Editing 2662: Physics Safety Tip

{{comic
| number    = 2662
| date      = August 22, 2022
| title     = Physics Safety Tip
| image     = physics_safety_tip.png
| titletext = In general, avoid exposure to any temperatures, pressures, particle energies, or states of matter that physicists think are neat.
}}

==Explanation==
This is another one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category:Tips|Tips]], this time a General Physics Safety Tip. 

Additionally, this comic serves to [[:Category: Book promotion|promote]] his new book as it states that this flow chart is taken from the ''[[What If? 2]]'' book, and the link to his promotion page is written in the comic: [https://xkcd.com/what-if-2/  xkcd.com/what-if-2/]. The what if? blog as well as both books gives answers to odd or strange science questions. Clicking on the link in the comic will take you to the link. Clicking anywhere on the comic will do the same. It has been a general thing for Randall to [[Header text#2014-07-23_-_what_if.3F_book_tour|comment]] on the fact that he does not know how to make only part of an image into a link, which he also [[Header text#2022-08-11_-_Preorder_What_if.3F_2_-_with_image|did recently]] in the [[Header text|header text]] .

In general, there are very narrow ranges of temperature, pressure, and chemical makeup humans can survive in. Human physicists necessarily spend all their time in these conditions and think of them as ordinary. The physics of these ordinary conditions has already been thoroughly studied, which makes them now familiar and boring. Instead physicists get excited to study more extreme conditions, most of which would be quickly lethal to humans — anything from the event horizons of black holes to the vacuum of space, to volumes where charged particles traveling near the speed of light are forced to collide, and many, many things in between. Thus, extreme conditions are very dangerous for most organisms. Even for especially resilient organisms, such as tardigrades, there is a point past which they will [https://what-if.xkcd.com/141/ stop being biology and start being physics], in which case their resilience will not save them. Thus if a physicist is excited about something, it likely exists in circumstances where your own existence — as well as other life — would meet an end. One (partial) exception is particle beams; {{w|Anatoli Bugorski|people can stick their heads in particle beams and survive — but not unscathed}}. Also, physicists used to be excited about (particles produced by) cosmic rays before they had powerful accelerators.

==Transcript==
:[A larger header, with a gray sup header below, are written above a flowchart:]
:<big>General Physics Safety Tip:</big>
:<font color="gray">(From ''what if 2'', xkcd.com/whatif2)</font>

:[The flowchart consists of three rectangular boxes that are placed above, to the right and below a diamond box. There are three arrows. One is going down from the top box to the top corner of the diamond. The other two goes from the right and bottom corner of the diamond to the other two boxes. These two arrows has labels written next to them. All four boxes has text in them.]
:Top box: Should I stand near this thing?
:Diamond box: Are physicists excited about it?
:Label on left arrow: No
:Left box: Maybe
:Label on bottom arrow: Yes
:Bottom box: No

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Flowcharts]]
[[Category:Tips]]
[[Category:Book promotion]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:What If?]]