Talk:1622: Henge

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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This "catch the sun in the butterfly net" subplot reminds me of novel by Polish author Kornel Makuszyński (and a children's films based on it) "The Two Who Stole the Moon" --JakubNarebski (talk) 08:43, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I had to laugh at this part of the explanation, and then remove it: "(In reality, the fact that the net is not melting or burning proves that the sun is nowhere near the net.)" Because in this comic they obviously catch the sun ion a net, as they later (after the catch) has put it on sale on Craiglist as per the title text. But the reason I laughed was that the only problem the writer of this sentence saw was that the sun would be too hot. What about it's size and gravity, if we are talking about the real sun... So yes if it where the real sun it would be a long way away to look this small (150 million km as usual, 8 light minutes). But in this comic it is between the trees and it is very small and cool. Only strange thing is that Beret Guy is not involved as his powers would explain this comic. But then again he would never do it for profit. --Kynde (talk) 09:23, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I disagree, there's no indication that this scheme actually worked. The Craigslist posting could just as easily have been written in advance, and the Title text could be the next line spoken, before the capture either succeeds or fails. Swordsmith (talk) 16:48, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
If the sun will be cold, it would also be dark. On the other hand, if the sun will have it's real temperature and be small, it would be exploding ... it's hard to remove just one property from Sun. -- Hkmaly (talk) 16:04, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

The "sun exposure" explanation is wrong. It's not about how it holds up under sunlight, it's about how much sunlight it gets. 198.41.235.101 17:21, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

The phrase "any given day" suggests that the two hypothetical trees will align with the sun on any day of the year arbitrarily chosen. A better way to say it would be "...Cueball realizes that the setting sun would line up with almost any two trees on at least one day of the year." (Anonymous user Ben) 108.162.214.239 16:43, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

If the observer is able to move freely, he can always position himself in such a way that the sun will set between the two trees on any give day. The only exception will be if the two trees and the sunset are aligned, i.e. the trees obscure the sun. Sysin (talk) 17:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

The line about "getting rich" got me thinking.... Only 5E-10 of the sun is gold [1] but the sun's mass is approx 2E30kg [2], so that's 1E21 kg of gold (about US $35 septillion at today's prices), and that's just one element, there are all sorts of precious metals in the sun's core... Sysin (talk) 17:19, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

^^(about US $35 septillion at today's prices)^^ - yes, but, once you had it (in a lump it'd be over 1% the mass of the Moon or perhaps 300 billion Mt Everests) in your posession and started to sell it, not anywhere near so much at tomorrow's prices... ;) 162.158.152.227 12:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The selling of Sun on craigslist is possibly a refernce to the woman who was selling land on the sun on ebay -- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3112111/What-blazes-Spanish-woman-selling-plots-land-sun-1-sues-eBay-breach-contract-auction-site-closes-down.html 162.158.255.46 17:30, 29 December 2015 (UTC)