Editing 1365: Inflation

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 12: Line 12:
 
She compares this to the nature of a microscope - which optically expands a small image, just like the universe has done to itself. Ponytail is impressed by it until Megan looks at the image captured by the {{w|Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe|Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)}}.
 
She compares this to the nature of a microscope - which optically expands a small image, just like the universe has done to itself. Ponytail is impressed by it until Megan looks at the image captured by the {{w|Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe|Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)}}.
  
βˆ’
The concept of an {{w|Metric expansion of space|expanding universe}} is sometimes explained by the "balloon model", where the two-dimensional skin represents our three-dimensional universe and the inflation of the balloon represents expansion over time. But instead of showing a balloon, [[Randall]] uses a basketball, which cannot inflate as easily as a balloon.
+
The concept of an {{w|Metric expansion of space|expanding universe}} is sometimes explained by the "balloon model", where the two-dimensional skin represents our three-dimensional universe and the inflation of the balloon represents expansion over time. But instead of showing a balloon [[Randall]] uses a basketball which can not inflate that much like a balloon.
  
βˆ’
The elliptical {{w|Mollweide projection}} of this {{w|Cosmic microwave background|cosmic microwave background (CMB)}} image of the sky makes the map look a bit like a basketball. Randall further exaggerates this by superimposing the traditional curves that are visible on a basketball and the {{w|Spalding (sports equipment)|Spalding}} company logo over the original image available at the bottom here. The mentions of scale and basketballs in this comic might be a reference to the "If the Earth were the size of a basketball" comparison, similarly to [[1074: Moon Landing]] and [[1515: Basketball Earth]].
+
The elliptical {{w|Mollweide projection}} of this {{w|Cosmic microwave background|cosmic microwave background (CMB)}} image of the sky makes the map look a bit like a basketball. Randall emphasizes this by superimposing the traditional curves that are visible on a basketball and the {{w|Spalding (sports equipment)|Spalding}} company logo over the original image available at the bottom here.
  
 
Megan and Ponytail are both disconcerted by this, and the title text references the 1996 basketball movie ''{{w|Space Jam}}'' by promising images of main characters Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny if the polarization of the view is changed to {{w|B-modes|E-mode}}, a type of polarization of the cosmic background radiation arising from the radiation scattering off non-uniform plasma.
 
Megan and Ponytail are both disconcerted by this, and the title text references the 1996 basketball movie ''{{w|Space Jam}}'' by promising images of main characters Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny if the polarization of the view is changed to {{w|B-modes|E-mode}}, a type of polarization of the cosmic background radiation arising from the radiation scattering off non-uniform plasma.

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)