3311: Planet Database
| Planet Database |
 Title text: Atmospheric transmission spectroscopy has revealed that the sunsets from the observatory are really pretty. |
Explanation[edit]
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This is one of 54 incomplete explanations: |
Cueball and Megan are browsing through a list of potentially habitable planets. Planetary habitability depends on many factors, including having a temperature range in which water is a liquid, having a solid surface, and having an atmosphere.
The punch line comes when Megan finds a planet with the correct habitable factors. Alas, she is looking at our Earth, which orbits our Sun (which is also called Sol). This is similar to 1231: Habitable Zone, where an astronomer fails to realize that he is looking at (a reflection of) Earth before he gets excited about its habitability. (Megan could also be looking at Venus, which is within the Sun's habitable zone, has a mass 81% that of Earth—which rounds to 1 Earth mass—and has an atmosphere. However, Venus is decidedly not habitable.)
The title text expands on this joke by saying that the observatory is looking at sunsets instead of planets. It's not clear if this is being done with the observatory's instruments or just with people's eyes, which act spectroscopically since we can see different colors. Light at sunset (or sunrise) travels through more of the atmosphere before reaching the ground, so more of its blue color gets scattered and we see more red and orange colors — making it colorful, and pretty.
Transcript[edit]
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This is one of 37 incomplete transcripts: |
- [Megan is sitting at her desk looking at a laptop. Cueball stands behind her.]
- Megan: I'm browsing the list of potentially habitable planets.
- Megan: This one is promising!
- Megan: Wait, no, the surface is thousands of degrees.
- [Similar panel.]
- Megan: This one could be a water planet!
- Megan: ... But it's not dense enough to be solid.
- Cueball: Yeah, that's a mini-Neptune.
- [Megan points at the laptop screen.]
- Megan: This one could be habitable if it has a greenhouse effect!
- Megan: Sadly, spectroscopy shows no atmosphere.
- Cueball: Aww.
- Megan: Here's one in the habitable zone, 1 Earth mass, with an atmosphere!
- Cueball: Ooh, what star does it orbit?
- Megan: ...Sol.
- Cueball: Dammit.
Discussion
i THINK they would have known if they were looking at earth or not... probably? 73.132.167.116 20:38, 14 October 2026 (UTC)
- I think this has happend before somehow 107.1.219.44 20:41, 14 October 2026 (UTC)
- They aren't 'looking at Earth', so much as trawling through the database of all known planets. Selecting those that are known to have the right qualities or deselecting those that are known to not have the right qualities, to cut the whole database down to a short-list of useful ones for the study's purpose.
- Among the "known planets" is Earth, of course. The name, and the precise star around which any given planet orbits, isn't a useful selection criteria, so it's only when looking for more detail (in this case, the name of the planet's star... they haven't even looked at the name/ID of the planet yet) that they realise - in the absence of there somehow being a Counter-Earth in the database - the actual nature of the planet record. 78.151.45.31 21:23, 14 October 2026 (UTC)
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