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| Vera Rubin Observatory |
 Title text: 'Spurious signals from the kitchen' is harder for an optical telescope than a radio one, but with enough determination and creativity, I believe it's possible. |
Explanation
This shows a bingo card of various items discovered or potentially discoverable using the Vera Rubin Observatory. This is an astronomical observatory located in Chile, featuring the largest (as of 2026) digital astronomical camera; it began gathering scientific data shortly before the publication of this comic. However, the 'discoveries' get more and more ridiculous as the card goes on, gathering into ridicule.
A table of these is shown below:
| # | Item | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black hole tidally disrupting a star | |
| 2 | Planet nine | |
| 3 | Remnants of a former Milky Way companion galaxy | |
| 4 | 10,000 new trans-Neptunian objects | |
| 5 | Object on interstellar trajectory | |
| 6 | Star being eclipsed by weird object | |
| 7 | Secret military satellite | |
| 8 | Kuiper Belt object that's a surprising color | |
| 9 | Mars-sized TNO | A TNO is a Trans-Neptunian Object |
| 10 | Local group supernova | |
| 11 | Spurious signal from observatory kitchen | This is an allusion to an incident at the Parkes Observatory where their radio telescope detected signals that turned out to be radiation from a microwave oven. |
| 12 | Glitch in alert system spams all astronomers | |
| 13 | Space (free) | |
| 14 | Earth-sized TNO | |
| 15 | Defunct spacecraft | |
| 16 | Surprising number of small galaxies | |
| 17 | Neutron star merger | |
| 18 | New supernova constraints on dark energy | |
| 19 | New dwarf planet bigger than Pluto/Eris | |
| 20 | Lost historical comet | |
| 21 | 5 million asteroids and comets | |
| 22 | 50,000 near-Earth asteroids | |
| 23 | Object likely to impact Earth | |
| 24 | Vera Rubin herself (faked death, stole spaceship) | Vera Rubin died in 2016. However, this card takes a ridiculous conspiracy theory that she faked her death, and is still alive and well. This is obviously a ridiculous theory[citation needed]. |
| 25 | Many very small dots | This would hardly be a helpful discovery in an observatory, as observatories are meant to make these 'small dots' visible. So discovering small dots would hardly be helpful. |
Transcript
- [A Bingo card is shown, with 25 squares. They are as follows:]
- Black hole tidally disrupting a star.
- Planet nine.
- Remnants of a former Milky Way companion.
- 10,000 new trans-Newtonian objects.
- Object on interstellar trajectory.
- Star being eclipsed by weird object.
- Secret military satellite.
- Kuiper Belt object that's a surprising color.
- Mars-sized TNO.
- Local group supernova.
- Spurious signal from observatory kitchen.
- Glitch in alert system spams all astronomers.
- Space (free).
- Earth-sized TNO.
- Defunct spacecraft.
- Surprising number of small galaxies.
- [Title:] Vera Rubin Observatory discoveries. Bingo Card.
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