Editing 1973: Star Lore

Jump to: navigation, search

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==
Computers, chargers, and other electronic items often have status lights in various colors. In a dark room, these lights appear as pinpricks of light, similar to constellations. Presumably, Randall's room has many such items. This comic may be part of the [[:Category:My Hobby|My Hobby series]] in the sense that his room doesn't really look like that, rather, he claims it does for humor value. It's also not clear whether this refers to Randall's bedroom (typical US usage of "my room" refers to one's bedroom) or some other room Randall spends a good deal of time in. However, since a bedroom is generally the only room in which one might spend significant time in the dark, it seems very likely this is referring to Randall's bedroom.
+
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT running on a COMPUTER with TOO MANY STATUS LEDs - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
  
The comic's narrator is explaining how some of his lights remind him of stars, which gives him an opportunity to show off his knowledge of sci-fi trivia: "The Five Sisters" could be a reference to a pentagon-shaped constellation from Isaac Asimov's book ''Foundation's Edge'', though it could not have been 'known to the ancients' since it was less than 100 years old; though it could also be a somewhat more oblique reference to the Pleiades cluster (often called the Seven Sisters). It could also refer to the cluster of 5 lights next to the speech bubble, which is reinforced by the next bubble talking specifically about the bigger red light in the cluster. Interestingly, there are some green stars. Stars might look green due to a neighbouring star, but green stars are actually impossible due to the principle of {{w|black-body radiation}}. However, green status lights on electronics are common.{{Citation needed}}
+
Computers, chargers, and other electronic items often have status lights in various colors. In a dark room, these lights appear as pinpricks of light, similar to constellations. Presumably Randall's room has many such items, though this may be like [[My Hobby]] in the sense that his room doesn't really look like that but he claims it does for humor value. It's also not clear whether this refers to Randall's bedroom (typical US usage of "my room" refers to one's bedroom) or some other room Randall spends a good deal of time in.
  
In the title text, the narrator describes his {{w|smoke alarm}} status light as a pulsing variable star. A smoke alarm (which in ''modern'' Greek is "synagermós kapnoú"), whatever name might be derived from the ancient-Greek version) is a device that detects smoke, which would indicate a fire. These are commonly placed in houses as a safety precaution. Typically, many smoke alarms have a status light that blinks to assure that they are still functioning. A subtle blinking light is more clear in its (intermittent) activation than a steady one that might actually be inactive but reflecting external illumination, while a high-intensity photoemitter capable of being seen in near-direct daylight would be annoyingly bright when the lights are off at night.
+
The comic's narrator is explaining how some of his lights remind him of stars, which gives him an opportunity to show off his knowledge of sci-fi trivia: "The Five Sisters" is a reference to a pentagon-shaped constellation from Isaac Asimov's book ''Foundation's Edge'', though it could not have been 'known to the ancients' since it was less than 100 years old. It could also refer to the cluster of 5 lights next to the speech bubble, which is reinforced by the next bubble talking specifically about the bigger red light in the cluster.
 +
 
 +
Interestingly, there are some green stars. Stars might look green due to a neighbouring star, but {{w|Green star (astronomy)|green stars are actually impossible}} due to the principle of black body radiation.
 +
 
 +
In the title text, the narrator describes his {{w|smoke alarm}} status light as a pulsing variable star. A smoke alarm is a device that detects smoke, which would indicate a fire. These are commonly placed in houses as a safety precaution. Typically, many smoke alarms have a status light that blinks to assure that they are still functioning.
  
 
==Transcript==
 
==Transcript==
:[A black panel with 31 dots of different sizes and in various colors (white, red, yellow, blue and green). These bright dots are scattered around three white speech bubbles for off-panel speakers. Next to the top left corner of the first bubble, there are five dots close together. Two white, two yellow (one brighter than the other) and a red dot that is clearly larger than any of the other four.]
+
:[A black panel with 32 dots of different sizes and in various colors (white, red, yellow, blue and green). These bright dots are scattered around three white speech bubbles. Two of these are places in the middle of the panel, and has been connected with a white line panel indicating they belong to one person. The last speech bubble is much smaller and below and right of the other two. Both sets of bubbles have an arrow pointing towards the bottom of the panel, to the off-panel speakers. Next to the first speech bubbles top left corner there are five dots close together. Two white, two yellow (one brighter than the other) and a red dot that is clearly larger than any of the other four.]
 
:Person 1 (off panel): That cluster was known to the ancients as the Five Sisters.
 
:Person 1 (off panel): That cluster was known to the ancients as the Five Sisters.
 
:Person 1 (off panel): The red one is a supergiant and will probably explode within the next million years.
 
:Person 1 (off panel): The red one is a supergiant and will probably explode within the next million years.

Please note that all contributions to explain xkcd may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see explain xkcd:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

To protect the wiki against automated edit spam, we kindly ask you to solve the following CAPTCHA:

Cancel | Editing help (opens in new window)