Talk:1637: Salt Mine

I don't think that the exotic restaurants relate, here. As well, I think that Ponytail says "Yes, that is definitely why" because she is saying "Yes, we definitely built the detector here to block out cosmic rays, and definitely *not* to eat the delicious salt." You know what I mean? Thoughts? 173.245.54.21 06:46, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree. The comment about restaurants only adds to the potential confusion around the comic. 108.162.216.59 08:05, 1 February 2016 (UTC)BK201

The science facility in a salt mine made me think of Portal 2. Now i'm wondering if the IMB served as an inspiration for Portal 2. 141.101.104.25 08:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

"The title text is intended to be absurd, and thus humorous." GLaDOS, is that you? (I can't help. As I read this sentence I imagined it spoken by GLaDOS...) Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 08:49, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Could the salt eating be a reference to TOS: The Man Trap? 162.158.90.159 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Yes, definitely. I came here looking for the name is the episode; it really does seem like the scientists are (or are under the control of) salt-eating creatures masquerading as mere scientists. In fact, the hover text corroborates with that interpretation: "this one" could be a particle - "this particle is a little bland. Pass the saltshaker?" - a creature that eats this much salt could also eat cosmic rays... ~~ 188.114.97.127 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Maybe "salt" should taste somewhat appropriate about flavor of subatomic particles and randomness (cryptography) too. Rotten Brain 162.158.150.221 14:35, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Even assuming that's 'low grade' rock-salt, mostly inert rock, the intake would probably exceed the regulatory advice (6g/day over here, I think, but I'd have to look it up to be sure - and that's mostly used up/exceeded with the hidden salt in prepared meals!). I think that's because of the danger of the sodium excess (hence sodium-free salts, sometimes called "salt-free salt" as it has a different formula to NaCl, sold as being a healthier option). But raw salt ingestion like this would (assuming it doesn't already overload the tastebuds, perhaps because of an extremely over-riding craving?) likely also create problems of extreme and active dehydration... i.e. like being mummified from the inside-out.

I do know that there are cravings for minerals (coal, clays, chalk, etc), which can be life-long habits without too many apparent ill effects (perhaps tooth-wearing, primarily) - if not just a strange reaction to pregnancy. If anyone knows of a similarly extreme salt-craving, though, it would probably be worth linking it in so I'm not left thinking that it's a typical "taken to extremes" XKCD comic. 162.158.152.89 16:42, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

The lines about salt at the end of the explanation ("This explanation should be taken with a grain of salt. This comic should be taken with a grain of salt. Salt.") are the best part, not only of the explainer page but of this comic. The only time I laughed, and I laughed aloud. 162.158.252.227 17:40, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

When I was a child, I would sneak rock salt crystals from the bags used for the water softener and eat them. They tasted *really* good. To me, this comic is calling out that childish desire to eat rock salt, because boy is it tasty. Nothing more. 108.162.214.203 18:31, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I am still very confused by this strip. Why was it necessary to build a particle detector to gain access to the delicious salt? And why does the first speaker assume it was to 'block' cosmic rays? The current explanation says "as is the case with the real life IMB", but surely particle detectors do not block cosmic rays, they detect them. 162.158.152.149 20:03, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

The IMB was not build to look for cosmic rays, but for local proton decay. The cosmic rays would be a disturbance and was wished to be avoided. I have tried to make it clearer in the explanation. --Kynde (talk) 20:49, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

The Cow Tools of xkcd? - 199.27.129.5 20:33, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I like the comment J-beda made when changing what I wrote about neutrinos:

"Neutrinos do not pass through EVERYTHING otherwise they could not be detected."

True they can be stopped individually, but hey it takes about a light year of lead to get the chance of a neutrino being stopped up to 50%... So I would say yes they pass through everything, but once in a blue moon one of them may be stopped (and detected if hitting one of our few detectors that can detect neutrinos). It was 8 neutrinos detected out of the roughly 10⁵⁸ neutrinos emitted by the supernova... Or as Randall wrote in his What if Lethal Neutrinos:

Neutrinos are ghostly particles that barely interact with the world at all. Look at your hand—there are about a trillion neutrinos from the Sun passing through it every second. [Night and day since the Earth rarely stops any of them].

In the first foot note [1] he also writes:

Statistically, my first neutrino interaction probably happened somewhere around age 10. [By that time 315,360,000,000,000,000,000,000 neutrinos would have passed through his hand, I guess multiplying with the number of hands areas of your body will not really matter...] :-)

So true there will be some neutrinos that react making my statement that they pass through everything completely wrong :-p --Kynde (talk) 22:12, 1 February 2016 (UTC)