explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3182: Telescope Types

2025-12-18T17:34:23Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 3182
| date = December 17, 2025
| title = Telescope Types
| image = telescope_types_2x.png
| imagesize = 517x680px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I'm trying to buy a gravitational lens for my camera, but I can't tell if the manufacturers are listing comoving focal length or proper focal length.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently ACCORDING TO A TELESCOPE POINTING BACK IN TIME. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This comic shows diagrams of a number of different types of {{w|telescope}} — some real, while others are other objects, or made up by [[Randall]]. It includes both refracting and reflecting designs; see [[1791: Telescopes: Refractor vs Reflector]] for the important (according to Randall) differences between them.

{| class="wikitable"
! Type !! Real? !! Refractor/Reflector !! Description
|-
| {{w|Reflecting telescope#Prime_focus|Prime Focus}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design where the observer/receiver is situated at the focal point of a single mirror. Rare in optics, but a common design in radio telescopes.
|-
| {{w|Herschelian telescope|Herschelian}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope design much akin to Prime Focus but with the mirror tilted so that the observer does not block incoming light. Named after astronomer William Herschel.
|-
| {{w|Newtonian telescope|Newtonian}} || Yes || Reflector || Newtonian telescopes employ a second, flat mirror along with the primary parabolic mirror.
|-
| {{w|Galilean telescope|Galilean}} || Yes || Refractor || What might usually come to mind when picturing a telescope. A long tube that uses lenses rather than mirrors (making it a refracting telescope) to magnify images.
|-
| {{w|Keplerian telescope|Keplerian}} || Yes || Refractor || An improvement on Galilean telescopes, using a convex lens rather than a concave one at the eyepiece (as shown in the diagram). It does however invert images.
|-
| {{w|Gregorian telescope|Gregorian}} || Yes || Reflector || Uses two concave mirrors, the secondary being placed beyond the primary's focal point. The image is reflected back through a hole in the primary mirror. Unique among reflectors in that the image is not inverted.
|-
| {{w|Cassegrain telescope|Cassegrain}} || Yes || Reflector || Similar to prime focus, but uses a secondary mirror to reflect light through a hole in the primary mirror to the observer (situated at the rear)
|-
| {{w|Cardboard}} tube || Yes, but not as a (functional) telescope || Neither || Children may sometimes use tubes, particularly the cardboard middles from paper rolls, as a play 'telescope'. Looking through a tube can give an illusion of magnification by removing distractions and focusing your attention on the object in view, but it doesn't actually magnify the object being viewed. It will still cause a minor optical effect due to {{w|diffraction}} on the edges of the tube.
|-
| Kaleido || Yes, but not as a telescope || Reflector || A {{w|kaleidoscope}} is similar in form to the stereotypical 'ship's telescope', being a tubular object that you look in to one end of. However, it isn't really a telescope, because you can't use it to magnify arbitrary objects of interest. The non-viewing end is closed, and you view patterns created by many fragmented reflections of tiny objects contained at the end, rather than remote objects. The mirrors are also usually flat, so there's no magnification.
|-
| {{w|Liquid mirror telescope|Liquid Mirror}} || Yes || Reflector || A telescope with the same design as Prime Focus, using a rotating pool of reflective liquid (most commonly mercury) as a mirror. The diagram adds a straw so that someone can drink the liquid. This would not improve telescope performance or end well for the drinker.
|-
| Narcissian || Yes, but not as a telescope || Reflector || This is like a prime focus telescope, but the focus is outside the end of the telescope where the viewer is located, so they can only see themselves, magnified by the concave mirror. This is inspired by the myth of {{w|Narcissus}}, who fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water. A {{w|house of mirrors}} (a typical attraction at a funfair) might feature such a 'telescope', because it is basically a concave mirror.

Furthermore, a narcissist, someone who is inordinately self-centered and arrogant (named for Narcissus), would likely appreciate this kind of mirror, as a narcissist would consider self-viewing more worthwhile than viewing the outside world.
|-
| {{w|Gravitational lens|Gravitational}} || Yes || Refractor || Using the gravitational effect of very large objects on the light passing around them to gain a magnified (if distorted) view of objects beyond them. These are formed naturally by large stars (particularly {{w|black holes}}) and galaxies, which can't be constructed on Earth{{cn}}. There are proposals to launch missions to the very far reaches of the Solar System to "construct" a {{w|Solar gravitational lens}} telescope, but the masses and distances involved are not compatible with consumer camera hardware. In the title text, Randall makes a pun on whether the listed focal length of a gravitational lens is measured in the {{w|comoving and proper distances|comoving or proper}} reference frame — that is, whether the expansion of the universe (between the place and time of the lens's creation or construction and Randall's decision to purchase) has been factored out or not. At the cosmological scales between stars and galaxies, where gravitational lensing is most relevant, this is a useful distinction to make, but [https://iauarchive.eso.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/ stars are not for sale] (by any legitimate commercial entity) and so nobody would be advertising any focal length in either reference frame for any purchaser.
|-
| Geological || No || Reflector || This 'telescope' employs a single mirror to show the observer the 2003 movie {{w|The Core}}, which was universally derided by science-minded people. As a telescope it would not be useful, not least because it cannot be pointed at an arbitrary object. Its relevance to real geology is also dubious.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Telescopes]]
[[Category:Movies]]
[[Category:The Core]]

3170: Service Outage

2025-11-20T01:58:52Z

MinersHavenM43: Undo revision 391276 by MinersHavenM43 (talk) (oops didn't see the first edit :/)

{{comic
| number = 3170
| date = November 19, 2025
| title = Service Outage
| image = service_outage_2x.png
| imagesize = 376x364px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Now, if it were the *Canon* wiki, it's possible to imagine someone with a productivity-related reason for consulting it, but no one's job requires them to read that much about Admiral Daala.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
In this comic, Cueball is comparing the effects that service outages for different websites can have on his productivity. When the service (like Google) is essential to his work, his productivity will clearly go down. However, his productivity increases if the service (the Star Wars Legends wiki) is non-essential, implying that he frequently gets distracted by them. However, his productivity is shown as slowly decreasing back to normal after the outage, probably because he has found some other ways to distract himself.

The title-text continues the Star Wars Legends Wiki joke, mentioning the canon and non-canon wikis.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

3170: Service Outage

2025-11-20T01:57:40Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 3170
| date = November 19, 2025
| title = Service Outage
| image = service_outage_2x.png
| imagesize = 376x364px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Now, if it were the *Canon* wiki, it's possible to imagine someone with a productivity-related reason for consulting it, but no one's job requires them to read that much about Admiral Daala.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
In this comic, Cueball is comparing the effects that service outages for different websites can have on his productivity. When the service (like Google) is essential to his work, his productivity will clearly go down. However, his productivity increases if the service (the Star Wars Legends wiki) is non-essential, implying that he frequently gets distracted by them. However, his productivity is shown as slowly decreasing back to normal after the outage, probably because he has found some other ways to distract himself.

The title-text continues the Star Wars Legends Wiki joke, mentioning the canon and non-canon wikis.

When a major internet service goes down, the people whose work relies on it become much less productive as they cannot work on the thing they were working on. On the other hand, the people whose work doesn't rely on it become more productive as they have fewer distractions. It is worth noting that they might just use some other service to distract themselves during the outage, without any productivity effect.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

Talk:3156: Planetary Rings

2025-10-18T18:17:48Z

MinersHavenM43:

Is my draft right? It's hard to understand a comic that hasn't yet got an explanation! [[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 16:21, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
:I came here to say this is one of those xkcds that really doesn't need explaining. I do like the bit about "although it's theorized that [Earth] may have had [a natural planetary ring system] in the past," it's additional information I wouldn't think about just reading the panel. [[Special:Contributions/64.201.132.210|64.201.132.210]] 17:48, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
:I think you did a good job, you gave depth to the terms used, added related facts, and included comparisons netween the listed rings. [[Special:Contributions/64.114.211.102|64.114.211.102]] 18:17, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
Can't wait until our ring evolves via kessler syndrome. [[Special:Contributions/64.114.211.102|64.114.211.102]] 18:17, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
: I can't wait for the stage after that: [[2314|Carcinization]]. [[Special:Contributions/149.22.90.216|149.22.90.216]] 23:10, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

I added two notes, but I don't have time now to learn the syntax to make proper notes, so they are just in the middle of the text. I will try to do it later, if someone else doesn't do it. [[User:Rps|Rps]] ([[User talk:Rps|talk]]) 18:33, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Earth's historical rings: {{w|Rings of Earth}} [[Special:Contributions/191.101.157.126|191.101.157.126]] 19:20, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Mars also has a ring, although it consists of just 2 very large objects. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 21:43, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
: Nope. Mars has TWO rings. Deimos orbits at three times the distance and four times the period of Phobos. Two rings with one large object each. And if you are taking an areocentric perspective, there's a much more massive ring 1.5 AU away. [[Special:Contributions/181.214.218.33|181.214.218.33]] 22:46, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Regarding the title text: One of those bits of information that aids navigation has long been where on a tree the moss grows (should you be in an area with trees, obviously, and otherwise be without a compass or can see the Sun to do the watch-dial trick (with an analogue watch, or a bit of imagination)). Back in the '90s, I noted that I could augment that, in an urban environment, from the rise in houses having satellite dishes (BSB 'squarials' and Sky dishes, originally, here in the UK) all pointing pretty much directly south. (With enough local knowledge, you might even be able to compare them to TV aerials and possibly triangulate to where you were within a larger urban area - assuming you were 'somewhat lost, but not ''totally'' lost'.) And, even today, I find them a reassuring extra bit of info when I'm skirting through the suburbs of cities, knowing that I'm not being twisted too far awa from my chosen direction (working with my in-head memory of the map I'd planned with, which can occasionally get nudged off from reality by an inconvenient twist and turn of road). 
Though I must say, I've never ever considered latitude-enumeration as an additional factor. Apart from anything else, the design of the dish normally has the 'receiver arm' sitting at an off-axis focal point, so you need to project out at the complimentary 'up-angle' from the exact angle the dish itself ''points''. But, anyway, I'm not sure I ever could have distinguished 55°N from 60°N, by eye, even sighting upon a centre-axis dish's direction. And yet I'd surely already know if I was as far south as Edinburgh or actually somewhere as far north as Lerwick, before checking out the local dishes... ;) [[Special:Contributions/2.98.65.8|2.98.65.8]] 21:48, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand why it says "If some of them are pointing straight up, you're probably near the Equator". Surely, if you're on Earth, they're pointing straight down.
: Well, the satellite dishes need to point up to get signal from up there in the sky. [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 18:17, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

2975: Classical Periodic Table

2025-10-16T02:25:21Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 2975
| date = August 21, 2024
| title = Classical Periodic Table
| image = classical_periodic_table_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x530px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Personally I think mercury is more of a 'wet earth' hybrid element.
}}

==Explanation==
An element is a basic atomic building block of the physical world. Ancient civilizations believed in a small number of broad elements. The most famous are the {{w|classical element|classical (Hellenistic) elements}} of earth, fire, air, water, and sometimes a fifth element such as "void", "ether", or "quintessence". The Chinese {{w|Wuxing (Chinese philosophy)|wuxing}} system was a bit different, dropping air and adding elements for wood and metal. Such elemental theories fell out of favor as alchemists and later scientists began to discover what we now recognize as the atomic model, and today 118 elements are recognized and organized into the {{w|Periodic Table of Elements}}.

Here, Randall has taken a modern periodic table and merged and color-coded the modern elements to represent the four classical elements, leaving only the edges and boundaries between dissimilar regions. Gaseous elements such as hydrogen are colored light blue for "air". Bromine and mercury, the two elements that remain liquid at room temperature and pressure, are colored dark blue for "water". Radioactive elements along the bottom of the table whose isotopes have only extremely short half-lives are red for "fire", with the rest of the chart filled in brown for "earth". The "earth" region includes many elements which are radioactive but have isotopes whose half-lives are greater than 1 day. (All elements also have radioactive isotopes with much shorter half-lives, but most of the universe's supply of any given element will tend to be its longest-lived isotope, since others rapidly decay.)

The title text says that mercury should be classified as "wet earth". While it's a liquid, it has a very high surface tension so even large drops will stick together and may seem almost like a gel. Additionally, as evidenced by a {{w|Pseudoscience|very trustworthy source}}[https://what-if.xkcd.com/50/], mercury (at room temperature) is functionally a solid for many fluid purposes, including boating.
===Table Sections===
{| class=wikitable
! scope="col" | Section in Randall’s Table
! scope="col" | Symbol
! scope="col" | Periodic table groups
! scope="col" | Elements contained
! scope="col" | Explanation
|-
| Air || A || All noble gases and most reactive nonmetals || Hydrogen, Helium, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Chlorine, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, Radon || These elements are a gas at room temperature, so they are grouped into "air".
|-
| Water || W || One metal and one nonmetal || Bromine, Mercury || These elements are liquid at room temperature, so they are grouped into “water”.
|-
| Fire || F || One alkali metal and many synthetic metals || Astatine, Francium, Nobelium, Lawrencium, Rutherfordium, Dubnium, Seaborgium, Bohrium, Hassium, Meitnerium, Darmstadtium, Roentgenium, Copernicium, Nihonium, Flerovium, Moscovium, Livermorium, Tennessine, Oganesson || These are all highly radioactive metals (with perhaps an exception for astatine and oganesson, which may be metalloids or nonmetals) with the most stable isotope having a half-life less than one day and a tendency to violently decompose, hence they are classified as "fire". Any unshielded exposure to them tends to include severe burns, be they radiation or otherwise.
|-
| Earth || E || Most metals and metalloids || All other elements || Most of the periodic table consists of solid metals (and a few solid metalloids and nonmetals) which collectively make up most of the planet "{{w|Earth}}" and the life-forms living on it (in combination with each other and several of the marked non-earth elements).
|}

In actual chemistry, the symbol "W" is used for tungsten (from the germanic "Wolfram", taken from the traditional name of the ore-stone that tungsten was originally found in; "Tungsten" is of swedish origin) and "F" is the symbol for fluorine (its latin-derived name was coined for how its common minerals were used to help other smelted ores to 'flow', by lowering the melting point of the mixture). There are no chemical elements currently given the letters "A" or "E", although there are a number of two-character symbols that start with these (and also "F", but none for "W"). Argon, erbium and einsteinium were at certain times (and places) symbolically just their initial letters alone, however, in juxtaposition to "Wo" once having been used for wolfram.

The classical elements (and, as early chemistry developed, some of the earliest known current periodic-table elements) were often given pictorial symbols as a shorthand/code as befit the select, exclusive and secretive nature of that time's alchemical arts. Just one of these representations used a figurative set of triangles: upward-pointing for air and fire, downward-pointing for earth and water, with air and earth having a line across, to give 🜁, 🜂, 🜃 and 🜄.

This comic is similar to [[2913: Periodic Table Regions]], which also groups elements using unconventional methods. The classical elements have been a topic of previous comics, such as [[965: Elements]]

==Transcript==
:[Header:]
:Classical Periodic Table

:[A diagram in the shape of the periodic table of elements is split into labeled colored regions. Each region is labeled with a large letter over a word in smaller letters. The colored regions are discontinuous with respect to the elements they cover.]

:[The regions and colors are as follows:]
:* A: Air: light blue: Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Chlorine, and the noble gases.
:* W: Water: dark blue: Bromine and Mercury.
:* F: Fire: red-orange: Astatine, Francium, and everything from Nobelium onwards (radioactive).
:* E: Earth: brown: everything else, covers majority of the diagram.

==Trivia==

* In Randall's first What-If book, it is explained that a 1-liter (sides of 10 cm / ~3.94 inches) cube of Astatine, which cannot exist under standard conditions, would "immediately turn into a column of superheated gas" which would destroy roughly a city block.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Periodic table]]

3107: Weather Balloons

2025-09-21T02:24:51Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 3107
| date = June 25, 2025
| title = Weather Balloons
| image = weather_balloons_2x.png
| imagesize = 547x351px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Once you add the balloons into the model, it makes forecasting easier overall--the forecast is always 'cold and dark, with minimal solar-driven convection.'
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|weather balloon}} is a balloon that carries {{w|meteorology|meteorological}} instruments into the high atmosphere and sends readings back to scientists, who use the information to make weather and climate predictions. Typically it will rise up until the difference between the pressure inside the balloon and that outside gets too great, and the membrane breaks and the fragments of balloon fall back down. This is why the graph plots the number of balloons launched each day, rather than overall, since most balloons launched on one day would be gone from the sky the next day.

The chart in the comic claims that weather forecasting accuracy correlates with the number of weather balloons launched each day, with accuracy increasing fast at first, followed by diminishing returns as the number of launches increases. However, it forecasts that if the rate of balloon launches is sufficiently high, it could provide so many balloons that they actually impact the weather by blocking out sunlight. If the balloons are not included in the weather model, the accuracy of the model based on the readings provided by the many balloons decreases. This starts to happen somewhere between 100 billion to 1 trillion weather balloons launched each day. The accuracy of the model drops completely towards zero for around 10 trillion launched each day, where it even falls below the accuracy for just a single balloon (which may or may not be augmented by non-balloon information) at the start of the graph.

While the number of weather balloon launches impacts weather model accuracy, it's not the only factor. Ground stations have been collecting and collating useful surface data for centuries. Scientific understanding of the physical processes in the atmosphere has also improved, only in part due to balloons, and the speed of computers used in analyses and simulations has increased by many orders of magnitude. The existence of weather and geophysical satellites also significantly improves forecasts, as they can continuously gain information about clouds and temperatures over huge areas, while weather balloons capture information as they rise through only a single air-column for a limited duration.

The surface area of the Earth is around 510 {{w|Trillion|short-scale trillion}} square meters (5.1×1013 m2), and a typical weather balloon (while smaller at launch) will expand to approximately 6 m diameter at altitude; this covers an area slightly under 30 m2, within a just marginally larger 'air surface area' at height. This makes it entirely possible to blanket the whole Earth with around 18 trillion standard weather balloons - or possibly even fewer, given the current availability of larger balloon models each more than twice the width, or four times the area. This isn't far off the implications given by the graph. On the other hand, the inherent translucency of the balloon material, the tendency of the balloons to jostle vertically (the illustration implying that it's not just a single layer of close-packed balloons), and the need to synchronize launches and ascents to try to form an optimal single layer, might make complete coverage difficult to accomplish without a slightly greater number of launches. Alternatively, roughly doubling this coverage could be achieved by launching when the balloons will end up in the sunlit hemisphere at any given time.

The joke in the title text is that when there are so many balloons that sunlight is entirely blocked, weather will always be the same - dark and cold - so we won't need complex models to forecast it. Also, when there is no heating of the Earth's surface, the solar-driven convection that drives storms and weather patterns would stop. Of course, plants and algae would start to die out, followed shortly by humans and most other life on Earth. However, assuming that the balloons are being launched by humans, the number of them that it would be possible to launch would fall as the population and social structures began to collapse, mitigating the impact on the weather. The pollution from the trillions of balloons would last for longer, but wouldn't prevent sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface.

==Transcript==

:[A graph.]

:[X axis has 14 divisions/ticks upon it, a selection of them labeled logarithmically with progressive values of ten:]
::1 [First tick]
::10
::100
::1,000
::1 Million
::1 Billion
::1 Trillion [Penultimate tick]
::[Rightwards arrow and label:] Number of weather balloon launches per day
:[Y axis is unmarked and unquantified:]
::[Upwards arrow and label:] Weather model accuracy

:[The plot starts above the first mark for 1 balloon, at about 40% of the eventual maximum value of the curve. It starts rising quickly before levelling off, effectively plateaus between 100 million and 10 billion, then reduces even more rapidly down to perhaps 15% of the maximum above the final 10 trillion mark.]
::[A point on the line at about 4000 launches per day and 85% of the maximum is indicated by an arrow and label:] Current rate

:[The graph is decorated (behind the plot-line) with a number of drawn features, mostly of weather balloons dotted around the space between the 'ground'/X-axis and the upper limit of the plot.]
::[The upper balloons are visibly more expanded than those closer to the ground, one of which seems to have just been released by a Cueball standing half way between the "1" and "10" tickmarks, as apparently linked by some 'movement dots'.]
::[Most balloons are at or around the upper limit of their range, and the number of balloons around a general horizontal position increases from left to right.]
::[A single high-altitude ballon is found in the area above the plot-line to the left.]
::[In the top right, balloons become heavily clustered and an arrow points at this overlapping mass (once more above the plot-line) leading from a text label:] Layer of weather balloons, not accounted for in models, blocks sunlight from reaching Earth

:[A stylistic 'Sun' is drawn above the top-right cluster of balloons, various light-to-mid-shade halftones are used to roughly indicate shadows cast below the in reasingly densely packed balloons leading up to this section of the scene. The lightest tones start to 'reach the ground' at slightly above the "1 Billion" mark, the darkest tones starting in the 1 Trillion to (unlabeled) 10 Trillion division.]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Weather]]

Talk:1063: Kill Hitler

2025-09-13T00:39:40Z

MinersHavenM43:

Actually, I think the joke here is that Black Hat actually did end Hitler's atrocities, but that history is not actually changeable. Hitler's "suicide" was actually Black Hat killing him. This is then layers with the impossibility of changing history. This would imply that anyone that wants to stop Hitler before he rose to power will be circumvented.

[[User:UnaSalusVictis|UnaSalusVictis]] ([[User talk:UnaSalusVictis|talk]]) 01:26, 25 November 2012 (UTC)UnaSalusVictis

:According to all reasonable time travel theories, this makes sense. You cannot go into the past to change things, because the future that exists is a future where you were in the past - you just didn't know it yet because it was in your future. This also applies to the future. Your knowledge of the future cannot possibly change it because your foreknowledge exists in this future. If your foreknowledge made that future not happen, then there would be no need to change it. But the future and the past account for the fact that you were there to change things, even before you ever knew you would be. Ergo, any attempt to ''change'' the past will merely result in ''causing'' the past to result exactly as it did before. The catch-22 of time travel stories. You can have a fatal flaw, or a fatally uncompelling story. But, all that said, this is a cartoon and not necessarily reliant on reasonable time travel theory.[[Special:Contributions/76.29.225.28|76.29.225.28]] 07:07, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

:That's exactly my opinion on this topic! Look at this video (Mercedes vs Hitler in the past): [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytVdBLMmRno]] ~~Muessigb
::But say you could predict what the future would look like if you did nothing (or did not yet have that knowledge). Then by obtaining that knowledge you could then do something you would not have done otherwise and thus change the potential future. With a powerful enough simulator, you might get a good idea of what would happen if no one knew about it, and then decide if something should be changed based on this information. This is what happens in the book {{w|Lightning (novel)|Lightning}}. I do not believe this can be done, but as the future has not happened yet, I do not see the same problems as with traveling back in time. Of course having a good guess of the future is not the same as traveling to it... If you did that, then changing it after you had been there would be troublesome. See for instance {{w|Back to the Future 2}} and the book mentioned above. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:44, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

True, killing Hitler before he rose to power and committed all his atrocities would cause a Grandfather paradox... Cueball invented the time machine and send Black Hat back because he wanted Hitler dead, but if Hitler died before that, there would be no reason to invent the time machine and send Black Hat back which ergo cause the initial trip to kill Hitler not possible and ergo Hitler couldn't die before he rises to power and committed his atrocities. [[Special:Contributions/175.137.100.81|175.137.100.81]] 01:40, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
:Just for the record, it was Black Hat who invented this time machine! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:51, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Maybe in the original timeline, Hitler's atrocities extended beyond 1945. When Black Hat went back in time and assassinated Hitler in 1945, a new time-line was created. When Black Hat returned to the current date, he returned to a different timeline than the one he left. In this timeline (ours), Hitler died in 1945, and because this timeline is based on that fact, Cueball thinks that Black Hat has not changed anything, when in fact, Black Hat's actions created the new timeline. -- mwburden [[Special:Contributions/70.91.188.49|70.91.188.49]] 15:00, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
:Except that Hitler would have already been killed in 1945 by Black Hat, only it would have been thought beforehand to be Hitler killing himself as, until the time machine is invented, you wouldn't think that people from the future would be coming from the future to assassinate the opponent. People would assume that Hitler killed himself as that is more plausible than an assassin killing him and then vanishing without a trace. {{unsigned|Mulan15262}}
::Also Cueball would not know that anything had happened if anything had been changed, as his an everyone else life would have changed, and most people born say a few years after the start of the way, would probably not have been born, because everyone else would have done something different if World War II had never happened, and many more people would have lived back then, to make the chance that your parents meet and fall in love much less. And even if they still did, they might have had their children at a different time in their lives! And just a few seconds can matter in which cell will enter the egg...--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:51, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

:The only flaw in that logic is that there's really no way Hitler would have survived the Russian invasion. He was in a bunker, killing himself, because his whole nation and army were crushed. He would have been put on trial and no doubt executed, if not shot by the first soldier who saw him. -HavokTheorem [[Special:Contributions/121.73.107.90|121.73.107.90]] 04:30, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
::Thank you for this answer. My faith in explainxkcd contributors was declining rapidly until I reached your comment. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.58|108.162.219.58]] 20:20, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
::Actually you only think that because Black Hat prevented [http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/wolfenstein/images/d/d7/Hitler2forms.gif/revision/latest?cb=20090918003616 Mecha Hitler]. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.80|162.158.255.80]] 17:54, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Was the explanation always as bad as it appears now?? It's awful. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.58|108.162.219.58]] 01:34, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

First off, in a previous time line he could have escaped to a Moon Base to rebuild his army and destroy the world and Cueball just does not remember that history, just the one where Hitler dies in the bunker. Second, there are many forms of logical time travel. You could jump to a different Now 70 years ago and kill Hitler (assuming he exists) and then come back. Your timeline would not have changed, but the other Now would have a future without Hitler. The good or bad that is achieved is the same, but you get no benefit other then the joy of killing Hitler. And you really should seek professional help for that.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.18|108.162.219.18]] 18:52, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
:In many stories where this idea is used, you actually go to this alternative time yourself, so when you return the world you return to would be the one where Hitler died. Maybe you were never born in this world, but as you are from another dimension where you did get born, then you can exist in this world instead. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:51, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Did Randall at least partly choose Hitler because of the old rumour that he wasn't actually dead (Because hearing the news of his death may have seemed incredulous, and because his body was removed by the Soviets, who never openly revealed information to the West). Sorry about the wordiness of this comment, I hope you'll be able to comprehend it. {{unsigned ip|108.162.250.223}}

:I recommend this short story on time travel: [http://www.abyssapexzine.com/wikihistory/ Wikihistory]. My favourite quote: "everybody kills Hitler on their first trip". Brilliant, short and nerdy.
:--[[User:Lou Crazy|Lou Crazy]] ([[User talk:Lou Crazy|talk]]) 16:37, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

You are all assuming that the time machine actually works. Why? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.160|162.158.202.160]] 21:50, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

If time travel were possible, you could go back in time, seduce the woman who was to become your mother — you would become your own father! Robert Heinlein wrote a story with that theme, “‘—All You Zombies—’”. Heinlein goes further, introducing a sex-change operation, so mother, father, and child are all the same person.

If I had a time machine I would go back only twenty years and kill Bush and Blair. Think of the millions of lives that would be saved! [[User:The Cat Lady|-- The Cat Lady]] ([[User talk:The Cat Lady|talk]]) 16:39, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Assuming the time machine actually worked, Black Hat most likely went to explore the time of his choosing, and only told Cueball he killed Hitler right before his suicide to annoy him. I don't think Black Hat would just deprive himself of that big of an opportunity. [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 00:39, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

==Total Classical Games Death==

Kill Classical Games. Behead Classical Games. Roundhouse kick Classical Games into the concrete. Slam dunk baby Classical Games into the trashcan. Crucify filthy Classical Games. Defecate in Classical Games's food. Launch Classical Games into the sun. Stir fry Classical Games in a wok. Toss Classical Games into an active volcano. Urinate into a Classical Games's gas tank. Judo throw Classical Games into a wood chipper. Twist Classical Games's head off. Report Classical Games to the IRS. Karate chop Classical Games in half. Curb stomp Classical Games's pregnant mother. Trap Classical Games in quicksand. Crush Classical Games in the trash compactor. Liquefy Classical Games in a vat of acid. Eat Classical Games. Dissect Classical Games. Exterminate Classical Games in the gas chamber. Stomp Classical Games's skull with steel toed boots. Cremate Classical Games in the oven. Lobotomize Classical Games. Mandatory abortions for Classical Games's mother. Grind fetal Classical Games in the garbage disposal. Drown Classical Games in fried chicken grease. Vaporize Classical Games with a ray gun. Kick old Classical Games down the stairs. Feed Classical Games to alligators. Slice Classical Games with a katana. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.151.97|172.71.151.97]] 20:27, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

:I agree, I hate Classical Games. He always spams. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.23.58|172.69.23.58]] 23:53, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Talk:3106: Farads

2025-06-25T15:19:05Z

MinersHavenM43:

I'm sure the Farad is going to drive all sorts of commentary. My nitpick with the description: a 1F 30V+ capacitor can be held in hand (e.g. Cornell Dubilier DSM105Q030W075PB, Nichicon LNR1V105MSE). I don't recall the hazard criteria for stored energy right off, so I can only say that @30V there is no shock hazard in dry environment human handling, but the energy stored still present other hazards (e.g. fire or burns from conductors) [[Special:Contributions/12.171.61.178|12.171.61.178]] 14:39, 25 June 2025 (UTC) JourneymanWizard

Who wrote this description? It's complete nonsense. A capacitor can't throw a stone. A 1 F capacitor is also not remotely dangerous unless it's charged to a high voltage — except that a 1 F capacitor and a 0.01 F capacitor can be charged to essentially the same maximum voltage!

Unlike other units of measure where a single unit is non-extreme, "The capacitance of the Earth's ionosphere with respect to the ground is calculated to be about 1 F." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farad] Most capacitors in practical use are measured in pico, nano, or micro farads. 03:04, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Please note that the pound, shown in panel 2, is not an SI unit. The corresponding SI unit is the kilogram; an item with a mass of one kilogram is still commonplace. [[User:Troy0|Troy0]] ([[User talk:Troy0|talk]]) 03:11, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
:I added Trivia to mention that (and another thing), sorry that I didn't read here first but I think I've covered your thoughts on the subject. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.246.160|82.132.246.160]] 13:07, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

When my father was a young engineer, the old guys would haze the new kids by asking them to fetch a "one farad capacitor". But everybody in the lab said "Sorry, I ran out, go ask Fred on the top floor", "Go ask Tom in the basement", "Try Peter's Parts on Vine St", etc--- give the kid a run-around. The joke was: at the time, 1F was likely large than a large garbage can and many hundred (non-SI) pounds. But the world changed, and in recent years you can easily buy 1F @ 16V, about the size of a soup can, to smooth car sound power feeds. --[[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 03:27, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

This explanation would benefit from some elaboration on how and why supercapacitors are dangerous. [[Special:Contributions/195.252.226.234|195.252.226.234]] 04:41, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Funnily enough, the wikipedia page for "Farad" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farad) currently has a 1 farad supercapacitator as the title image. It looks pretty unassuming. [[User:Mouse|Mouse]] 08:54, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Top of the page says June 23 even though it looks like this came out on June 25. Should it be changed? [[Special:Contributions/85.76.9.43|85.76.9.43]] 05:15, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
:Randall-time, it was 24/Jun (or Jun/24, being leftpondian with potentily mixedendian dates). It's not unnown for it to be an early-hours-of-day-after (EST) release, though late-hours-of-day-after is rather unusual. I'm guessing awkward commitments took over, perhaps even the prescheduled timer (if left 'in charge', not having even been put to the test in a while) didn't work when/how it should have.
:We've also had surpisingly ''early'' releases (noon or earlier, UTC, making it very-early-on-day-of-release), but I haven't any specific memory of it being so early that it ended up ''preceding'' the scheduled day (off-schedule additions don't count), other than perhaps when he was currently on a book-tour and (e.g.) in Europe so probably doing his prefered time-of-day (or when it was most convenient for his schedule) in UTC/UTC+1/UTC+2 'mode', though it was still "yesterday" back home.
:Best suggestion is to see when [[3107]] comes out. If it's a Wednesday(ish)-compatible time, this was just overdue for ...reasons. But if it's Friday(ish), then we can re-examine its true position (with much arguing, I suspect) in the schedule.
:It ''could'' also be an attempt to subtly shift what number pops up when (I think a past "whole week series", or two, were conjectured to alter the numbers to reasonably engineer the landing of [[404]] upon April 1st), but that's probably beyond speculation until we at least can assess what has happened by the end of this week. (''Then'' start looking for what numbers land (near) where, up to arbitrary points in the future.)
:Also something to add to Trivia, ''when'' we can rule out some of the possibilities (or be prepared to be wrong/overly-comprehensive, like here, and remove the wronger bits later). [[Special:Contributions/82.132.246.160|82.132.246.160]] 13:07, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

I agree with [[User:Troy0|Troy0]] that having a non-SI unit in there (1 pound) is incongruous, and it should instead be a sugar crystal weighing 1 gram. [[Special:Contributions/121.98.227.79|121.98.227.79]] 06:52, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

"most consumer electronics use at most a nanofarad" -> nah... Several hundreds of microfarads are quite common. But so are tens-of-picofarad, mostly in HF/RF filters etc. Calculating an average over all capacitors in all consumer electronics makes no sense anyway... But I'd say "Most consumer electronics use capacitors in the picofarad to milifarad range".
"To prevent static electricity from building lethal charge, unused supercapacitors are usually stored and transported with a "keeper", a steel or aluminum bar shorting the terminals." -> Static charge won't change the voltage of a 1 F capacitor much... V=q/C with small q and large C... The shorting is for high voltage capacitors that 'recharge' themselves trough {{w|Dielectric_absorption|dielectric absorption}}... Interesting, but completely different. -- [[User:Gautee|Gautee]] ([[User talk:Gautee|talk]]) 07:52, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
:Even a supercapacitor is not necessarily lethal. It depends on the voltage. A project I'm working on has a 6v supercapacitor (to keep the clock running for a few days when power is disconnected). And they're not even expensive parts. For example [https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/KYOCERA-AVX/SCMT32H755MRBB0?qs=l7cgNqFNU1iVPH0cf9oilA%3D%3D this one] is 7.5F (!) at 6v. They're not very large and only cost $9. Touching the terminals when it is charged will hurt a lot, but it will hardly kill you. [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 14:40, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

We now have an exact answer to the question "how tall is Cueball?"--[[Special:Contributions/86.13.226.126|86.13.226.126]] 09:16, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
:Assuming that Cueball's holding the stick in a plane parallel to the comic frame. [[User:Legowerewolf|Legowerewolf]] ([[User talk:Legowerewolf|talk]]) 13:23, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
:If the stick really is parallel, Cueball's height is 1.78 m, or 5'10" for the Americans, or 9.02×106 ħc/eV for the Proxima b-ans. [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 15:19, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

In agreement with the first discussion point, this description remains low quality. It claims that after the unwarranted panic, Megan and White Hat "ask why he [Cueball] is carrying it [the 1-farad capacitor] around." This does not occur at any point in the comic or the Title Text, and should be removed. [[Special:Contributions/198.147.146.254|198.147.146.254]] 10:21, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

3092: Baker's Units

2025-05-22T02:11:19Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 3092
| date = May 21, 2025
| title = Baker's Units
| image = bakers_units_2x.png
| imagesize = 349x310px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 169 is a baker's gross.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a baker's bot. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

A {{w|Dozen#Baker's_dozen|baker's dozen}} is 13 units of bakery goods, as opposed to the normal dozen meaning 12. That tradition began when salesmen in medieval times had to pay penalties (in some regions, draconian ones) when customers were sold one item short, or not enough weight. To avoid the customer complaints and the penalty, bakers added a safety margin that allowed them to still serve a dozen in a hurry: If a miscount happens the baker would have given out twelve rolls just as ordered; if no miscount happens the baker is just short of one inexpensive item).

Randall proceeds to apply this principle to other things comprised of 12 units, some with bizarre results:
* Imperial feet are 12 inches long; a baker's foot would be 13 inches long.
* Noon is 12:00 o'clock ("twelve hundred hours/Juliett" in 24-hour {{w|24-hour clock#Military time|military parlance}}); baker's noon would be 1 o'clock PM ("thirteen hundred hours", etc).
* Dodecahedra have 12 faces (the shape that most {{w|Dice#Polyhedral dice|d12}}s take the form of), baker's ones are tridecahedra with triangles, squares and pentagons (which are not Platonic solids and cannot be used as dice due to having multiple face types), rendering dice-based games unbalanced.
* Years have 12 months; a baker would celebrate New Year's Eve on January 31 (meaning that their New Year would shift forward each year).
* Octaves are comprised of 12 half-steps (a half-step is the distance between F and F#). A baker’s octave would have 13 half-steps (corresponding to a minor ninth) and cause problems in musical composition, as octaves (of the baker’s variety) are would be dissonant, instead of being consonant. However, Randall's example is actually a ''major'' ninth, with ''fourteen'' half-steps. If he wanted thirteen half-steps, Randall could have used D♭ instead of D or drawn a bass clef instead of a treble clef.
* Trial juries in the Anglo-Saxon law tradition ({{w|Common Law}}) consist of 12 peers. The baker’s jury has 13 peers. This might be considered to make little practical difference, though it does mean that (in situations where a jury is allowed to present a majority verdict instead of requiring unanimity), the odd number of jurors would prevent exact ties. (Note that {{w|Trial by jury in Scotland|Scottish juries}}, in particular, start with the expectation of there being 15 jurors, and may well end up reduced to 13 or even 12.)
* The {{w|Flag of Europe}} has 12 stars forming a circle (as a symbol of harmony; unlike in the US flag, the stars do not represent member states. The flag was first adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955, when it already had 13 members - today there are over 40. The European Communities adopted the Flag of Europe in 1986 before the EC turned into the European Union. A 13th star (or a bread roll) could potentially be added to the baker's EU flag nevertheless without major damage to the symbol.
* Magnesium is the element with the ordinal number 12, aluminum is number 13 and a very different material.{{Citation needed}} "Baker's magnesium" actually has more applications in baking (namely, tinfoil, which is actually made of aluminum, not tin).
* In the title text, 144 (12x12) is a gross. 169 (13x13) would be a baker's gross, an addition of not just one but 25 units.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Math]]

Talk:3078: Anchor Bolts

2025-04-19T21:02:59Z

MinersHavenM43:

As a kid, I was ALWAYS worried about how plate tectonics would change the continent's layout in a few hundred million years' time, along with how the Sun will die (and maybe consume the Earth if we don't move it) in five billion years. Young me would be SO glad we are finally fixing the first issue. [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 03:28, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
: Were young you a Superman fan, and did you ever wonder what really happened on Krypton? Scientists and engineers, funded and enabled by a Trump-style politician and his promise to "Stop The Earthquakes NOW!", actually overcame (temporarily) the materials issues and solved the stress equations (see below), and installed a (temporarily) successful planetary plate-anchoring system. Jor-El objected to the project, he and any who supported him were de-funded as a result, and he spent his remaining time ensuring that he could get his son the [deleted] outa there before the accumulated strain ruptured the anchors and blew the planet apart. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.41.45|162.158.41.45]] 04:09, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
:Did you also worried about the collision with Andromeda galaxy? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 05:15, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
::I was more sad that I wouldn't be able to see it within my lifetime :( [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 21:02, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Would an anti-subduction screw really work? The tectonic plates are slow, but they are quite heavy, so they have a fair bit of momentum. Indeed, enough to overcome the not inconsiderable friction already present due to the weight of the uplifted portion of the upper plate. Such a screw would therefore need to exert quite a bit of additional pressure to bring the motion to a halt; Exactly how much I shall leave as an exercise for the reader (because I have no clue where to even start trying to work it out), but my guess is that you're gonna need some seriously high tensile strength material for these, even if they are placed at very short intervals along the plate boundary. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.84.172|172.68.84.172]] 03:52, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

:The screw material could easily be some sort of unobtanium, it would still not work. With the forces involved, the result would be the stone would break around the screws, IMHO. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 05:16, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Looks like somebody got to Randall M. and pointed out that what he drew is a {{w|Bolt_(fastener)|bolt}}, not a screw. The title and caption of the comic have been edited accordingly. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.41.3|162.158.41.3]] 05:38, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

:The item depicted is a 'machine screw'; A bolt has a portion of the shaft un-threaded. An actual bolt would likely be more suitable for this application, but it's not uncommon for machine screws to be used instead.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.23.21|172.69.23.21]] 09:21, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

::This appears to be incorrect, as least in the USNA (United States in North America), fans of spurious renaming of political geography. "The [https://www.dude-n-dude.com/2025/03/16/amoebas-lorica-meme-ories-59-shame-no-2/ [sigh]] American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) defines machine screws as featuring a diameter of up to 0.75 inches. While machine-screw diameters can be smaller than this, they can't be any larger, which means machine screws are typically smaller than most other screws." "Machine screws are used with a threaded hole to join two components together, sometimes requiring a nut. Bolts rely on nuts and are fitted through a clearance hole to secure parts together." [https://www.essentracomponents.com/en-us/news/solutions/fastening-components/a-guide-to-machine-screws On this evidence], the illustrated fastener is a bolt. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.16|172.71.142.16]] 14:34, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

This is silly. The global cooperation and engineering required to make this work (I'm assuming unobtanium as a given) far surpasses that required to decarbonise commerce and fix climate change, which project is not going well, to say the least. [[User:Neil UK|Neil UK]] ([[User talk:Neil UK|talk]]) 08:32, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Added an Actual Citation Needed to vulcanism being bad for humanity. Without it, life may not have started in the first place. And fertile volcanic soils would not have sustained us/our predecessors if such life had started. Minor issues like localised danger are surely a blip in time compared to that, and even now there's only a danger to ''some'' humans (less than, say, yellowstone erupting, which isn't something a bolt could stop... in fact, drilling the bolthole sounds like it could ''cause'' a Yellowstone, if done wrongly (if, in fact, there is a 'right' way)). ...other than that, yeah, go ahead! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.181|172.70.91.181]] 09:49, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
:Sure, but that's not the right way to get that issue fixed. Feel free to rephrase it, or ask people to rephrase it for you in the incomplete tag. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 11:21, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
::Did #2 --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 11:22, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
:::Solved the phrasing? I think I can remove the request from the Incomplete, but would want to retain the other expected bit (at least until the whole Incomplete gets removed, which would traditionally be no earlier than some time next week). Looks like there's arguments about this, though. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.58.97|172.70.58.97]] 14:20, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

To avoid having to travel through the mantle to insert the bolt from the bottom, wouldn't it be better to use something like a spring toggle bolt in this case? Seems like sort of a drywall situation to me. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.58.9|172.69.58.9]] 14:22, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
:Or a molly-bolt (which is dangerously close to using a {{w|wall plug}}/rawlplug ''with a screw''... as originally alluded). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.58.156|172.70.58.156]] 14:30, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

So what would be the result of this for the oceans (and connected systems)? Assuming that the bolts worked, and that the spreading at mid-ocean ridges was halted (by the vent system installed). The sea floor would not be renewed. Sediment would accumulate on the sea floor, and not be swepet under the rug. What would the long term consequences be? Would we have shallower oceans with less rocky bottoms? What would that do? (To currents, to climate, to marine life, ...) Would sedementation disrupt the circulation of ocean water through the lithosphere, messing with such things as the CO2 balance? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.57|108.162.246.57]] 20:35, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3078: Anchor Bolts

2025-04-19T03:28:51Z

MinersHavenM43:

3078: Anchor Bolts

2025-04-19T03:25:21Z

MinersHavenM43: basic explanation creation

{{comic
| number = 3078
| date = April 18, 2025
| title = Anchor Screws
| image = anchor_screws_2x.png
| imagesize = 381x326px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The biggest expense was installing the mantle ducts to keep the carbonate-silicate cycle operating.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by an AUTOMATIC SUBLIMATOR. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

Tectonic plates are plates that divide the Earth's crust. They slowly move across the Earth's surface at the rate of a few centimeters per year, although the rate is nonuniform across plates. When they collide, the denser plate gets dragged under the less dense plate, in a process called subduction. An "anti-subduction anchor screw" would effectively stop the process of subduction and the movement of plate tectonics as a whole.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Subduction]]

2717: L6 Lagrange Point

2025-04-11T19:11:20Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 2717
| date = December 27, 2022
| title = L6 Lagrange Point
| image = l6_lagrange_point_2x.png
| imagesize = 399x400px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.
}}

==Explanation==

In celestial mechanics, the {{w|Lagrange point}}s are points of equilibrium for small-mass objects under the influence of two massive orbiting bodies. Or in simpler terms, positions in space where objects can float motionless relative to the defining bodies.

There are five traditional Lagrange points. Two form equilateral triangles with the two massive objects (in this case the Earth and the Sun), and three more are collinear with the massive objects. The L1, L2, and L3 points are unstable, as any drifting off the point (e.g. due to the gravity of other bodies) might quickly increase the tendency to depart the area. However, there are quasi-stable {{w|Halo orbit}}s around these points, like the one used by the {{w|James Webb Space Telescope}}. The L4 and L5 points can actually retain objects stably over long periods, resulting in the Sun-Jupiter L4 and L5 points capturing the {{w|Trojan (celestial_body)|Trojan Asteroids}}.

Randall claims that a sixth Lagrange point has been discovered outside of {{w|Cleveland}}, {{w|Ohio}}. This is pretty obviously farcical,{{Citation needed}} as this would be part of the Earth and thus not gravitationally balanced between Earth and the Sun, though it is balanced by the countering forces that hold anything stable on the surface of any body: {{w|gravity}} and {{w|electromagnetism}}. The joke here is that there actually is a small village named {{w|LaGrange, Ohio|LaGrange, OH}} (population 2,595 in 2020) just outside Cleveland ([https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lagrange,+OH+44050/ map]). However, the village name is spelled with a capital G, unlike {{w|Joseph-Louis Lagrange}} after which the Lagrange points were named.

There is, however, a {{w|Lagrange,_Maine|Lagrange in Maine}}, a {{w|Lagrange,_Virginia|Lagrange in Virginia}} and a {{w|Lagrange_Township,_Bond_County,_Illinois|Lagrange Township in Illinois}} which all use the lower case g in their spelling like Joseph-Louis Lagrange. There are also {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_(disambiguation)|twenty-six other communities}} in the United States with a spelling of LaGrange or La Grange, as well as four in France and two in Australia with one of the three spellings. This includes {{w|La_Grange,_Texas|La Grange, Texas}} which became famous as the title of a {{w|La_Grange_(song)|ZZ Top song}}.

The title text mentions {{w|Akron}} and {{w|Toledo,_Ohio|Toledo}}, two other large cities in Ohio. It says that their gravitational influence is the reason why orbits around the LaGrange L6 are unstable. The Lagrange points are solutions for a simplified three-body system, and orbits around them may be disrupted if additional bodies such as moons or planets are close enough or massive enough to cumulatively exert significant gravitational forces over time (the Moon does factor into the Earth-Sun L1 and L2 Lagrange points, especially, but that can be accounted for in the station-keeping measures already required). Trying to orbit around a point on the ground would, of course, run into much more serious problems, {{w|lithobraking|such as the ground.}}

==Transcript==
:Grey on white diagram of the Earth orbiting the Sun, not to scale. Earth is depicted as a circle with pale grey continents on darker grey seas, and shows a view from above the North Pole without any Arctic ice. The sun is drawn surrounded by radially symmetrical exaggerated wave pattern.
:Also in grey, approximate locations of Lagrange points 1 to 5 are marked with dots and labels: "L1" "L2" "L3" "L4" "L5".
:In black, a point on the Earth's surface within the boundary of a continent that could be North America. Also in black, an arrow pointing towards the point, and the label "L6".
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Huge space news: Astronomers have discovered a new Lagrange point just outside Cleveland.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Science]]

3072: Stargazing 4

2025-04-11T00:09:22Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 3072
| date = April 4, 2025
| title = Stargazing 4
| image = stargazing_4_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x386px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = We haven't actually seen a star fall in since we invented telescopes, but I have a list of ones I'm really hoping are next.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a 1-STAR YELP REVIEW. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This is the fourth comic in the [[:Category:Stargazing|Stargazing]] series, following [[2274: Stargazing 3]] which came out five years before. That was the longest stretch between two comics in the series so far.

The host [[Megan]] begins the introduction by referencing rude reviews of her stargazing lessons on {{w|Yelp}}, a popular site for rating businesses such as restaurants. The reviewers doubt that she is actually a qualified astronomer due to how simplistic her lessons are; they claim she is just saying the words that come to mind. She passes these people off as people who "hate cool space facts", as opposed to being people who hate virtually useless space facts.

Then she states that there are over 20 stars in the sky and some of them are over the age of 100. Both of these statements are true, but extreme understatements.
*A few thousand stars are visible to the unaided eye under good viewing conditions, though in a city there ''could'' be less than 20 stars visible even on a clear night.
:For a normal stargazing session the event should be held in a venue with as little light pollution as possible, which could mean the middle of an urban green space, conveniently away from lighting or else specially arranging for the most inconvenient lighting to be off for the duration. However, given the unprofessional nature of Megan's lessons, there is no guarantee that this session does not take place under less-than-ideal circumstances. Or she is perpetually unlucky as [[1556: The Sky|daylight or clouds]] may further reduce visible stars.
:Ignoring the need for visibility entirely, it is also estimated that there are about 200 sextillion (2×1023) stars in the {{w|observable universe}}, of which around half would be somewhere 'in the sky' - that is, above the horizon - at any given moment from any place on Earth.
*Stars are typically billions of years old. While new stars are being created in nebulae all the time, it is extremely unlikely that we are seeing the nebulous start of even the shortest-lived stars within the first century of their life. One of the 'youngest' potential candidates is {{w|SN 1987A}}, which may be a neutron star less than 40 years old. But that is discounting the additional age it has acquired from it being approximately 168,000 light years away from us (making it actually 168,000+ years old). It is further undermined by arguably just being the next stage of life of the far older star that went supernova in order to leave the neutron star behind.
:Of stars within 100 light-years of Earth and formed afresh from interstellar material, {{w|AU Microscopii}} is slightly over 30 light-years away and considered to be very new as far as stars go. But it is still 22 ''million'' (...[https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/7nl70d/65000011_years_ago/?rdt=39147 and thirty]) years old by current understanding.

Megan states that our galaxy is huge and that there are more grains of sand in the {{w|Milky Way}} than grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches. This [[2733: Size Comparisons|size comparison]] is a parody of the common saying that there are more stars in the visible universe than grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. Since the Earth's sand is a subset of all of the galaxy's sand, and there are more planets with sand other than Earth (such as Mars), there are unquestionably more grains of sand in the Milky Way than on Earth. Tangentially, it is unclear whether the stars outnumber Earth's sands, as shown here: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-stars-outnumber-the-sands-of-earths-beaches/ Do Stars Outnumber the Sands of Earth’s Beaches?] and here: [https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-ever-lasting-question-more-sand-or-stars/ The ever-lasting question: more sand or stars?]. Also, the original quote was all the sand on Earth, not just on the beaches. Megan adds a helpful hint, calling a beach a big wet sandbox.

She then finishes the lesson by correctly saying that there is a black hole in the center of our galaxy ({{w|Sagittarius A*}}), and that stars sometimes fall in and get consumed by the black hole. When stars come too close to black holes, they experience a {{w|tidal disruption event}} (TDE), where a star is pulled apart ({{w|spaghettification|spaghettified}}) by the black hole after exceeding its tidal radius, or {{w|Roche limit}}. This creates streams of material that orbit the black hole and form an accretion disk that will eventually be consumed by the black hole or ejected in jets.

She adds her personal opinion about this fact, saying that such events are "hilarious", and proceeds by saying that it's okay to laugh at the fate of those stars as the gravity of the black hole will prevent any signals from those stars escaping. This is due to black holes' immense gravitational attraction that prevents even light from escaping. In Megan's case the most important consequence of this fact is that anyone on planets around such stars cannot leave Yelp reviews if they hear her laughing. Thus, they cannot add to those that mock her lesson.

However, as the Roche limit of a black hole for the average star it's consuming is usually greater than the size of the black hole's event horizon ({{w|Schwarzschild radius}}), reviews made just after the star begins spaghettification could still escape the black hole. Not only do stars not use any kind of human-made technology,{{citation needed}} but any information regarding the app Yelp has yet to reach any star near Sagittarius A*, and will do so only after 27,000 years. It is much more likely that someone living on one of the star's planets would try to leave a comment on Yelp, not the star itself, but in any case the same issues with distances would of course apply. It also seems unlikely that any planet would still be following a star when it first gets that close to a supermassive black hole.

In the title text Megan claims that we haven't actually seen a star fall into the black hole since we invented telescopes. While it is true that we haven't observed any star fall into our closest supermassive black hole, this phenomenon has been been observed for other black holes, and the {{w|Sagittarius_A*#Discovery_of_G2_gas_cloud_on_an_accretion_course|G2 gas cloud on an accretion course}} was discovered in 2002. Megan also apparently has a list of stars she would like to see fall into the black hole. But she can just keep hoping, as humans at present have no way of changing the position of any star, and probably couldn't implement it soon upon such distant stars even if were possible. So unless she is hoping for one (or more) of the already closer stars to be observed to fall in next, she is unlikely to experience success for stars on her list.

==Transcript==

:[The background is black, Megan is in front of three others, Cueball and Ponytail to the left, and White Hat to the right. Megan is drawn in white while the background characters are in grey.]
:Megan: Welcome back to Stargazing.
:Megan: According to some ''incredibly'' rude Yelp reviews, I'm "not informative" and "can't possibly be an astronomer" and "just kind of say words as they occur to me."
:Megan: I guess some losers just hate cool space facts!

:[The sky is white, the floor is black, Megan is pointing at the sky. Hairy, a Megan-like woman (with longer hair), Cueball, and Ponytail are on the left, White Hat and Hairbun are on the right. All of the characters are drawn in black.]
:Megan: Anyway, that dot is a "star."
:Megan: There are over 20 stars in the sky, and some of them are more than 100 years old.

:[The background is black again, the panel zooms in on Megan's face.]
:Megan: Our galaxy is huge.
:Megan: You know the beach? That big wet sandbox?
:Megan: Well, there are more grains of sand in the Milky Way than in all Earth's beaches combined.
:Off-panel voice to the left: Wow.
:Off-panel voice to the right: ...Wait.

:[The background is still in black, Megan is in front of others and has her finger raised, Ponytail is left of Megan, White Hat and Hairbun on the right. Megan is again drawn in white while the background characters are in grey.]
:Megan: The galaxy has a black hole at the center.
:Megan: Sometimes stars fall in, which is ''hilarious''.
:Megan: Don't worry, it's okay to laugh. The gravity prevents signals from escaping, so they can't leave Yelp reviews.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Stargazing]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Stargazing]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]

3072: Stargazing 4

2025-04-05T03:04:33Z

MinersHavenM43: first and fourth panel

Talk:3072: Stargazing 4

2025-04-05T02:46:59Z

MinersHavenM43:

First comic explanation I've done. This is... somewhat harder than what I expected. [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 02:46, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

3072: Stargazing 4

2025-04-05T02:46:03Z

MinersHavenM43: categorie s

3072: Stargazing 4

2025-04-05T02:42:32Z

MinersHavenM43:

3064: Lungfish

2025-03-17T18:20:10Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 3064
| date = March 17, 2025
| title = Lungfish
| image = lungfish_2x.png
| imagesize = 317x403px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I know having so many base pairs makes rebasing complicated, but you're in Bilateria, so shouldn't you at LEAST be better at using git head?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a COPY OF COPY OF COPY OF COPY OF LUNGFISH - more information on lungfish if necessary. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Lungfish (the class ''Dipnoi'') have the largest known genome among the vertebrates (155 billion base pairs), and the third-largest known genome of all species. The comic relates this to a common issue when editing documents or coding, where the author accidentally makes changes to two separate documents when they meant to only edit one, making both documents essential for the completion of a project. The comic posits that Lungfish has a habit of doing this with its own genome, making both genes essential and increasing the amount of base pairs.

The names of the "files" reference several things about computer files:
* Older versions of Windows, when copy-and-pasting a file within the same folder, would automatically append "Copy of" to the start of the filename, resulting in a file named "Copy of [Document]" (this was previously referenced in the title text of [[1459: Documents]].) If ''that'' file was then copied, it would be likewise appended, thus producing "Copy of Copy of [Document]". (Newer versions of Windows instead add "- Copy" to the end of the filename, which produces the same effect but keeps things in roughly the same order when sorted by name.)
* Numbered labels in brackets can be produced by a couple different actions:
** If multiple files are highlighted and a Rename action is performed, all of the files will be given the same name with a numeric designator, starting with the one clicked on for the Rename action and then proceeding from the top of the list down as originally sorted. For example, if three files named "Alpha", "Beta", and "Gamma" are highlighted, and the user right-clicks on "Gamma" and renames it to "Alphabet", then "Gamma" will be renamed to "Alphabet (1)", followed by "Alphabet (2)" [formerly Alpha] and "Alphabet (3)" [formerly Beta].
** If a copied file is pasted multiple times in the same folder, it will also receive number labels in the same format.
* Some users will keep older drafts of a file in case of a need to revert back to an older version; this can be done with a number label (i.e. "v1", "v2", etc.) or a proper word (i.e. "draft", "edited", etc.) at the user's discretion. This can be useful if it's discovered an edit breaks something important, or in the event that a mistaken save action loses data, but it can also lead to file hoarding.

The file names "Copy of Copy of Gene v3 (Newest) (2)" and "Copy of Copy of Gene v3 (Final) (2)" suggest a very poorly-organized filesystem - and a tendency to copy-paste unnecessarily - on the part of the lungfish, which certainly explains why it keeps editing multiple documents instead of a single one.

The title text further compares the biology of lungfish to managing versions of files. Rebasing is the act of moving changes from one file branch to another, which Cueball says is complicated due to the large amount of base pairs. {{w|Bilateria}} is a clade of animals characterized by embryonic bilateral symmetry, giving their bodies distinguishable "head" and "tail" ends. Since this applies to lungfish, Cueball says the lungfish should at least know how to use the "head" branch with the {{w|Git}} version control system.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball is standing on the end of a wooden dock looking down at the ocean. A lungfish is sticking its head out of the water close to the dock and looking at Cueball.]
:Lungfish: It turns out I've been editing both '''''Copy of Copy of Gene v3 (Newest) (2)''''' and '''''Copy of Copy of Gene v3 (Final) (2)''''' so now I can't delete either one.
:Cueball: You have '''''got''''' to stop doing this.
:Lungfish: It's fine, I'll just buy more storage.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Why lungfish have such enormous genomes

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Version Control]]

965: Elements

2025-02-25T02:10:43Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 965
| date = October 17, 2011
| title = Elements
| image = elements.png
| titletext = Of all the nations, the armies of the ununoctium-benders are probably the least intimidating. The xenon-benders come close, but their flickery signs are at least effective for propaganda.
}}

==Explanation==
In the popular children's TV show ''{{w|Avatar: The Last Airbender}}'', the four nations that inhabit the world can each telekinetically control ("bend") one of the four classical elements: water, earth, fire and air. One person, the avatar, can control all four elements and is markedly more powerful than any other character. {{w|Dmitri Mendeleev}} is the creator of the modern periodic table, which categorizes the 118+ atomic elements by their atomic number.

The comic is comparing the control over more magical power with more practical, "science-y" power. Fire, boulders, and storms may be more impressive visually, but science has proven time and again that "boring" can have very practical, very deadly applications. Additionally, while the advantages of controlling the four alchemical elements are mostly physical and visible (characters in the show most often use their powers to push, throw, or create barriers), the phenomena related to Mendeleev's elements and his research include subatomic particle interactions. One power the depicted Mendeleev has that the Avatar definitely does not have is control over radioactive elements, and this is the subtle, slow-acting power he demonstrates.

The powers of the Avatar's world, moreover, generally require actual contact with the relevent element (or a material that is sufficiently composed within its sphere). An Earthbender typically cannot do anything to manipulate rock or soil without touching some connected part of it, and cannot do anything if suspended in the air or (until they can learn to manipulate any of the "earth impurities" within it) restrained and enclosed by metal. Firebenders generally learn to make use of their own bodyheat, in a manner that seems initially inconsistent with the other bending disciplines but is hand-waved (in either sense) to be actually very effective, insofar as waterbending significant effects only using one's own bodily moisture is a far less prolific occurence.

With this in mind, manipulating and coercing a particular element does not imply the ability to generate it from nothing. Mendeleev, therefore, should not be expected to spontaneously create any given rare element from nowhere, and (if true to the same philosophy, with the addition of modern scientific understanding of the elements) must therefore be either identifying and concentrating extremely small trace quantities already within reach (in order to weaponise the substance) or somehow be able to use his mastery of all elements to induce transmutation (via established fission or fusion processes from other types of atom under his full control).

{{w|Polonium}} gained a level of notoriety as the poison used to kill Russian dissident {{w|Alexander Litvinenko}}.

The title text talks about power levels of the elements if each element had a controlling nation as per the TV show. Ununoctium (1-1-8-ium) was the placeholder name for {{w|oganesson}}, the 118th element. It did not officially gain its permanent name until late 2016, 5 years after this comic was released. Oganesson, the heaviest element that has been created, has the shortest life before it decays into other elements, with a half-life of less than a millisecond. {{w|Xenon}}, a noble gas like oganesson, has few practical applications, but it is sometimes used in "neon" signs.

==Transcript==
:[Aang the Avatar and Dmitri Mendeleev stand in opposition to each other. Aang wields all 4 classical elements: Water, Fire, Earth, and Air.]
:Aang: I'm the avatar, master of all 4 elements!
:Mendeleev: Really? I'm Mendeleev, master of all 118+.
:''swoosh''
:Mendeleev: That was polonium-bending. You probably didn't feel anything, but the symptoms of radiation poisoning will set in shortly.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Periodic table]]

3029: Sun Avoidance

2024-12-27T05:20:55Z

MinersHavenM43: wrong it's

{{comic
| number = 3029
| date = December 25, 2024
| title = Sun Avoidance
| image = sun_avoidance_2x.png
| imagesize = 311x403px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = C'mon, ESA Solar Orbiter team, just give the Parker probe a LITTLE nudge at aphelion. Crash it into the sun. Fulfill the dream of Icarus. It is your destiny.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SANTA BOT FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (SKILL ISSUE). Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The comic shows the end of a table of human missions, both terrestrial and space-based, ranked by how far they stayed away from the {{w|Sun}}.

The vast majority of these missions have been on Earth, a few on the Moon, and most of the rest in Earth orbit, so about 157 million km from the Sun. There have also been 8 probes sent to the outer planets; they could be at the top of the list if this were shown, but only if they started by flying directly away from the Sun, at at time when the Earth was farthest from the Sun. Else they would have been closer to the Sun at the start than all missions on Earth when Earth was farthest. It is not how far away the mission ends but how close it comes at closest approach to the Sun.

Most space probes try not to get too close to the Sun, because it's extremely hot{{Citation needed}} and their equipment (especially the electronics) are not designed to work at such temperatures and radiation levels. If they have to venture into the inner Solar System, either because the mission is to an inner planet or other body there or to use {{w|gravity assist}} of Mercury or Venus, mission planners will design the trajectory so it remains tens of millions of kilometers away from the Sun, to minimize the Sun's effect on the spacecraft.

This comic was posted the day after December 24, 2024, when the {{w|Parker Solar Probe}} made its closest approach to the Sun. As a result, it has set a new record for the worst failure in solar avoidance. This mission needs to be really close to the Sun so it can make close-up analysis of its corona and magnetic field. It has been engineered with special solar shields to protect it from the extreme heat and radiation.

Obviously the joke is to mischaracterize Parker's impressively close approach to the Sun as a failure to avoid it. Earth and everything on it travel at an {{w|Earth's orbit|average of 29.78 km/s}} in a direction 90 degrees to the direction of the Sun, and the majority of this "sideways" relative velocity must be shed to bring Parker's orbit closer to the Sun. Just to bring a mass of approximately 17 metric tons directly to an orbit crossing Mercury requires a rocket the size of the [https://launchercalculator.com/?rocket=NS1 Saturn V stack]. Parker masses about forty times that and its Christmas 2024 perihelion was just 6.1 million kilometers versus Mercury's 46 million kilometers. The Parker mission designers needed an extremely ''high'' degree of skill to plot a course with very minor adjustments that resulted in the seven gravity assists from Venus that were needed to get this close to the Sun — and should rank well above all the missions that went nowhere near the Sun and therefore showed no skill avoiding it.

The next closest mission that's still in operation (the {{w|Helios (spacecraft)|Helios}} missions ended in 1985) is the {{w|European Space Agency}}'s {{w|Solar Orbiter}}. The title text jokes that it should nudge Parker so it crashes into the Sun fulfilling the supposed dream of {{w|Icarus}}, a character from Greek mythology who flew too close to the Sun using wings crafted by his father {{w|Daedalus}}, and fell into the sea because the beeswax in the wings melted. Flying too close to the Sun is a saying that relates to Icarus, whose dream may have been to fly even closer to the Sun (or just so high that he was), but the 'reality' was instead a fall ''out'' of the sky and into the sea, making the title text somewhat metaphorically mixed.

The title text additionally suggests that the Solar Orbiter could be repurposed to nudge the Parker Probe into a Sun-striking trajectory, as their orbits do technically overlap, although it would take some time (and very precise operation) to coordinate the Orbiter such that it could somehow send the Probe into a full terminal Sun-dive to cement its position as being the closest mission to the Sun (or, in terms of the comic, aquiring a "last place" position in Sun-avoidance that can only ever be equalled, and never overtaken). But it would be difficult to accomplish the feat, as the mission had not been designed with this degree of capability in reserve, and it would not be easy to give the amount/timing of nudge needed without potentially damaging/destroying both craft.

Note that falling into the Sun, starting from Earth, needs almost as much effort as it would take to launch a probe ''from'' the surface of the Sun (assuming one could be) and out into Earth's orbit, which might involve reversing the {{w|Gravity assist|gravitational slingshots}} used to save some effort. The possible advantage for a Sun-destined probe is that it can end by taking advantage of {{w|aerobraking}} in its {{w|Stellar atmosphere|thickening atmosphere}}, but this would mean surviving higher tempereratures for even longer than Parker probe is designed to hopefully withstand; it would take further development to have a probe with a good chance of surviving long enough to make useful studies all the way up to not missing the Sun at all, or could only be considered as beyond the end of any practical mission.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Header:] Sun Avoidance Skill Leaderboard

:[A table with three columns, all with underlined headers.]
:Rank
:Mission
:Sun Nearest Miss
:[First 'row', 'Rank', is of extra height and over several lines, using vertical and horizontal ellipses between the two endpoints to indicate a range of ranks in the first column, the first visible digit of the larger number being cut off by the left frame edge:] 1. ⋮ … ⋮ 4303857.
:[Across both the 'Mission' and 'Sun Nearest Miss' columns, the first row has some text spread across two lines, within a framing pair of large square brackets to match the Rank range:] All other expeditions in human history
:[A simple row, with all three columns separately populated, the first columns Rank number is also cut off across the first visible digit.]
:4303858.
:Mariner-10
:69.0 million km
:[Another row, likewise.]
:4303859.
:Helios 1
:46.4 million km
:[Another row.]
:4303860.
:BepiColombo
:45.8 million km
:[Another row, with a yet more significant Ranking digit now partly visible due to non-proportional spacing, itself being cut off in the stead of the now fully visible next digit.]
:24303861.
:Messenger
:45.3 million km
:[Another row, back to the original pre-cutoff.]
:4303862.
:Solar Orbiter
:43.8 million km
:[Another row.]
:4303863.
:Helios 2
:43.3 million km
:[Final row.]
:4303864.
:Parker
:6.17 million km

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Congratulations to the Parker Solar Probe for setting a new record for "Worst Job Avoiding the Sun."

==Trivia==
This comic was released on Christmas Day of 2024, but makes no reference to Christmas. This year marks the first time in xkcd's 20 year history (of releasing comics around Christmas), that there have been no [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comics]] released during those days. Also all nine times before this year, when a release day fell on Christmas Day, that comic has always been about Christmas.

It might explain why this comic was released on Christmas Day instead of a Christmas comic, if [[Randall]] found the accomplishments of the Parker Solar Probe more interesting than Christmas itself. It would not be the first accomplishment mentioned on or around Christmas, however, with the others having been given a seasonal spin.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Space probes]]

Talk:2626: d65536

2024-11-23T15:16:52Z

MinersHavenM43:

I wonder: can we even make a fair polyhedron with 65536 faces? In Randal's illustration, the faces seem to be irregular hexagons. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.105|172.70.130.105]] 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: This is better than my question, which was simply if you could tile a sphere with these. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.36|172.70.211.36]] 23:01, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Definitely possible, just create two identical right pyramids with a 32768-gon base and glue the bases together. [[User:Clam|Clam]] ([[User talk:Clam|talk]]) 23:53, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: Would this design be fair? Consider a set of 256 lines of latitude overlapping another set, with the second set's polar axis at the equator of the first. Cut flat quadrangles between the intersection points of the lines of latitude. Doesn't use hexagons like the comic does though. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.121|172.70.110.121]] 09:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:: Fairness is a given for pyramids (if that's what you're asking). As long as there's enough 'rolling energy' to get either of the pyramids 'facing up', any N-agon base to the pyramids should have enough indeterminate impetous to then finally roll around a bit to end up with any of those exposed faces on top.
::(Interesting to note that for odd-numbered N-agonal bases, like that in a D10, you need to offset the bases and instead of sticking to the triangular faces base-to-base you now have kite-shapes that interlock in a serration that is no longer strictly planar along the axis's perpendiculars.)
::That might need a selection of the pyramidal slope. A very wide pair of bases with very little tip-'elevation' (to fit tightly within an oblate spheroid) should transition very well between same-pyramid faces, like a bulgy button, but one with highly acute tip-angle (prolate, likewise) might find the dominant behaviour to be tip-to-tip tipping, more like a toggle-fastener. OTOH, for odd-numbered end-agons it would probably ratchett to subsequent sides as it tips back and forth so long as it has enough energy to it.
::If you're asking about lines of latitude intersecting, consider that near the poles of either latitudinal reference the division of the other reference-system is going to be spliced more irregularly and thus give varying degrees of stability to rest upon.
::(Also, do you have a latitudinal line that crosses ''both'' pairs of poles, or are you deliberately moving them by half a phase (1/512th of the relevent circumference) so that you at least don't have them entirely coincident.)
::I believe the suggested scheme would be to take a dodecahedron or icosohedron (either of the two duals can be used to start with) and then subdivide each face in such a manner that equally-sized (but differently distorted) hexagons – and 12 little regular pentagons of identical area fitting in at the old dodecahedron centre/the old icosahedron vertex – emerge from the required segmentation/vertex-truncation and readjustment the radiality of all new mid-edge vertices (or maybe the newer-edges' centres or the newer-faces' centres) to touch the unit sphere. If done symmetrically, it should be entirely fair.
::The face-count might be troublesome, though. The twelve necessary pentagonal faces leaves 65524 hexagons, to split evenly between* either 12 or 20 zones, and it should be obvious that neither is possible**, in whole numbers, given the starting point of 2n faces...
:::(* - you can, and probably will in this design, have some that cross between two of the top-level polygons, but you can fully 'donate' as many as you then fully ''get'' donated from the next face around, so it might as well be just counted as a group of whole tiles on an a set of Escher-like interlocking 'rough' polygons.)
:::(** - If you're using 12 zones, that's 3x4x(however many in the zone + one corner each) and there's no factor of 3 in ''any'' value that is 2n. Arranging into 20 symmetrical zones (5x4), you will find that 65524 isn't divisible by 5, either...)
::You could probably arrange an N-ahedron with the number of faces being 12+(12a) or 12+(20b), for some higher value (a bit of mental arithmatic suggests 65592 might be that value) and mark all the 'excess' faces (56?) with "Roll Again!". Or perhaps some pithy motivational slogans that also convey roughly the same meaning... :P [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 11:32, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Postcript: Ok, so this is my idea for face-placing. Take a D8 (octahedron) and divide each of its 8 originally triangular faces into 8192 smaller faces (alternatively, start with a cube and progressively truncate its corners towards the same end). This is not a divisible by three number (neither can you put one in the centre, the rest are divisble by three and can surround it symmetrically), but you don't need strict rotational symmetry in any way. The opposing side can reflect/copy the non-symmetry as required to create any useful symmetry across the whole of the structure (and make floored-base/upmost-face pairings, amongst other things).
::As long as you make the faces equally likely to land on ''and stay on'' (could be hyperstellated as a slightly flat irregular 8192agon-based right-pyramid with the pyramid-faces of adjacent sides matching or meshing edges with those of each other, or a complicated mostly-hexagonal mesh, or a triangular one that's a limited fragment of a fine geodesic-like bulged pattern) by some suitable scheme governing area, aspect ratio and inter-face angle of incidence (probably normalising features to touch the unit sphere, for a start) then it should do it fairly and with ''exactly'' 65536 faces. I leave the fine-tweaking up to someone else. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 12:59, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't know why it's so big? Seems like it should have a diameter of approx. 1 meter. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.105|172.70.130.105]] 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: Cueball is 50 pixels high. The ball is 340 px high. Assuming Cueball is an average-height male (1.7m), and is standing the same distance from the viewer as the center of the ball, roughly how large is each face of the polygon? Area of a sphere is 4.pi.r.r, r=0.85, so 9.08 m^2 or 9080000 mm^2, divide by number of faces, get 277 mm^2, so we get 1.6cm to a side. If I did that right, then you're right: those are fairly large faces. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.39|172.69.70.39]] 05:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I ran the calculations for the Trivia section. I used 12pt font which gave each number an area of 1/6 square inch (about 1 square cm) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.237|162.158.106.237]] 06:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:Simple: Exaggerated for comedic effect and to make the point it's unwieldy (plus avoid the fuss of figuring out a realistic size) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:31, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Should the title and picture file use "d" or the comic's difficult to type "ᴅ"?
[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 21:55, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Since xkcd uses small caps as lowercase letters, the "ᴅ" should just be considered xkcd-font for "d", and as such need not be used on the title, which is not using the xkcd font.
:: Ah! [[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 06:15, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

If you really did want to generate a 16 bit integer with physical dice, it would be much simpler to roll a [https://www.thediceshoponline.com/impact-opaque-hexidice-d16-hexadecimal-dice hex die] four times. [[User:Clayot|Clayot]] ([[User talk:Clayot|talk]]) 23:30, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Rolling a binary die 16 times would also work. You can get binary dice for 1¢ each. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.69|108.162.245.69]] 01:31, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::The lowest-value coin of all is the Tiyin from Uzbekistan. Some 3,038 equate to one UK penny (and 2,000 tot up to one US cent) from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21572359. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 15:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Those 1¢ "dices" are not exactly guaranteed to be random. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:::They seem as random as other dice? Am I wrong? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.63|172.70.230.63]] 09:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:::: You can reduce bias by taking two not quite fair coins. Flip them together. If both heads, or both tails, then record a 0. If different, record a 1. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 15:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::::: Actually, it's better to flip one coin twice. If it's heads then tails, record a 0, if it's tails then heads, record a 1. If it's HH or TT, try again. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.207.8|172.70.207.8]] 15:20, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the hardest part (or maybe second-hardest part) is figuring out which facet is the one on top. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.109|162.158.78.109]] 00:46, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:Roll it on a glass table, check from below which face it's landed on instead. Wait until it has settled safely, though, or it might land on ''your'' face! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.227|172.70.90.227]] 04:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:: Good plan. Assuming standard dice design, subtract the value from 65537 to get the value of the uppermost face. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.39|172.69.70.39]] 05:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::: Because computer binary counting starts with ZERO (and in this case ends with 65535) one has to subtract from 65535. This die would not have a 65536 and it would have a zero. [[User:Inquirer|Inquirer]] ([[User talk:Inquirer|talk]]) 22:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::::Notice that the parent comment says “assuming standard dice design” and standard dice start with 1 and end with their d number: a standard d4 has faces 1,2,3,4; a standard d6 has faces 1,2,3,4,5,6; a standard d10 1,2,3,[…],10; and a standard d100 has faces 1 through 100. Which is why rolling 2xd10 does NOT yield the same results as rolling 1xd100, because one cannot roll a 1 OR a 100 with two d10’s, and other numbers are over represented. This is why I have both a d12 and a d100 in my set of dice…[[User:John|John]] ([[User talk:John|talk]]) 11:40, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::D10s are frequently (IME) numbered 0..9, with underlines to distinguish 6 from 9, whether or not that is as a deliberate sop to pairing up for percentiles ("It's the red dice first...", "It isn't!", "It is, it's ''always'' the red dice first, that's a 9 percent fail, not at 90 percent success!"). The 0 opposite 9, 1 opposite 8, etc.
:::::If you're rolling 1..10s (depends upon the system being used for... and arguments about the original intentions, possibly, where 10 of something or zero of something turning up/discovered means a lot to what exactly happens next) you ''treat'' them as full 10s, and double-zero can (again, hopefully understood in advance) be a "natural 100", rather than a natural-zero, to someone's obvious advantage or detriment.
:::::Similarly, games with D4 may use 0..3 as its outcomes, or D3s (D6/2s) have 0,0,1,1,2,2 as faces. Or if you are somehow stuck with a 1-based die of the appropriate (or divisible) range, and need to play something that requires a 0-based one, you agree that MAXNUM->ZERO or N=N-1.
:::::From my recollections of the truly huge collection of multicoloured, multisized and variously multifaceted dice that was dragged out for wargaming/role-playing sessions, years of accumulations from various sources, the D6s (spotted, not "Hit", "Missfire", <arrows for miss direction>, or otherwise for other uses), D8s, D12s and D20s were habitually 1-upwards, and Ds with 3, 4 and 10 almost all 0-upwards. D6s were the most numerous, but D10s well up there (enough for colour-mismatched pairs for each of a whole battalion of participants, even if the Hit/Miss die had to be passed around at need, and the few big yellow D20s might need to be offered onwards/rolled on someone's behalf on occasion).
:::::In short, the 'standard' is perhaps more firmly that opposite sides add up to double the average (not possible with D4, which is also "point-marked", not one number per side), though I'd like to check a D3 to see if it's 0 opposite 2 (x2) and 1 opposite 1 (which also happens to be a 0..5-dice with the opposition rule, but modded by 3) or perhaps in a basic {1..6}mod3 conversion 1 opposes 0(=6), 2 opposite 2(=5), 0(=3) opposite 1(=4). Maybe next time I go a gaming I'll get the chance. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.44|172.70.86.44]] 12:48, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::HOW are you figuring any numbers are over represented in rolling 2xD10? There are 100 possibilities, 1 through 100, one chance per number, exactly equal... Each die has a 1 in 10 chance of rolling each value. Unless you're forgetting to pre-assign which die is the tens position and which is the ones... This is why any set with more than one D10 has then different colours so you can tell them apart... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::::::Not sure what you're asking here. It seems to bear very little relevence to the meaning of the thing you're replying to (wot I wrote, which might indicate the error in conveying is at my end). I did not ''intend'' to suggest (as it is untrue) that 2D10≠1D100 (give or take adjusting what "00" means, which is an implementation issue, not a mathematical one), but I'll gladly clear up anything I left potentially saying something other than I thought it did. Quote the bit, and you can get a 'better' rewrite of it ASAP. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.41|162.158.159.41]] 05:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::::"Which is why rolling 2xd10 does NOT yield the same results as rolling 1xd100, because one cannot roll a 1 OR a 100 with two d10’s, and other numbers are over represented.", that line. A 1 is rolling 0 on the tens die and a 1 on the ones die. A 100 is 0 on both dice (or you make the range 0 to 99, in which case two 0s is 0). NOW I think you were thinking of multiplying the values, which is indeed bad (for example, it then becomes impossible to roll a 17, as no two single digit numbers multiply to 17. Also, 9x9 is 81, 9x10 is 90, making those the last two possible values before 100, the other 80s and 90s unachievable. And then what you say make sense, you can get 24 with 3x8 or 4x6, two chances = over-represented). [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:29, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::::::::Ah, no, that was User:John, not me (172.70.86.44). Teach me for replying based on seeing the Diffs page, and not counting the indent-colons correctly! You were replying to a point that I had actually ''not even noticed'', at the same 'level' as I had jumped in on the zero-based-range thing with my spiel that you weren't actually arguing with. (Not sure John was thinking dice-multiplied, either, as 1x1=1. Perhaps why I blanked that bit out.)
::::::::On the subject, though, the Babylon 5 RPG used an interesting double-dice system, for some things (either straight success/fail or modifying other offsets, possibly). Red D6 and Green D6 (or similar hue distinction) rolled together. Take the ''lowest'' value of the two, and then call it negative if it was the red one. Equal rolls mean zero, except double-1 (critical/special failure of some kind) and -6 (likewise a success). Gives a slightly modified normalised-around-zero distribution (intentionally or otherwise) with the possible results being ((-Critical -5 -4 -4 -3 -3 -3 -2 -2 -2 -2 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 0 0 0 0 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +2 +2 +2 +2 +3 +3 +3 +4 +4 +5 +Critical)), if you order the 36 possibilities. Similar to 2D6 added, minus 7 (to bunch up the unexceptionalism towards the baseline), but two of the middlingest possibilities removed and given special status at the either end for that little possible pizzaz! ;)
::::::::It reminded me of the experiment with monkeys where they were taught to recognise values (as number of bananas, e.g.) and then taught that whichever of two options they chose, it was the ''other'' one's value that dictated their reward. When done with abstract numbers (digits, or colours/shapes relating to numbers by training) they would "choose low, to get high", but when given ''actual'' quantities of reward-items, they'd instinctively "choose high", by instinct, immediately before their conscious brains kicked in and they realised they'd done the wrong thing. Or something like that (look for 30/40-year-old study, possibly shown to be flawed, these days)...
::::::::Anyway, it took a short while to train oneself to be somehow excited by 3 dots on a green when paired with six dots on a red, say, (or dissapointed with a green 6 in the light of any non-6 red) when previously the merest glance at the cumulative spots on thrown dice would suffice to satisfy the question of how well they fell for you. ;)
::::::::Not useful for this comic, but had always been dying to mention it, from the beginning! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.64|172.70.86.64]] 11:10, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::::::LOL! Yes, I indented to answer John, his comment mystified me, :) And I did not check your identity, just understood by your response YOU were the one I was speaking to. :) The comments on here are so many and so LARGE I haven't read most, just that his caught my eye. THAT is an interesting if complicated dice system, wow! [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:03, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

What material should it be to be light enough to easily roll it but cheap enough that doing the 1,5 meters doest cost a fortune ? Sorry if the question is not clear. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.69.30|141.101.69.30]] 05:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I recommend making it hollow. You could probably do something like this for $3000 if you made it out of 1/8th inch acrylic plate. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.237|162.158.106.237]] 07:02, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:At first I thought aluminum for sturdiness, but really you could make this out of cardboard for dirt cheap, lasercutting precise shapes, but you'd have to design its structural frame to keep it intact, exchanges design effort for price. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.63|172.70.230.63]] 09:32, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with this dice being really random. Like, sure, if thrown correctly, but that's going to be quite hard. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

:True. For a rolled die to be random, it needs to roll far enough so that the initial orientation no longer governs the outcome. Say, ten times the circumference, or about 150 meters? -- [[User:Dtgriscom|Dtgriscom]] ([[User talk:Dtgriscom|talk]]) 10:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Interesting to consider the 'necessary minimum'. Simplify to a "wheel of fortune" (just one axis of continual rotation) it would depend upon the potential variation of imparted rotation. If (say) 'aiming' at two whole rotations has a (perhaps 'normal') spread of variance that relates to ±½ rotational uncertainty at the 1st and 3rd quartile of probability then the sub-first and above-third 'tails' might wrap around to (roughly) equalise the chances that 2±(whatever fraction) spins lands just about anywhere just about equally. Aiming at four whole rotations (similary ±1 spin at the given quartiles, and the tailing chancs 'filling in' above 5 rotations and below 3) would smooth things out, all else equal, but takes twice as much perceived/attempted effort for not much more 'randomising'.
::Similarly, requiring 10 full rolls (maybe honestly aiming for 10, but allowing it to be 7.5 or less if not obviously 'just nudged') seems overkill, in the single dimension.
::Except, of course that you also need enough distance (on top of whatever factor you consider practical as a variation-wrapping value, which might not be the ½-in-2 I give) to also roll ''sideways''. If for some reason you really don't want to roll 65536 or 1 (or is it 65535 and 0?), which may be on polar-opposite faces, you might make sure that they are directly to the left and right before you propel the die forwards ''a little'', not caring which distribution of numbers is on/near the rolling-equator (2 is acceptible to you, and 65533, etc; other very low/high values conceivably placed on that thin band of "wheel-like chance" but you're just avoiding the very largest and smallest, or specifically just the one of them) but knowing that it's more unlikely to easily present the exact face(s) you dislike than it might be in a truly 'fair' roll.
::Perhaps the best thing is to have a rolling track to send the thing down that puts it the required "two or so rotations" forward to then either hit a wall or climb slightly up a slope (at a roughly 45 degree angle) that then sends it back roughly sideways to the original vector for a similar distance with a perpendicular or even composite moment of rolling rotation, to bring 'initially axial' numbers fully into play... And that dog-leg would require a sligthly shorter length from launch-position to where the thoroughly mixed-up final stopping point should be, whilst significantly foiling the master-manipulators who actually try to arrange an initial setup that favours better final results (rather than just nudge it, uncaring, for a result not as totally random but certainly not more predominently of desired-for ranges than otherwise). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.8|141.101.99.8]] 12:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::At what point does the structural material the die is composed of, combined with its mass, create a smoothing effect that will destroy the fairness of the die. I mean a small plastic die is no problem. A 2-ton acrylic die would start grinding off the edges of some faces with every roll, would it not? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.69.122|172.69.69.122]] 13:35, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Should it be related to https://xkcd.com/221/ ? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.183.246|162.158.183.246]] 08:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to wait, I think - I don't think there's room in my attic for this as well as all the Betamax kit, my drawers full of MiniDiscs and my Zune collection. No, I'll sit tight - I'm hearing encouraging things about the introduction of the Magic 65536-Ball... [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 09:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:The number of sides on the die inside the ball is not what determines the name of the ball. It's the exterior housing which is colored in the manner of an Eight Ball. The classic design uses a d20, and is still called an Eight Ball, not a Twenty Ball. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.195|172.70.130.195]] 18:00, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Full disclosure: I don't have any of those things in my attic. And I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think Randall thinks rolling a d65536 is genuinely the hardest part of generating random 16-bit numbers. And Grape Nuts contain neither grapes nor nuts. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 23:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm suprised the hidden message points to 2624. I would've thought it would point to 2626 to refer to itself. Maybe things didn't get published as intended? Or maybe Randall really just wanted to point people to the Voyager comic? [[User:Linux2647|Linux2647]] ([[User talk:Linux2647|talk]]) 18:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I'm no ASCII expert, but from the description provided I'm pretty sure the comic URL would require the number representing "26" to show up twice. A die with, say, two 13,359 faces would obviously not be fair. If only Randall had published this as #2625 or #2627! (Or maybe he ''planned'' to publish it last week and had to shuffle his schedule after finalizing this comic?) [[User:GreatWyrmGold|GreatWyrmGold]] ([[User talk:GreatWyrmGold|talk]]) 18:24, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Probably the latter, seeing as it doesn't actually line up so that any of them are actually "26". The numbers are xk-cd-.c-om-/2-62-4/, so the 26 and 24 aren't lined up like that. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.87|172.70.126.87]] 19:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::To change the number from 24 to 26 would mean changing 13,359 to 13,871. The only way that would be a problem is if 13,871 was already in the comic, which it isn't. Convert 13,359 to hex, it's 342F. In ASCII, 34 is "4", 2F is "/". Add 2 you get 36, so the new hex number is 362F, which converted to decimal is 13,871. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 11:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
:Perl code to decode the ASCII: <pre>perl -E 'for (30827, 25444, 11875, 28525, 12082, 13874, 13359) { print chr($_ >> 8), chr($_ & 0xff) }; print "\n"'</pre>

<big><big>'''Remember that "die" is singular and "dice" is plural'''</big></big> [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 09:30, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

;Might be worth offering some easier alternatives..
Needless to say, 16 ordered coins (eg ordered by the date of their minting) provide a much easier alternative to a d65536.

Other (easy to find) d p^2 - such as 8 ordered d4, or 5 ordered d8 and a coin (or bit-shave a dice.)
It's true some rules need to be applied (the highest number of the die is treated as a 0, and the order of the dice is strictly followed).

For example using a rainbow spectrum ordering of 6d8,
I role: 7, 1, 2, 8, 3, 5. Each dice represents 3 bits -
111-001-010-000-011-101. We shave off the last two bits (because we want 16 bits, not 18, for a d65536)
1110 0101 0000 0111. Hex = E507, which is decimal 58,631.

While it takes a few seconds for a human to convert the number it is quite trivial to write a program to convert an image capture.

There are also specialist dice - such as d16 'hexidice' which provide 4 bits per ordered die, and far less human calculation.
There are even d256 hex dice made, but they suffer the same problem that a d65536 would have.

[[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]])
: how are you trivially converting image captures? i still use my keyboard. what's the update? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.79.120|162.158.79.120]] 18:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:For your D8 system, since a D8 absolutely SCREAMS octal, you'll get results from 001 to 1000 octal for each die roll. Just subtract 1, and it's a perfect 3 digit range, 000 to 111! Which feels better than 8, the highest roll, becoming 0, the lowest, like you're doing. And as the previous commenter asked, how is image capture trivial? Especially from a programming perspective? Seems like the ACTUAL trivial method is to put a calculator into scientific mode and just type in the hex number to convert... :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

::D8 is fine, and I tried that - but it's not so easy to composite the hex number from D8. With a D16 (there are two different styles, both easily available) it's really easy to get a nybble of randomness. Using e.g. visible spectrum ordering and suitable (eg red, orange, yellow, grass*, green, cyan, blue, purple) dice, it's trivial to order the dice to 4 bytes of randomness. (and a d65536 is only 2 bytes) (*I have no grass but I have a dark orange), so just now I rolled 0x6A5D391B.

::As for using a program to convert an image capture, it was sort of a joke. However, the real advantage over a calculator is that the calculator is a PRNG.
::Here is a link to 12 lines of code that would grab the dice numbers - similar code would be used to grab the colours.
:: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66027978/python-number-recognition-on-colored-screen
:: Also, just for fun, have a look at the an system http://gamesbyemail.com/news/diceomatic
::Mainly I wrote this just for fun. ([[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]]) 11:19, 18 June 2022 (UTC))

I found an octahedral Goldberg with 65538 sides, 6 squares and 65532 irregular hexagons, notated GP₄(128,0). Can be constructed by chamfering a cube 7 times (Conway cccccccC). I don't think anything can be closer. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 04:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:I have had two designs in mind:
:*Start with octahedron, subdivide each face triangle into 16,384 triangular faces (subdivide all original edges into 128ths, effectively, while "halving into quarter-sized triangles), pairing the triangles up into half that many 'diamonds' then inflating to touch the bounding sphere, keeping the diamonds planar and possibly equal area, but will also distort them (some into kites, others may be utterly irregular) so it'll be a (literal?) balancing act to make all tippings between faces equally possible.
:*Start with a tetrahedron, subdivide likewise, stick with the triangles, have the same issue of inflating the faces towards the unit sphere while balancing the resulting distortions.
:I tried to work out something that seems to exactly match the image (or as exactly as I perceive it to be) with mildly distorted hexagons - albeit with the necessary pentagonal substitutions to carry the curvature - formed of (a similarly subdivided set of) sub-triangles drawn out on the original surfaces of either icosahedron or a snub-stellated extension onwards the dodecahedron, but I couldn't get the numbers to add up. Which is not to say that there isn't a way to do it. I was going to spend more time on this issue later, so if I get past the issues, then... Watch this space? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 13:17, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I WAS going to say a far simpler way is to roll a D6 and 4 D10s (what is WITH all the lowercase Ds? Every time I see dice named it's uppercase!), figuring that gives a range of 0 to 69,999, and throw out/re-roll results higher than 65,535. (I realize that probably adjusts the odds, but I would think minimally and equally). Then I realized the D6 can't give a result of 0, so the real range is 10,000 to 69,999. Oops! And a D7 feels weird and rare if it even exists, SO! 5 D10s and still throw out everything above 65,535. :) Oh, and I agree with the Warning text, NEEDS an explanation how these numbers turn into a URL. WITHOUT relying on writing a program or concepts like "big endian", just say what's being done to ONE number, come on! EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out and added a MUCH simpler explanation. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]])
:I think a D7*2 exists, i.e. a D14div2 (two faces for each of seven digits), though they're rarer than D14s (same idea as a D10, but interlocked heptagonally-based pyramid 'ends') which are already niche. I saw one with days on (Mo/Tu/We/Th/Fr/Sa/Su, leastwise), which is the only vaguely obvious reason for one. Might as well have a spinner. But to save so much 'wasted' rolling, use a D8 and only reject the 8 (or, rather, 8=0, reroll the 7 and all the rest, to prevent actual statistical clumping, ditto onwards from any other 'bust'). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.41|162.158.159.41]] 05:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::Yup, didn't think about a D8 (which is extra stupid as I was discussing D8 higher up, LOL!) D'oh! And yes, I didn't think about rolling a day of the week, that would make a D7/D14 useful. Even if it was so labelled, just have Sunday equals 0, Monday is 1, etc. Range becomes 0 to 69999, only about 4,000 possibilities thrown out (I'd probably just re-roll the D7/D14). For a D8 I'd agree with your method.

::Reminds me of a Facebook Memory I had the other day: If you want to confuse someone, ask them why there's a line under the 6 on a D8.[[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:14, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

'''"hexakismyriapentakischiliapentahectatriacontakaihexahedron"''' [From the Explanation] Would anyone care to take a stab at deciphering that word? As of this comment, Google only returns this page as a reference. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 01:55, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
:I have not checked for accuracy/consistency with the accepted "large specific number prefixing" conventions, but "hexa" (6) "kismyria" (x10,000) "penta" (5) "kischilia" (x5,000) "penta" (5) "hecta" (x100) "tria" (3) "conta(kai?)" (x10) "hexa" (6) "hedron" (-faced 3d shape")... Possibly constructed by historic geometrical naming rules (historically may not have dealt with myriads enough to establish a firm usage-policy), possibly just the root number* Google Translated to modern Greek, in the latin alphabet and geometrised/de-spaced a bit. It was funny enough for me not to investigate too closely, but this is my impression. It'll be lost once the Incomplete is edited off, anyway, and was never part of the comic to be explained. The 'Incomplete' rewrites sometimes ''do'' seem to need a bit of counter-nerdsniping, but as we don't have an explainexplainxkcd.com to discuss them, in Talk is as good a place as any... :) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.211|172.70.85.211]] 09:11, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
::(*) It's the "kai" that gets me. May be the difference between US number ("twelve thousand thirteen") and UK number ("twelve thousand and thirteen"), except for Greek, or "triacontakai" is "thirty", but that seems unweildy to me for "everyday" Greek (ancient or modern) and I'd have used "trideca" before realising that's probably "thirteen" (c.f. "dodecaedron", so... Anyway, to explain my assumption there. Really I could just look it up to be certain! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.121|162.158.159.121]] 09:19, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
::: I'm the one who named the polyhedron. Hexakismyria (60000) - pentakischilia (5000) - pentahecta (500) - triaconta (30) - kai - hexa (6) - hedron (3D). From what I found, "Kai" was supposed to be added when there's a tens and ones place as stated on [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polygon&oldid=1085462006#Naming wikipedia's polygon page], and "kis" was used for multiples of thousands as per [https://polytope.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Nomenclature&oldid=43793 another wiki]. In both cases, if there's a naming convention flaw, it's best to get a Wikipedia-grade citation to fix things. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.58|108.162.242.58]] 01:36, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
:Why'd you place your comment above mine from 2 days earlier? :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:42, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

It seems like it would be inappropriate for me to make the call, as I'm the one who made the fix, but can the "Don't remove this too soon" request for more information on the hidden message trivia be declared resolved? I feel I've made it clear (I feel like fully doing the conversion on every number would seem too bulky). Also, it begs the question, why THAT comic, is it worth mentioning that this makes it seem likely that THIS was supposed to be 2624, and he forgot to update the number? It would have been simple enough to just add 2 to the last number... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:26, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

16D does have a fair (and in fact regular) die with those many sides, which is the 16-orthoplex/hyperoctahedron. Its "long name" is hexamyriapentachiliapentacositriacontahexapedakon (basically the name the last person said but without -kai- and -kis-). [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 15:16, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:3000: Experimental Astrophysics

2024-10-19T12:34:28Z

MinersHavenM43:

== i really thought he would do something special for the 3000th comic :( i was so hyped ==
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.64.207|172.68.64.207]] 03:48, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

:Saaame:( but maybe he will do something at 3072[[User:SomeRandomNerd|SomeRandomNerd]] ([[User talk:SomeRandomNerd|talk]]) 03:57, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
:It's about blowing up the Sun and likely destroying the Solar System. That's not special enough for you? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 04:01, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
::It doesn't reference its three-thousandness, unlike comics [[1000]] and [[2000]]; it could've been released any other day. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.25|162.158.90.25]] 04:22, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
:I was expecting xkcd 3000 for long but very busy today. I found this comic seemingly not too long after its publication, but not rather upset now [[User:物灵|物灵]] ([[User talk:物灵|talk]]) 06:40, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
:SAME! :( [[User:B_for_brain|B for brain]] ([[User_talk:B_for_brain|talk]]) ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg4bo-hj-mDyOOUp_Yp0pug youtube channel] [https://bforbrain.weebly.com/ wobsite (supposed to be a blag)]) 09:22, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
Randall really did fall off 😭 [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 10:23, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

xkcd 4000 is coming out on 10 march 2031 unless randall uploads inconsistently during those 1000 comics (very likely) unrelatedly i pronounce TŻO as /tiː ʐɛd oʊ/. is that normal? [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 04:10, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
:You (as I) seem to be rightpondian (or have a smattering of ¿polish? culture still within your leftpondian upbringing). I suspect it would be more /ʐi/ for Randall and most of his countrypeople (or straight /zi/, if not a different attempt at the dot-diacritic). It might more correctly be pronounced as /ˈʐɛt/, however, if I have the correct origin. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.2|172.70.162.2]] 06:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
::actually i am brazillian, my english is a mix of primarily american and british english. my understanding of polish came from when i was really into linguistics a few years ago. [[User:MinersHavenM43|MinersHavenM43]] ([[User talk:MinersHavenM43|talk]]) 12:34, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

That’s it? That’s 3000? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.245|162.158.154.245]] 04:20, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

3000th comic! Yay? [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 10:29, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
sad[[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.32|172.68.54.32]] 11:01, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Talk:3000: Experimental Astrophysics

2024-10-19T04:10:19Z

MinersHavenM43:

899: Number Line

2024-07-08T21:41:49Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 899
| date = May 16, 2011
| title = Number Line
| image = number line.png
| titletext = The Wikipedia page List of Numbers opens with "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it."
}}

== Explanation ==

Once again, [[Randall]] seems to be just messing around, this time with a number line.

*'''Negative numbers''' have the same magnitude as positive numbers but can only be used to represent the removal of that same magnitude (hence the term "difference" being used for subtraction). Negative numbers may be called imitator numbers in the comic because of their similarities to positive numbers.

*'''0.99'''.... is {{w|0.999...|equal to 1}} because if you subtract any number from one, however small, you will get a number that is less than 0.99. 1 − '''0.0000000372''' is 1 bit less than the {{w|IEEE_floating_point|IEEE 754 32-bit floating-point representation}} of 1.

*The '''{{w|golden ratio}}''' or '''ϕ''' (phi) is the number <math>\tfrac{1+\sqrt{5}}{2}</math>, about 1.61803. It has many interesting mathematical properties, mostly relating to geometry, and has occasional appearances in nature, such as spirals formed by the seeds in sunflowers. It is also subject to many less credible claims, such as the belief that phi appears in {{w|Parthenon}} (a well-disputed claim) or that rectangles proportioned after phi are more aesthetically pleasing. The speaker seems to drive off his listeners as soon as he brings it up; the golden ratio is infamous for being brought up by know-it-alls, which Randall has mocked in other comics.

* The approximate range from 2.1 to 2.3 is marked as '''The Forbidden Region'''. Why Randall marked this range as forbidden is really anyone's guess; it seems to be an entirely arbitrary designation.

*'''{{w|e (mathematical constant)|e}}''' (Euler's number) is 2.71828... and '''π''' (pi) is 3.14159265...

*'''2.9299372''' is probably a {{w|President's Day}} reference. It is the average of e and π just as the American Presidents' Day is always observed on the 3rd Monday of February (between {{w|George Washington}} and {{w|Abraham Lincoln}}'s birthdays). Washington and Lincoln were the 1st and 16th Presidents of the USA, respectively. Each has a celebrated place in American history.

*'''{{w|Gird}}''', '''ᛟ''' is a purely fictional number. (The glyph that Randall uses seems to resemble an older shape of the digit 4, such as seen on [http://www.bl.uk/learning/images/mappinghist/large2296.html archaic maps].). Canon and orthodox could mean "accepted as the offical story" and "most science-based followers", but they could also reference to organised religions. Gird could be a reference to any or all of:
**[http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-secret-number/ Bleem] - a fictional integer between 3 and 4
**iCarly's [http://icarly.wikia.com/wiki/Derf Derf] - a fictional integer between 5 and 6
**George Carlin's [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bleen Bleen] - a fictional integer between 6 and 7
**[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-033 SCP-033] - a fictional "missed number" consisting of complex formulae that causes mathematical systems to break down when it is introduced to them (manifesting as the physical destruction of the objects the mathematical formulae are contained in, such as paper and computers)
**Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal's [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3913 Sorf] - a fictional integer between 2 and 3 

*'''Site of Battle of 4.108''' is another map joke, implying that 4.108 is an actual location, where an eponymous battle was previously fought. It may be a reference (or homage) to the {{w|Battle of Wolf 359}}, a famous military conflict in the fictional universe of Star Trek. 4.108 was also referenced in [[2861: X Value]], though with an added 3 in the ten-thousandths place.

*An '''Unexplored''' region obscures the line approximately ranging all values from 4.5 to 6.7. In the days when the Earth was still being mapped out, territories that had yet to be properly explored and charted were labelled in a similar manner. The placement of the '''Unexplored''' region on the number line indicates that all numbers in that range, including the integers 5 and 6, are completely unknown. This is, of course, patently ridiculous,{{cn}} and the humor seems to derive solely from how nonsensical and unbelievable it is. Correspondingly, the digits 5 and 6 cannot be found in the comic.

*It is often the case in the media that "It has been 7 years..." or "In the last 7 years..." etc. It is made to seem like a believable statistic but cannot always be true. Alternatively, it is intended as an absurd joke that the number 7 is just "not to be believed".

*'''8''' is not the largest even {{w|prime number}}, nor is it a prime at all. The largest (and only) even prime is 2. A joke intended for those who clearly know that the claim is false.

*The last entry seems to be a reference to certain fields of {{w|pure mathematics}}, which focus less on performing calculations with numbers and more on understanding structures that may be described using logic. It finishes off the tone of the comic that seems to be shaping the number line terms of what is commonly useful to certain areas of applied mathematics, rather than a complete, accurate version of the number line.

The title text is a literalism joke; at the time the comic was published, all Wikipedia articles with incomplete lists began with the message template "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it." In the case of the {{w|List of numbers}} page, one could infer the absurd notion that Wikipedia wanted to have the list include every number from negative infinity to infinity. But because all Wikipedia articles are necessarily finite, such a list would always be incomplete, no matter how much it was expanded. It may also be referencing his previous statements about Wikipedia being the home of compulsive list-makers, who make the most astonishingly complete lists imaginable.

As of 2022, Wikipedia's List of numbers page, as well as all pages including lists that cannot ever reach a state of completion, are headed by the message template "This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources."

== Transcript ==
:[Number line ranging from −1 to 10.]
:[Arrow pointing left, towards negative numbers] Negative "imitator" numbers (do not use)
:[Line right before the number one] 0.99... (actually 0.0000000372 less than 1)
:[Line at the golden ratio.] Φ Parthenon; sunflowers; golden ratio; wait, come back, I have facts!
:[Line at a region between two and 2.2] forbidden region
:[Line at Euler's number.] e
:[Line a bit before 3] 2.9299372 (e and pi, observed)
:[Line at π.] π
:[Line at 3.5 with ᛟ as the numeral] Gird – accepted as canon by orthodox mathematicians
:[Line a bit after 4.] site of battle of 4.108
:[Blob between 4.5 and 6.5 labeled unexplored.]
:[Line at seven.] Number indicating a factoid is made up ("every 7 years...", "science says there are 7...", etc)
:[Line at eight.] Largest even prime
:[Line at 8.75.] If you encounter a number higher than this, you're not doing real math

== Trivia ==

* As for the "Gird" between 3 and 4, one might argue that the arithmetic square root of 11 may have some "integer" properties, because there exists an integer-to-integer{{Citation needed}} function f(x) such that f(f(x))=11x. (details needed)
* The "unexplored" area is actually famous for some numbers, such as twice π (also known as tau (τ), approximately 6.283185).

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]

2936: Exponential Growth

2024-05-24T10:10:10Z

MinersHavenM43: Better exponents

{{comic
| number = 2936
| date = May 22, 2024
| title = Exponential Growth
| image = exponential_growth_2x.png
| imagesize = 545x264px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Karpov's construction of a series of increasingly large rice cookers led to a protracted deadlock, but exponential growth won in the end.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by an INFINITELY NESTED SET OF RICE COOKERS - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}

{{w|Exponential growth}} is the principle that if you keep multiplying a number by a value larger than 1, you will pretty quickly get very large numbers. Even if you start with 1 and simply double it each time, you'll have a 10-digit number after about 30 iterations.

This principle is often illustrated using a story that generally follows the narrative of a king of India (or elsewhere) wishing to thank a man for creating the game of {{w|chess}}, or perhaps some other chess-related service, and asked him to name his own reward. The man asks for a single grain of wheat (or, in some versions, rice) to be placed on the first square of a chessboard, and then for each subsequent square adding twice as many grains as the one before, until {{w|Wheat and chessboard problem|all 64 squares are filled}}. The king grants his strange request and immediately orders one wheat grain to be placed on the board, imagining this to be a trivial gift compared to the vast riches he had expected to be asked for. For the second square two more pieces are placed, and the square after has four pieces (the tale may involve waiting a day between each placing of grains, delaying the unravelling and subsequent outcome of the story). However, by the 20th iteration, there are over 500,000 grains on the board and the king has to dig deep into his supply to continue to pay his dues. On the 24th the king finds he owes more than 8 million grains. By the 32nd, the king finds himself owing over 2 billion grains and has to give up, realising the essential impossibility of the task.

In some versions of the story, the man is executed for embarrassing the king/being over-greedy; in others, he's rewarded for his cleverness; in yet others he becomes king himself as a consequence. There are also other versions that [https://www.comedy.co.uk/radio/finnemore_souvenir_programme/episodes/7/5/ subvert the well-known tale] by the king not being so naïve as to fall for the 'trick' played by the creator of the problem.

Since a chessboard contains 64 squares, the final square would contain 263 (approximately 9.2 quintillion) grains. This would be around 600 billion tonnes of wheat (even in modern times, this is more than 750 years of global wheat output). Worse, that's just for the final square – adding up all the squares would require about double that (264-1 which is approximately 18.4 quintillion grains).

Instead of this being a (possibly apocryphal) story, [[Black Hat]] enacts it literally during a game of chess to annoy his opponent into quitting. Black Hat begins describing the metaphor, only to reveal it wasn't a metaphor at all. Black Hat had been playing actual chess games, and tried to force his opponent to resign by burying the chess pieces in rice, as implied by the multiple large sacks bluntly labelled 'rice' on his side of the chessboard. (This is not the first comic to feature large quantities of rice labelled in this manner – in [[1598: Salvage]], a gargantuan tank of rice has simply the word 'rice' written on the side in equally gargantuan capital letters.)

{{w|Garry Kasparov}} is a world renowned Russian chess master. He had the highest FIDE chess rating in the world - one of 2851 points - until {{w|Magnus Carlsen}} surpassed that in 2013 by 31 points. The [https://www.chess.com/openings/Sicilian-Defense-Taimanov-Szen-Kasparov-Gambit Kasparov gambit] is an opening move in chess, a variation of the {{w|Sicilian Defense}}.

In 1984–1985 Garry Kasparov played {{w|Anatoly Karpov}} in a 5-month-long 48-game championship tournament which was abandoned. In these matches Kasparov was losing 4-0 with 6 wins being required to win. Kasparov proceeded to draw 35 times before the match was abandoned. The title text implies that Kasparov actually tried this method on Karpov, who attempted to consume all the rice with "increasingly large rice cookers", but eventually couldn't keep up, causing the game to be abandoned in the 5 month period. While this is obviously fictional, it fits with the principle of exponential growth. If exponential growth is unrestricted, it will eventually grow beyond the constraints of anything that could plausibly be built to contain it.

In a 1985 rematch, Kasparov defeated Karpov for the world championship title, which he retained in their next rematch in 1986.

There are several articles in the International Chess Federation (FIDE)'s [https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/LawsOfChess.pdf Laws of Chess] that might prevent Black Hat from winning in this way:
* 7.3 "If a player displaces one or more pieces, he shall re-establish the correct position (...). The arbiter may penalise the player who displaced the pieces."
* 12.1 "The players shall take no action that will bring the game of chess into disrepute."
* 12.6 "It is forbidden to distract or annoy the opponent in any manner whatsoever. (...)"

The amount of rice collected on each square of the chess board is listed below. It all sums up to around 400 billion tons (or {{w|tonne}}s, the various distinctions being not so important), taking each grain as weighing approximately 0.02 grams. This is 500 times the annual world production.

The last day, alone, would require 200 billion tons. But the implicit nature of this doubling is that the amount of rice you put on at any stage is exactly equal to the amount of rice already on the board ''plus one extra grain''. So there were around 200 billion tons already, before the last square required a virtually identical additional amount.

* First row:
** a1: 1 grain
** a2: 2 grains
** a3: 4 ...
** a4: 8
** a5: 16
** a6: 32
** a7: 64
** a8: 128
* Second row
** b1: 256
** b2: 512
** b3: 1,024
** b4: 2,048
** b5: 4,096
** b6: 8,192
** b7: 16,384
** b8: 32,768
:
* First of each subsequent row
:
** c1: 65,536 grains (~ 1 kg)
** d1: 16,777,216 (~ 400 kg)
** e1: 4,294,967,296 (~ 100 tons)
** f1: 1,099,511,627,776 (~ 25,000 tons)
** g1: 281,474,976,710,656 (~ 6 million tons)
:
* ...
:
* Eighth row, in detail
** h1: 72,057,594,037,927,936 (~ 1.5 billion tons, more than the 2022 world harvest)
** h2: 144,115,188,075,855,872
** h3: 288,230,376,151,711,744
** h4: 576,460,752,303,423,488
** h5: 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
** h6: 2,305,843,009,213,693,952
** h7: 4,611,686,018,427,387,904
** h8: 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (~ 200 billion tons)

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Wheat_Chessboard_with_line.svg Example on chessboard (SVG diagram)]

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Black Hat is talking to Cueball standing next to him, arm raised.]
:Black Hat: Exponential growth is very powerful.

:[Closeup on Black Hat. Next to him is an image of the lower left part of a chessboard. The four leftmost squares in the bottom row have grains of rice on them -- one, two, four, and eight grains respectively.]
:Black Hat: A chessboard has 64 squares.
:Black Hat: Say you put one grain of rice on the first square, then two grains on the second, then four, then eight, doubling each time.

:[Black Hat has emptied a bag of rice on a chessboard. There are two additional bags next to him and a pile of rice already on the table. A small pile of rice is growing at Black Hat's feet. A frustrated Hairy is walking away, fists clenched. On Hairy's side of the chessboard there is a white King and Pawn]
:[Caption above panel, representing Black Hat continuing to speak:]
:If you keep this up, your opponent will resign in frustration.
:It's called Kasparov's Grain Gambit. Nearly impossible to counter.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Chess]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

2928: Software Testing Day

2024-05-04T12:50:53Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 2928
| date = May 3, 2024
| title = Software Testing Day
| image = software_testing_day_2x.png
| imagesize = 255x408px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The company tried to document how often employees were celebrating Software Testing Day, but their recordkeeping system kept mysteriously crashing.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a NEGATIVE ONCE BOOKED EMPLOYEE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Quality Assurance (QA) engineers are responsible for ensuring the quality of some software product through the use of testing. This process often involves entering bizarre and/or nonsense inputs in an attempt to break the software. Cueball, a QA engineer in this case, expresses concern that the scheduling system doesn't crash. This could either be because as a QA engineer he is concerned about crashes in general, or that as a system used by QA engineers it likely has a lot of weird/invalid values that could cause a crash.

For example, here it seems that Software Testing Day, a day likely celebrated by QA engineers, takes place every −1 years on January 0th at 25:71 PM. All values except for "January" and "PM" are invalid and make no sense, suggesting that a QA engineer picked this date to test the scheduling system. If the date were to be made sense through under/overflow, it would result on January 1st at 14:11 (2:11 PM). Apparently, though this date is nonsensical, the QA engineers have decided to make this date a celebration day. Both "January" and "PM" are likely correct values because for QA reasons these two items tend to be selected from predetermined lists since they have an extremely limited number of possible values, it's rarely possible to enter an invalid value for either of these.

The title text suggests that the recordkeeping system used to see how often employees celebrated Software Testing Day kept crashing, possibly due to the employees celebrating on January 0th or any nonsensical values.

In real life, such invalid dates would be rejected or coerced to be valid dates. Failing to account for invalid dates may result in errors, sometimes catastrophic, such as [https://www.theregister.com/2012/03/12/azure_leap_day_confirmed/ the 2012 Microsoft Azure outage] caused by the server trying to generate a certificate valid until February 29, 2013.

Treatment of invalid dates varies by the chosen programming language and date-time library. Javascript, for example, would coerce January 0th into December 31st, and 25 o’clock into 1 o’clock the following day. While there is no way to directly create a Javascript Date object using 12-hour notation (because that requires text parsing, and the validation of the text input would just result in an invalid date), the following code snippet represents how far this correction can be abused:

// In Javascript, month 0 is January
const d = new Date(2024, 0, 0, 25+12, 71);
console.log(d); // prints “Mon Jan 01 2024 14:11:00” (exact format depends on your locale)

An event happening every −1 years1 years is equivalent to one that happens every year, but the numbers are reversed; i.e. if this year hosts the 1st Software Testing Day, next year will host the 0th Software Testing Day. This is expected to cause issues in software that assumes that the 2nd Software Testing Day will occur after the 1st Software Testing Day, an assumption that time only moves in one direction that [[2867: DateTime|may or may not]] be reasonable.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball stand facing each other.]
:Megan: So, do you and the other QA engineers have any fun plans for the holiday?
:Cueball: Yeah, assuming the scheduling system doesn't crash.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Software Testing Day is a holiday celebrated every -1 years on January 0th at 25:71 PM.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Programming]]

2925: Earth Formation Site

2024-04-26T23:44:02Z

MinersHavenM43: added a bit to the first paragraph, don't really like my wording but ehj

{{comic
| number = 2925
| date = April 26, 2024
| title = Earth Formation Site
| image = earth_formation_site_2x.png
| imagesize = 478x521px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's not far from the sign marking the exact latitude and longitude of the Earth's core.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BLUE PLAQUE COMMITTEE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, Cueball stands in front of a sign that declares itself to be an historical location. Typically, these signs are placed at precise locations where historical and even mythological events happened (such as where battles have been fought, or where people of note were born, or resided, or accomplished something, or died). In some cases, multiple locations lay "claim" to events whose true locations are uncertain (or, of course, when events span multiple locations, such as where people resided). However, the event in question on the sign is the formation of the Earth which, due to the Sun's 225-million year long orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy and the movement of the galaxy itself through space relative to other objects, would not have occurred anywhere ''on'' Earth. The sign could maybe be referring to where the place of the formation of the Earth would be placed if it corresponded to current Earth coordinates, which would also be strange as the Earth formed in the center of the current Earth, so the sign could not be anywhere in the surface of Earth.

The date on the sign is also ridiculously precise, in keeping with the information usually found on historical markers but absurd in the context of the [https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/how-do-planets-form/ tens or hundreds of millions of years] thought to be required for planet formation. It would require some specific definition of when the gradually-coalescing mass could be considered a planet, as well as the ability to determine when that mass met the definition. The date shown for the formation of the Earth, 4.45 billion years, also differs from the commonly accepted date, [https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html 4.54 (±0.05) billion years].

The title text refers to the 'coordinates of the Earth's core'. This is similar to signs marking {{w|File:Equator sign kenya.jpg|specific}} {{w|File:Arctic Circle sign.jpg|latitudes}}, {{w|File:Prime meridian.jpg|longitudes}} or other {{w|File:2022-06-06 18 39 21 Sign reading "Highest Point on Interstate 80 East of the Mississippi River" along eastbound Interstate 80 (Keystone Shortway) just east of Exit 111 in Pine Township, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.jpg|notable}} {{w|File:World's lowest point (1971).jpg|locations}}. But, since all coordinates, when superimposed on a globe, theoretically converge at the Earth's core, this reinforces the idea that no singular location can be picked as the exact location where the Earth formed.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Generated by EARTH — Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

(Cueball is standing in front of a sign in a field of grass. The sign reads:)

HISTORICAL MARKER

EARTH FORMATION SITE

~ 4,450,000,000 BCE ~

At this location in the year 4,450,000,000 BCE, a cloud of dust and gas gravitationally collapsed to form the Earth.

{{comic discussion}}

2762: Diffraction Spikes

2024-04-19T18:29:51Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 2762
| date = April 12, 2023
| title = Diffraction Spikes
| image = diffraction_spikes_2x.png
| imagesize = 324x370px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Even if a planet is lucky enough to have a stable orbit that weaves between the spikes, the seasons get weird whenever it passes close to them.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Diffraction spike|Diffraction spikes}} are visual artifacts that appear to extend from light sources, mostly when viewed through a reflector telescope. In telescopes, they are often caused by the support struts of the secondary mirror in the telescope. They've become especially well known lately because they're quite prominent in images from the {{w|James Webb Space Telescope}}; its bigger spikes are due to the [https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/diffraction-spikes-jwst/ edges of the hexagonal mirror sections], not the struts.

The comic feigns that these artifacts are real spikes of stellar matter extending from the stars being viewed. The spikes have sufficient energy and coherence to slice planets that intersect them, rather than merely bludgeon or vaporize them. Additionally, they appear to nullify gravity - preventing the halves from recombining and allowing them to maintain their shape.

The title text suggests that a planet would have to be particularly lucky to avoid encountering one of these spikes during its lifetime. This would make our own solar system exceptionally fortunate, given the number of planetary bodies that remain whole, though it could perhaps serve as an explanation for the {{w|Asteroid belt}}, being remnants of formerly destroyed planets.

The title text also claims that the spikes produce sufficient light and heat to disrupt seasonal (and perhaps even diurnal) patterns on planets that come close enough to them, but this is not something we experience on Earth.{{cn}}

==Transcript==
:[SHORT VERSION : The comic is a photo of a star, with the diffraction spikes that usually happen when taking pictures with telescopes. An exoplanet orbits that star, and its trajectory crosses one of the spikes. At the intersection point, the onomatopoeia "SLICE" is written, and the trajectory splits in two. Not far after, two half-planets continue their course.]

:[Caption below panel:]
:Bad news for exoplanets: it turns out those diffraction spikes are real.

:[LONG VERSION : On a black square background, there is a white circle, representing a star, with a diameter one-fourth the length of the background perimeter. Its center is approximately one radius left of the center of the square. Six solid white lines intersect the center of the circle, and extend into the background. Those portions of the lines that are in the background are drawn as narrow triangles; the portions within the circle (white on white) are invisible. The lines represent the rays of a diffraction pattern. The "star" drawing is bilaterally symmetrical along any of the six lines. The longest line, with the length of each ray equal to the diameter of the circle, is oriented at approximately 15/195 degrees from the vertical (left and right boundaries of the background). The second, very short, is at approximately 20 degrees. The third, fourth, and fifth, with the emergent parts approximately one radius long (the fourth slightly longer) are oriented at about 35, 50, and 80 degrees respectively. The sixth, short like the second, is at approximately 95 degrees.]

:[Near the apex of the longest line (diffraction pattern ray) at 15 degrees, there is a dashed white line, curved as if part of the circumference of a circle with radius three times that of the "star" circle, and describing approximately twenty degrees of arc. This line represents the orbit of an exoplanet circling the star. At its intersection with the diffraction pattern ray, indicated by a small white circle, the dashed line bifurcates. At the rightmost ends of the dashed lines, there are two circles, one light gray with an irregular, darker gray pattern at the center, the other white. These represent a planet that has been sliced into two equal portions by the diffraction ray. A few white specks surrounding the circles represent debris from the cutting. The word SLICE is written in white capital letters immediately to the right of the point of intersection.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Photography]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Exoplanets]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]

2922: Pub Trivia

2024-04-19T16:26:43Z

MinersHavenM43:

{{comic
| number = 2922
| date = April 19, 2024
| title = Pub Trivia
| image = pub_trivia_2x.png
| imagesize = 422x666px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Bonus question: Where is London located? (a) The British Isles (b) Great Britain and Northern Ireland (c) The UK (d) Europe (or 'the EU') (e) Greater London
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a TRIVIAL BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Many pubs have trivia nights, where patrons form teams and compete to best answer questions about a range of topics. Cueball has apparently been hired by one bar to infiltrate other bars' quiz nights and write particularly bad questions for them, which he has accomplished using different strategies. The idea is that by making the trivia nights at other pubs horrible, he will drive business to the pub that hired him.

The comic shows [[Cueball]] reading off bad trivia questions which are either confusing, likely to provoke arguments, or don't have an answer.

1. Which member of {{w|BTS}} has a birthday this year?

Problem: multiple answers

BTS is a {{w|K-Pop}} group. Every member would have a birthday each year. In fact, all humans have a birthday every year. (Unless you were born on leap day and trying to be pedantic, or it was a year when {{w|Gregorian calendar|the calendar changed}}.) Since this comic was published in 2024, even the possible February 29 exception does not apply (and no BTS member was born on February 29).

A more usual type of question might be to ask which member celebrates a birthday in a given day, or which celebrates a particular milestone birthday in the current year.

2. How many sides does a {{w|platonic solid}} have?

Problem: multiple answers

There are five {{w|Platonic solids}}, with 4, 6, 8, 12, or 20 faces (colloquially called sides) in {{w|Euclid|Euclidean}} {{w|Euclidean geometry|3-space}}. The solids have, respectively, 6, 12, 8, 30, and 30 edges (also occasionally called sides colloquially).

A more devious quizmaster might actually include this as a trick question with the correct answer being 'zero', since strictly speaking solids do not have 'sides'. However, on the basis of the other questions presented here it seems unlikely that Cueball intended for the question to be answerable in this (or any other) way.

More usual questions might be "How many Platonic solids are there?" or "What is the highest number of faces on a Platonic solid?".

3. What is the smallest lake in the world?

Problem: arguable

Unknowable as there are many small bodies of water in the world, and determining which is the smallest while still being large enough to count as a {{w|lake}} is a complicated question.

An acceptable question might ask what is recognised by the Guinness World Records as the world's smallest lake.

4. Which Steven Spielberg movie features more shark attacks? {{w|Jaws (movie)|Jaws (1975)}} or {{w|Lincoln (movie)|Lincoln (2012)}}

Problem: trivial

Jaws is a famous movie about a killer shark, and features at least five fatal shark attacks. Lincoln is a movie about the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, containing zero shark attacks{{cn}}. Unlike the previous unanswerable questions, this is a question that no reasonable person could get wrong.

An actual quiz question might centre around how much the shark appears in Jaws (a surprisingly small amount).

5. How many planets were there originally?

Problem: ambiguous

5 billion years ago, in the nascent solar system, there were countless {{w|planetesimal|planetesimals}} that would eventually form the planets. The ancient Greeks named seven planets: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Eventually, it was decided that the Earth is also a planet, and that the Sun and the Moon were not. Uranus and Neptune were eventually discovered, followed by Ceres, Vesta, Juno, and Pallas, all of which were considered planets prior to the invention of the term "asteroid". Then Pluto was discovered, and the count of "planets" stabilized at 9 until 2006, when the discovery of Kuiper Belt objects larger than Pluto led to creation of the term "dwarf planet", leaving us with 8 known planets and 5 known dwarf planets. Today there are also thousands of known exoplanets (planets that orbit stars other than the sun).
The joke here is that "originally" is so poorly defined that it could mean anywhere from 0 (the number of planets prior to formation of the solar system) to infinity (number of planets in the universe if the universe is indeed infinite).

6. What {{w|NFL}} player has scored the most points outside of a game?

Problem: no answer

American football has a somewhat complicated scoring system, and record keeping involves (for instance) crediting the 6 points for a touchdown to both the receiver and the passer in some situations. This question does not address any of this complexity, but adds a new level of ambiguity as the "points" a player can score outside of a game are undefined. Is it any points scored in any game at all (e.g. Scrabble or Root?) except football, or is it points that are not part of any game at all (e.g. "Wow, you made a good point, I need to reconsider my position.")

Normal questions might be about who scored the most points in a game, a season, or a career.

7. The {{w|Wright brothers}} built the first airplane. Who built the last one?

Problem: unknowable

Since airplanes are built continuously, there is no way to know who built the most recent one. Alternatively, if 'the last one' means 'the last one ''ever''', then it probably hasn't been built yet (and hopefully won't be built for a long time).

The question is also wrong: the Wright Brothers managed the first sustained controlled flight of a powered heavier-than-air craft, but many others had built airplanes before them.

8. Is every even number greater than 2 the sum of two primes?

Problem: unknown, and possibly unknowable

This is {{w|Goldbach's conjecture|an open question}} in math.
Known as Goldbach's Conjecture, mathematicians widely believe that it is true, and it has held true for every number we've checked (and we've checked a great many numbers) but since {{w|almost all}} numbers have never been checked, we can't generalize that it will hold for ALL even numbers without proof. Since it is {{w|Gödel's incompleteness theorems|known}} that something can be true but impossible to prove or disprove, this may be the situation forever.

9. Not counting {{w|Canberra}}, what city is the capital of {{w|Australia}}?

Problem: no answer

Canberra is the capital of Australia. Sydney is larger and possibly more famous, so that asking the capital of Australia would be a good trivia question: people who know their capitals would respond with Canberra and less knowledgeable people would guess Sydney. Australia is divided into states and territories, each with its own capital, but this would leave multiple equally valid answers to the question. There is a cheeky answer too: "A".

Common questions similar to this might concern countries which have multiple capitals, where the capital has moved, or, as in this case, where it is not the most well known city in the country.

10. Who played the drums?

Problem: ambiguous

Lots of people have played {{w|drum|the drums}}{{cn}}, through the ages.
If this question asked who played the drums for a particular band or on a particular album, track, or performance, it would be an example of a good trivia question. As it is, it has many possible answers and no way to choose between them.

The alt-text bonus question: Where is {{w|London}} located? (a) The {{w|British Isles}} (b) {{w|Great Britain and Northern Ireland}} (c) The {{w|UK}} (d) {{w|Europe}} (or 'the {{w|EU}}') (e) Greater London

Problem: multiple answers

All choices are technically correct as they are various geographical areas that include the city of London, England. (d) incorrectly conflates Europe, a geographical area that London is located in, with the EU, which the UK (and consequently London) has not been in since {{w|Brexit}} in 2020.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}

2898: Orbital Argument

2024-02-24T02:36:49Z

MinersHavenM43: first edit here, explained the barycenter stuff

{{comic
| number = 2898
| date = February 23, 2024
| title = Orbital Argument
| image = orbital_argument_2x.png
| imagesize = 448x323px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = "Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a LIGHT WAVE-EARTH BARYCENTER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, the person in the middle is using the {{w|Argument to moderation|middle ground fallacy}} to try to make a compromise between the two characters. By sheer coincidence, it happens that he is also correct. Due to the fact that the Earth also exerts a gravitational force (albeit extremely small), the center of rotation is technically not at the center of the Sun. It is however, nowhere near the center of Earth's orbital radius, instead being barely above the surface of the Sun.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}