Editing 2414: Solar System Compression Artifacts
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone.
Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | + | {{incomplete|Created by a MISSING PHYSICAL PHENOMENON LOST DUE TO HIGH COMPRESSION. More on the title text - dark matter and dynamic range issues need to be explained in more detail. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | |
− | + | ''{{w|Voyager 1}}'' is a [[:Category:Space probes|space probe]] launched by the United States in 1977. Originally designed to study the outer planets of the {{w|Solar System}}, it is now several decades into an extended mission beyond Neptune. The Voyager probe has made history for passing many milestones of our solar system. | |
− | + | When images are compressed by a {{w|lossy compression}} format (e.g. {{w|JPEG}}), visual artifacts are created. Randall here is suggesting that the probe has passed the artifacts as if the artifacts were an actual feature of the solar system rather than a consequence of our technology. The banding lines he has drawn are commonly seen in old images with low bit depth built by software that doesn't implement a technique to remove them called dithering. However, the slightly discolored regions often created by compression could also be a metaphor for the region of space that that solar radiation prevents from being a complete vacuum: because there is some gas in these areas, they may reflect light, causing banding lines when their density is high enough. Voyager 1 has passed through numerous such boundaries, as mentioned previously in [[1189: Voyager 1]]. | |
− | + | Compression artifacts are often caused by large changes in coloration over a short distance, and Randall could feel that the drastic change in coloration from bright sun to dark vacuum could be creating a compression artifact around the Sun, somewhat like the Sun looking blurry due to low video quality. However, there is no definite region where solar radiation stops, only a boundary where it fades to a level lower than that of radiation from other sources. Some compression methods result in compression artifacts that behave in the same way, fading as the distance from the color boundary increases but never completely disappearing. | |
− | + | The 'solar system' in the snapshot appears to be a 4-bit greyscale-plane at a more pixelated level than the image given. It can be picked out as being in 16 'banded' levels from the brightest (closest zones, within this image, to the Sun) to darkest (the furthest illustrated expanses, heading into interstellar space), with irregular or non-trivial transitional edges but no obvious or dominant dithering/speckling or 'noise'. The Voyager image (and track) is overlaid at finer resolution in the white 'line drawing' format. | |
− | The | + | The 'apparent pixels' seem to be at a resolution close to the order of 1AU². A rough count of the pixelation boundaries from the craft to the leftmost edge, plus an additional allowance for the likely radius of the 'sun' (or, rather, its solar wind density, or similarly represented measure) still beyond the edge, is surprisingly close to to the ~150 AU current distance of Voyager 1. |
− | + | For perspective, the Earth is then within/adjacent to the single lower-resolution 'pixel' that holds the Sun, and as of the comic's date of publication, over on its far side. But the Sun itself is not even visible, as the bright ball of pixels representing its environs is centered off the left side of the comic. It would be a dot so far beyond the left boundary of the image that Neptune, at around 30 'pixels' distance, may only ''just'' be placed within the leftmost extreme of this view at its own rightmost point in its orbit. The overlaid Voyager 'sketch' (in its more native resolution/bit-depth and antialiasing) stretches out over maybe a dozen such low-res pixels/AUs; this suggests that the viewpoint of the observer is close to the Voyager craft, making the craft appear large by comparison. | |
+ | |||
+ | Randall humorously implies in this comic that exiting the compression artifacts is the best way to determine whether an object has left the Solar System, which is obviously not correct.{{Citation needed}} | ||
+ | |||
+ | In the title text the mystery of the undetectable {{w|Dark Matter}}, which current mainstream physics supposes makes up most of the mass in the universe, is explained since this dark matter is rendered completely undetectable by our spacetime codec's {{w|dynamic range}} issues (thus brushing against the theme of a simulated universe). When an area is too dark or too bright for a system (computer simulation, screen, camera, etc.), it is shown as either absolute black or absolute white, respectively. There might be details in that area that is outside of the dynamic range of the system, but the system is unable to handle the inputs. The title text is saying that dark matter is too dark{{Citation needed}} to be properly rendered in detail. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Artifacts are evident in [[1683: Digital Data]], and mentioned in the title text of [[331: Photoshops]]. | ||
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
Line 26: | Line 32: | ||
:[Caption below the panel]: Milestone: ''Voyager'' has passed through the streaming video compression artifacts that mark the edge of the solar system | :[Caption below the panel]: Milestone: ''Voyager'' has passed through the streaming video compression artifacts that mark the edge of the solar system | ||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} | ||
[[Category:Space probes]] | [[Category:Space probes]] |