https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=Mistercow 2026-04-19T13:49:18Z User contributions MediaWiki 1.30.0 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1204:_Detail&diff=35232 2013-04-26T13:47:46Z

<p>Mistercow: /* Explanation */ The resolution in this case corresponds to the width of a pixel, not its area. Note the units on the y axis.</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 1204<br /> | date = April 26, 2013<br /> | title = Detail<br /> | image = detail.png<br /> | titletext = 2031: Google defends the swiveling roof-mounted scanning electron microscopes on its Street View cars, saying they 'don't reveal anything that couldn't be seen by any pedestrian scanning your house with an electron microscope.'<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> {{w|Google Earth}} is mapping software provided by Google that allows people to see the Earth from a birds-eye-view perspective. If you zoom in close enough, you can see individual streets – or in this case, a neighborhood.<br /> <br /> {{w|Optical resolution|Resolution}} is a term (roughly) representing the scale of the smallest identifiable feature in an image. In the context of terrestrial image mapping, this would correspond to the width of the square occupied by a single pixel in a terrestrial satellite image. In this strip, Randall points out that the resolution of images available to Google Earth has been decreasing (improving) at an exponential rate for the past decade. This is due to the improving quality of satellite imaging technology, as well as integration of additional data sources, such as aerial photography and street-level roaming cameras. Each tick in the scale represents a resolution improvement by three orders of magnitude.<br /> <br /> The {{w|Planck length}} is a unit of length and in principle the shortest measurable length, thus making it effectively the &quot;resolution&quot; of our reality. It is around 1.6×10&lt;sup&gt;-35&lt;/sup&gt; m, close to 10&lt;sup&gt;-20&lt;/sup&gt; times the diameter of a proton. The comic shows how the current growth trend in resolution of Google Earth will hit the Planck length around the year 2100, even though such result is currently considered impossible to achieve.<br /> <br /> The title text refers to the fact that the trendline predicts an available resolution in the nanometer range by 2031, which would necessitate (using today's technology) the use of {{w|scanning electron microscope}}s to achieve.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> :My Neghborhood's Resolution in:<br /> :[A chart showing the Resolution of Google Earth increasing on a logarithmic scale towards the Planck Length, with resolution on the y-axis and time in years on the x-axis.]<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> [[Category:Comics]]<br /> [[Category:Charts]]<br /> [[Category:Comics from 2013]]<br /> [[Category:Comics from April]]</div>

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