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Gravitational Square Wave

|< < Prev #3317 (October 28, 2026)

Title text: Depending on the energy deposition I can manage, it might also be a fun prank on the rest of the Earth.

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Explanation

Gravitational waves were predicted by general relativity, years before scientists were able to directly observe them. Significant gravitational waves can only be created by very heavy objects (like neutron stars) moving very quickly. Most such oscillations are binary pulsars whose oscillations create sine waves, which are smooth.

Fourier proved that sine waves of various amplitudes and frequencies can be summed to approximate any function. The comic diagram illustrates how a series of binary gravitational-wave oscillators can be stacked to produce a square wave. Square wave gravitational waves would be very unlikely to be found naturally, and observing such waves would surprise scientists. However, one would not be able to manuver black holes or neutron stars at all, much less in a manner to produce a gravitational wave with the level of accuracy to functionally work as a square wave.

The title text implies that the waves could be given enough energy to destroy or otherwise significantly affect the Earth.

Transcript

[A diagram is pictured, showing a sine wave progressively being modified into a square wave using progressively smaller pairs of black holes, then neutron stars.]

[Caption below the panel:]

My Hobby: Arranging binary black holes and rotating neutron stars to produce a gravitational square wave, as a prank on gravitational wave astronomers

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This Week's Explanation for Improvement

As part of the Explanation Improvement Project, each week the community selects one older, stagnant, or otherwise neglected explanation to expand and polish together. This week's pick is comic 1334: Second, you can help us by editing its explanation!

To get involved with the project, you can also nominate an explanation that you think should be improved, or vote on current nominations!

Second

|< < Prev #1334 (February 24, 2014) Next > >|

Title text: Let me just scroll down and check behind that rock. Annnnd... nope, page copyright year starts with '19'. Oh God, is this a WEBRING?

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Explanation

Welcome to This Week's Explanation for Improvement! Anyone is encouraged to help explain comic 1334: Second; click here to get started! If you are new to wiki editing, you can read our editing FAQ for guidance. Here are some suggestions for improving this explanation:   Copyedit the entire explanation!   Improve the explanation of "webrings", mentioned in the title text   Maybe we could add the newer developments in the 12 years after this comic was posted, such as the AI summaries and the enshittification of Google results

Google is a popular search engine,^{[citation needed]} and its searching algorithms are widely regarded as the most accurate and useful. If your search terms were sufficiently detailed, you will be able to find what you were looking for on the first page. Having to view the second page indicates your search terms were too vague or the answer to your query doesn't exist. When the search results typically number in the tens of millions (or more; in fact, more popular search results are in the billions), only the very first results relate to the user's real query, so the second page is typically not helpful for the issue.

Cueball, after failing to find his query in the first page of results, takes a curious peek at the second page. This is represented by a not-at-all subtle metaphor in which Cueball is about to wander into a sun-baked desert. According to the title text, he finds one vaguely relevant webpage, but the copyright starting with '19' (i.e. from the 1990s or older), means that it's probably too old to be of any use.

The title text refers to webrings. Webrings consist of multiple websites that are connected together through links, usually with a common theme. They connect from one website to the next, eventually leading back to the starting site. They were popular in the 1990s as a form of web directory, popularized by the titular "The Webring" (later WebRing) and typically curated by a 'ringmaster'. Web directories in general fell out of use with the rise of search engines, so seeing a webring could mean a site has not been updated since then. Yahoo acquired WebRing in 1999 as part of its acquisition of GeoCities and rebranded the service to Yahoo! WebRing in 2000, leaving ringmasters "angry" in part because their customizable homepages had been replaced by the design of Yahoo! WebRing. Taking off in the early 2020s, people have been creating new webrings, often in connection to the web hosting service Neocities, launched in 2013 and inspired by GeoCities. At one time, the importance of a webpage was judged partly on the number of pages linking to it; a webring has at least one page (the previous page in the ring linking to it) but often nothing else (if they were notable enough to be otherwise linked, they were less likely to be on a webring), meaning that reaching a webring meant that one had reached the one-incoming-link level of unimportance.

Transcript

[Cueball in a desert standing before a rock.]

Rock: Greetings, stranger.

Rock: Whatever quest drives you, abandon it.

Rock: You shall find no answers in these desolate wastes.

Cueball: I knew I wouldn't.

Cueball: I guess I... just had to see.

I hate feeling desperate enough to visit the second page of Google results.

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