written, and later spoken, words evoke how the lives of all of us are somehow confined to barely more than a single pixel's-worth of existence upon an already zoomed-in view of space. Although it might look like a white dot, the comic actually has used pale blue color for the dot representing Earth, with the color used in the "2x" version of the image being 0xBDCFF4.<br />
<br />
From the comment, however, it appears that 'Carl' is not looking at an image. Instead it is a spacecraft window. The minute nature of the Earth is as a result of some unintended consequences of an attempt to deorbit from {{w|low Earth orbit}} (i.e. not more than 2000 kilometers from the Earth's surface, from which the Earth should still mostly fill any view that points towards it). Rather than transitioning from LEO into a re-entry trajectory, somehow the vessel and crew have been sent into a ''much'' higher-reaching orbit, if not into a solar or extra-solar trajectory. And it is apparently Carl's fault. The speech is thus not an inward view of where we all are, but an outward look at somewhere that all the crew (unwillingly, and against all recent expectations) are ''not''.<br />
<br />
<!-- NOT SURE IF THIS NEW PARAGRAPH IS NEEDED. "BLUE MARBLE" ALREADY MENTIONED (AS SEPARATE), AND WE ALREADY HAVE REFERENCED CORE INFLUENCES AND MORE. THOUGH MAYBE SOMEONE CAN RE-USE/RE-EDIT SOME OF IT? -- This comic is not (although it appears as to the uneducated pre-astronomer who watches [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Foreman_(comedian) map men]) a reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble Blue Marble] image taken on the moon. The most common distribution of this image has been cropped to remove most of the empty space, and rotated so [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14Gtm2Z_70 north was up]. --><br />
<br />
The title text continues with the traditional tone of the speech, only to become an implicit attempt to claim that it wasn't quite as drastic an error as it actually seems to have been.<br />
<br />
The very same words (or as far as they go), but in the more traditional situation of an informative lecture, were previously used in [[1246: Pale Blue Dot]].<br />
<br />
=== The scale of the error ===<br />
<br />
The comic's distance from Earth is unlikely to be anywhere near that of Voyager 1, and would not be being seen portrayed by the same 1500mm high-resolution narrow-angle camera as took the alluded-to image. The apparent size of Earth, compared with Carl at his window, would depend a lot on the actual 'camera' geometry/position for the scene. For comparison, however, the Earth seen from the Moon is slightly under four times the diameter of the Moon as seen from the Earth, or perhaps nearly the size of a clenched fist, held at arm's length. This implies (unless the scene uses a particularly wide-angled lens, close to Carl and the window) that the vessel's position is now ''significantly'' beyond the orbit of the Moon.<br />
<br />
The ''absence'' of a clearly visible Moon, which would have a near-identical phase to the illuminated Earth and could easily be the second brightest object in the scene, is therefore best explained by it being no more than a sub-pixel object, indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness of space, somewhere within thirty Earth diameters (and thus [[2205: Types of Approximation|approximately]], in this image, pixels) of the visible Earth. This could include being sufficiently in conjunction/opposition to Earth to blend in, or be obscured by it.<!-- Note just for those who pass by this source: This excludes the 'out there' humorous possibility that the badly-done manouver did not effect the spacecraft, so much as it somehow sent the *Earth* out of its position, leaving the ship (and the Moon, and more than half of all other satellites?) still technically continuing more or less their prior Earth-orbits - which are now technically various solar ones... This could be a remake of {{w|Space: 1999}}. --><br />
<br />
The general lack of other visible stars, etc, would be explained by the exposure being tuned to not wash out the illuminated internal view, and not being set up for useful astronomical shots, though may then set another range of useful limits on what magnitude of reflected sunlight must still arrive from Earth in order to remain visible.<!-- Additional bonus note: This would depend upon the effective Earth-phase, Earth-albedo (e.g. ocean/land/ice-cap as prime reflector), the actual levels of the running lights by the 'cupula' viewing window and possible lower-dynamic-range capabilities/adjustments to the resulting image by the hypothetical 'comic camera', perhaps other details. On top of it being more governed by Rule Of Funny than *strict* reality, I suggest that making the actual calculation would be more troublesome than it's worth. Right? --><br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Carl Sagan (drawn Cueball like but with flat hair) is standing in front of a black screen with a tiny pale blue dot in the middle. He indicates the screen by holding out his right hand palm up towards the screen. He is speaking to someone off-panel, who replies from a star burst on the right edge of the panel.]<br />
:Carl: Look again at that dot. That's home. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives...<br />
:Carl: On a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.<br />
:Off-panel voice: We '''''know,''''' Carl.<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Carl Sagan was '''''not''''' making us feel better about how badly he'd messed up the low Earth orbit reentry burn.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]<br />
[[Category:Space]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2906:_Earth&diff=3374302906: Earth2024-03-14T15:40:02Z<p>BunsenH: specific colour</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2906<br />
| date = March 13, 2024<br />
| title = Earth<br />
| image = earth_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 364x472px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Just think of all the countless petty squabbles and misunderstandings, of all the fervent hatreds, over so insignificant a thing as the direction and duration of a rocket engine firing.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a BLUE MARBLE THAT HAS BEEN CROPPED AND ROTATED - Can someone comment on the color of the dot (which color has been used?) It is hard to see but clearly it is not white. This has been mentioned but can someone find out which color has been used? Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
[[File:Pale Blue Dot.png|200px|right|thumb|The ''Pale Blue Dot'' image from Voyager 1. Earth is the "pale blue dot" halfway up the rightmost color band.]]<br />
At first sight, this appears to be the famous {{w|Carl Sagan}} commentary, upon the ''{{w|Pale Blue Dot}}'' image of Earth, a picture taken by the {{w|Voyager 1 probe}} in 1990 (at that time 6 billion kilometers away) but having been transmitted back to Earth to be appreciated as one of the most iconic 'photos of Earth from space', along with ''{{w|Earthrise}}'' and ''{{w|The Blue Marble}}''. Sagan's written, and later spoken, words evoke how the lives of all of us are somehow confined to barely more than a single pixel's-worth of existence. Although it might look like a white dot, the comic actually has used pale blue color for the dot representing Earth. (The color used in the "2x" version of the image is 0xBDCFF4.)<br />
<br />
From the comment, however, it appears that 'Carl' is not looking at an image. Instead it is a spacecraft window. The minute nature of the Earth is as a result of some unintended consequences of deorbiting maneuver from {{w|low Earth orbit}} (i.e. not more than 2000 kilometers from the Earth's surface, from which the Earth should still mostly fill any view that points towards it). Rather than transitioning from LEO into a re-entry trajectory, somehow the vessel and crew have been sent into a ''much'' higher-reaching orbit, if not into a solar or extra-solar trajectory. And it is apparently Carl's fault. The speech is thus not an abstract description of where we all are, but pointing out where all the crew (unwillingly, and against all recent expectations) are ''not''.<br />
<br />
This comic is not (although it appears as to the uneducated pre-astronomer who watches [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Foreman_(comedian) map men]) a reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble Blue Marble] image taken on the moon. The most common distribution of this image has been cropped to remove most of the empty space, and rotated so [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14Gtm2Z_70 north was up]. <br />
<br />
The title text continues with the traditional tone of the speech, only to become an implicit attempt to claim that it wasn't quite as drastic an error as it actually seems to have been.<br />
<br />
The very same words (or as far as they go), but in the more traditional situation of an informative lecture, were previously used in [[1246: Pale Blue Dot]].<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Carl Sagan (drawn Cueball like but with flat hair) is standing in front of a black screen with a tiny pale blue dot in the middle. He indicates the screen by holding out his right hand palm up towards the screen. He is speaking to someone off-panel, who replies from a star burst on the right edge of the panel.]<br />
:Carl: Look again at that dot. That's home. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives...<br />
:Carl: On a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.<br />
:Off-panel voice: We '''''know,''''' Carl.<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Carl Sagan was '''''not''''' making us feel better about how badly he'd messed up the low Earth orbit reentry burn.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]<br />
[[Category:Space]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2904:_Physics_vs._Magic&diff=3371872904: Physics vs. Magic2024-03-12T16:15:21Z<p>BunsenH: Restored "incomplete" (way too early to remove, page is still undergoing major changes) and "Explanation" heading</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2904<br />
| date = March 8, 2024<br />
| title = Physics vs. Magic<br />
| image = physics_vs_magic_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 740x294px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = 'At the stroke of midnight, your brother will be hurtling sideways at an altitude of 150 meters' is a regular physics prediction about your nonmagical trebuchet, whereas 'you are cursed to build a brother-launching trebuchet' falls out of the Lagrangian.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by THE ILVERMORNY PROFESSOR OF THERMODYNAMICS- Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
This comic explores the distinctions between magic and physics through the perspective of [[Miss Lenhart]], a schoolteacher. She explains that {{w|physics}} involves the continuous application of forces to objects over time, whereas magic reveals the outcome without detailing the process. She illustrates her point with a magical curse example that dictates the recipient will slay their brother by midnight (or possibly noon), highlighting its lack of scientific basis due to the absence of a causal explanation. She further contends that the {{w|laws of thermodynamics}}, among other laws, fall into the category of magic, with {{w|Lagrangian (physics)|Lagrangians}} representing a deeper level of magic.<br />
<br />
The humor in this comic arises from the observation that foundational physical laws, despite being empirically derived, lack explanations for their inherent truths. According to the logic presented in the second panel, these laws resemble magic as they specify outcomes without clarifying the means to achieve them. While some laws might be derived from others, ultimately, we accept certain principles as given, akin to magical reasoning.<br />
<br />
The second panel references Newtonian mechanics, depicted as an initial value problem, which establishes a system's initial conditions and its temporal evolution based on specific rules. This formulation aligns with our intuitive understanding that the present is a known state and the immediate future is determined by present conditions. The final panel humorously juxtaposes this notion with various physics concepts that challenge our basic assumptions in progressively disconcerting ways.<br />
<br />
Specifically, equilibrium thermodynamics, a major branch of thermodynamics familiar to students, makes predictions about a system's eventual state without accounting for its current state or intermediate behaviors. This perspective seemingly contradicts the principle introduced in the first panel, although the concept of inquiring about long-term stability without detailed process knowledge remains intuitively accessible.<br />
<br />
{{w|Conservation law}}s, emerging naturally from Newtonian physics, present another conceptual challenge. While basic explanations involve calculus and elementary algebra, more advanced interpretations connect conservation laws to physical system symmetries in a highly abstract and enigmatic manner. These laws, therefore, make permanent statements about a system's state, independent of its evolution, challenging the initial principle in a manner that feels even more counterintuitive than thermodynamics. Notably, particle physics conservation laws, except in cases involving the {{w|Wu experiment|weak nuclear force}}, maintain certain system properties like charge, spin, and parity.<br />
<br />
Lagrangian mechanics, a reinterpretation of classical physics equivalent to Newton's laws, diverges by considering both initial and final states to determine physically permissible trajectories. This approach directly opposes the first panel's principle, mirroring the magical definition by surprisingly and counterintuitively aligning the intuitive Newtonian perspective with the "magical" frameworks of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics. Therefore, the comic labels Lagrangians, central to Lagrangian mechanics and system dynamics description, as 'Deep Magic', highlighting their role in encapsulating physics' magical aspect.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, the comic might hint at the teleological debate within physics, especially regarding the {{w|stationary-action principle}}'s potential teleological interpretations. This principle, foundational to deriving various equations of motion across physics fields, suggests a teleological element by inferring initial conditions from specified final conditions, challenging the conventional causality narrative.<br />
<br />
The title text merges the comic's thematic elements, contrasting a nonmagical {{w|trebuchet}} prediction with the mystical implications of the curse, further blending the lines between physics predictions and magical foresight.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Miss Lenhart is standing in front of a whiteboard and pointing to it with a stick. The whiteboard contains two lines of scribbles at the top, two drawings below them featuring a curve on the left and a circle on the right, and below them four additional lines of scribbles with smallest line of scribbles in the lower left corner.]<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Physics''''' and '''''magic''''' are different in a very deep way.<br />
<br />
:[Close-up of Miss Lenhart pointing the stick to the left to a depiction of a projectile's motion due to gravity. The path of movement is shown as a dashed line that first heads directly to the right but starts increasingly curving downward. There are five small circles at different points within the path. There are labels "V<sub>0</sub>" for an arrow pointing right on the left side of the leftmost circle, "F" for an arrow pointing downward below the leftmost circle, and "T<sub>0</sub>" to "T<sub>4</sub>" for the five individual circles from left to right.]<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Physics''''' works by describing the forces that act on a system.<br />
:Miss Lenhart: To predict outcomes, we progressively apply those forces over time.<br />
<br />
:[Miss Lenhart is holding the stick down and standing in front of Jill and Hairy sitting at their desks. Jill has her hands on her desk while Hairy has his hands on his lap.]<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Magic''''' specifies the outcome, but not the intermediate events.<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '' "Ere the clock strikes twelve, you are cursed to slay your brother" '' is magic, not science.<br />
<br />
:[Same setting as in the third panel, except Miss Lenhart is holding the stick slightly lower and Jill has her other hand on her lap.]<br />
:Miss Lenhart: ... And that's how we know thermodynamics is magic.<br />
:Miss Lenhart: Conservation laws are, too.<br />
:Hairy: What about Lagrangians?<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Deep''''' magic. Speak not of them here.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]<br />
[[Category:Physics]]<br />
[[Category:Trebuchet]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2905:_Supergroup&diff=3371312905: Supergroup2024-03-12T01:40:31Z<p>BunsenH: /* Songs mentioned in the title text */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2905<br />
| date = March 11, 2024<br />
| title = Supergroup<br />
| image = supergroup_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 335x321px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = I love their cover of 1,200 Balloons, Dalmatians, and Miles.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a HYPERGROUP - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In popular music, a {{w|supergroup (music)|supergroup}} is a musicial group formed by collaboration of existing solo artists and members of other musical groups.<br />
<br />
This comic shows a concert by a supergroup formed from members of musical groups whose names all begin with a number. The name of the supergroup is the sum of all those numbers, followed by the names of the original groups without their numbers.<br />
<br />
The title text indicates that there's a song that's a {{w|medley (music)|medley}} or {{w|mashup (music)|mashup}} of songs whose titles begin with numbers. The title of this "supersong" is similarly formed by adding the numbers and following with the rest of all the titles.<br />
<br />
=== Counts ===<br />
<br />
21 + 5 + 4 + 2 + 100 + 3 + 9 + 1 + 1 + 30 = 176<br />
<br />
99 + 101 + 1000 = 1200<br />
<br />
==== Musical groups mentioned in the comic ====<br />
<br />
* {{w|Twenty One Pilots}}<br />
* {{w|5 Seconds of Summer}}<br />
* {{w|4 Non Blondes}}<br />
* {{w|2 Live Crew}}<br />
* {{w|100 gecs}}<br />
* {{w|3 Doors Down}}<br />
* {{w|Nine Inch Nails}}<br />
* {{w|OneRepublic}}<br />
* {{w|One Direction}}<br />
* {{w|Thirty Seconds to Mars}}<br />
<br />
==== Songs mentioned in the title text ====<br />
<br />
* {{w|99 Luftballons}} (by {{w|Nena (band)|Nena}}) (English adaptation: 99 Red Balloons)<br />
* {{w|One Hundred and One Dalmatians#Music|One Hundred and One Dalmatians}} (Disney film soundtrack)<br />
* {{w|A Thousand Miles}} (by {{w|Vanessa Carlton}})<br />
<br />
There are also ''three'' songs titled (or known as) {{w|500_Miles_(disambiguation)|"500 Miles"}}, by Hedy West, the Proclaimers, and Tori Amos. Any two of them could replace "A Thousand Miles" in the tally.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, Knit Cap, and Hairy are in line at a theatre box office.] <br />
:[The marquee above the box office says:]<br />
:<big>Playing Tonight</big><br />
:''The New Supergroup:''<br />
:176 Pilots, Seconds of Summer, Non Blondes, Live Crew, gecs, Doors Down, Inch Nails, Republic, Direction, and Seconds to Mars<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Knit Cap]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]<br />
[[Category:Music]]<br />
[[Category:Math]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2905:_Supergroup&diff=3371302905: Supergroup2024-03-12T01:39:21Z<p>BunsenH: /* Songs mentioned in the title text */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2905<br />
| date = March 11, 2024<br />
| title = Supergroup<br />
| image = supergroup_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 335x321px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = I love their cover of 1,200 Balloons, Dalmatians, and Miles.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a HYPERGROUP - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In popular music, a {{w|supergroup (music)|supergroup}} is a musicial group formed by collaboration of existing solo artists and members of other musical groups.<br />
<br />
This comic shows a concert by a supergroup formed from members of musical groups whose names all begin with a number. The name of the supergroup is the sum of all those numbers, followed by the names of the original groups without their numbers.<br />
<br />
The title text indicates that there's a song that's a {{w|medley (music)|medley}} or {{w|mashup (music)|mashup}} of songs whose titles begin with numbers. The title of this "supersong" is similarly formed by adding the numbers and following with the rest of all the titles.<br />
<br />
=== Counts ===<br />
<br />
21 + 5 + 4 + 2 + 100 + 3 + 9 + 1 + 1 + 30 = 176<br />
<br />
99 + 101 + 1000 = 1200<br />
<br />
==== Musical groups mentioned in the comic ====<br />
<br />
* {{w|Twenty One Pilots}}<br />
* {{w|5 Seconds of Summer}}<br />
* {{w|4 Non Blondes}}<br />
* {{w|2 Live Crew}}<br />
* {{w|100 gecs}}<br />
* {{w|3 Doors Down}}<br />
* {{w|Nine Inch Nails}}<br />
* {{w|OneRepublic}}<br />
* {{w|One Direction}}<br />
* {{w|Thirty Seconds to Mars}}<br />
<br />
==== Songs mentioned in the title text ====<br />
<br />
* {{w|99 Luftballons}} (by {{w|Nena (band)|Nena}}) (English adaptation: 99 Red Balloons)<br />
* {{w|One Hundred and One Dalmatians#Music|One Hundred and One Dalmatians}} (Disney film soundtrack)<br />
* {{w|A Thousand Miles}} (by {{w|Vanessa Carlton}})<br />
<br />
There are also ''three'' songs titled (or known as) {{w|500_Miles_(disambiguation)|"500 Miles"}}, by Hedy West, the Proclaimers, and Tori Amos.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, Knit Cap, and Hairy are in line at a theatre box office.] <br />
:[The marquee above the box office says:]<br />
:<big>Playing Tonight</big><br />
:''The New Supergroup:''<br />
:176 Pilots, Seconds of Summer, Non Blondes, Live Crew, gecs, Doors Down, Inch Nails, Republic, Direction, and Seconds to Mars<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Knit Cap]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]<br />
[[Category:Music]]<br />
[[Category:Math]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2904:_Physics_vs._Magic&diff=3370712904: Physics vs. Magic2024-03-11T21:01:35Z<p>BunsenH: particle conservation laws</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2904<br />
| date = March 8, 2024<br />
| title = Physics vs. Magic<br />
| image = physics_vs_magic_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 740x294px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = 'At the stroke of midnight, your brother will be hurtling sideways at an altitude of 150 meters' is a regular physics prediction about your nonmagical trebuchet, whereas 'you are cursed to build a brother-launching trebuchet' falls out of the Lagrangian.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by THE ILVERMORNY PROFESSOR OF THERMODYNAMICS- Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
This is a comic about the differences between magic and physics. [[Miss Lenhart]], a school teacher, says that {{w|physics}} is applying forces to objects continuously over time, while magic tells you the outcome, but not how it'll get there. She gives an example of a magical curse that causes the recipient to slay their brother by midnight (or possibly noon) it's not science because it doesn't say what will cause them to take this action. She then states that the {{w|laws of thermodynamics}} and other laws are also magic, with {{w|Lagrangian (physics)|Lagrangians}} being deep magic.<br />
<br />
The joke is that these basic physical laws have been discovered empirically, but we don't know ''why'' they're true. So by the logic in the second panel, they're essentially like magic, since they specify a result without explaining how we get there. It may be possible to derive some of them from the others, but eventually we hit bottom and we have to say "because it just is", and that's like magic.<br />
<br />
The second panel alludes to Newtonian mechanics, which is formalized mathematically as an initial value problem; that is to say, the initial conditions of a system are known, and the rules relating the current condition of a system to the evolution of that system over time are specified. As humans, we are used to thinking of the present being a known state and the immediate future depending only on the present, so the Newtonian formalism makes intuitive sense as a picture of the world. The last panel contrasts this humorously with a series of physics ideas which violate this basic assumption in increasingly unsettling ways.<br />
<br />
Thermodynamics, in particular equilibrium thermodynamics, the most studied branch and that most familiar to physics students, frames its questions in terms of the most likely state for a system to evolve to eventually. In this sense, the predictions of thermodynamics do not depend on the present state of the system, and do not help predict its intermediate behaviour. They only predict what the state of the system will be after a long enough time has elapsed for the system to have stopped evolving; in other words, to have reached equilibrium. Looked at in this way, thermodynamics seems to violate the principle outlined in the first panel; however, most people will be intuitively comfortable with the idea that one can ask sensible questions about long term stability without considering the details of how the system gets there.<br />
<br />
{{w|Conservation law}}s arise naturally from Newtonian physics, but it is not necessarily clear intuitively how. Low level explanations tend to take the form of an understandable but fairly un-illuminating derivation from calculus and elementary algebra, while at a more advanced level they are shown to relate to symmetries of a physical system in a way which is very general and powerful, but nonetheless extremely abstract and mysterious. Either way, the end result — a conservation law — is a statement about how a system will be for ever, regardless of its evolution. This also violates the principle stated in the first panel, and it violates it in a way which seems intuitively stranger than thermodynamics. Conservation laws also appear in particle physics, where such elementary properties as the charge, spin, and parity of a system don't change... with some exceptions, involving the {{w|Wu experiment|weak nuclear force}}.<br />
<br />
Lagrangian mechanics is a reformulation of classical physics. It is exactly equivalent to Newton's laws. However, while Newtonian Mechanics is formulated in terms of specific forces acting on an initial state, and allows one to predict the final state by evolving the system forwards in time, Lagrangian mechanics instead takes the initial and final states of a system as inputs, and gives a rule which states which trajectories between those states are physically allowed. This is apparently a direct contravention of the principle in the first panel. In fact, it much more closely resembles the definition of magic given; one of the most surprising and counter-intuitive facts in physics is that the intuitive Newtonian worldview is exactly mathematically equivalent to the magical-seeming Lagrangian and closely related Hamiltonian pictures. For this reason the comic refers to Lagrangians (the central tool of lagrangian mechanics which serves as a description of the system dynamics) as 'Deep Magic', as it is really the ultimate expression of the 'magical' side of Physics.<br />
<br />
{{w|Teleology}} is a branch of causality often associated with religion or magical thinking, that argues from the end result, instead of the cause of things.<br />
In this sense, the comic may also be alluding to disputes about possible teleological aspects of the {{w|stationary-action principle}}, that can be used to derive Newtonian, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian equations of motion, and even general relativity, as well as classical electrodynamics and quantum field theory.<br />
For simple classical systems it can usually be stated as follows:"Given that the particle begins at position x1 at time t1 and ends at position x2 at time t2, the physical trajectory that connects these two endpoints is an extremum of the action integral." The Wikipedia article goes on to state: "By specifying some but not all aspects of both the initial and final conditions (the positions but not the velocities) we are making some inferences about the initial conditions from the final conditions, and it is this 'backward' inference that can be seen as a teleological explanation."<br />
However, since the principle can be used to derive both integral laws (that appear to be arguing from the result) and the usual differential laws (that appear to be arguing from the cause), one can argue that these seemingly contradictory forms of causality are in fact not contradicting each other, since they are mathematically equivalent.<br />
<br />
The title text seems to be mixing the diagram shown on the whiteboard with the curse of the comic. The first prediction is (according to Miss Lenhart) a physics prediction about a nonmagical {{w|trebuchet}}, whereas the second prediction would be something from deep magic.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Miss Lenhart is standing in front of a whiteboard and pointing to it with a stick. The whiteboard contains two lines of scribbles at the top, two drawings below them featuring a curve on the left and a circle on the right, and below them four additional lines of scribbles with smallest line of scribbles in the lower left corner.]<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Physics''''' and '''''magic''''' are different in a very deep way.<br />
<br />
:[Close-up of Miss Lenhart pointing the stick to the left to a depiction of a projectile's motion due to gravity. The path of movement is shown as a dashed line that first heads directly to the right but starts increasingly curving downward. There are five small circles at different points within the path. There are labels "V<sub>0</sub>" for an arrow pointing right on the left side of the leftmost circle, "F" for an arrow pointing downward below the leftmost circle, and "T<sub>0</sub>" to "T<sub>4</sub>" for the five individual circles from left to right.]<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Physics''''' works by describing the forces that act on a system.<br />
:Miss Lenhart: To predict outcomes, we progressively apply those forces over time.<br />
<br />
:[Miss Lenhart is holding the stick down and standing in front of Jill and Hairy sitting at their desks. Jill has her hands on her desk while Hairy has his hands on his lap.]<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Magic''''' specifies the outcome, but not the intermediate events.<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '' "Ere the clock strikes twelve, you are cursed to slay your brother" '' is magic, not science.<br />
<br />
:[Same setting as in the third panel, except Miss Lenhart is holding the stick slightly lower and Jill has her other hand on her lap.]<br />
:Miss Lenhart: ... And that's how we know thermodynamics is magic.<br />
:Miss Lenhart: Conservation laws are, too.<br />
:Hairy: What about Lagrangians?<br />
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Deep''''' magic. Speak not of them here.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]<br />
[[Category:Physics]]<br />
[[Category:Trebuchet]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=72:_Classhole&diff=33631272: Classhole2024-03-01T18:43:11Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ pasta isn't boiled, really,but simmered; alternate source is possible</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 72<br />
| date = March 6, 2006<br />
| title = Classhole<br />
| image = classhole.jpg<br />
| titletext = A term coined by my friend Beth<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
The subject of this comic is [[Black Hat]] himself. He admits to being an asshole, a profanity that describes someone who does things that antagonize, irritate, or anger others (either intentionally or incidentally). While a common example might be someone who weaves in and out of traffic, or someone who parks across two parking spaces, Black Hat is "more creative." This also suggests that, while most people described as assholes are either ignorant or selfish, Black Hat seems to intentionally behave this way strictly to be an asshole and not for any self-benefit. He claims to be a "classy asshole," or as he coins the {{w|portmanteau}}, a "class-hole." He seems to equate creativity with class, although that seems like a leap. In any event, this is another early Black Hat strip that, for the first time, explicitly sets out that he goes out of his way to wreak havoc.<br />
<br />
Among his "pranks," he suggests poking holes in grocery noodle cups. These are pre-packaged cups filled with dried noodles and dried soup mix (either in a separate pouch, or loose in the cup) to which one adds boiling water, which both cooks the pasta and dissolves the soup mix to become the soup/broth. By poking holes in the cup, Black Hat ensures that someone pouring boiling water in the cup would have it leak all over them, causing them great surprise and pain.{{citation needed}}<br />
<br />
He also suggests poking holes in {{w|condoms}}, which could cause even more serious consequences. This form of {{w|Reproductive coercion#Birth control sabotage|contraceptive sabotage}} is a way to cause unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease infection. Sabotage may be by someone acting maliciously at random (such as poking holes at the store pre-purchase) or by one of the participants to attempt to cause a pregnancy when the other partner does not want it, often occurring as part of reproductive abuse.<ref name=ACOG>Committee on Health Care for Underserved Women. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. February 2013<br />
[https://www.acog.org/Resources-And-Publications/Committee-Opinions/Committee-on-Health-Care-for-Underserved-Women/Reproductive-and-Sexual-Coercion Committee Opinion No. 554: Reproductive and Sexual Coercion] Obstet Gynecol 2013;121:411–5. PMID 23344307</ref> The 2013 movie {{w|The Priest's Children}} describes a similar campaign.<br />
<br />
The title text explains that the word 'classhole' was first introduced to [[Randall]] (and probably to the world) by a friend of his named Beth. The term was later prominently used in the {{w|Family Guy}} episode {{w|Brian Griffin's House of Payne}}, but since that episode first aired in 2010, this comic (and by extension Beth, presumably) used it before that. Whether the writers of Family Guy derived the word from this comic, heard of it from some other source, or thought of it independently is unknown.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:Cueball: How did you spend your morning?<br />
:Black Hat: Feeding rocks to children in the park.<br />
<br />
:Cueball: Your sociopathic abuse of random strangers staggers me.<br />
:Black Hat: I aspire to have more creativity than the common asshole.<br />
<br />
:Black Hat: I'm more of a <u>classy</u> asshole -- A class-hole, if you will. For example, I like poking tiny holes in styrofoam noodle cups at the grocery store --<br />
<br />
:Black Hat: Thanks to me, someone gets surprise boiling water in the lap.<br />
:Cueball: I am in awe.<br />
:Black Hat: It's even more fun to do to condoms.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
{{Comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Language]]<br />
[[Category:Sabotage]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2898:_Orbital_Argument&diff=3357622898: Orbital Argument2024-02-26T16:42:09Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ centers of mass</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2898<br />
| date = February 23, 2024<br />
| title = Orbital Argument<br />
| image = orbital_argument_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 448x323px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = "Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by an ARGUMENTATIVE ORBITAL ELEMENT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In this comic, [[White Hat]] is using the {{w|Argument to moderation|middle ground fallacy}} to try to make a compromise between the positions of [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]].<br />
<br />
Cueball appears to be asserting a {{w|geocentric}} viewpoint, whilst Megan adheres to a {{w|heliocentric}} one, both of which are flawed descriptions of the way things are, but the latter is much closer to reality. White Hat, however, considers it {{wiktionary|politic#Adjective|politic}} to 'split the difference' and declares his intention to compromise with a 'middle' option, to try to uncritically please both parties. (Though it's probable that he may instead just equally annoy them both!)<br />
<br />
On a naive reading, which imagines a point of common orbit midway between the bodies, his thesis is simply wrong. However, by one way of looking at it, it happens that he is also correct. Because two bodies exert equal but opposite gravitational forces on each other, each orbits around the average location of the other, and therefore they both orbit a common center. This {{w|Barycenter (astronomy)|barycenter}} is located somewhere between the centers of mass of the two bodies; the distance of each body's center of mass from the barycenter is proportional to the other body's mass. This is most apparent in systems where the two bodies have similar masses, but it is present to an extent in all orbital pairs, even when one body is far more massive than the other. For this reason, Earth does not orbit the center of the stationary Sun as described by the heliocentric model. However, the Earth-Sun barycenter is only slightly different from the Sun's own true center, still well within the Sun. It is around this which the Sun wobbles, in contrast to the way the Earth orbits around this unequally proportioned midpoint.<br />
<br />
The Earth-Moon barycenter is located approximately ¾ of the way from Earth's center of mass to its surface, towards the Moon's center of mass.<br />
<br />
The equivalent Jupiter-Sun barycenter, meanwhile, is located just ''above'' the 'surface' of the Sun due to the masses involved being not as different (but still significantly so), and the much greater distance between them. As each of the planets and the Sun are simultaneously orbiting/'being orbited' (and every planet also measurably pulls on every other, etc, even discounting every smaller and/or more distant body in the universe), the combined solar-system's barycenter is a less simply-defined point (that being more likely to be within the Sun, at any given point of time), which can often be considered to more simply average out to "<each planet> orbits the Sun" for most purposes, and Cueball is therefore ''least'' correct, and it would be a false solution to give his worldview an equivalence of validity.<br />
<br />
That White Hat has worded his compromise solution in a way that (arguably) encompasses the deeper truth of the barycentric viewpoint is not treated as justifying his mediating approach. It is clearly understood (by someone who seems to understand the complexities, e.g. a {{w|Randall Munroe#NASA|NASA physicist}}) that White Hat's 'successful' conclusion is just accidental. Which is vexatious. This seems to be a case of a {{w|Gettier problem}}: White Hat reaches a true statement via unjustified logic.<br />
<br />
The title text extends the principle of the comic's astronomical viewpoint down to the correspondingly opposing 'quantum world'. For various well-studied reasons, light is often described ''either'' as particles ''or'' as waves. White Hat's approach would be to give both viewpoints equal credit and suggest a compromising middle-ground explanation. In this case, also, he would have the {{w|Wave–particle duality|correct answer}} but, in the continuing view of an increasingly exasperated witness to his chronic {{w|False balance|"half-and-half"ism}}, not through actually correct reasoning.<br />
<br />
Another example of the middle ground fallacy was used in [[690: Semicontrolled Demolition]], although in that case the person offering the compromise solution was not portrayed as getting the right answer by accident.<br />
<br />
Orbits of celestial bodies are quantified using a set of parameters called orbital elements. Some of these parameters are commonly known as arguments, such as the {{w|Argument of periapsis}}. However, these kind of arguments tend to lead to consensus rather than disagreements. Independent measurements of the arguments might indeed be combined by taking the mean (to discover the middle ground).<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
:[From left to right, Cueball, White Hat and Megan standing. Cueball and Megan are arguing. Cueball is raising a finger while Megan's arms are outstretched. White Hat stands between them, both hands out in an equivocal gesture.]<br />
:Cueball: The sun orbits the earth!<br />
:Megan: The earth orbits the sun!<br />
:White Hat: When two people disagree, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Maybe the earth and the sun orbit a common center!<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:] <br />
:It's annoying when people are right by accident.<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:Physics]]<br />
[[Category:Logic]]<br />
[[Category:Compromise]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2898:_Orbital_Argument&diff=3357322898: Orbital Argument2024-02-26T03:30:07Z<p>BunsenH: tidal bulges</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2898<br />
| date = February 23, 2024<br />
| title = Orbital Argument<br />
| image = orbital_argument_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 448x323px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = "Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by an ARGUMENTATIVE ORBITAL ELEMENT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In this comic, the person in the middle is using the {{w|Argument to moderation|middle ground fallacy}} to try to make a compromise between the two characters.<br />
<br />
[[Cueball]] appears to be asserting a {{w|geocentric}} viewpoint, whilst [[Megan]] adheres to a {{w|heliocentric}} one, an argument that has actually long been settled in the latter's favor. [[White Hat]], however, considers it {{wiktionary|politic#Adjective|politic}} to 'split the difference' and declares his intention to compromise with a 'middle' option, to try to uncritically please both parties. (Though it's probable that he may instead just equally annoy them both!)<br />
<br />
By one way of looking at it, it happens that he is also correct. Because two bodies exert equal but opposite gravitational forces on each other, each orbits around the average location of the other, and therefore they both orbit a common center. This {{w|Barycenter (astronomy)|barycenter}} is located somewhere between the two bodies; the distance of each body's center of mass from the barycenter is proportional to the other body's mass. This is most apparent in systems where the two bodies have similar masses, but it is present to an extent in all orbital pairs, even when one body is far more massive than the other. For this reason, Earth does not orbit the center of the stationary Sun as described by the heliocentric model. However, the Earth-Sun barycenter is only slightly different from the Sun's own true center, still well within the Sun. It is around this which the Sun wobbles, in contrast to the way the Earth orbits around this unequally proportioned midpoint.<br />
<br />
The Earth-Moon barycenter is located approximately ¾ of the way from Earth's center of mass to its surface, towards the Moon's center of mass. Our tidal bulges (oceanic and otherwise) occur along that line. One bulge is towards the Moon because of the gravitational attraction, and the other is in the opposite direction, by centrifugal force from the Earth's rotation around the barycenter.<br />
<br />
The equivalent Jupiter-Sun barycenter, meanwhile, is located just ''above'' the 'surface' of the Sun due to the masses involved being not as different (but still significantly so), and the much greater distance between them. As each of the planets and the Sun are simultaneously orbiting/'being orbited' (and every planet also measurably pulls on every other, etc, even discounting every smaller and/or more distant body in the universe), the combined solar-system's barycenter is a less simply-defined point (that being more likely to be within the Sun, at any given point of time), which can often be considered to more simply average out to "<each planet> orbits the Sun" for most purposes, and Cueball is therefore ''least'' correct, and it would be a false solution to give his worldview an equivalence of validity.<br />
<br />
That White Hat has worded his compromise solution in a way that (arguably) encompasses the deeper truth of the barycentric viewpoint is not treated as justifying his mediating approach. It is clearly understood (by someone who seems to understand the complexities, e.g. a {{w|Randall Munroe#NASA|NASA physicist}}) that White Hat's 'successful' conclusion is just accidental. Which is vexatious. This seems to be a case of a {{w|Gettier problem}}: White Hat reaches a true statement via unjustified logic.<br />
<br />
The title text extends the principle of the comic's astronomical viewpoint down to the correspondingly opposing 'quantum world'. For various well-studied reasons, light is often described ''either'' as particles ''or'' as waves. White Hat's approach would be to give both viewpoints equal credit and suggest a compromising middle-ground explanation. In this case, also, he would have the {{w|Wave–particle duality|correct answer}} but, in the continuing view of an increasingly exasperated witness to his chronic {{w|False balance|"half-and-half"ism}}, not through actually correct reasoning.<br />
<br />
Another example of the middle ground fallacy was used in [[690: Semicontrolled Demolition]], although in that case the person offering the compromise solution was not portrayed as getting the right answer by accident.<br />
<br />
Orbits of celestial bodies are quantified using a set of parameters called orbital elements. Some of these parameters are commonly known as arguments, such as the {{w|Argument of periapsis}}. However, these kind of arguments tend to lead to consensus rather than disagreements. Independent measurements of the arguments might indeed be combined by taking the mean (to discover the middle ground).<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
:[From left to right, Cueball, White Hat and Megan standing. Cueball and Megan are arguing. Cueball is raising a finger while Megan's arms are outstretched. White Hat stands between them, both hands out in an equivocal gesture.]<br />
:Cueball: The sun orbits the earth!<br />
:Megan: The earth orbits the sun!<br />
:White Hat: When two people disagree, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Maybe the earth and the sun orbit a common center!<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:] <br />
:It's annoying when people are right by accident.<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:Physics]]<br />
[[Category:Logic]]<br />
[[Category:Compromise]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2898:_Orbital_Argument&diff=3356952898: Orbital Argument2024-02-25T05:28:19Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ get the math right</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2898<br />
| date = February 23, 2024<br />
| title = Orbital Argument<br />
| image = orbital_argument_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 448x323px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = "Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a LIGHT WAVE-EARTH BARYCENTER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In this comic, the person in the middle is using the {{w|Argument to moderation|middle ground fallacy}} to try to make a compromise between the two characters.<br />
<br />
[[Cueball]] appears to be asserting a {{w|geocentric}} viewpoint, whilst [[Megan]] adheres to a {{w|heliocentric}} one, an argument that has actually long been settled in the latter's favor. [[White Hat]], however, considers it {{wiktionary|politic#Adjective|politic}} to 'split the difference' and declares his intention to compromise with a 'middle' option, to try to uncritically please both parties. (Though it's probable that he may instead just equally annoy them both!)<br />
<br />
By one way of looking at it, it happens that he is also correct. Because two bodies exert equal but opposite gravitational forces on each other, each orbits around the average location of the other, and therefore they both orbit a common center. This {{w|Barycenter (astronomy)|barycenter}} is located somewhere between the two bodies; the distance of each body's center of mass from the barycenter is proportional to the other body's mass. This is most apparent in systems where the two bodies have similar masses, but it is present to an extent in all orbital pairs, even when one body is far more massive than the other. For this reason, Earth does not orbit the center of the stationary Sun as described by the heliocentric model. However, the Earth-Sun barycenter is only slightly different from the Sun's own true center, still well within the Sun. It is around this which the Sun wobbles, in contrast to the way the Earth orbits around this unequally proportioned midpoint. <br />
<br />
The equivalent Jupiter-Sun barycenter, meanwhile, is located just ''above'' the 'surface' of the Sun due to the masses involved being not as different (but still significantly so), and the much greater distance between them. As each of the planets and the Sun are simultaneously orbiting/'being orbited' (and every planet also measurably pulls on every other, etc, even discounting every smaller and/or more distant body in the universe), the combined solar-system's barycenter is a less simply-defined point (that being more likely to be within the Sun, at any given point of time), which can often be considered to more simply average out to "<each planet> orbits the Sun" for most purposes, and Cueball is therefore ''least'' correct, and it would be a false solution to give his worldview an equivalence of validity.<br />
<br />
That White Hat has worded his compromise solution in a way that (arguably) encompasses the deeper truth of the barycentric viewpoint is not treated as justifying his mediating approach. It is clearly understood (by someone who seems to understand the complexities, e.g. a {{w|Randall Munroe#NASA|NASA physicist}}) that White Hat's 'successful' conclusion is just accidental. Which is vexatious.<br />
<br />
The title text extends the principle of the comic's astronomical viewpoint down to the correspondingly opposing 'quantum world'. For various well-studied reasons, light is often described ''either'' as particles ''or'' as waves. White Hat's approach would be to give both viewpoints equal credit and suggest a compromising middle-ground explanation. In this case, also, he would have the {{w|Wave–particle duality|correct answer}} but, in the continuing view of an increasingly exasperated witness to his chronic {{w|False balance|"half-and-half"ism}}, not through actually correct reasoning.<br />
<br />
Another example of the middle ground fallacy was used in [[690: Semicontrolled Demolition]], although in that case the person offering the compromise solution was not portrayed as getting the right answer by accident.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
:[From left to right, Cueball, White Hat and Megan standing. Cueball and Megan are arguing. Cueball is raising a finger while Megan's arms are outstretched. White Hat stands between them, both hands out in an equivocal gesture.]<br />
:Cueball: The sun orbits the earth!<br />
:Megan: The earth orbits the sun!<br />
:White Hat: When two people disagree, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Maybe the earth and the sun orbit a common center!<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:] <br />
:It's annoying when people are right by accident.<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:Physics]]<br />
[[Category:Logic]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2898:_Orbital_Argument&diff=3356762898: Orbital Argument2024-02-24T16:20:53Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ only approximate</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2898<br />
| date = February 23, 2024<br />
| title = Orbital Argument<br />
| image = orbital_argument_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 448x323px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = "Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a LIGHT WAVE-EARTH BARYCENTER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In this comic, the person in the middle is using the {{w|Argument to moderation|middle ground fallacy}} to try to make a compromise between the two characters.<br />
<br />
[[Cueball]] appears to be asserting a {{w|geocentric}} viewpoint, whilst [[Megan]] adheres to a {{w|heliocentric}} one, an argument that has actually long been settled in the latter's favor. [[White Hat]], however, considers it {{wiktionary|politic#Adjective|politic}} to 'split the difference' and declares his intention to compromise with a 'middle' option, to try to uncritically please both parties. (Though it's probable that he may instead just equally annoy them both!)<br />
<br />
By one way of looking at it, it happens that he is also correct. Because the Earth and Sun exert equal but opposite gravitational forces on each other, the center of Earth's orbit is not at the center of the stationary Sun. The Earth-Sun {{w|Barycenter (astronomy)|barycenter}} is slightly different from the Sun's own true center, with the two bodies' distances from the barycenter being approximately inversely proportional to their masses. It is around this which the Sun wobbles, in (effectively) direct opposition to the way the Earth rotates around this unequally proportioned midpoint. The equivalent Jupiter-Sun barycenter, meanwhile, is located just ''above'' the 'surface' of the Sun due to the masses involved being not so much different (but still significantly so), and the much greater distance between them.<br />
<br />
As each of the planets and the Sun are simultaneously orbiting/'being orbited' (and every planet also measurably pulls on every other, etc, even discounting every smaller and/or more distant body in the universe), the combined solar-system's barycenter is a less simply-defined point (that being more likely to be within the Sun, at any given point of time), which can often be considered to more simply average out to "<each planet> orbits the Sun" for most purposes, and Cueball is therefore ''least'' correct, and it would be a false solution to give his worldview an equivalence of validity.<br />
<br />
That White Hat has worded his compromise solution in a way that (arguably) encompasses the deeper truth of the barycentric viewpoint is not treated as justifying his mediating approach. It is clearly understood (by someone who seems to understand the complexities, e.g. a {{w|Randall Munroe#NASA|NASA physicist}}) that White Hat's 'successful' conclusion is just accidental. Which is vexatious.<br />
<br />
The title text extends the principle of the comic's astronomical viewpoint down to the correspondingly opposing 'quantum world'. For various well-studied reasons, light is often described ''either'' as particles ''or'' as waves. White Hat's approach would be to give both viewpoints equal credit and suggest a compromising middle-ground explanation. In this case, also, he would have the {{w|Wave–particle duality|correct answer}} but, in the continuing view of an increasingly exasperated witness to his chronic {{w|False balance|"half-and-half"ism}}, not through actually correct reasoning.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
:[From left to right, Cueball, White Hat and Megan standing. Cueball and Megan are arguing. Cueball is raising a finger while Megan's arms are outstretched. White Hat stands between them, both hands out in an equivocal gesture.]<br />
:Cueball: The sun orbits the earth!<br />
:Megan: The earth orbits the sun!<br />
:White Hat: When two people disagree, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Maybe the earth and the sun orbit a common center!<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:] <br />
:It's annoying when people are right by accident.<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:Physics]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2898:_Orbital_Argument&diff=3356592898: Orbital Argument2024-02-24T06:26:56Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ inversely proportional, arrrgh</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2898<br />
| date = February 23, 2024<br />
| title = Orbital Argument<br />
| image = orbital_argument_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 448x323px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = "Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a LIGHT WAVE-EARTH BARYCENTER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In this comic, the person in the middle is using the {{w|Argument to moderation|middle ground fallacy}} to try to make a compromise between the two characters.<br />
<br />
[[Cueball]] appears to be asserting a {{w|geocentric}} viewpoint, whilst [[Megan]] adheres to a {{w|heliocentric}} one, an argument that has actually long been settled in the latter's favor. [[White Hat]], however, considers it politic to 'split the difference' and declares his intention to compromise with a 'middle' option, to try to uncritically please both parties. (Though it's probable that he may instead just equally annoy them both!)<br />
<br />
By one way of looking at it, it happens that he is also correct. Because the Earth and Sun exert equal but opposite gravitational forces on each other, the center of Earth's orbit is not at the center of the stationary Sun. The Earth-Sun {{w|Barycenter (astronomy)|barycenter}} is slightly different from the Sun's own true center, with the two bodies' distances from the barycenter being inversely proportional to their masses. It is around this which the Sun wobbles, in (effectively) direct opposition to the way the Earth rotates around this unequally proportioned midpoint. The equivalent Jupiter-Sun barycenter, meanwhile, is located just ''above'' the 'surface' of the Sun due to the masses involved being not so much different (but still significantly so), and the much greater distance between them.<br />
<br />
As each of the planets and the Sun are simultaneously orbiting/'being orbited' (and every planet also measurably pulls on every other, etc, even discounting every smaller and/or more distant body in the universe), the combined solar-system's barycenter is a less simply-defined point, which can often be considered to more simply average out to "<each planet> orbits the Sun" for most purposes, and Cueball is therefore ''least'' correct, and it would be a false solution to give his worldview an equivalence of validity.<br />
<br />
That White Hat has worded his compromise solution in a way that (arguably) encompasses the deeper truth of the barycentric viewpoint is not treated as justifying his mediating approach. It is clearly understood (by someone who seems to understand the complexities, e.g. a {{w|Randall Munroe#NASA|NASA physicist}}) that White Hat's 'successful' conclusion is just accidental. Which is vexatious.<br />
<br />
The title text extends the principle of the comic's astronomical viewpoint down to the correspondingly opposing 'quantum world'. For various well-studied reasons, light is often described ''either'' as particles ''or'' as waves. White Hat's approach would be to give both viewpoints equal credit and suggest a compromising middle-ground explanation. In this case, also, he would have the {{w|Wave–particle duality|correct answer}} but, in the continuing view of an increasingly exasperated witness to his chronic {{w|False balance|"half-and-half"ism}}, not through actually correct reasoning.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
:[From left to right, Cueball, White Hat and Megan standing. Cueball and Megan are arguing. Cueball is raising a finger while Megan's arms are outstretched. White Hat stands between them, both hands out in an equivocal gesture.]<br />
<br />
:Cueball: The sun orbits the earth!<br />
<br />
:Megan: The earth orbits the sun!<br />
<br />
:White Hat: When two people disagree, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Maybe the earth and the sun orbit a common center!<br />
<br />
Caption: It's annoying when people are right by accident.<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2898:_Orbital_Argument&diff=3356572898: Orbital Argument2024-02-24T05:33:00Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ equal but opposite forces</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2898<br />
| date = February 23, 2024<br />
| title = Orbital Argument<br />
| image = orbital_argument_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 448x323px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = "Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a LIGHT WAVE-EARTH BARYCENTER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In this comic, the person in the middle is using the {{w|Argument to moderation|middle ground fallacy}} to try to make a compromise between the two characters.<br />
<br />
[[Cueball]] appears to be asserting a {{w|geocentric}} viewpoint, whilst [[Megan]] adheres to a {{w|heliocentric}} one, an argument that has actually long been settled in the latter's favor. [[White Hat]], however, considers it politic to 'split the difference' and declares his intention to compromise with a 'middle' option, to try to uncritically please both parties. (Though it's probable that he may instead just equally annoy them both!)<br />
<br />
By one way of looking at it, it happens that he is also correct. Because the Earth and Sun exert equal but opposite gravitational forces on each other, the center of Earth's orbit is not at the center of the stationary Sun. The Earth-Sun {{w|Barycenter (astronomy)|barycenter}} is slightly different from the Sun's own true center, with the two bodies' distances from the barycenter being proportional to their masses. It is around this which the Sun wobbles, in (effectively) direct opposition to the way the Earth rotates around this unequally proportioned midpoint. The equivalent Jupiter-Sun barycenter, meanwhile, is located just ''above'' the 'surface' of the Sun due to the masses involved being not so much different (but still significantly so), and the much greater distance between them.<br />
<br />
As each of the planets and the Sun are simultaneously orbiting/'being orbited' (and every planet also measurably pulls on every other, etc, even discounting every smaller and/or more distant body in the universe), the combined solar-system's barycenter is a less simply-defined point, which can often be considered to more simply average out to "<each planet> orbits the Sun" for most purposes, and Cueball is therefore ''least'' correct, and it would be a false solution to give his worldview an equivalence of validity.<br />
<br />
That White Hat has worded his compromise solution in a way that (arguably) encompasses the deeper truth of the barycentric viewpoint is not treated as justifying his mediating approach. It is clearly understood (by someone who seems to understand the complexities, e.g. a {{w|Randall Munroe#NASA|NASA physicist}}) that White Hat's 'successful' conclusion is just accidental. Which is vexatious.<br />
<br />
The title text extends the principle of the comic's astronomical viewpoint down to the correspondingly opposing 'quantum world'. For various well-studied reasons, light is often described ''either'' as particles ''or'' as waves. White Hat's approach would be to give both viewpoints equal credit and suggest a compromising middle-ground explanation. In this case, also, he would have the {{w|Wave–particle duality|correct answer}} but, in the continuing view of an increasingly exasperated witness to his chronic {{w|False balance|"half-and-half"ism}}, not through actually correct reasoning.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
:[From left to right, Cueball, White Hat and Megan standing. Cueball and Megan are arguing. Cueball is raising a finger while Megan's arms are outstretched. White Hat stands between them, both hands out in an equivocal gesture.]<br />
<br />
:Cueball: The sun orbits the earth!<br />
<br />
:Megan: The earth orbits the sun!<br />
<br />
:White Hat: When two people disagree, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Maybe the earth and the sun orbit a common center!<br />
<br />
Caption: It's annoying when people are right by accident.<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2897:_Light_Leap_Years&diff=3355032897: Light Leap Years2024-02-22T03:52:29Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ compare with solar system</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2897<br />
| date = February 21, 2024<br />
| title = Light Leap Years<br />
| image = light_leap_years_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 288x389px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = When Pope Gregory XIII briefly shortened the light-year in 1582, it led to navigational chaos and the loss of several Papal starships.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a PHOTON MOVING AT EXACTLY 9,478,164,812,659,200 M/LEAP YEAR - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
A {{w|light year}} is a unit of distance, commonly used in astronomy, equal to the distance light travels in a vacuum in one year; the year used is the {{w|Julian year (astronomy)|Julian year}}, or 365.25 days. The joke of this strip is based on the fact that "one year" isn't a precise unit of measurement: there have been different definitions, evolving over time, of what constitutes a year. The {{w|Gregorian calendar}} (the one most commonly used in modern times) includes a system of {{w|leap year}}s in which an additional day is added every fourth year (with some exceptions) to make up for incompatibilities between day and year cycles. This temporarily changes the length of a year from 365 to 366 days, which could be taken to change the length of a light year. In this comic, [[Randall]] assumes that a light year is based on the length of the ''current'' year, which means that during leap years, it's based on 366 days, and during non-leap years, 365 days. That means that at the start and end of leap years, databases with astronomical distances have to be adjusted.<br />
<br />
2024 is a leap year in the Gregorian calendar, and leap day (February 29) was just over one week away when this comic was released. The comic portrays [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] updating astronomical distances in some sort of database, noting how long and unpleasant the process is; the caption reveals that the reason is that leap years "make light-years 0.27% longer" (366/365 = 1.0027397...). This makes the distance to Alpha Centauri "0.27% shorter".<br />
<br />
Standardized systems of measurement naturally don't change continually. As the comic points out, the difficulty in having to regularly update every reference to these units would be enormous and pointless. In real life, a light year is defined by the {{w|Julian year (astronomy)|Julian year}}, defined as 365.25 days, with each day being 86,400 SI seconds in length. This results in a light year which is standardized at 9,460,730,472,580.8 km, no matter how long the calendar year may be. <br />
<br />
The title text jokes that {{w|Pope Gregory XIII}}, the originator of the Gregorian calendar, "briefly shortened the light-year in 1582." In reality he shortened the year, as he decided to advance the Julian calendar by 10 days to make up for excess past leap days. This change led to "navigational chaos and the loss of several Papal starships". This is of course ludicrous since there were no starships in the 16th century, there's never been a "Papal starship",{{Citation Needed}} and the light-year wasn't developed as a unit of measurement until 1838. Indeed, it wasn't known that the speed of light is finite until {{w|Rømer's determination of the speed of light}} in 1676. The joke is that the evolving and somewhat loose and changing definitions of early calendars had significant impacts on the units of measurement we still use today. Such changes were of only minor significance at the time, but as technology has advanced and become increasingly reliant on precise and consistent measurements, such changes could be disastrous.<br />
<br />
The values given for Proxima Centauri's distance from the Sun, 4.2377 light-years during leap years and 4.2493 light-years otherwise, are consistent with a distance of 4.2464 light-years as described by the {{w|International Astronomical Union}}, which is only minutely different from 4.2465 light-years, the value given by {{w|Gaia catalogues|Gaia Data Release 3}} in 2020. This error happens to be consistent with Randall potentially wrongly assuming that the light-year is defined using the Gregorian year (365.2425 days) rather than the Julian year (365.25 days). Though tiny on an interstellar scale, the difference between 4.2377 and 4.2493 light-years, 0.0116 light years, equals 109.7 billion km (68.2 billion miles), about 730 times the average distance between the Earth and the sun (150 million km or 93 million miles) and about 24.5 times the average distance between Neptune and the sun (4.47 billion km, 2.80 billion miles).<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Cueball is sitting at his laptop and leaning to the back of his office chair, while having his other hand on the laptop. He is looking at Ponytail standing behind him. The text from the laptop screen is shown above it, indicated with a zigzag line.]<br />
:Cueball: It took until February, but I finally got all the distances updated!<br />
:Ponytail: I really wish we didn't have to do this.<br />
:[Laptop screen:]<br />
:<u>Proxima Centauri</u><br />
:Distance: [in red, crossed out] <span style="color:red"><s>4.2493 ly</s></span><br />
:[in green] <span style="color:green">4.2377 ly</span><br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Astronomers hate leap years because they make light-years 0.27% longer.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:Time]]<br />
[[Category:Calendar]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2897:_Light_Leap_Years&diff=3354622897: Light Leap Years2024-02-21T16:45:11Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ do the math; punctuation</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2897<br />
| date = February 21, 2024<br />
| title = Light Leap Years<br />
| image = light_leap_years_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 288x389px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = When Pope Gregory XIII briefly shortened the light-year in 1582, it led to navigational chaos and the loss of several Papal starships.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a LIGHT LEAP SECOND - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
A {{w|light-year|light year}} is a length unit that is defined as how much light will travel in a vacuum during a year; however, the year used is the average {{w|Julian year (astronomy)|Julian year}}, or 365.25 days. In this comic, however, [[Randall]] works with the assumption that a light year is based on the length of the ''current'' year, which means that during leap years, it uses 366 days, and during non-leap years, it uses 365 days. That means that at the start and end of leap years, databases with astronomical distances have to be adjusted.<br />
<br />
2024 is a leap year in the {{w|Gregorian calendar}} used in most parts of the world.<br />
<br />
This comic portrays [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] updating astronomical distances in some sort of database, noting how long and unpleasant the process is, the caption reveals that the reason is that leap years "make light-years 0.27% longer". (366/365 = 1.0027397...)<br />
<br />
A {{w|light year}} is a unit of distance, common used in astronomy, equivalent to the distance light travels in a vacuum in one year. The joke of this strip is based on the fact that "one year" isn't a precise unit of measurement, there are different definitions of what what constitute a year, which have evolved over time, and which vary among themselves. The Gregorian calendar (the most commonly used in modern times) includes a system of "leap years" in which an additional day is added every fourth year (with some exceptions) to make up for inconsistencies between day and year cycles. This temporarily changes the length of a year from 365 to 366 days, which could be taken to change the length of a light year.<br />
<br />
Standardized systems of measurement naturally don't change continually. As the comic points out, the difficulty in having to regularly update every reference to these units would be enormous and pointless. In real life, a light year is defined by the {{w|Julian year (astronomy)|Julian year}}, which is defined as 365.25 days, with each day being 86,400 SI seconds in length. This results in a light year which is standardized at 9,460,730,472,580.8 km, no matter how long the calendar year may be. <br />
<br />
The rollover text jokes that {{w|Pope Gregory XIII}}, the originator of the Gregorian calendar, "briefly shortened the light-year in 1582, which led to "navigational chaos and the loss of several papal starships". This, of course, is ludicrous, as there were no starships in the 16th century, there's never been a "papal starship", and the light-year wasn't developed as a unit of measurement until 1838. The joke is that the evolving and somewhat loose and changing definitions of early calendars had significant impacts on the units of measurement we still use today. Such changes were of only minor significance at the time, but as technology has advanced and become more reliant on precise and consistent measurements, such changes could be disastrous.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Cueball is sitting at his laptop and leaning to the back of his office chair, while having his other hand on the laptop. He is looking at Ponytail standing behind him.]<br />
:Cueball: It took until February, but I finally got all the distances updated!<br />
:Ponytail: I really wish we didn't have to do this.<br />
:[Zig-zag line to the laptop screen:]<br />
:<u>Proxima Centauri</u><br />
:Distance: [in red, crossed out] <span style="color:red"><s>4.2493 ly</s></span><br />
:[in green] <span style="color:green">4.2377 ly</span><br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Astronomers hate leap years because they make light-years 0.27% longer.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:Time]]<br />
[[Category:Calendar]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2890:_Relationship_Advice&diff=3344352890: Relationship Advice2024-02-07T16:45:06Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ comma splice</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2890<br />
| date = February 5, 2024<br />
| title = Relationship Advice<br />
| image = relationship_advice_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 740x241px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Good to be a little wary of advice that sounds too much like a self pep talk.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a RELATIONSHIP WITH A JOB IN THE FINE ARTS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In this comic, [[White Hat]], [[Cueball]], and [[Ponytail]] can be seen having a conversation about relationships. White Hat expresses the opinion that "relationships aren't easy". The others accept this advice, which is generally accepted as a reasonable view: two people are always going to have at least some difference in opinions, desires and needs that need to be communicated, negotiated and worked out. This requires mutual effort and some level of compromise in any healthy and successful relationship. <br />
<br />
In the subsequent frames, however, White Hat continues to push the matter, describing relationships in increasingly unpleasant terms, starting with calling them "constant work" and ultimately calling it a "crushing burden". Cueball and Ponytail correspondingly agree with him less, and instead {{w|The lady doth protest too much, methinks|begin to worry about him}}. <br />
<br />
White Hat's views on what is necessary and appropriate in relationships appear to go to unhealthy extremes. While his initial comments about relationships requiring efforts are reasonable, the notion that relationships consist of endless, overwhelming effort is not, for most people, though for some people who experience significant asociality this can be how most relationships feel. However, Cueball and Ponytail appear to suspect that White Hat may be describing a relationship that he's currently in or that has severed, and trying to rationalize an unhealthy situation by telling himself that "this is normal". <br />
<br />
When someone is in an abusive relationship, they may struggle to see that the relationship is abusive, often confusing genuinely destructive behavior with normal relationship troubles. There are various reasons this may occur. Some people experience {{w|traumatic bonding}}, some have spent so much time in or around unhealthy relationships that they've come to seem 'normal', and some experience various forms of {{w|Codependency|codependence}}. For people in such situations, help from friends and/or professional counselors is often necessary to allow them to even identify the situation they're in, and particularly to separate themselves from the situation.<br />
<br />
Seeing Randall’s often negative thoughts on [[223: Valentine's Day|Valentine’s Day]] and the [[1016: Valentine Dilemma|problems it produces]], it may not be a coincidence that this comic was released only nine days before the event. <br />
<br />
The title text explains that advice which focuses on remaining upbeat in a bad situation (like a "pep talk"), should give others pause. There's a good chance that the person giving such advice is trying to {{w|Reaction formation|convince themselves that their situation is alright}}, rather than providing useful guidance for others. In this comic, this sentiment is seemingly applied to White Hat, whose "relationship advice" may be much more personal than such advice should reasonably be, and the reader is thus warned to take advice like this with a grain of salt. This is similar to [[449: Things Fall Apart]] where Cueball tells Megan "I love you" repeatedly and Megan points out he's only saying it to reassure ''himself'' rather than express it to her.<br />
<br />
This comic's title is reminiscent of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category:Tips|Tips]] comics. Here, though, there turns out to be no actual advice or tip, and thus not part of the tip category.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[White Hat, Cueball and Ponytail are walking. White Hat has his palm out.]<br />
:White Hat: What you have to remember is, relationships aren't easy.<br />
:Ponytail: Yeah, fair.<br />
<br />
:[Close-up of White Hat with his finger raised.] <br />
:White Hat: They're hard. They require constant work.<br />
:White Hat: A relationship is a job.<br />
:Off-panel voice: I guess...<br />
<br />
:[White Hat has stopped walking and is facing Cueball and Ponytail standing a bit further away.]<br />
:White Hat: It's a challenge that feels overwhelming. It's a crushing burden.<br />
:Cueball: Umm.<br />
<br />
:[White Hat has his arms raised while still facing Cueball and Ponytail.]<br />
:White Hat: A relationship is a grueling ordeal.<br />
:Cueball: ...Who are you trying to convince, exactly?<br />
:Ponytail: Yeah, are '''''you''''' okay?<br />
:White Hat: I'm '''''fine!''''' This is '''''normal!'''''<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Social interactions]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2884:_Log_Alignment&diff=3333792884: Log Alignment2024-01-23T00:53:02Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ spelling</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2884<br />
| date = January 22, 2024<br />
| title = Log Alignment<br />
| image = log_alignment_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 351x312px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = A video can have a log scale that's misaligned with both the time AND space axes.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a BENDY LOG - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
This comic jokes about how there isn't a rule in math that requires you to align log scale and graph axes. Therefore, the person who drew the graph in the comic decided to make it distorted. According to that person, this graph is still valid. Whilst a plot ''can'' be made according to measures not consistent with the graph axes, especially where [https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Curvature-introduced-by-pen-type-recording-system-Comparison-of-a-raw-seismogram-showing_fig5_364100386 other factors dictate the plotting], it is more usual to make use of {{w|Graph paper#Examples|variant grid systems}} that are directly suited to your intended purpose (and stick to them).<br />
<br />
The comic shows a background distribution of straight and parallel (but notably off-orthogonal) lines, such as might normally define the log-magnitude on a log-log or semi-log graph. But there are no perpendicular gradations ''and'' the bar graph drawn upon it appears to have no relation with the background, drawn distorted in an almost [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD Dalíesque] manner as if a projection of one twisted in 3d space, both its bars and the base/vertical axes seem to have no relation to to the supposed underlying log-scale. However, with the slight exception of the bar tops crossing the log lines at an angle, and the curved vertical axis having {{w|Graduation (scale)|graduation ticks}} that bear no linear ''or'' log relation with the intersecting background, the distorted bars only travel unidirectionally across the underlying parallels and ''could'' feasibly be read as indicating a definitive magnitude (or range) of some kind. Or at least could with number-labels to give an idea of what values to associate with each log-line. That two bars appear from outside the frame of the comic (the base axis having fallen off the bottom) might not even matter, so long as we can work out what quality or sample each of the bars represents (being similarly unlabeled).<br />
<br />
The title text further reinforces the concept of misalignment by stating that the time axis at the bottom of a video can be misaligned with the video itself and a log scale in that video.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Distorted bar graph on top of gray log scale lines in the background that are slightly tilted, with the lower ends on the left]<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:There's actually no rule in math that says your log scales have to be aligned with your graph axes.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Math]]<br />
[[Category:Bar charts]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2883:_Astronaut_Guests&diff=3333712883: Astronaut Guests2024-01-22T23:04:35Z<p>BunsenH: tweaks; add gravitational potential energy</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2883<br />
| date = January 19, 2024<br />
| title = Astronaut Guests<br />
| image = astronaut guests 2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 331x391px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = They didn't bring us a gift, but considering the kinetic energy of a bottle of wine at orbital speed, that's probably for the best.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by ELEVEN ASTRONAUTS OVER YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
In this comic, [[Cueball]], [[Megan]], [[Ponytail]], and [[Hairbun]] can all be seen eating dinner together. Presumably, Ponytail and Hairbun were invited over for dinner, as, to impress them, [[Cueball]] misleadingly claims that they previously "had six {{w|astronaut}}s over for dinner." Normally, this would be interpreted as the astronauts being friends with the hosts (which confers social prestige), going inside their house, and eating. As it turns out, the astronauts only briefly passed overhead while in {{w|orbit}}, and, by chance, this happened during dinnertime. This is a pun on the word "over", as the personnel of the {{w|International Space Station}} are overhead when it passes above you; yet they did not go "over ''to'' someone's house" in the sense that English speakers would usually assume.<br />
<br />
Cueball may also be considering the property lines to extend up indefinitely (just like in "What If?" article "{{what if|161|Star Ownership}}"), causing the astronauts to [[1475: Technically|technically]] be at their house despite being hundreds of miles away, vertically.<br />
<br />
The astronauts in question were presumably occupying the International Space Station, which has an orbital period of between 90 and 93 minutes (depending on its altitude) or 5400 to 5580 seconds.[https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Tools/orbitTutorial.htm] If the astronauts were "over" for 7½ milliseconds, that would be somewhere between 1.34x10⁻⁶ and 1.39x10⁻⁶ of an orbit. Earth's circumference (at the equator) being approximately 40,000 kilometres (24,850 miles), the station was apparently "over" for a ground distance of between 53.9 m and 55.7 m (177 to 183 feet). That would imply quite a large property, but may also consider the astronauts' locations within the ISS, which is 109 m (356 feet) long. (The effect of [[1276: Angular Size|angular size]] is small in this case because the ISS's elevation is small compared to the radius of the Earth. The route traced by the ISS in orbit is only slightly larger than its projection at ground level.)<br />
<br />
The caption makes Cueball's statement even less impressive, alleging that statements like it are correct in many places. This would make it uninteresting as a {{w|coincidence}}. It can only happen for latitudes of less than 51.64° north or south, which is as far as the orbital inclination of the ISS takes it, leaving almost 21.6% of the Earth's surface never directly "over"ed. Nonetheless, these areas of the globe will be, overall, significantly more sparsely populated than those that are "over"ed, meaning that the claim could be made in much more than 88.4% of places, assuming that by "places" we mean "properties where people are likely to be having dinner".<br />
<br />
The title text suggests that Cueball didn't want a gift (a bottle of wine) from the astronauts. The kinetic energy of a 1.2 kg (full) bottle of wine travelling at the linear velocity of the International Space Station (8000 m/s) is on the order of [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2*%288km%2Fs%29%5E2*1.2kg 40 megajoules]. The gravitational potential energy of that mass on the Earth's surface (equatorial radius of 6,378 km) is 75.08 MJ, and its gravitational potential energy at an elevation of 408 km is 70.56 MJ, a difference of 4.52 MJ[https://physics.icalculator.com/gravitational-potential-energy-physics-calculator.html], and that would be converted to kinetic energy if it were to fall. For comparison, the kinetic energy of a fully loaded semi-truck (max legal weight 80,000 pounds or ~36 tonnes) at 70mph (110km/h; a typical highway speed limit for passenger cars) is around [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2*%28110km%2Fh%29%5E2*80000+pounds 17 megajoules]. A bottle with more than 2½ times the kinetic energy of that would be hard to keep on the table, and would likely do damage to people or things that tried to keep it there. {{Citation needed}}<br />
<br />
This comic was posted the same day as the American release of a film set on the ISS (conveniently named ''{{w|I.S.S. (film)|I.S.S.}}''), and just a day after the latest flight to the station by a {{w|Axiom Mission 3|Crew Dragon flight}} had temporarily increased the occupants from the normal seven residents to eleven.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, and Hairbun are eating around a table. Cueball is leaning on the back of his chair and has his palm out.]<br />
:Cueball: We don't have houseguests often, but we once had six astronauts over for dinner.<br />
:Hairbun: Oh, wow!<br />
:Cueball (muttering): <small>''…for 7½ milliseconds in mid-August 2012.''</small><br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
: If you spend enough time looking at orbital records and property lines, you can make this claim in a lot of places.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Hairbun]]<br />
[[Category: Space]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2883:_Astronaut_Guests&diff=3333092883: Astronaut Guests2024-01-22T00:19:18Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ angular size effect is negligible</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2883<br />
| date = January 19, 2024<br />
| title = Astronaut Guests<br />
| image = astronaut guests 2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 331x391px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = They didn't bring us a gift, but considering the kinetic energy of a bottle of wine at orbital speed, that's probably for the best.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by SIX RUSSIAN ASTRONAUTS OVER YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
In this comic, [[Cueball]], [[Megan]], [[Ponytail]], and [[Hairbun]] can all be seen eating dinner together. Presumably, Ponytail and Hairbun were invited over for dinner, as, to impress them, [[Cueball]] misleadingly claims that they previously "had six {{w|astronaut}}s over for dinner." Normally, this would be interpreted as the astronauts being friends with the hosts (which confers social prestige), going inside their house, and eating. As it turns out, the astronauts actually only briefly passed overhead while in {{w|orbit}}, and, by chance, this happened during dinnertime. This is a pun on the word "over", as the personnel of the {{w|International Space Station}} are overhead when it passes above you; yet they did not go "over ''to'' someone's house" in the sense that English speakers would usually assume.<br />
<br />
Cueball may also be considering the property lines to extend up indefinitely (just like in "What If?" article "{{what if|161|Star Ownership}}"), causing the astronauts to [[1475: Technically|technically]] be at their house despite being hundreds of miles away, vertically.<br />
<br />
The astronauts in question were presumably occupying the International Space Station, which has an orbital period of between 90 and 93 minutes (depending on its altitude) or 5400 to 5580 seconds.[https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Tools/orbitTutorial.htm] If the astronauts were "over" for 7½ milliseconds, that would be somewhere between 1.34x10⁻⁶ and 1.39x10⁻⁶ of an orbit. Earth's circumference (at the equator) being approximately 40,000 kilometers (24,850 miles), the station was apparently "over" for a ground distance of between 53.9 m and 55.7 m (177 to 183 feet). That would imply quite a large property, but may also take into account the locations of the astronauts within the ISS, which is 109 m (356 feet) long. (The effect of [[1276: Angular Size|angular size]] is small in this case because the ISS's elevation is small compared to the radius of the Earth. The route traced by the ISS in orbit is only slightly larger than its projection at ground level.)<br />
<br />
The caption makes Cueball's statement even less impressive, alleging that statements like it are correct in a lot of places. This would make it not even interesting as a {{w|coincidence}}. Though it can only happen for latitudes of less than 51.64° north or south, which is as far as the orbital inclination of the ISS takes it, leaving almost 21.6% of the Earth's surface never directly 'over'ed.<br />
<br />
The title text suggests that Cueball didn't want a gift (a bottle of wine) from the astronauts. The kinetic energy of a 1.2 kg (full) bottle of wine traveling at the linear velocity of the International Space Station (8000 m/s) is on the order of [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2*%288km%2Fs%29%5E2*1.2kg 40 megajoules]. For comparison, the kinetic energy of a fully loaded semi-truck (max legal weight 80,000 pounds or ~36 tonnes) at 70mph (110km/h; a typical highway speed limit for passenger cars) is around [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2*%28110km%2Fh%29%5E2*80000+pounds 17 megajoules]. A bottle with more than double the kinetic energy of that would be hard to keep on the table, and would likely do damage to people or things that tried to keep it there.{{Citation needed}}<br />
<br />
This comic was posted the same day as the American release of a film set on the ISS (conveniently named ''{{w|I.S.S. (film)|I.S.S.}}'').<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
:[Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, and Hairbun are eating around a table. Cueball is leaning on the back of his chair and has his palm out.]<br />
:Cueball: We don't have houseguests often, but we once had six astronauts over for dinner.<br />
:Hairbun: Oh, wow!<br />
:Cueball (muttering): <small>''…for 7½ milliseconds in mid-August 2012.''</small><br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:If you spend enough time looking at orbital records and property lines, you can make this claim in a lot of places.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Hairbun]]<br />
[[Category: Space]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2883:_Astronaut_Guests&diff=3332562883: Astronaut Guests2024-01-20T17:25:29Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ tweaks</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2883<br />
| date = January 19, 2024<br />
| title = Astronaut Guests<br />
| image = astronaut guests 2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 331x391px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = They didn't bring us a gift, but considering the kinetic energy of a bottle of wine at orbital speed, that's probably for the best.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by SIX ASTRONAUTS OVER YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
In this comic, [[Cueball]], [[Megan]], [[Ponytail]], and [[Hairbun]] can all be seen eating dinner together. Presumably, Ponytail and Hairbun were invited over for dinner, as, to impress them, [[Cueball]] misleadingly claims that they previously "had six {{w|astronauts}} over for dinner." Normally, this would be interpreted as the astronauts being friends with the hosts (which confers social prestige), going inside their house, and eating. As it turns out, the astronauts actually only briefly passed overhead while in {{w|orbit}}, and, by chance, this happened during dinnertime. This is a pun on the word "over", as the personnel of the {{w|International Space Station}} are overhead when it passes above you&mdash; yet they did not go "over ''to'' someone's house" in the sense that English speakers would usually assume.<br />
<br />
Cueball may also be considering the property lines to extend up indefinitely (just like in "What If?" article "{{what if|161|Star Ownership}}"), causing the astronauts to technically be at their house despite being hundreds of miles away, vertically. The astronauts in question were presumably occupying the International Space Station, which has an orbital period of between 90 and 93 minutes (depending on its altitude) or 5400 to 5580 seconds.[https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Tools/orbitTutorial.htm] If the astronauts were "over" for 7½ milliseconds, that would be somewhere between 1.34x10⁻⁶ and 1.39x10⁻⁶ of an orbit. Earth's circumference (at the equator) being approximately 40,000 kilometers (24,850 miles), the station was apparently "over" for a ground distance of between 53.9 m and 55.7 m (177 to 183 feet). That would imply quite a large property, but may also take into account the locations of the astronauts within the ISS, which is 109 m (356 feet) long.<br />
<br />
The caption makes Cueball's statement even less impressive, alleging that statements like it are correct in a lot of places. This would make it not even interesting as a {{w|coincidence}}.<br />
<br />
This comic was posted the same day as the American release of a film set on the ISS (conveniently named ''{{w|I.S.S. (film)|I.S.S.}}'').<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
:[Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, and Hairbun are eating around a table. Cueball is leaning on the back of his chair and has his palm out.]<br />
:Cueball: We don't have houseguests often, but we once had six astronauts over for dinner.<br />
:Hairbun: Oh, wow!<br />
:Cueball (muttering): <small>''…for 7½ milliseconds in mid-August 2012.''</small><br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:If you spend enough time looking at orbital records and property lines, you can make this claim in a lot of places.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Hairbun]]<br />
[[Category: Space]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2883:_Astronaut_Guests&diff=3332552883: Astronaut Guests2024-01-20T17:24:04Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ implied property size</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2883<br />
| date = January 19, 2024<br />
| title = Astronaut Guests<br />
| image = astronaut guests 2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 331x391px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = They didn't bring us a gift, but considering the kinetic energy of a bottle of wine at orbital speed, that's probably for the best.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by SIX ASTRONAUTS OVER YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
In this comic, [[Cueball]], [[Megan]], [[Ponytail]], and [[Hairbun]] can all be seen eating dinner together. Presumably, Ponytail and Hairbun were invited over for dinner, as, to impress them, [[Cueball]] misleadingly claims that they previously "had six {{w|astronauts}} over for dinner." Normally, this would be interpreted as the astronauts being friends with the hosts (which confers social prestige), going inside their house, and eating. As it turns out, the astronauts actually only briefly passed overhead while in {{w|orbit}}, and, by chance, this happened during dinnertime. This is a pun on the word "over", as the personnel of the {{w|International Space Station}} are overhead when it passes above you&mdash; yet they did not go "over ''to'' someone's house" in the sense that English speakers would usually assume.<br />
<br />
Cueball may also be considering the property lines to extend up indefinitely (just like in "What If?" article "{{what if|161|Star Ownership}}"), causing the astronauts to technically be at their house despite being hundreds of miles away, vertically. The astronauts in question were presumably occupying the International Space Station, which has an orbital period of between 90 and 93 minutes (depending on its altitude) or 5400 to 5580 seconds.[https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Tools/orbitTutorial.htm] If the astronauts were "over" for 7½ milliseconds, that would be somewhere between 1.34x10⁻⁶ and 1.39x10⁻⁶ of an orbit. Earth's circumference being approximately 40,000 kilometers (24,850) miles (at the equator), the station was apparently "over" for a ground distance of between 53.9 m and 55.7 m (177 to 183 feet). That would imply quite a large property, but may also take into account the locations of the astronauts within the ISS, which is 109 m (356 feet) long.<br />
<br />
The caption makes Cueball's statement even less impressive, alleging that statements like it are correct in a lot of places. This would make it not even interesting as a {{w|coincidence}}.<br />
<br />
This comic was posted the same day as the American release of a film set on the ISS (conveniently named ''{{w|I.S.S. (film)|I.S.S.}}'').<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
:[Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, and Hairbun are eating around a table. Cueball is leaning on the back of his chair and has his palm out.]<br />
:Cueball: We don't have houseguests often, but we once had six astronauts over for dinner.<br />
:Hairbun: Oh, wow!<br />
:Cueball (muttering): <small>''…for 7½ milliseconds in mid-August 2012.''</small><br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:If you spend enough time looking at orbital records and property lines, you can make this claim in a lot of places.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category: Comics featuring Hairbun]]<br />
[[Category: Space]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=100:_Family_Circus&diff=333160100: Family Circus2024-01-18T16:36:20Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ OCD checking on things e.g. door locked</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 100<br />
| date = May 10, 2006<br />
| title = Family Circus<br />
| image = family circus.jpg<br />
| titletext = This was my friend David's idea<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
''{{w|The Family Circus}}'' is a comic characterized by single-panel round comics with a caption below the comic. Jeffy is a character in ''Family Circus'', and dotted lines representing his wanderings are a frequent theme of ''Family Circus'' comics. {{w|Obsessive-compulsive disorder}} (OCD) is a mental illness that compels the sufferer to perform repetitive actions. Common symptoms include, but are not restricted to, excessive hand washing and repeated opening and closing of a door.<br />
<br />
The comic depicts the character Jeffy as having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and traces his movements over a period of time. The dotted line that depicts his movements returns frequently to the kitchen sink, presumably either to repeatedly wash his hands or to make sure that the faucet was turned off.<br />
<br />
In the title text, [[Randall Munroe|Randall]] attributes this idea to the unknown friend [[David]]. He did the same in [[42: Geico]] and [[51: Malaria]].<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Picture shows a pathway winding through trees to a sink inside a house, out to some swings and back to the sink, out to a ball and back to the sink, then on into the house.]<br />
:Jeffy's ongoing struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring David]]<br />
[[Category:Psychology]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2882:_Net_Rotations&diff=3331082882: Net Rotations2024-01-18T03:53:27Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ there's got to be an app for that</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2882<br />
| date = January 17, 2024<br />
| title = Net Rotations<br />
| image = net_rotations_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 318x477px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = For decades I've been working off the accumulated rotation from one long afternoon on a merry-go-round when I was eight.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a DIZZY ROBOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
This comic may refer to a thing that some people with {{w|OCD}} do, which is to spin around to get rid of "net rotations," hence the title of this comic. [[Cueball]] (perhaps representing [[Randall]]?) takes this one step beyond the typical person with OCD - he calculates the net rotations each day and spins around at the end of the day to cancel this out.<br />
<br />
A mobile device with position/orientation sensing would be able to keep track of one's net rotations, eliminating the need for calculations. One would need only to do one's spinning while monitoring the device to see when it returned to zero.<br />
<br />
The caption at the bottom of the comic suggests that it is another one of Randall’s [[Category:Tips]] and says that it is healthy and necessary/highly recommended to do this. However, most people don’t, and most people are still ok. In fact, xkcd's own characters are perfectly ok with [[162: Angular Momentum|accumulating net rotations]] and [[2679: Quantified Self|similar topological excesses]].<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Cueball is standing on one leg in front of a whiteboard with his arms crossed, thinking to himself. There are circular curves around Cueball indicating rotary motion. The whiteboard contains two vertical helix-like curves crossing over each other at multiple points and other notes shown as rows of illegible scribbles, the bottom one of which is circled. There is a thought bubble over Cueball.]<br />
:Cueball (thinking): ...and three lefts for going down the stairwell at work, two rights from cloverleaf interchanges, minus one for the Earth's rotation...<br />
:Cueball (thinking): Okay, that's a net of 17 right.<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the comic:]<br />
:Spacetime health tip: Remember to cancel out your accumulated turns at the end of each day to avoid worldline torsion.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:Physics]]<br />
[[Category:Tips]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2877:_Fever&diff=3325182877: Fever2024-01-08T16:25:53Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ liquid oxygen</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2877<br />
| date = January 5, 2024<br />
| title = Fever<br />
| image = fever_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 514x587px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Hypothermia of below 98.6 K should be treated by leaving the giant molecular cloud and moving to the vicinity of a star.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by an SATURDAY NIGHT HYPER-FEVER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
This comic mimics [https://www.bannerhealth.com/healthcareblog/-/media/images/project/healthcareblog/hero-images/2020/05/fevers-at-every-age-infographic.ashx?h=1477&w=750&hash=14066972FE7A69A90BE29654F41F7C65 charts] on {{w|fever}} temperatures and actions that are indicated as a result. However, rather than dividing the normal body temperature range of a febrile (fever-having) patient into subtle grades, it quickly progresses beyond these to specify treatment for increasingly high temperature ranges, culminating with the most extreme temperature range ever achieved in the universe. <br />
<br />
After the first two entries in the table, the rest refer to temperatures caused by the surrounding environment, rather than by conditions internal to the body (or the vapor/plasma cloud you would turn into if you reach this temperature...). Hence the 'treatments' consist of removing yourself from those environments. <br />
<br />
[[Randall]] uses the SI related unit {{w|Celsius}} for all entries in the table, giving the temperature in {{w|Fahrenheit}} only for the first entry in the table about a normal fever temperature range. <br />
<br />
The title text uses the real SI unit {{w|Kelvin}}, and suggests that those with temperatures under 98.6 Kelvin (-173.55 Celsius or -280.39 Fahrenheit) are in a {{w|molecular cloud}} and that they should get near a star to warm them up. 98.6 ''Fahrenheit'' (=37°C) is the average human resting body temperature, explaining why Randall chose this number, but 98.6 Kelvin is a good deal colder than this, and a temperature at which it would be very hard for a human to survive. By way of comparison, the normal boiling point of liquid oxygen is 90.19 K (−182.96 °C; −297.33 °F).<br />
<br />
Taking an everyday situation to its logical extreme is a common humor trope, often used by xkcd.<br />
<br />
===Table of fever temperatures===<br />
{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"<br />
|+ Treating a Fever<br />
|-<br />
! Fever Temperature in Celsius (Fahrenheit) !! Treatment !! Additional notes<br />
|-<br />
| 38-40 (100-104) || Fluids, rest, normal doctor stuff || Normal fever temperatures. <br />
<br />
"Normal doctor stuff" refers to routine medical consultation at an outpatient clinic or through telemedicine.<br />
|-<br />
| 40-45 (104-113) || Hospital, advanced doctor stuff || A severe fever level at which humans might start experiencing brain damage from fever. <br />
<br />
"Advanced doctor stuff" refers to hospital care, likely in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU).<br />
|-<br />
| 45-100 (113-212) || Exit that steam cloud immediately || A temperature range that is uncomforable and injurious. (Imagine keeping your hand right above the spout of a steaming kettle.) For the rest of the table, the prescribed treatments presume that the fever temperature is due to one's environment. <br />
<br />
Note that this range maximum is 100 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which water boils. After this point, the water in the body would soon boil, causing quick and painful death.<br />
|-<br />
| 100-400 (212-750) || Stop, drop, and roll || The subject is probably on fire. Stop, drop, and roll is a recommended method for putting out flames on your clothing.<br />
|-<br />
| 400-500 (750-930) || Return to Earth from Venus ASAP || 464°C (867°F) is {{w|Venus}}ian atmosphere temperature.<br />
|-<br />
| 500-1,500 (930-2,700) || Please climb out of that volcano || {{w|Magma}} is about 700°C (1,290°F). Therefore, if someone is at that temperature, they are probably in lava/magma.<br />
|-<br />
| 1,500-5,000 (2,700-9,000) || Turn your tunneling machine around and come back up to the surface || 4,400-6,000°C (7,950-10,830°F) is the estimated core temperature of the {{w|Earth}}. Another reference to the 2003 movie [[:Category:The Core|The Core]], at least the 6th comic to do so.<br />
|-<br />
| 5,000-6,000 (9,000-10,800) || No, the surface of the '''''Earth''''', not the Sun || 5,500°C (9,930°F) is the approximate temperature of the surface of the {{w|Sun}}. The Sun's {{w|photosphere}} has a temperature between 4,400 and 6,600 K (4,130 and 6,330 °C) (with an effective temperature of 5,772 K (5,499 °C)).<br />
|-<br />
| 6,000-50,000 (10,800-90,000) || Wait, that's not the Sun. What star are you visiting? Come back right now. || Surface temperatures of {{w|main sequence|main-sequence}} stars larger than the Sun can go up to 50,000 (Kelvin and degrees Celsius are indistinguishable at this point). Though some stars can be even hotter.<br />
|-<br />
| 50,000-20,000,000 <small>(90,000-36,000,000)</small> || At least stay on the '''''surface''''' of the star instead of diving down to the core || Core temperatures of main-sequence stars like the Sun are usually around ten million kelvins, while larger and hotter stars can reach up to a hundred million.<br />
|-<br />
| 20,000,000-10,000,000,000 <small>(36,000,000-18,000,000,000)</small> || You know, you could've picked a normal star instead of one that's exploding || {{w|Supernova}}e can reach temperatures of billions of degrees for brief periods, with type II supernovae even reaching hundreds of billions of degrees. This is the first of two comics in a row that mentions exploding stars, with [[2878: Supernova]] the next comic. That comic is like this comic also a [[:Category:Charts|Charts comic]].<br />
|-<br />
| 10,000,000,000 or higher <small><br>(18,000,000,000 or higher)</small> || I hope you're enjoying your visit to the Big Bang but you should really come back home immediately || 10<sup>32</sup> °C (or K), the highest physically meaningful temperature, is the estimated temperature at the Planck epoch (10<sup>-43</sup> s) after the {{w|Big Bang}}<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A table is shown with two columns with twelve rows. The columns are labeled and there is a heading above table:]<br />
:<big>Treating a Fever</big><br />
<br />
:[Column labels]:<br />
:Fever<br />
:Treatment<br />
<br />
:38°C-40°C (100°F-104°F) <br />
:Fluids, rest, normal doctor stuff<br />
<br />
:40°C-45°C<br />
:Hospital, advanced doctor stuff<br />
<br />
:45°C-100°C<br />
:Exit that steam cloud immediately<br />
<br />
:100°C-400°C <br />
:Stop, drop, and roll<br />
<br />
:400°C-500°C<br />
:Return to Earth from Venus ASAP<br />
<br />
:500°C-1,500°C<br />
:Please climb out of that volcano<br />
<br />
:1,500°C-5,000°C<br />
:Turn your tunneling machine around and come back up to the surface<br />
<br />
:5,000°C-6,000°C<br />
:No, the surface of the '''''Earth''''', not the Sun<br />
<br />
:6,000°C-50,000°C<br />
:Wait, that's not the Sun. What star are you visiting? Come back right now.<br />
<br />
:50,000°C-20,000,000°C<br />
:At least stay on the '''''surface''''' of the star instead of diving down to the core<br />
<br />
:20,000,000°C-10,000,000,000°C<br />
:You know, you could've picked a normal star instead of one that's exploding<br />
<br />
:10,000,000,000°C or higher<br />
:I hope you're enjoying your visit to the Big Bang but you should really come back home immediately<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Charts]]<br />
[[Category:Medicine]]<br />
[[Category:Volcanoes]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:The Core]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2877:_Fever&diff=3324442877: Fever2024-01-06T16:45:55Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ high, not large; in fact 100-400 is a larger range than 400-500; spelling</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2877<br />
| date = January 5, 2024<br />
| title = Fever<br />
| image = fever_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 514x587px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Hypothermia of below 98.6 K should be treated by leaving the giant molecular cloud and moving to the vicinity of a star.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by an SATURDAY NIGHT HYPER-FEVER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
This chart on {{w|fever}} temperatures begins with the normal body temperature range of a febrile (fever-having) patient and progresses to specify treatment for increasingly high temperature ranges, culminating with the most extreme temperature range ever achieved in the universe. <br />
<br />
After the first two entries in the table the rest refer to the surrounding temperature rather than internal body temperature. Of course if you do not remove yourself from the heat source quickly, you would also reach those temperatures (or the vapor/plasma cloud you would turn into at the relevant temperatures, would reach this temperature...)<br />
<br />
[[Randall]] uses the SI related unit {{w|Celsius}} for all entries in the table, giving the temperature in {{w|Fahrenheit}} only for the first entry in the table, normal fever temperatures. See the [[#Table of fever temperatures|table]] below for details about all entries with the temperature range also converted to Fahrenheit.<br />
<br />
The title text uses the real SI unit {{w|Kelvin}}, and suggests that those with temperatures under 98.6 Kelvin (-173.55 Celsius or -280.39 Fahrenheit) are in a {{w|molecular cloud}} and that they should get near a star to warm them up. 98.6 Kelvin is very cold, and of course 98.6 ''Fahrenheit'' (=37°C) is the average human resting body temperature, explaining why Randall chose this temperature as his last entry.<br />
<br />
Taking an everyday situation to its logical extreme is a standard humor trope that xkcd often uses.<br />
<br />
===Table of fever temperatures===<br />
{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"<br />
|+ Treating a Fever<br />
|-<br />
! Fever Temperature in Celsius (Fahrenheit) !! Treatment !! Additional notes<br />
|-<br />
| 38-40 (100-104) || Fluids, rest, normal doctor stuff || Normal fever temperatures. <br />
<br />
"Normal doctor stuff" refers to routine medical consultation at an outpatient clinic or through telemedicine.<br />
|-<br />
| 40-45 (104-113) || Hospital, advanced doctor stuff || A severe fever level at which humans might start experiencing brain damage from fever. <br />
<br />
"Advanced doctor stuff" referes to hospital care, likely in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU).<br />
|-<br />
| 45-100 (113-212) || Exit that steam cloud immediately || A temperature range that is uncomforable and injurious. (Imagine keeping your hand right above the spout of a steaming kettle.) For the rest of the table, the prescribed treatments presume that the fever temperature is due to one's environment. <br />
<br />
Note that this range maximum is 100 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which water boils. After this point, the water in the body would soon boil, causing quick and painful death.<br />
|-<br />
| 100-400 (212-750) || Stop, drop, and roll || Someone is probably on fire. Stop, drop, and roll is a recommended method for putting out flames on your clothing.<br />
|-<br />
| 400-500 (750-930) || Return to Earth from Venus ASAP || 464°C (867°F) is {{w|Venus}}ian atmosphere temperature.<br />
|-<br />
| 500-1,500 (930-2,700) || Please climb out of that volcano || {{w|Magma}} is about 700°C (1,290°F). Therefore, if someone is at that temperature, they are probably in lava/magma.<br />
|-<br />
| 1,500-5,000 (2,700-9,000) || Turn your tunneling machine around and come back up to the surface || 4,400-6,000°C (7,950-10,830°F) is the estimate internal temperature of the {{w|Earth}}. Another reference to the 2003 movie [[:Category:The Core|The Core]], at least the 6th comic to do so.<br />
|-<br />
| 5,000-6,000 (9,000-10,800) || No, the surface of the '''''Earth''''', not the Sun || 5,500°C (9,930°F) is the approximate temperature of the surface of the {{w|Sun}}. The Sun's {{w|photosphere}} has a temperature between 4,400 and 6,600 K (4,130 and 6,330 °C) (with an effective temperature of 5,772 K (5,499 °C)).<br />
|-<br />
| 6,000-50,000 (10,800-90,000) || Wait, that's not the Sun. What star are you visiting? Come back right now. || Surface temperatures of {{w|main sequence|main-sequence}} stars larger than the Sun can go up to 50,000 (Kelvin and degrees Celsius are indistinguishable at this point). Though some stars can be even hotter.<br />
|-<br />
| 50,000-20,000,000 <small>(90,000-36,000,000)</small> || At least stay on the '''''surface''''' of the star instead of diving down to the core || Core temperatures of main-sequence stars like the Sun are usually around ten million kelvins, while larger and hotter stars can reach up to a hundred million.<br />
|-<br />
| 20,000,000-10,000,000,000 <small>(36,000,000-18,000,000,000)</small> || You know, you could've picked a normal star instead of one that's exploding || {{w|Supernova}}e can reach temperatures of billions of degrees for brief periods, with type II supernovae even reaching hundreds of billions of degrees.<br />
|-<br />
| 10,000,000,000 or higher <small><br>(18,000,000,000 or higher)</small> || I hope you're enjoying your visit to the Big Bang but you should really come back home immediately || 10<sup>32</sup> °C (or K), the highest physically meaningful temperature, is the estimated temperature at the Planck epoch (10<sup>-43</sup> s) after the {{w|Big Bang}}<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A table is shown with two columns with twelve rows. The columns are labeled and there is a heading above table:]<br />
:<big>Treating a Fever</big><br />
<br />
:[Column labels]:<br />
:Fever<br />
:Treatment<br />
<br />
:38°C-40°C (100°F-104°F) <br />
:Fluids, rest, normal doctor stuff<br />
<br />
:40°C-45°C<br />
:Hospital, advanced doctor stuff<br />
<br />
:45°C-100°C<br />
:Exit that steam cloud immediately<br />
<br />
:100°C-400°C <br />
:Stop, drop, and roll<br />
<br />
:400°C-500°C<br />
:Return to Earth from Venus ASAP<br />
<br />
:500°C-1,500°C<br />
:Please climb out of that volcano<br />
<br />
:1,500°C-5,000°C<br />
:Turn your tunneling machine around and come back up to the surface<br />
<br />
:5,000°C-6,000°C<br />
:No, the surface of the '''''Earth''''', not the Sun<br />
<br />
:6,000°C-50,000°C<br />
:Wait, that's not the Sun. What star are you visiting? Come back right now.<br />
<br />
:50,000°C-20,000,000°C<br />
:At least stay on the '''''surface''''' of the star instead of diving down to the core<br />
<br />
:20,000,000°C-10,000,000,000°C<br />
:You know, you could've picked a normal star instead of one that's exploding<br />
<br />
:10,000,000,000°C or higher<br />
:I hope you're enjoying your visit to the Big Bang but you should really come back home immediately<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Charts]]<br />
[[Category:Medicine]]<br />
[[Category:Volcanoes]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:The Core]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2872:_Hydrothermal_Vents&diff=331678Talk:2872: Hydrothermal Vents2023-12-30T00:22:34Z<p>BunsenH: locks and bolts make no difference</p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
Current text: "... but could theoretically repopulate the surface if there were ever extenctions in the real world, as there have been in prior times." <br> Should extenctions be extinctions? <br />
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.176|172.69.195.176]] 12:01, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I was the one who (somehow mis)typed that, and indeed it should. If it hasn't been corrected by the time I get there, I'll do it. (Related, or not, but my on-screen keyboard appears to have updated over the last day or so. I had to reset it back to how I like it (no drag-to-type, no 'suggestions' bar above, remove the emoji button) and I'm sure it's also resized vertically, meaning I may mis-hit 'keys' on different rows, but not sure how I got 'e' instead of 'i'. Put it down to an inexicable Thinko, perhaps?) Also, I might change to make clear that (e.g.) hydrothermic crustacea might (re)redevelop 'regular' phototropic versions (or those atuned to photosynthesis-rooted food webs, or something), instead of being chemosynthesis-rooted. But that could be too difficult to summarise.<br />
:...darnit, where's the tilde on this changed OSK? (Ah, there it is. Looks like they added a 'handy' numberpad setting, which I need to switch away from to get where the ~ still resides!) Yet another bothersome 'improvement' that I'll have to see if I can deal withn in the settings... Sheesh... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.225|172.69.194.225]] 14:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Regarding the ethology of the benthic species of ''Rangifer tarandus'', the May-Marks navigational hypothesis has now been largely supplanted by the idea of the "angler deer", in which the low-frequency luminescence around the covering of the turbinate bones is used used as a lure, attracting abyssopelagic subspecies of ''Daucus carota'' that would ordinarily avoid regions of such extreme temperature. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 12:23, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This may well be the most dark Christmas comic ever in the history of xkcd! And not even really funny. Don't get my wrong I can still be amused but find it a bit out of the ordinary for saying Merry Christmas ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:36, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Oh, don't worry, this only traps ''benthic'' santas. As you'll have noticed, your own Julemanden has remained unaffected... As you can tell by the lack of charboiled reindeer ''or'' nisser, just beyond the 'chimneys' themselves. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.225|172.69.194.225]] 14:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::Fun fact: Benthic santas independently evolved the familiar "Santa" body plan. They are actually more closely related to spiders. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.64|172.69.247.64]] 17:40, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::Hmm. It's not clear from the comic how many legs benthic Santas have: two, eight, or [[2314: Carcinization|six]]. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 19:03, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I've just been re-reading an old ''Far Side'' collection, and thinking that this comic would be the kind of thing that Gary Larson would draw. Except that he would probably have included a pair of comical googly Santa eyes, staring at the reader. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 17:01, 28 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The link to an article explaining ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer's'' slayer replacement system, is humorous & mostly apropos, but I feel that a link to ''The Santa Clause'' would be much more directly relevant?<br />
<br />
The ecology and behavior of "benthic santas" (putative taxon <em>Abyssosanta bathytroglodyta</em>) may have been [<em>ahem</em>] profoundly different from the extant species. The clues are few, but they support the hypothesis that <em>A. bathytroglodyta</em> sought out chimney-like structures and other crevices for shelter and food, to which they were perhaps guided by a symbiosis with <em>Rangiferpisces rubrum</em>, the red-antlered reindeerfish. Predation pressure from hydrothermal vent chimney mimics (<em>Nigroventus abyssosantavorus</em>) would have driven <em>A. bathytroglodyta</em> to the surface. In a possible analogy, the Atlantic clawed lobster, <em>Homarus americanus</em>, initially a deep-water species, was driven to the intertidal zone by predation from <em>Gadus gadus</em> (cod) and other large fish - only to be confronted with intolerable predation pressure from humans, to which they eventually adapted. By this model, the modern Santa (<em>Santa donator</em>) evolved from its precursor species under strong human selection pressure. At least <em>S. donator</em> was, from its precursor's traits, preadapted for a high-pressure existence, and for the cold and dark of the Arctic. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.80|172.70.214.80]] 16:51, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:<applause />[[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.141|162.158.33.141]] 17:57, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Well done! [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 01:10, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
By my theory, if Black Smokers are responsible for drawing in Benthic Santas, and removing them from the ocean, White Smokers are where Pelagic Popes spontaneously spawn from. Whether the two phenomena are directly connected (e.g. mass-for-mass) requires further study. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.34|141.101.99.34]] 21:34, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I was curious about the size of hydrothermal vents. Would the benthic santas need to be gnome-sized? But it turns out they can be quite large, up to 60 meters high, with openings up to two meters across. "Opening" is somewhat misleading, though, as the vents aren't hollow pipes but are filled with internal structures "like a kitchen sponge." Santa wouldn't be able to slide down this chimney. Oh well. I still love this comic, and the phrase "benthic santa" cracks me up. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.75|162.158.91.75]] 18:55, 29 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Overworld santas are unhindered by by the physical size/configuration of chimneys (or, indeed, if it's a mere central-heating/aircon vent), so I think they already have the possibility of ingress covered (if not the egress). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.226|141.101.98.226]] 19:34, 29 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I'm guessing that you're looking at [https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/05lostcity/background/chimney/chimney.html this page]. Looking at the larger picture that's linked there... if the box marked "500 mm" is taken to mean that that's the scale of the whole image, the large pore is about 15 cm x 7 cm. If the width of the "500 mm" box is supposed to represent 500 mm, the pore is about 67 cm x 30 cm. A Santa who can navigate a chimney grating shouldn't be deterred by this. The image may not imply that a clear path with such dimensions exists all the way down, of course. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 00:22, 30 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2872:_Hydrothermal_Vents&diff=331586Talk:2872: Hydrothermal Vents2023-12-28T17:01:41Z<p>BunsenH: Far Side</p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
Current text: "... but could theoretically repopulate the surface if there were ever extenctions in the real world, as there have been in prior times." <br> Should extenctions be extinctions? <br />
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.176|172.69.195.176]] 12:01, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I was the one who (somehow mis)typed that, and indeed it should. If it hasn't been corrected by the time I get there, I'll do it. (Related, or not, but my on-screen keyboard appears to have updated over the last day or so. I had to reset it back to how I like it (no drag-to-type, no 'suggestions' bar above, remove the emoji button) and I'm sure it's also resized vertically, meaning I may mis-hit 'keys' on different rows, but not sure how I got 'e' instead of 'i'. Put it down to an inexicable Thinko, perhaps?) Also, I might change to make clear that (e.g.) hydrothermic crustacea might (re)redevelop 'regular' phototropic versions (or those atuned to photosynthesis-rooted food webs, or something), instead of being chemosynthesis-rooted. But that could be too difficult to summarise.<br />
:...darnit, where's the tilde on this changed OSK? (Ah, there it is. Looks like they added a 'handy' numberpad setting, which I need to switch away from to get where the ~ still resides!) Yet another bothersome 'improvement' that I'll have to see if I can deal withn in the settings... Sheesh... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.225|172.69.194.225]] 14:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Regarding the ethology of the benthic species of ''Rangifer tarandus'', the May-Marks navigational hypothesis has now been largely supplanted by the idea of the "angler deer", in which the low-frequency luminescence around the covering of the turbinate bones is used used as a lure, attracting abyssopelagic subspecies of ''Daucus carota'' that would ordinarily avoid regions of such extreme temperature. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 12:23, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This may well be the most dark Christmas comic ever in the history of xkcd! And not even really funny. Don't get my wrong I can still be amused but find it a bit out of the ordinary for saying Merry Christmas ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:36, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Oh, don't worry, this only traps ''benthic'' santas. As you'll have noticed, your own Julemanden has remained unaffected... As you can tell by the lack of charboiled reindeer ''or'' nisser, just beyond the 'chimneys' themselves. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.225|172.69.194.225]] 14:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::Fun fact: Benthic santas independently evolved the familiar "Santa" body plan. They are actually more closely related to spiders. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.64|172.69.247.64]] 17:40, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::Hmm. It's not clear from the comic how many legs benthic Santas have: two, eight, or [[2314: Carcinization|six]]. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 19:03, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I've just been re-reading an old ''Far Side'' collection, and thinking that this comic would be the kind of thing that Gary Larson would draw. Except that he would probably have included a pair of comical googly Santa eyes, staring at the reader. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 17:01, 28 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The link to an article explaining ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer's'' slayer replacement system, is humorous & mostly apropos, but I feel that a link to ''The Santa Clause'' would be much more directly relevant?<br />
<br />
The ecology and behavior of "benthic santas" (putative taxon <em>Abyssosanta bathytroglodyta</em>) may have been [<em>ahem</em>] profoundly different from the extant species. The clues are few, but they support the hypothesis that <em>A. bathytroglodyta</em> sought out chimney-like structures and other crevices for shelter and food, to which they were perhaps guided by a symbiosis with <em>Rangiferpisces rubrum</em>, the red-antlered reindeerfish. Predation pressure from hydrothermal vent chimney mimics (<em>Nigroventus abyssosantavorus</em>) would have driven <em>A. bathytroglodyta</em> to the surface. In a possible analogy, the Atlantic clawed lobster, <em>Homarus americanus</em>, initially a deep-water species, was driven to the intertidal zone by predation from <em>Gadus gadus</em> (cod) and other large fish - only to be confronted with intolerable predation pressure from humans, to which they eventually adapted. By this model, the modern Santa (<em>Santa donator</em>) evolved from its precursor species under strong human selection pressure. At least <em>S. donator</em> was, from its precursor's traits, preadapted for a high-pressure existence, and for the cold and dark of the Arctic. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.80|172.70.214.80]] 16:51, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:<applause />[[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.141|162.158.33.141]] 17:57, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Well done! [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 01:10, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
By my theory, if Black Smokers are responsible for drawing in Benthic Santas, and removing them from the ocean, White Smokers are where Pelagic Popes spontaneously spawn from. Whether the two phenomena are directly connected (e.g. mass-for-mass) requires further study. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.34|141.101.99.34]] 21:34, 26 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2872:_Hydrothermal_Vents&diff=331521Talk:2872: Hydrothermal Vents2023-12-27T19:03:40Z<p>BunsenH: crabs</p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
Current text: "... but could theoretically repopulate the surface if there were ever extenctions in the real world, as there have been in prior times." <br> Should extenctions be extinctions? <br />
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.176|172.69.195.176]] 12:01, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I was the one who (somehow mis)typed that, and indeed it should. If it hasn't been corrected by the time I get there, I'll do it. (Related, or not, but my on-screen keyboard appears to have updated over the last day or so. I had to reset it back to how I like it (no drag-to-type, no 'suggestions' bar above, remove the emoji button) and I'm sure it's also resized vertically, meaning I may mis-hit 'keys' on different rows, but not sure how I got 'e' instead of 'i'. Put it down to an inexicable Thinko, perhaps?) Also, I might change to make clear that (e.g.) hydrothermic crustacea might (re)redevelop 'regular' phototropic versions (or those atuned to photosynthesis-rooted food webs, or something), instead of being chemosynthesis-rooted. But that could be too difficult to summarise.<br />
:...darnit, where's the tilde on this changed OSK? (Ah, there it is. Looks like they added a 'handy' numberpad setting, which I need to switch away from to get where the ~ still resides!) Yet another bothersome 'improvement' that I'll have to see if I can deal withn in the settings... Sheesh... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.225|172.69.194.225]] 14:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Regarding the ethology of the benthic species of ''Rangifer tarandus'', the May-Marks navigational hypothesis has now been largely supplanted by the idea of the "angler deer", in which the low-frequency luminescence around the covering of the turbinate bones is used used as a lure, attracting abyssopelagic subspecies of ''Daucus carota'' that would ordinarily avoid regions of such extreme temperature. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 12:23, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This may well be the most dark Christmas comic ever in the history of xkcd! And not even really funny. Don't get my wrong I can still be amused but find it a bit out of the ordinary for saying Merry Christmas ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:36, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Oh, don't worry, this only traps ''benthic'' santas. As you'll have noticed, your own Julemanden has remained unaffected... As you can tell by the lack of charboiled reindeer ''or'' nisser, just beyond the 'chimneys' themselves. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.225|172.69.194.225]] 14:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::Fun fact: Benthic santas independently evolved the familiar "Santa" body plan. They are actually more closely related to spiders. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.64|172.69.247.64]] 17:40, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::Hmm. It's not clear from the comic how many legs benthic Santas have: two, eight, or [[2314: Carcinization|six]]. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 19:03, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The link to an article explaining ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer's'' slayer replacement system, is humorous & mostly apropos, but I feel that a link to ''The Santa Clause'' would be much more directly relevant?<br />
<br />
The ecology and behavior of "benthic santas" (putative taxon <em>Abyssosanta bathytroglodyta</em>) may have been [<em>ahem</em>] profoundly different from the extant species. The clues are few, but they support the hypothesis that <em>A. bathytroglodyta</em> sought out chimney-like structures and other crevices for shelter and food, to which they were perhaps guided by a symbiosis with <em>Rangiferpisces rubrum</em>, the red-antlered reindeerfish. Predation pressure from hydrothermal vent chimney mimics (<em>Nigroventus abyssosantavorus</em>) would have driven <em>A. bathytroglodyta</em> to the surface. In a possible analogy, the Atlantic clawed lobster, <em>Homarus americanus</em>, initially a deep-water species, was driven to the intertidal zone by predation from <em>Gadus gadus</em> (cod) and other large fish - only to be confronted with intolerable predation pressure from humans, to which they eventually adapted. By this model, the modern Santa (<em>Santa donator</em>) evolved from its precursor species under strong human selection pressure. At least <em>S. donator</em> was, from its precursor's traits, preadapted for a high-pressure existence, and for the cold and dark of the Arctic. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.80|172.70.214.80]] 16:51, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:<applause />[[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.141|162.158.33.141]] 17:57, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Well done! [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 01:10, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
By my theory, if Black Smokers are responsible for drawing in Benthic Santas, and removing them from the ocean, White Smokers are where Pelagic Popes spontaneously spawn from. Whether the two phenomena are directly connected (e.g. mass-for-mass) requires further study. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.34|141.101.99.34]] 21:34, 26 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2872:_Hydrothermal_Vents&diff=331501Talk:2872: Hydrothermal Vents2023-12-27T01:10:53Z<p>BunsenH: </p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
Current text: "... but could theoretically repopulate the surface if there were ever extenctions in the real world, as there have been in prior times." <br> Should extenctions be extinctions? <br />
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.176|172.69.195.176]] 12:01, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I was the one who (somehow mis)typed that, and indeed it should. If it hasn't been corrected by the time I get there, I'll do it. (Related, or not, but my on-screen keyboard appears to have updated over the last day or so. I had to reset it back to how I like it (no drag-to-type, no 'suggestions' bar above, remove the emoji button) and I'm sure it's also resized vertically, meaning I may mis-hit 'keys' on different rows, but not sure how I got 'e' instead of 'i'. Put it down to an inexicable Thinko, perhaps?) Also, I might change to make clear that (e.g.) hydrothermic crustacea might (re)redevelop 'regular' phototropic versions (or those atuned to photosynthesis-rooted food webs, or something), instead of being chemosynthesis-rooted. But that could be too difficult to summarise.<br />
:...darnit, where's the tilde on this changed OSK? (Ah, there it is. Looks like they added a 'handy' numberpad setting, which I need to switch away from to get where the ~ still resides!) Yet another bothersome 'improvement' that I'll have to see if I can deal withn in the settings... Sheesh... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.225|172.69.194.225]] 14:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Regarding the ethology of the benthic species of ''Rangifer tarandus'', the May-Marks navigational hypothesis has now been largely supplanted by the idea of the "angler deer", in which the low-frequency luminescence around the covering of the turbinate bones is used used as a lure, attracting abyssopelagic subspecies of ''Daucus carota'' that would ordinarily avoid regions of such extreme temperature. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 12:23, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This may well be the most dark Christmas comic ever in the history of xkcd! And not even really funny. Don't get my wrong I can still be amused but find it a bit out of the ordinary for saying Merry Christmas ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:36, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Oh, don't worry, this only traps ''benthic'' santas. As you'll have noticed, your own Julemanden has remained unaffected... As you can tell by the lack of charboiled reindeer ''or'' nisser, just beyond the 'chimneys' themselves. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.225|172.69.194.225]] 14:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The link to an article explaining ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer's'' slayer replacement system, is humorous & mostly apropos, but I feel that a link to ''The Santa Clause'' would be much more directly relevant?<br />
<br />
The ecology and behavior of "benthic santas" (putative taxon <em>Abyssosanta bathytroglodyta</em>) may have been [<em>ahem</em>] profoundly different from the extant species. The clues are few, but they support the hypothesis that <em>A. bathytroglodyta</em> sought out chimney-like structures and other crevices for shelter and food, to which they were perhaps guided by a symbiosis with <em>Rangiferpisces rubrum</em>, the red-antlered reindeerfish. Predation pressure from hydrothermal vent chimney mimics (<em>Nigroventus abyssosantavorus</em>) would have driven <em>A. bathytroglodyta</em> to the surface. In a possible analogy, the Atlantic clawed lobster, <em>Homarus americanus</em>, initially a deep-water species, was driven to the intertidal zone by predation from <em>Gadus gadus</em> (cod) and other large fish - only to be confronted with intolerable predation pressure from humans, to which they eventually adapted. By this model, the modern Santa (<em>Santa donator</em>) evolved from its precursor species under strong human selection pressure. At least <em>S. donator</em> was, from its precursor's traits, preadapted for a high-pressure existence, and for the cold and dark of the Arctic. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.80|172.70.214.80]] 16:51, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:<applause />[[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.141|162.158.33.141]] 17:57, 26 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Well done! [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 01:10, 27 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
By my theory, if Black Smokers are responsible for drawing in Benthic Santas, and removing them from the ocean, White Smokers are where Pelagic Popes spontaneously spawn from. Whether the two phenomena are directly connected (e.g. mass-for-mass) requires further study. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.34|141.101.99.34]] 21:34, 26 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2872:_Hydrothermal_Vents&diff=3314812872: Hydrothermal Vents2023-12-26T16:58:09Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ minor tweaks</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2872<br />
| date = December 25, 2023<br />
| title = Hydrothermal Vents<br />
| image = hydrothermal vents 2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 330x459px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Benthic Santas weren't even discovered until the 1970s, but many scientists now believe Christmas may have originally developed around hydrothermal vents and only later migrated to the surface.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by SANTA'S REMAINS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
This [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comic]] was released on {{w|Christmas Day}} 2023, in the morning (at least in [[Randall]]'s timezone in Boston). <br />
<br />
It is the second Christmas comic using [[:Category:Facts|Facts]], and Ocean Fact in this comic. The first of these was released six years earlier, also on Christmas Day in comic [[1933: Santa Facts]]. This comic could in fact also have been called Santa Facts...<br />
<br />
In the world above the surface of the sea, {{w|Santa Claus}} had just finished his annual trip around the world when this comic was posted. It makes a joke on that by saying that there are "{{wiktionary|benthic}} Santas", meaning there are Santas that deliver gifts {{w|Benthic zone|to the seafloor}}. The joke here is that all Santas may tend to [[1620: Christmas Settings|go down chimneys]], and that {{w|hydrothermal vent|hydrothermal vents}} have {{w|Aggressive mimicry|evolved}} to trick undersea Santa into entering them, believing they were real chimneys, and thus getting killed and digested by the vents as seen in the comic. This is not an entirely unknown {{w|Pitcher plant|digestive mechanism}}, although the depicted version goes beyond all known biological processes. This comic is [[2559: December 25th Launch|one of]] the darker-themed Christmas comics, compared to the usual merry xmas comics.<br />
<br />
There are many things that are very strange mentioned.{{Citation needed}} There is little to no evidence that actual humans live down deep in the sea, and fish and other undersea creatures are unlikely to know what "Santa" is or understand the concept of Christmas, so it is unclear what the exact goals of "benthic Santas" might be.{{Citation needed}} The comic shows the remains of many "Santas", suggesting that there are multiple members of the 'Santa' species (this might also explain the many Santas who appear on street corners, shopping malls, etc.) in contrast to some assertions in the literature that there is only one. It is also possible that there is only one (perhaps or perhaps not specifically subsea) Santa, whose death invokes the spontaneous appearance of [https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/Slayer a replacement].<br />
<br />
The title text may referring to {{w|abiogenesis}}, the origin of life. It was thought non-living matter combined into living cells in shallow water through the energy supplied from the sun and lightning. At least, amino acids can be synthesized this way, as proven by the {{w|Miller–Urey experiment}}. A new explanation places the origin of life on hydrothermal vents, as it's rich in chemicals and rocks there serve as catalysts, with energy coming from earth's heat. Either way, forms of life are known to migrate environments to fill new (or vacated) niches, after having been established in another. The current residents of {{w|hydrothermal vents#Black_smokers|'black smokers'}} include creatures (like shrimps, worms and crabs) that are known elsewhere, but could theoretically repopulate the surface if there were ever further mass extinctions across the uppermost layers of the real world, as there have been in prior times.<br />
<br />
The 1970s timeframe likely refers to the discovery in 1977 of hydrothermal vent ecosystems near the Galapagos Rift, which formed the basis of this new theory of abiogenesis. By suggesting that the "benthic Santas" were part of this discovery, the comic implies that a key aspect of Christmas folklore might also have its roots in these deep-sea ecosystems.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[An undersea landscape is shown. A rock formation goes up from the the middle part op the bottom of the panel. The top of the formation has five "hot-smoker" chimneys of different heights, almost like a hand with the thumb to the right, but the middle finger being the shortest and the "index finger" being somewhat longer than all the others. From all five chimneys thick gray smoke is emitted. The smoke rises almost vertically to start from all five, and the four to the left have their smoke combine rather early and it bulges to the left. The rightmost chimney's smoke bends to the right and only merges with the combined smoke from the others at the top right. Below the chimneys their interior in the rock formation is indicated with dotted lines and the inside of these chimneys are thus displayed. At the bottom all five merge into a large cavity (shown with dotted lines) inside the rock formation. In this cavity there is a liquid in which several items float around, most notably two Santa Claus hats and two large bones surrounded by five smaller blobs of material and several smaller specks. On the outside on the rock formation grow four types of sea-life, a sponge and some sea lilies or the like, one on the left side and three on the right. To the left two fish are swimming near the rock and close to it on the right there is an octopus. There are three labels with lines pointing to the smoke, to the vents, and to the cavity in the rock formation containing the Santa hats.]<br />
:Top label: Smoke<br />
:Middle label: Chimneys<br />
:Bottom label: Santas being digested<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Ocean fact: Hydrothermal vent black smokers actually evolved as predatory chimney mimics to feed on benthic Santas.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Facts]]<br />
[[Category:Christmas]]<br />
[[Category:Geology]]<br />
[[Category:Biology]]<br />
[[Category:Animals]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2872:_Hydrothermal_Vents&diff=3314362872: Hydrothermal Vents2023-12-25T22:24:44Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ links to W'pedia on vents, black smokers</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2872<br />
| date = December 25, 2023<br />
| title = Hydrothermal Vents<br />
| image = hydrothermal vents 2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 330x459px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Benthic Santas weren't even discovered until the 1970s, but many scientists now believe Christmas may have originally developed around hydrothermal vents and only later migrated to the surface.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by SANTA'S REMAINS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
This comic was released on Christmas Day, in the ([[Randall]]'s) morning. In the world above the surface of the sea, Santa Claus had just finished his annual trip around the world. This comic makes a joke on that by saying that here are "{{wiktionary|benthic}} Santas", meaning there are Santas that deliver gifts {{w|Benthic zone|to the seafloor}}. The joke here is that all Santas may tend to [[1620: Christmas Settings|go down chimneys]], and that {{w|hydrothermal vent|hydrothermal vents}} have {{w|Aggressive mimicry|evolved}} to trick undersea Santa into entering them, believing they were these, and thus getting killed by getting digested by the vents, as seen in the comic. This is not an entirely unknown {{w|Pitcher plant|digestive mechanism}}, albeit that the depicted version goes beyond all known biological processes.<br />
<br />
There are many things that are very strange mentioned.{{citation needed}} There is little to no evidence that actual humans live down deep in the sea, and fish and other undersea creatures are unlikely to know what "Santa" is or understand the concept of Christmas, so it is unclear what the exact goals of "benthic Santas" might be.{{citation needed}} The comic shows the remains of many "Santas", suggesting that there are multiple members of the 'Santa' species (this might also explain the many Santas who appear on street corners, shopping malls, etc.) in contrast to some assertions in the literature that there is only one. It is also possible that there is only one (perhaps or perhaps not specifically subsea) Santa, whose death invokes the spontaneous appearance of [https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/Slayer a replacement].<br />
<br />
The title text may referring to {{w|abiogenesis}}, the origin of life. It was thought non-living matter combined into living cells in shallow water through the energy supplied from the sun and lightning. At least, amino acids can be synthesized this way, as proven by the {{w|Miller–Urey experiment}}. A new explanation places the origin of life on hydrothermal vents, as it's rich in chemicals and rocks there serve as catalysis, with energy coming from earth's heat. Either way, forms of life are known to migrate environments to fill new (or vacated) niches, after having been established in another. The current residents of {{w|hydrothermal vents#Black_smokers|'black smokers'}} include creatures (like shrimps, worms and crabs) that are known elsewhere, but could theoretically repopulate the surface if there were ever extenctions in the real world, as there have been in prior times.<br />
<br />
The 1970s timeframe likely refers to the discovery in 1977 of hydrothermal vent ecosystems near the Galapagos Rift, which formed the basis of this new theory of abiogenesis. By suggesting that the "benthic Santas" were part of this discovery, the comic implies that a key aspect of Christmas folklore might also have its roots in these deep-sea ecosystems.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Top label:] Smoke<br />
:[Middle label:] Chimneys<br />
:[Bottom label:] Santas being digested<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Ocean fact: Hydrothermal vent black smokers actually evolved as predatory chimney mimics to feed on benthic Santas.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Christmas]]<br />
[[Category:Facts]]<br />
[[Category:Biology]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2872:_Hydrothermal_Vents&diff=3314242872: Hydrothermal Vents2023-12-25T19:43:21Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ grammar</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2872<br />
| date = December 25, 2023<br />
| title = Hydrothermal Vents<br />
| image = hydrothermal vents 2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 330x459px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Benthic Santas weren't even discovered until the 1970s, but many scientists now believe Christmas may have originally developed around hydrothermal vents and only later migrated to the surface.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by SANTA'S REMAINS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
This comic was released on Christmas Day, in the ([[Randall]]'s) morning. In the belief of many children, Santa Claus had just finished his annual trip around the world. This comic makes a joke on that by saying that here are "benthic Santas", meaning there are Santas that deliver gifts underwater. The joke here is that Santa may tend to [[1620: Christmas Settings|go down chimneys]], and that hydrothermal vents were {{w|Aggressive mimicry|evolved}} to trick Santa into entering them, believing they were chimneys, and thus getting killed by getting digested by the vents, as seen in the comic. There are many things that are very strange mentioned.{{citation needed}} There is little to no evidence that actual humans live down deep in the sea, and fish and other undersea creatures are unlikely to know what "Santa" is or understand the concept of Christmas, so it is unclear what the exact goals of "benthic Santas" might be.{{citation needed}}The comic shows the remains of many "Santas", suggesting that at least some of the many Santas who appear on street corners, shopping malls, etc. may be real, in contrast to some assertions in the literature that there is only one. It is also possible that there is only one Santa, whose death causes the spontaneous appearance of a replacement.<br />
<br />
The title text is referring to {{w|abiogenesis}}, the origin of life. It was thought non-living matter combined into living cells in shallow water through the energy supplied from the sun and lightnings. At least, amino acids can be synthesized this way, as proven by the {{w|Miller–Urey experiment}}. A new explanation places the origin of life on hydrothermal vents, as it's rich in chemicals and rocks there serve as catalysis, with energy coming from earth's heat.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Top label:] Smoke<br />
:[Middle label:] Chimneys<br />
:[Bottom label:] Santas being digested<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Ocean fact: Hydrothermal vent black smokers actually evolved as predatory chimney mimics to feed on benthic Santas.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Christmas]]<br />
[[Category:Facts]]<br />
[[Category:Biology]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2872:_Hydrothermal_Vents&diff=3314232872: Hydrothermal Vents2023-12-25T19:42:50Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ many-Santas hypothesis</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2872<br />
| date = December 25, 2023<br />
| title = Hydrothermal Vents<br />
| image = hydrothermal vents 2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 330x459px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = Benthic Santas weren't even discovered until the 1970s, but many scientists now believe Christmas may have originally developed around hydrothermal vents and only later migrated to the surface.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by SANTA'S REMAINS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
This comic was released on Christmas Day, in the ([[Randall]]'s) morning. In the belief of many children, Santa Claus had just finished his annual trip around the world. This comic makes a joke on that by saying that here are "benthic Santas", meaning there are Santas that deliver gifts underwater. The joke here is that Santa may tend to [[1620: Christmas Settings|go down chimneys]], and that hydrothermal vents were {{w|Aggressive mimicry|evolved}} to trick Santa into entering them, believing they were chimneys, and thus getting killed by getting digested by the vents, as seen in the comic. There are many things that are very strange mentioned.{{citation needed}} There is little to no evidence that actual humans live down deep in the sea, and fish and other undersea creatures are unlikely to know what "Santa" is or understand the concept of Christmas, so it is unclear the exact goals of "benthic Santas" might be.{{citation needed}}The comic shows the remains of many "Santas", suggesting that at least some of the many Santas who appear on street corners, shopping malls, etc. may be real, in contrast to some assertions in the literature that there is only one. It is also possible that there is only one Santa, whose death causes the spontaneous appearance of a replacement.<br />
<br />
The title text is referring to {{w|abiogenesis}}, the origin of life. It was thought non-living matter combined into living cells in shallow water through the energy supplied from the sun and lightnings. At least, amino acids can be synthesized this way, as proven by the {{w|Miller–Urey experiment}}. A new explanation places the origin of life on hydrothermal vents, as it's rich in chemicals and rocks there serve as catalysis, with energy coming from earth's heat.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[Top label:] Smoke<br />
:[Middle label:] Chimneys<br />
:[Bottom label:] Santas being digested<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Ocean fact: Hydrothermal vent black smokers actually evolved as predatory chimney mimics to feed on benthic Santas.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Christmas]]<br />
[[Category:Facts]]<br />
[[Category:Biology]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2870:_Love_Songs&diff=331322Talk:2870: Love Songs2023-12-22T19:14:09Z<p>BunsenH: Shape of Things</p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
<br />
I need to know which axis means “does the ‘me’ like them” because I fail to understand it.--[[Special:Contributions/172.71.134.164|172.71.134.164]] 23:53, 20 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Pick a song you know that isn't near the (X=Y) line, and it should explain it.<br />
:e.g. "That don't impress me much", at centre-top. Clearly the other party is trying to impress (likes the 'me') but Shania is ambivalent in response (she doesn't actually love their being a rocket-scientist, nor hate it).<br />
:"Killing me softly..." is from 'me' having love, whilst "You're so vain..." is actively insulting the other party (but indifference by the target ''could'' be the attitude).<br />
:Though for X=Y items (e.g. "I will survive" - it's declared to be an unamicable but ultimately mutually-acceptable split) the way round of course doesn't matter. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.224|172.69.194.224]] 00:12, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I'm hoping "I Will Survive" isn't a reference to the Zootopia abortion comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.82|172.68.174.82]] 23:56, 20 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Well, some of the (apparently obvious) references I didn't know. First thought about "Girlfriend" was the {{w|Girlfriend in a Coma (song)|The Smiths song}} ''almost'' of that name. (And it looks like there are almost thirty possible songs... not sure how many are covers of others... {{w|Girlfriend (disambiguation)#Songs|under that exact name}}.) Can I suggest that any possible songs that could be confused (but maybe not match the plotted position, being of a different story/tone) be recorded in a "Not to be confused with..." section? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.177|172.71.178.177]] 01:02, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::At first, I confused "The Shape of You" with [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1xVigsyoJw "The Shape of Things"]. Whose position and trajectory on the chart would be complex. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 19:14, 22 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
not pictured: Jim Steinman songs, which spend most of their time out of the XY plane. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.214.109|172.69.214.109]] 00:14, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Gotta say, Perfect is a far better Ed Sheeran song than Shape of You<br />
<br />
The fault here is not so much with the axes or their interpretation as with the verb, "to love." [http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~heycock/thurber-only.html Nothing can be done about the verb "to love."] [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.62|172.70.210.62]] 04:19, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
(reads comic) (automatically sorts in all "Offspring" love songs) (thanks very much, xkcd, you got me again) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.160.124|172.71.160.124]] 09:24, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
"Girlfriend" by Matthew Sweet doesn't remotely follow the narrative in the explanation, but could nevertheless be graphed as shown.[[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 10:07, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Why is "I Will Always Love You" higher on the Y axis than the X axis?? The title and chorus seem genuine to me, and the rationale for breaking up is "I'm not what you need." [[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.58|172.68.34.58]] 15:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I love the way this came out. Mad props to everyone who worked on the table summaries. Were LLMs employed? [[User:Liv2splain|Liv2splain]] ([[User talk:Liv2splain|talk]]) 18:31, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:yes, and it made a mistake. Well, I made the mistake.In my prompt I was asking for a summary of the Song T-Rex from Katy Perry and chatGPT did neither complain nor correct - THAT is their mistake. And several people did not recognize even as it was obvious - including me. 🫣 --[[User:LaVe|LaVe]] ([[User talk:LaVe|talk]]) 23:43, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
In my opinion the Y-Axis of "Girlfriend" does not fit Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend", it should be closer to "Yes" than to "No". The lyrics include "I see the way you look at me [...] I know you talk about me all the time again and again".<br />
If the video counts: The guy ends up without his girlfriend (red-haired Avril) and seems to always enjoy the company and a kiss of black-haired Avril. The video ends with him and blond-haired Avril disappearing into a bathroom stall. Whomever you see as the "I" in the song, black-haired or blond-haired Avril, he seems sorta interested in both, so a "Yes". [[Special:Contributions/172.71.134.31|172.71.134.31]] 18:46, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Idea: We could add a column for the year the song came out. It would be interesting to see the year distribution and if it clumps in the late 90s (when Randall was a teenager). [[User:Laser813|Laser813]] ([[User talk:Laser813|talk]]) 19:33, 21 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
It needs a third (time) axis: in "You’re so vain", for example, there's the line "But you gave away the things you loved/And one of them was me" which suggests that the Warren Beatty^w^w male character at least USED to live the singer, and "when I was still quite naïve” might imply the feeling was once mutual, regardless of the current degree of indifference and/or active disdain. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.135.129|172.69.135.129]] 10:56, 22 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:That's just the same issue as the Piña Colada, really. What you could do for those (and others) is trace a track leading up to the dot (probably, from whatever history the song narrative describes as having come from). And maybe a short dashed onwards line to where they hope/fear/want/expect the relationship to progress to. Could get busy. And would need (probably subjective) analysis of the full lyrics then work out how best to tweak it not to get a plate full of undifferentiatable spaghetti. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.111|172.71.178.111]] 11:24, 22 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2867:_DateTime&diff=3311712867: DateTime2023-12-20T00:36:20Z<p>BunsenH: Undo revision 331151 by 162.158.230.92 (talk) page is still being edited several times a day</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2867<br />
| date = December 13, 2023<br />
| title = DateTime<br />
| image = datetime_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 679x478px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = It's not just time zones and leap seconds. SI seconds on Earth are slower because of relativity, so there are time standards for space stuff (TCB, TGC) that use faster SI seconds than UTC/Unix time. T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a RUSSIAN DATE-TIME SYSTEM BETWEEN Tа AND Tб - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
[[Ponytail]] asks [[Cueball]] how to calculate the time elapsed between two instants. A Cueball not intimately familiar with the complexities of the way humans measure time naively assumes that this is given by the difference of the timestamps. A Cueball who is familiar panics and states that it is impossible to know, and further that it is forbidden to even ask the question.<br />
<br />
Randall's use of the term "DateTime systems" covers [https://metacpan.org/pod/DateTime any] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html number] [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.datetime?view=net-8.0 of] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date situations], and the complexities are hardly confined to any particular programming language, or indeed computers as a whole. Some of these complexities include time zones (and changes to time zones), the international date line, daylight saving time and differing observation (or non-observation) thereof in different areas (and changes to the observation of daylight saving time over time), leap days and leap seconds, etc. Another complexity is found in relativistic effects, in which the flow of time varies depending on how deep in a gravity well one is; {{w|Barycentric Coordinate Time}} and {{w|Geocentric Coordinate Time}} (in French, TCB and TCG respectively - the reference to TGC in the title text appears to be a typo) are time systems used for space missions and orbit calculations that handle this. A partial list of such minutiae may be found at [https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time]. The title text of the comic also references some of them.<br />
<br />
The statement that "it is impossible to know" is because Ponytail did not provide enough information in the question: She needed to specify the location and time zone of both observations, and possibly the exact values of T1 and T2 to the nanosecond. The statement "and a sin to ask" is obviously hyperbolic; it's an expression of the fact that determining the answer accurately can be complicated and programming systems that attempt to do this can be frustrating. Considering the restrictions imposed by relativity on two observers agreeing on the timing of events, it may be literally impossible to determine a value of T2 - T1 that is absolutely "correct" to arbitrary levels of precision.<br />
<br />
"T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]": This is a colloquial expression that riffs on the more common "God only knows" as well as "Hell knows and Heaven suspects", to suggest that the thing in question is even more unknowable than the usual type of unknowable thing, to the point where it may be an evil invention of the Devil designed to cause complexity and frustration for the people having to deal with it.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Ponytail is talking to Cueball.]<br />
:Ponytail: Event #1 happened at time T<sub>1</sub>.<br />
:Cueball: Okay.<br />
<br />
:Ponytail: Then event #2 happened at time T<sub>2</sub>.<br />
:Cueball: Mhmm.<br />
<br />
:Ponytail: How would you calculate how much time elapsed between T<sub>1</sub> and T<sub>2</sub>?<br />
<br />
:[The comic splits into two paths, each with a caption at the top.]<br />
<br />
:[Path 1, upper right panel]<br />
:Caption: Normal person:<br />
:Cueball: T<sub>2</sub> minus T<sub>1</sub>.<br />
<br />
:[Path 2, lower right panel]<br />
:Caption: Anyone who's worked on datetime systems:<br />
:[Cueball has his arms raised.]<br />
:Cueball: '''''It is impossible to know and a sin to ask!'''''<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Time]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2867:_DateTime&diff=3311452867: DateTime2023-12-19T16:55:07Z<p>BunsenH: Not sure about the limitations imposed by relativity</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2867<br />
| date = December 13, 2023<br />
| title = DateTime<br />
| image = datetime_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 679x478px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = It's not just time zones and leap seconds. SI seconds on Earth are slower because of relativity, so there are time standards for space stuff (TCB, TGC) that use faster SI seconds than UTC/Unix time. T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a RUSSIAN DATE-TIME SYSTEM BETWEEN Tа AND Tб - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
[[Ponytail]] asks [[Cueball]] how to calculate the time elapsed between two instants. A Cueball not intimately familiar with the complexities of the way humans measure time naively assumes that this is given by the difference of the timestamps. A Cueball who is familiar panics and states that it is impossible to know, and further that it is forbidden to even ask the question.<br />
<br />
Randall's use of the term "DateTime systems" covers [https://metacpan.org/pod/DateTime any] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html number] [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.datetime?view=net-8.0 of] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html situations], and the complexities are hardly confined to any particular programming language, or indeed computers as a whole. Some of these complexities include time zones (and changes to time zones), the international date line, daylight saving time and differing observation (or non-observation) thereof in different areas (and changes to the observation of daylight saving time over time), leap days and leap seconds, etc. Another complexity is found in relativistic effects, in which the flow of time varies depending on how deep in a gravity well one is; {{w|Barycentric Coordinate Time}} and {{w|Geocentric Coordinate Time}} (in French, TCB and TCG respectively - the reference to TGC in the title text appears to be a typo) are time systems used for space missions and orbit calculations that handle this. A partial list of such minutiae may be found at [https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time]. The title text of the comic also references some of them.<br />
<br />
The statement that "it is impossible to know" is because Ponytail did not provide enough information in the question: She needed to specify the location and time zone of both observations, and possibly the exact values of T1 and T2 to the nanosecond. The statement "and a sin to ask" is obviously hyperbolic; it's an expression of the fact that determining the answer accurately can be complicated and programming systems that attempt to do this can be frustrating. Considering the restrictions imposed by relativity on two observers agreeing on the timing of events, it may be literally impossible to determine a value of T2 - T1 that is absolutely "correct" to arbitrary levels of precision.<br />
<br />
"T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]": This is a colloquial expression that riffs on the more common "God only knows" as well as "Hell knows and Heaven suspects", to suggest that the thing in question is even more unknowable than the usual type of unknowable thing, to the point where it may be an evil invention of the Devil designed to cause complexity and frustration for the people having to deal with it.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Ponytail is talking to Cueball.]<br />
:Ponytail: Event #1 happened at time T<sub>1</sub>.<br />
:Cueball: Okay.<br />
<br />
:Ponytail: Then event #2 happened at time T<sub>2</sub>.<br />
:Cueball: Mhmm.<br />
<br />
:Ponytail: How would you calculate how much time elapsed between T<sub>1</sub> and T<sub>2</sub>?<br />
<br />
:[The comic splits into two paths, each with a caption at the top.]<br />
<br />
:[Path 1, upper right panel]<br />
:Caption: Normal person:<br />
:Cueball: T<sub>2</sub> minus T<sub>1</sub>.<br />
<br />
:[Path 2, lower right panel]<br />
:Caption: Anyone who's worked on datetime systems:<br />
:[Cueball has his arms raised.]<br />
:Cueball: '''''It is impossible to know and a sin to ask!'''''<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
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[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Time]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2869:_Puzzles&diff=331082Talk:2869: Puzzles2023-12-18T23:57:04Z<p>BunsenH: </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 />
Aunt Alice is obviously a reference to the standard Alice / Bob / Eve crypto protocol characters. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.219|162.158.158.219]] 20:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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Anyone know if this is an actual scene from an actual children's book? Or is it just sort of an ad hoc representation of how these things might typically go? -- MeZimm [[Special:Contributions/172.68.2.107|172.68.2.107]] 20:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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:"Aunt Gertrude" suggests *The Hardy Boys* series of children's novels. I don't recall this particular scene. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.46|172.70.85.46]] 20:38, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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::I don't think Aunt Gertrude ever set Frank and Joe a puzzle herself, but it is certainly evocative of several puzzles in the Hardy Boys. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.151.136|172.71.151.136]] 21:07, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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:::Can anyone with stronger Hardy Boys knowledge add some examples? I never read the Hardy Boys books or similiar kid mysteries, so it's hard to imagine how thin those mysteries got, to be compared to "character name -> random letter/word association -> answer" as used here without some examples. [[User:Mneme|Mneme]] ([[User talk:Mneme|talk]]) 22:57, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Could someone add a category for "Alice and Bob" comics? Right now, the list seems to be 177, 1323, 2440, 2691, 2869. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.233.38|162.158.233.38]] 22:07, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I'm not convinced that [[2440]] should be in the list; at best, it's using similar naming patterns. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 22:48, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::Eve is clearly mentioned in the title text (Evangeline the Adulterator, which is clearly a reference to Eve from 177).<br />
::: ''Is'' Evangeline the Adulterator clearly a reference to Eve? [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 23:57, 18 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2869:_Puzzles&diff=331075Talk:2869: Puzzles2023-12-18T22:48:20Z<p>BunsenH: </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 />
Aunt Alice is obviously a reference to the standard Alice / Bob / Eve crypto protocol characters. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.219|162.158.158.219]] 20:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Anyone know if this is an actual scene from an actual children's book? Or is it just sort of an ad hoc representation of how these things might typically go? -- MeZimm [[Special:Contributions/172.68.2.107|172.68.2.107]] 20:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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:"Aunt Gertrude" suggests *The Hardy Boys* series of children's novels. I don't recall this particular scene. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.46|172.70.85.46]] 20:38, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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::I don't think Aunt Gertrude ever set Frank and Joe a puzzle herself, but it is certainly evocative of several puzzles in the Hardy Boys. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.151.136|172.71.151.136]] 21:07, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Could someone add a category for "Alice and Bob" comics? Right now, the list seems to be 177, 1323, 2440, 2691, 2869. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.233.38|162.158.233.38]] 22:07, 18 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I'm not convinced that [[2440]] should be in the list; at best, it's using similar naming patterns. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 22:48, 18 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2867:_DateTime&diff=3309862867: DateTime2023-12-17T16:39:04Z<p>BunsenH: /* Explanation */ rv misleading "hyperbolic" link</p>
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<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2867<br />
| date = December 13, 2023<br />
| title = DateTime<br />
| image = datetime_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 679x478px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = It's not just time zones and leap seconds. SI seconds on Earth are slower because of relativity, so there are time standards for space stuff (TCB, TGC) that use faster SI seconds than UTC/Unix time. T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a RUSSIAN DATE-TIME SYSTEM BETWEEN Tа AND Tб - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
[[Ponytail]] asks [[Cueball]] how to calculate the time elapsed between two instants. A Cueball not intimately familiar with the complexities of the way humans measure time naively assumes that this is given by the difference of the timestamps. A Cueball who is familiar panics and states that it is impossible to know, and further that it is forbidden to even ask the question.<br />
<br />
Randall's use of the term "DateTime systems" covers [https://metacpan.org/pod/DateTime any] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html number] [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.datetime?view=net-8.0 of] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html situations], and the complexities are hardly confined to any particular programming language, or indeed computers as a whole. Some of these complexities include time zones (and changes to time zones), the international date line, daylight saving time and differing observation (or non-observation) thereof in different areas (and changes to the observation of daylight saving time over time), leap days and leap seconds, etc. Another complexity is found in relativistic effects, in which the flow of time varies depending on how deep in a gravity well one is; {{w|Barycentric Coordinate Time}} and {{w|Geocentric Coordinate Time}} (in French, TCB and TCG respectively - the reference to TGC in the title text appears to be a typo) are time systems used for space missions and orbit calculations that handle this. A partial list of such minutiae may be found at [https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time]. The title text of the comic also references some of them.<br />
<br />
The statement that "it is impossible to know" is because Ponytail did not provide enough information in the question: She needed to specify the location and time zone of both observations, and possibly the exact values of T1 and T2 to the nanosecond. The statement "and a sin to ask" is obviously hyperbolic; it's an expression of the fact that determining the answer accurately can be complicated and programming systems that attempt to do this can be frustrating.<br />
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"T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]": This is a colloquial expression that riffs on the more common "God only knows" as well as "Hell knows and Heaven suspects", to suggest that the thing in question is even more unknowable than the usual type of unknowable thing, to the point where it may be an evil invention of the Devil designed to cause complexity and frustration for the people having to deal with it.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
:[Ponytail is talking to Cueball.]<br />
:Ponytail: Event #1 happened at time T<sub>1</sub>.<br />
:Cueball: Okay.<br />
<br />
:Ponytail: Then event #2 happened at time T<sub>2</sub>.<br />
:Cueball: Mhmm.<br />
<br />
:Ponytail: How would you calculate how much time elapsed between T<sub>1</sub> and T<sub>2</sub>?<br />
<br />
:[The comic splits into two paths, each with a caption at the top.]<br />
<br />
:[Path 1, upper right panel]<br />
:Caption: Normal person:<br />
:Cueball: T<sub>2</sub> minus T<sub>1</sub>.<br />
<br />
:[Path 2, lower right panel]<br />
:Caption: Anyone who's worked on datetime systems:<br />
:[Cueball has his arms raised.]<br />
:Cueball: '''''It is impossible to know and a sin to ask!'''''<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Time]]</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2867:_DateTime&diff=330861Talk:2867: DateTime2023-12-15T16:04:06Z<p>BunsenH: "hyperbolic"</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 />
Comics like this are why this wiki exists. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.100.172|172.70.100.172]] 23:30, 13 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:The time falsehoods gist linked above is a really good explanation about why a programmer might panic about calculating time. Especially the ones about calling "getCurrentTime()" twice in a row doesn't always mean the results are in the order you think they were called, or even different values. t2 might very well be the same or less than t1. It can be maddening. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.197.149|162.158.197.149]] 23:40, 13 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::The last item is the most important to me: ''Users prefer to use the local timezone.'' This causes so much frustration while browsing the web! [[File:PissedOff.gif]] --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.110.68|162.158.110.68]] 00:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::Worth noting that events can take place over long periods. A sunspot or an illness or a relationship doesn't happen at a single point in time, it takes place over days or weeks or longer. When did it "start"? Who knows? Also I miss calling TI4-1212 here in DC. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.27|172.70.175.27]] 01:39, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::Out of curiosity, could someone explain the item in that time falsehoods list that says "Months have either 28, 29, 30, or 31 days"? My guess is that it's a reference to their being more calendars in the world than Gregorian? But I'm not sure if there's more than that going on, there.[[User:ModelD|ModelD]] ([[User talk:ModelD|talk]]) 18:18, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::Isn't that true of Gregorian calendars? February has 28 or 29 depending on the year, AJSN have 30 and JMMJAOD have 31.[[User:Gavin|Gavin]] ([[User talk:Gavin|talk]]) 18:33, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::::It's saying that "months have either 28, 29, 30, or 31 days" is a falsehood. The first one that comes to mind is the [https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-switch.html switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar]: "In North America, for example, the month of September 1752 had only 19 days, as the day count went straight from September 2 to September 14". [[Special:Contributions/172.70.43.108|172.70.43.108]] 21:03, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::: (Ninjaed, with an actual example! But retrying reply anyway as it had other details.) But how many days had <insert your choice of month(s) during which a given system changed from Julian to Gregorian>? I think possibly, without looking up when each and every transition occured, below 20 days is possible. (As in the ''n''<sup>th</sup> of one month to the ''n''<sup>th</sup> of the next is less than 20 days, for the right month and a number of ''n''s. For other ''n''s, you can only actually count from the month before to the month ''after'' (two full calendar months), the daycount for that being below the typical bimonthly stretch of 59, 60, 61 or 62 days (under more standard conditions)... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.48|172.70.90.48]] 21:07, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Related insanity on Computerphile with Tom Scott: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 03:54, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Even with just Special Relativity, the question doesn't really make sense, because the answer will depend on the inertial reference frame. "Impossible to know and a sin to ask" is not a bad way to describe questions about non-invariants. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.189|162.158.154.189]] 08:09, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Is it even ''possible'' for two observers to agree on the answer and be sure that it's correct for both of them? [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 16:53, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I can see Randall's point, so for your average everyday programming I'd say "please use a library function instead of trying to do it yourself, or you'll end up like the guy in the lower frame..." --[[User:IByte|IByte]] ([[User talk:IByte|talk]]) 11:02, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
When I googled "DateTime" all I came up with was Python libraries, nothing about relativity or other effects. Is that what Randall's talking about? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.125|172.69.22.125]] 22:03, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Ideally, the standard library functions for a language would cover many of the "quirks" without the programmer having to worry about remembering the details. The required inputs for the functions would be sufficient to determine the necessary offsets. But programmers still have to be careful about some of the issues, and not all languages (and their libraries) are sufficient for all situations. When things like relativistic effects have to be taken into account, the usual languages (and their libraries) don't have the needed flexibility/complexity and precision. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 00:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::I should clarify, I'm not saying the Python library doesn't have functions for those quirks. I'm just asking: what does Randall mean when he says "DateTime" (two capital letters, no space, as per the comic title)? Is he talking about the Python library? Or something else I didn't find yet?[[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.163|172.69.134.163]] 02:51, 15 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::Doesn't matter. For one the usage of CamelCase in such cases is pretty much standard regardless of language and besides of that the problems he's talking about/implying are pretty much true for every language. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 10:58, 15 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The recently-added link for "hyperbolic" goes to a W'pedia page for "Hyperbolic motion (relativity)". This is obviously intended as a joke, but I'm not convinced that an unmarked joke like this is appropriate. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 16:04, 15 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2867:_DateTime&diff=330814Talk:2867: DateTime2023-12-15T00:18:02Z<p>BunsenH: </p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
Comics like this are why this wiki exists. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.100.172|172.70.100.172]] 23:30, 13 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:The time falsehoods gist linked above is a really good explanation about why a programmer might panic about calculating time. Especially the ones about calling "getCurrentTime()" twice in a row doesn't always mean the results are in the order you think they were called, or even different values. t2 might very well be the same or less than t1. It can be maddening. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.197.149|162.158.197.149]] 23:40, 13 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::The last item is the most important to me: ''Users prefer to use the local timezone.'' This causes so much frustration while browsing the web! [[File:PissedOff.gif]] --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.110.68|162.158.110.68]] 00:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::Worth noting that events can take place over long periods. A sunspot or an illness or a relationship doesn't happen at a single point in time, it takes place over days or weeks or longer. When did it "start"? Who knows? Also I miss calling TI4-1212 here in DC. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.27|172.70.175.27]] 01:39, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::Out of curiosity, could someone explain the item in that time falsehoods list that says "Months have either 28, 29, 30, or 31 days"? My guess is that it's a reference to their being more calendars in the world than Gregorian? But I'm not sure if there's more than that going on, there.[[User:ModelD|ModelD]] ([[User talk:ModelD|talk]]) 18:18, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::Isn't that true of Gregorian calendars? February has 28 or 29 depending on the year, AJSN have 30 and JMMJAOD have 31.[[User:Gavin|Gavin]] ([[User talk:Gavin|talk]]) 18:33, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::::It's saying that "months have either 28, 29, 30, or 31 days" is a falsehood. The first one that comes to mind is the [https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-switch.html switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar]: "In North America, for example, the month of September 1752 had only 19 days, as the day count went straight from September 2 to September 14". [[Special:Contributions/172.70.43.108|172.70.43.108]] 21:03, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::: (Ninjaed, with an actual example! But retrying reply anyway as it had other details.) But how many days had <insert your choice of month(s) during which a given system changed from Julian to Gregorian>? I think possibly, without looking up when each and every transition occured, below 20 days is possible. (As in the ''n''<sup>th</sup> of one month to the ''n''<sup>th</sup> of the next is less than 20 days, for the right month and a number of ''n''s. For other ''n''s, you can only actually count from the month before to the month ''after'' (two full calendar months), the daycount for that being below the typical bimonthly stretch of 59, 60, 61 or 62 days (under more standard conditions)... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.48|172.70.90.48]] 21:07, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Related insanity on Computerphile with Tom Scott: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 03:54, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Even with just Special Relativity, the question doesn't really make sense, because the answer will depend on the inertial reference frame. "Impossible to know and a sin to ask" is not a bad way to describe questions about non-invariants. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.189|162.158.154.189]] 08:09, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Is it even ''possible'' for two observers to agree on the answer and be sure that it's correct for both of them? [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 16:53, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I can see Randall's point, so for your average everyday programming I'd say "please use a library function instead of trying to do it yourself, or you'll end up like the guy in the lower frame..." --[[User:IByte|IByte]] ([[User talk:IByte|talk]]) 11:02, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
When I googled "DateTime" all I came up with was Python libraries, nothing about relativity or other effects. Is that what Randall's talking about? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.125|172.69.22.125]] 22:03, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Ideally, the standard library functions for a language would cover many of the "quirks" without the programmer having to worry about remembering the details. The required inputs for the functions would be sufficient to determine the necessary offsets. But programmers still have to be careful about some of the issues, and not all languages (and their libraries) are sufficient for all situations. When things like relativistic effects have to be taken into account, the usual languages (and their libraries) don't have the needed flexibility/complexity and precision. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 00:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2867:_DateTime&diff=330791Talk:2867: DateTime2023-12-14T16:53:45Z<p>BunsenH: observer agreement</p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
Comics like this are why this wiki exists. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.100.172|172.70.100.172]] 23:30, 13 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:The time falsehoods gist linked above is a really good explanation about why a programmer might panic about calculating time. Especially the ones about calling "getCurrentTime()" twice in a row doesn't always mean the results are in the order you think they were called, or even different values. t2 might very well be the same or less than t1. It can be maddening. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.197.149|162.158.197.149]] 23:40, 13 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::The last item is the most important to me: ''Users prefer to use the local timezone.'' This causes so much frustration while browsing the web! [[File:PissedOff.gif]] --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.110.68|162.158.110.68]] 00:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::Worth noting that events can take place over long periods. A sunspot or an illness or a relationship doesn't happen at a single point in time, it takes place over days or weeks or longer. When did it "start"? Who knows? Also I miss calling TI4-1212 here in DC. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.27|172.70.175.27]] 01:39, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
Related insanity on Computerphile with Tom Scott: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 03:54, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Even with just Special Relativity, the question doesn't really make sense, because the answer will depend on the inertial reference frame. "Impossible to know and a sin to ask" is not a bad way to describe questions about non-invariants. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.189|162.158.154.189]] 08:09, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Is it even ''possible'' for two observers to agree on the answer and be sure that it's correct for both of them? [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 16:53, 14 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I can see Randall's point, so for your average everyday programming I'd say "please use a library function instead of trying to do it yourself, or you'll end up like the guy in the lower frame..." --[[User:IByte|IByte]] ([[User talk:IByte|talk]]) 11:02, 14 December 2023 (UTC)</div>BunsenHhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2863:_Space_Typography&diff=330352Talk:2863: Space Typography2023-12-07T16:53:40Z<p>BunsenH: trivia section?</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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Are the dot's actually roughly in line with the distances?<br />
<br />
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.135.78|172.71.135.78]] 21:31, 4 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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Yes they are. I eyeballed with a screenruler and calculated <br />
<br />
* 0.40 AU for Mercury (Should be 0.37)<br />
* 0.72 AU for Venus (0.72)<br />
* 1 AU for earth (reference)<br />
* 1.54 AU for Mars (1.52)<br />
* 5.24 AU for Jupiter (4.98)<br />
<br />
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.94|162.158.202.94]] 21:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
But what size font?[[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]])<br />
:129 trillion pt, give or take. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.109|141.101.105.109]] 23:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:: Thanks for the decimal-point check. This is my worksheet: [https://i.postimg.cc/tRsmk3c6/Oprimistic-AU.gif Image] (open in new tab) [[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 02:13, 5 December 2023 (UTC) <br />
<br />
The number of "e"s between h and r required to make Saturn line up is about 59 (tested using 27.2 pt font) [[User:Digin|Digin]] ([[User talk:Digin|talk]]) 22:17, 4 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
: There are currently three different figures in the explanation for how many "e"s are needed. One says the title text is correct as written, brackets and ellipsis and all. One says 59. One says 85. They can't all be right. [[User:LtPowers|LtPowers]] ([[User talk:LtPowers|talk]]) 13:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:: "They can't all be right." Well, they can, if they don't correspond to the same thing. Are we using the font size from the comic, or from the hover text? [[User:Rexon Mobile|Rexon Mobile]] ([[User talk:Rexon Mobile|talk]]) 15:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:: I think the [...] has to be condensing what should be a longer title text. If is was "correct as written", that's an extra 3 dots that don't correspond to planets or anything in that region of space. So unless someone can find some objects in that part of space, I think "correct as written" should be vetoed. Also, can't use periods, colons, or semicolons -- would need to separate the main sentence from the title text addition using perhaps a dash or a comma (as long as a comma isn't as comet). [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 17:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::: The sentence is using only the dots that are part of 'i's. Although the comic's text refers to "dots" without specifying that restriction, we don't have to assume that 'j's and punctuation must also correspond to solar system bodies. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 20:06, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::: Who says only the dots over the i's are to be considered? The comic certainly doesn't specify that... it just says "use the dots as a map". Someone early on in the explanation made the ''assumption'' that only the dots on letters (i and j) could, but I don't believe that's a valid assumption. The fact that Randall doesn't end the sentence with a dot implies he knows that dot would count, so he didn't include it, though admittedly he did include a period on the title text. [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 16:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I’m curious whether randall brute forced this, trained a neural network, or did it by hand. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.179|172.70.175.179]] 22:31, 4 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:He would probably answer: [[2173: Trained a Neural Net]] [[Special:Contributions/172.70.42.217|172.70.42.217]] 22:45, 4 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Trying to prep an image of a comparison between actual orbits and the comic, but it's taking longer than i'd like <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">[[User:SomeoneIGuess|someone, i guess]]<sup>([[User talk:SomeoneIGuess|talk i guess]]&#124;[[Special:Contributions/SomeoneIGuess|le edit list]])</sup></span> 23:20, 4 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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I assume brackets around (i) are for the Saturn's rings? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.102.71|162.158.102.71]] 23:26, 4 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:Ooh, good call. Put that in. [[User:LtPowers|LtPowers]] ([[User talk:LtPowers|talk]]) 13:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I assumed it was just a way to emphasize the i. In the comic, they are bolded, but that is not possible in title text. - [[Special:Contributions/172.68.27.133|172.68.27.133]] 22:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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The long, rambling diatribe about literature seemed odd at first, but I think Charlotte Brontë would be proud she was able to represent Pluto and Charon. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.56|172.69.247.56]] 04:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:I don't understand. What's this about Charlotte Brontë? I don't see any reference to her in this comic.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.112|162.158.155.112]] 20:17, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:: It's a joke about umlauts. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.48|172.69.247.48]] 06:37, 6 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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For what it's worth, the asteroid belt spans the area covered by the word "measure" [[Special:Contributions/172.71.222.152|172.71.222.152]] 14:10, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:It would be nice if the word gaps were aligned that way, but there is no obvious alignment with either the edges of the asteroid belt, or the location of the Kirkwood gaps. The asteroid belt would stretch from the middle of the M in "measure" to the P in "space", with the most prominent Kirkwood gaps corresponding roughly to the letters A, R and E. [[User:Rexon Mobile|Rexon Mobile]] ([[User talk:Rexon Mobile|talk]]) 15:33, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:If he really wanted to represent the asteroids, I think he might have found a way to include a word like "riiii[...]iiight" so there would be lots of dots. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
::So '''a'''steroids are mostly between the As in "measure" and "space". Neat. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.114.63|172.71.114.63]] 19:18, 6 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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I added the table with the count of 'e's and adjusted the wording where it said 85 'e's from the Sun to say an extra 13 'e's in the word "here". I worked this out using an image from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#/media/File:Solar_System_distance_to_scale.svg) in PowerPoint but don't have upload privileges to post. Would be nice if someone could do that. [[User:Denver87|Denver87]] ([[User talk:Denver87|talk]]) 15:30, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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Amazingly (assuming my math was right so please someone check) the sun to scale would be very close to the size of the actual dots used to represents the planets. (Planets wouldn't be visible.)<br />
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I don't see why the mnemonic for the order of the planets would be relevant to this comic. Should it be removed? [[User:Rexon Mobile|Rexon Mobile]] ([[User talk:Rexon Mobile|talk]]) 17:40, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
: Absolutely. No relevance to the comic. removed <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">[[User:SomeoneIGuess|someone, i guess]]<sup>([[User talk:SomeoneIGuess|talk i guess]]&#124;[[Special:Contributions/SomeoneIGuess|le edit list]])</sup></span> 18:18, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:: I put it in because it was another mnemonic about the solar system. [*shrug*] [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 19:59, 5 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
: what?! it should at least be mentioned. this comic wouldn't exist in a world without well-known solar system mnemonics :D<br />
: [[User:Lordpipe|Lordpipe]] ([[User talk:Lordpipe|talk]]) 10:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:: Maybe in a "Trivia" section? [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 16:53, 7 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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The mnemonic scans as "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", with the one hiccup that the emph'''a'''sis lands on the second syl'''la'''ble of mea'''sure'''. --[[User:NotaBene|NotaBene]] ([[User talk:NotaBene|talk]]) 22:46, 6 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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I'm so glad "dark black" is specified in the description, lest anyone get confused by looking for light black instead. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.127.16|172.70.127.16]] 03:41, 7 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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Lots of people get lost in the inner solar system. That is, they get lost on Earth, and Earth is in the inner solar system. Yet I don't think this mnemonic would help them much. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.187|172.70.178.187]] 07:47, 7 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
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== what if? news! ==<br />
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I can't find it anywhere here, but there is now an official what if youtube channel with (currently) two videos uploaded! Also, I think the most recent one *isn't* a duplicate of one already covered in other what if? media! (yeah i know this isnt related to the comic but this is where people will see it)[[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.61|162.158.175.61]] 23:38, 5 December 2023 (UTC)Bumpf<br />
:No, it's been covered somewhere in one of Randall's books. But for anyone who's wondering, here's the link. https://www.youtube.com/@xkcd_whatif<br />
:: If it's been covered already, i find it strange that its first upload was November 30, 2023... <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">[[User:SomeoneIGuess|someone, i guess]]<sup>([[User talk:SomeoneIGuess|talk i guess]]&#124;[[Special:Contributions/SomeoneIGuess|le edit list]])</sup></span> 00:19, 6 December 2023 (UTC) <br />
::: A quick reading of the video's comment indicate that it is taken from the first book, so "the most recent one *isn't* a duplicate of one already covered in other what if? media!" is incorrect, no matter when the free access was added on Youtube. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.233.107|162.158.233.107]] 08:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)<br />
:::: Oops :) that's what the "I think" was there for [[Special:Contributions/172.71.30.241|172.71.30.241]] 23:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)Bumpf</div>BunsenH