2558: Rapid Test Results

RTR

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Title text: A solid red area with two white lines means that you have been infected with the anti-coronavirus, COVID+19, which will cure anyone you have close contact with.

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Explanation

Weather forecasting is an extremely difficult task, even if it is only for five days. In numerical models, extremely small errors in initial values double roughly every five days for variables such as temperature and wind velocity. So most meteorologists provide us with only a five-day forecast.

In this comic Randall takes this to the extreme by first showing a Five-Day Forecast and then progressing to five-month, year, million, billion and finally trillion-year forecasts, leading to weather patterns that we don't regularly see.

Since the first weather symbol is the same in all six rows, we can assume it indicates the weather today and not tomorrow, in a trillion years, etc. It is only in the second panel of each row that time has passed per the row's label. Consequently, the last column gives the predictions for four days, four months, ..., four trillion years from today.

When moving past the five-day prediction, the forecast is just a qualified guess based on the time of year. In a month it is Christmas as shown in the second panel of the second row. Then it is January and February so snow is likely, but certainly not something that happens on all days of a winter month.

Looking at the five-year forecast, guesses are made as to what the weather will be like at the same time of year. For these first three predictions the weather symbols are all of the same three types: Sun, clouds and some kind of precipitation, rain or snow, with the temperature ranging from 21 to 44 °F (-6.1 to 6.6 °C) - winter temperatures.

Then we go into the far future, jumping a million years from panel to panel. But still the weather symbols stay the same. In 3 million years, however, aliens (or advanced humans) attack with energy beams from flying saucers. They are gone a million years later. The temperature range remains the same across the panels except that it rises to 52 °F (11 °C), a possible reference to global warming, in one panel, and while the attack is going on it rises to 275 °F (135 °C).

Once we get to the billion-year mark it actually becomes more meaningful to try to predict the "weather", because now we reach the times when the Sun begins to change. Although the Sun will continue to burn hydrogen for about 5 billion years yet (while in its main sequence), it will grow in diameter as it begins to exhaust its supply of fuel. The core will contract to increase the temperature, and the outer layer will then compensate by expanding slightly. This is what is indicated in panels two and three, where the color of the Sun changes towards red as the surface becomes cooler as it expands away from the center of the Sun. The temperature will rise on Earth as indicated in the panels (105 °F = 40.5 °C and 371 °F = 188 °C). The temperature will get hot enough in about a billion years that the Earth's oceans will boil away.

Once it no longer has enough hydrogen, the Sun will expand into a red giant. This should not happen until around five billion years from now, but in the forecast it is indicated to happen in only three. Maybe this is Randall taking liberties to show what happens during this phase, which would not fit into a four-billion-year forecast. Alternatively it just indicates how uncertain these kinds of forecasts are, or a statement that we may not know for certain that it will take five not three billion years.

In any case, the fourth panel shows the temperature at Earth's position inside the red giant Sun. The color of the panel indicates that we are inside the Sun. The temperature is 71,488,106 degrees Fahrenheit (39,715,597 degrees Celsius). The current temperature of the center of the Sun is "only" 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius), and although that may rise by a factor of ten during helium fusion, that will only be at the very core and not out in the solar atmosphere reaching out to Earth. Here the temperature would only be of the order of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, since the Sun's outer temperature decreases as it increases its diameter. So this panel's temperature also makes little sense. It may involve some ambiguities regarding what the forecast means; the edge of the red giant Sun is predicted to be somewhere near the current orbit of Earth, but the position of the Earth could change. The most likely prediction at the moment is for Earth to move outward, but if the planet is engulfed by the Sun, it would spiral inward, and at some point fall apart. So in some sense "here" for the forecast could become a position deep inside the Sun, where core temperatures could reach 100 million Kelvin. The temperatures shown are unreasonably precise; they probably should have only two or at most three significant figures.

The red giant phase lasts only half a million years, so a billion years after the Sun has been a red giant its outer atmosphere will definitely have disappeared, leaving only a dim, cool white dwarf to cool down. Given Randall's version of this time schedule, then it will have had about a billion years to cool down, but would still likely be the brightest object in the sky as seen from where the Earth once was. It is not shown in the last panel, where we just see other stars of the Galaxy. The temperature is down to that of the background radiation. Today this radiation has a temperature of 2.72548 kelvin = -270.4245 °C = -454.7641 °F. That is a few degrees F colder than what is shown in the comic, which states the temperature is -452 °F = 4.26 kelvin. This higher temperature may have been chosen to reflect that even the light from other stars would increase the actual temperature.

In the last panel with trillions of years, we jump right past the Sun's red giant phase to a panel looking much like the one after five billion years with only other stars. Over the next three trillion years the stars become fewer and fewer and dimmer and dimmer as they run out of fuel and fewer new stars form. After four trillion years the background temperature decreases one degree to -453 °F as the universe keeps expanding and the wavelength of the radiation does the same, thus decreasing its temperature.

The title text is a play on comments referring to fast-changing weather on a more ordinary human timescale, such as Mark Twain's quip, "If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes."

A ten-day forecast was used in 1245: 10-Day Forecast. In 1379: 4.5 Degrees, Randall looked at the weather over long periods of time as well. in 1643: Degrees he addressed Celsius vs. Fahrenheit for measuring temperature.

Image using Celsius

There is a different user-made version for the picture, using Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, in this image link.

Transcript

[A grid with six rows of five columns, where each row is labeled to the left. For each of the 30 squares a temperature is given in Fahrenheit at the top left. The rest of the square represents the weather as in a weather forecast (or some other relevant items for the comic), mainly in bright colors. Below are the six labels given above each of their five weather symbols with temperature given below these symbols description.]

Your 5-day forecast

[A bright yellow sun.]

38°F

[A grey cloud.]

41°F

[A grey cloud with six lines of blue raindrops below.]

36°F

[A grey cloud in front of a yellow sun.]

40°F

[Same as Today]

44°F

Your 5-month forecast

[Same as Today]

38°F

[A green Christmas tree with red presents beneath it.]

29°F

[A grey cloud with four snowflakes below.]

21°F

[Same as Next 2 Months]

24°F

[Same as Tomorrow]

35°F

Your 5-year forecast

[Same as Today]

38°F

[Same as Tomorrow]

25°F

[Same as Today]

36°F

[Same as Next 2 Days]

37°F

[Same as Today]

41°F

Your 5-million-year forecast

[Same as Today]

38°F

[Same as Today]

52°F

[Same as Tomorrow]

40°F

[Two red flying saucers (with bright domes) are shooting energy beams downwards. One of the beams seems to impact with something at the bottom of the panel, which then explodes. Two plumes of smoke rises up from below, drifting to the right.]

275°F

[Same as Next 3 Days]

40°F

Your 5-billion-year forecast

[Same as Today]

38°F

[A larger orange sun.]

105°F

[A very large red sun.]

371°F

[A pale yellow panel with no drawing.]

71,488,106°F

[A night sky with many bright stars.]

-452°F

Your 5-trillion-year forecast

[Same as Today]

38°F

[Same as Next 4 Billion Years]

-452°F

[A night sky with many stars.]

-452°F

[A night sky with fewer not so bright stars.]

-452°F

[A night sky with few dim stars.]

-453°F

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Discussion

As a Brit, I had to go away look up College Ruled, which I thought might be more exotic than it actually turns out to be, but a nice set on the whole. Someone is doubtless on top of the Explanation editing already (despite being unusually early, on the clock, as published!) so I'll let them have the fun. 172.70.90.71 16:59, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

As a fellow Brit, I share your pain at these revolting colonials mangling our mother tongue. Why not just call it "narrow ruled" like us? Kev (talk) 19:23, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

As an American, I can say that the reason that medium (or "college") ruled paper is not known as "narrow ruled" is because they are two different things. College ruled paper had lines spaced 9/32" (~7.1 mm) apart. Narrow ruled paper has those lines only 1/4" (6.35 mm) apart. --172.70.35.70 19:53, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Narrower, or less narrow, you can have better descriptions of line separation than "college". Like picas or other measurements (fractuons of inches or metric, as now given).

My first thought was that "College Ruled" was an inconstant ruling (e.g. alternating wide and narrow spacings, perhaps for handwriting guides to appropriately constrain ascender and descender strokes) or some variation akin to 'blank' sheet-music paper with staves*. If it's just comparatively narrower (than..? ...all lined paper that is wider-spaced?) then it was not obvious without knowing the 'local' naming convention.

Whatever the standards we have here (I'm sure it's measurement-based, or possibly how many lines the sheets have crammed onto them) the presence or absence of a left-hand margin was the obvious big difference at some point between Primary/Secondary ('school') education and Tertiary ('college'). I think when young we had to rule our own margins, then at some point the books became preruled, but maybe it wasn't that way at all. By university, you just bought a pad of whatever paper you wanted/was on sale, though, for everything but lab-books. ;)

(* - One variation of that we had in school was alternating 'normal' exercise-book lining with stave-marked paper, but I only had that in music classes where (because it was heavy on 'foundation' history of music stuff) we hardly did anything on the stave-ruled paper and instead were committed to writing out dictations of how monks developed notations to codify their religious chantings, etc, etc. It was not a very memorable class, for any of the good reasons you'd hope, but the 'special exercise books' (as also the mathematics ones with one page standard-lined, the next graph-papered, though the latter were at least usefully used more, and not just for doodling!) were one of the things I can still recall after 40-or-more years...) 172.70.86.22 20:49, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I thought the joke in the title text was that while COVID-19 infects nearby people, COVID+19 does the opposite, uninfecting people. If it annihilates COVID-19 like antimatter, that will release enormous amounts of energy, likely destroying the people involved. If you're disintegrated, it's of little help that you've been "cured". Barmar (talk) 20:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm ... infected person is supposed to have up to 100 billion of virions ... that's still less than 0.1mg ... but that would be about 9GJ or 2 ton of TNT ... yeah, I don't think it would matter they are cured. -- Hkmaly (talk) 22:34, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

2 tons of TNT easily explain the "curing everybody in close contact", though 162.158.92.101 08:45, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Would Covid+19 maybe have a positive Effect on health, because it is positive instead of negative? And would a Covid+-0 be neutral? In any case it is not stated that it has a negative effect or that it gets annihilated when meeting Covid-19, so I changed the last paragraph a bit. -- 256.256.256.256 (talk) 08:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Jeez, why is Randall so afraid to say "coronavirus"? If I didn't read the last line I would have thought this was about pregnancy tests! I've never seen a covid test before...- 172.70.178.113 09:49, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

a) Subtle humour that creeps up on you? (N.B., the following points suggest not, but YMMV.)

b) Didn't think it necessary. I've not seen a Covid LFT, either, but it seemed obvious from topicality, and if the last line would have been riffing on pregnancy I'd have been even more surprised...

b).i.: Actually, if it had been a pregnancy-tester joke, I'd expect it to be a sort of "conception reveal party" moment, and maybe congratulating Randall and his partner!

c) He actually does say Covid (more than he ever did in the infection-to-stop-infection comic!) and I don't think he's scared of saying it, but perhaps at some level (though he's probably failing to do this) he's just not wanting to BE IN THE FACE of some people who can't handle it.

c).i.: Though not making comics even vaguely related to viruses or testing would be the solution to that. Which is clearly not his chosen path as he still is pushing what some (not me!) would call a blue-pill agenda.

...it's all eye-of-the-beholder. I've had other comics bewilder me (or at least I wandered off down the wrong garden-path at first), and looks like that happened to you. Congratulations, you're (presumably) only human! 162.158.159.11 10:45, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Apart from the title text, this comic actually could apply equally to pregnancy tests (up until now the most commonly available type of lateral flow test kit) or any other single-reaction lateral flow test kit. I presume CoVID rapid antigen test kits are in the news where Randall is, because of the announcement that they would soon be made available free of charge in the US, on the day the comic was published (Citation needed). In the future when they fall out of circulation or other types of tests become more common, the joke will still stand. 108.162.249.15 12:35, 23 December 2021 (UTC) edit: and I missed the fact that the last panel actually has the word COVID. Ahh well. 108.162.250.182 12:49, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

First of all so many comics have been about covid-19 (this was no. 87 and the second this week, hope we get a corona free x-mas comic tomorrow!). Secondly the word Covid is used in the main comic, not just the title text, just as the original poster says: "Click to expand COVID menu". So no issue for Randall to mention Corona/covid. He just did not mention it specifically in the previous. --Kynde (talk) 18:22, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes the image is more familiar from pregnancy tests, but the repeated title says "Rapid Test". Around here that's what we call the at-home Covid tests that a LOT of people are learning to use right now before their holiday travel. It's in contrast with PCR tests, which take hours to days and require special laboratory equipment. 172.70.110.171 22:43, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Missing test results

Am I the only one, who is missing at least two more test results? Like:

• ≠ not positive
• ± positive and negative

--162.158.91.148 11:06, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I concur, maybe expand to

• Constructive/Deconstructive interference from the approximately positive results
• Taking a rapid test 14 hours after submission of a college module provides a digital read out of your grade
• White Lines (Don't Don't Do It) plays when you move within 2 metres of a covid-infected individual
• Blurred Lines plays when an antivaxxer gets a vaccine Kev (talk) 21:40, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

The third panel refers to the mathematical symbol for "approximately" (≈). The long-winded explanation in the table misses the point. -- 172.68.234.233 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The third panel is literally written up (first column) as "2 wavy lines resembling the approximately equal sign" (with wikilink). The long-windedness that follows in the third column is over-analysing, maybe, but the 'core' point isn't missed at all. You are of course free to edit, so long as you're aware that so are others.

PS, it is polite to sign Talk-page additions (with the four tildes, or two dashes and four tildes if clicking the right button above)) when adding a comment. HTH, HAND. 172.70.162.147 15:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
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