3278: Vera Rubin Observatory

Vera Rubin Observatory

|< < Prev #3278 (July 29, 2026)

Title text: 'Spurious signals from the kitchen' is harder for an optical telescope than a radio one, but with enough determination and creativity, I believe it's possible.

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Explanation

This is one of 40 incomplete explanations: This page was created by an 8.4-meter telescope. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This shows a bingo card of various items discovered or potentially discoverable using the Vera Rubin Observatory. This is an astronomical observatory located in Chile, featuring the largest (as of 2026) digital astronomical camera; it began gathering scientific data shortly before the publication of this comic. However, the 'discoveries' get more and more ridiculous as the card goes on, gathering into ridicule.

A table of these is shown below:

#	Item	Explanation
1	Black hole tidally disrupting a star	A few days before this comic, a paper describing the detection of a Tidal Disruption Event was published. It was detected by the Palomar Observatory, not Rubin.
2	Planet nine	This is a hypothetical planet in the distant reaches of the Solar System whose gravitational effects could explain the orbits of some extreme trans-Neptunian objects. Before it was redesignated as a dwarf planet, Pluto was considered the ninth planet.
3	Remnants of a former Milky Way companion galaxy
4	10,000 new trans-Neptunian objects	At the time of this publication 380 new TNOs had been detected.
5	Object on interstellar trajectory
6	Star being eclipsed by weird object
7	Secret military satellite
8	Kuiper Belt object that's a surprising color
9	Mars-sized TNO	A TNO is a Trans-Neptunian Object
10	Local group supernova
11	Spurious signal from observatory kitchen	This is an allusion to an incident at the Parkes Observatory where their radio telescope detected signals that turned out to be radiation from a microwave oven. The title text points out that the Rubin observatory, housing an optical telescope rather than radio, would be unlikely to detect signals like this, but Randall thinks some clever technique could be used.
12	Glitch in alert system spams all astronomers
13	Space (free)
14	Earth-sized TNO
15	Defunct spacecraft
16	Surprising number of small galaxies
17	Neutron star merger
18	New supernova constraints on dark energy
19	New dwarf planet bigger than Pluto/Eris
20	Lost historical comet
21	5 million asteroids and comets	About 11,000 new asteroids have been discovered so far
22	50,000 near-Earth asteroids	Only 33 of the newly identified objects discovered so far are near-Earth objects.
23	Object likely to impact Earth
24	Vera Rubin herself (faked death, stole spaceship)	Vera Rubin died in 2016. However, this card takes a ridiculous conspiracy theory that she faked her death, and is still alive and well. This is obviously a ridiculous theory[citation needed].
25	Many very small dots	This would hardly be a helpful discovery in an observatory, as observatories are meant to make these 'small dots' visible. So discovering small dots would hardly be helpful. This may be a reference to the Petrova Line in Project Hail Mary, which is described as "space dots". Or maybe some variation on the little red dots discoverted by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Transcript

This is one of 30 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[A Bingo card is shown, with 25 squares. They are as follows:]

Black hole tidally disrupting a star.

Planet nine.

Remnants of a former Milky Way companion.

10,000 new trans-Newtonian objects.

Object on interstellar trajectory.

Star being eclipsed by weird object.

Secret military satellite.

Kuiper Belt object that's a surprising color.

Mars-sized TNO.

Local group supernova.

Spurious signal from observatory kitchen.

Glitch in alert system spams all astronomers.

Space (free).

Earth-sized TNO.

Defunct spacecraft.

Surprising number of small galaxies.

[Title:] Vera Rubin Observatory discoveries. Bingo Card.

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Discussion

somehow I feel that you would never get bingo. 29 July 15:54 2026

"Many very small dots" might be related to "Little red dots" that were discovered by JWST. Barmar (talk) 20:09, 29 July 2026 (UTC)
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