1716: Time Travel Thesis

2016-08-05T19:35:00Z

Prinsburglar: /* small typo */

{{comic
| number = 1716
| date = August 5, 2016
| title = Time Travel Thesis
| image = time_travel_thesis.png
| titletext = 'Hey, what are those futuristic goggles for, anyway?' 'Oh, this is just a broken Google Glass. It was 2010's night at the club.'
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] has apparently been reading about {{w|time travel}}. He tells [[Megan]] about this, and Megan excitedly remarks that she did her college thesis on time travel which basically means that she is supposed to know a lot more about time travel than a guy who has just been "reading" about it.

Cueball, however, continues to ask her if she knows basic facts about time travel, like he is investigating if he has discovered facets about it that she would have overlooked while writing a thesis about it, in what could be described as a typical male (non-scientist) behavior against female scientists. Megan keeps trying to say that since she wrote a '''Time Travel Thesis''', (hence the title of the comic), she already knows all of this and much, much more, and she is obviously getting frustrated by Cueball's attempts to impress her with his "knowledge".

At this point Megan's future-self arrives with a ''Bzzzzt'', having used time travel to arrive at this exact moment in time. It seem she has continued her research and has successfully managed to make a time machine (maybe in a collaboration with others, but with the ability to use it to her own end and needs.)

The reason she arrives is only to tell her younger self that this conversation with Cueball doesn't go anywhere and isn't important, and so present-Megan can leave and not waste her time anymore. Up till then, Megan was presumably reluctant to break off a conversation on the topic of time travel, since the conversation could potentially have improved, or maybe she was even at first attracted to Cueball and interested because he at least had read about time travel. But once the conversation began to run off track, it came as a relief to know that she could quit without the risk of missing out on anything important.

And then she just walks away with her future-self leaving Cueball hanging in the last panel, having invented a completely new way to get out of useless/boring conversations.

Alternatively, future-Megan just makes an excuse to haul present-Megan off in order to prevent the latter from disclosing some details of time travel science to Cueball, which could have unintended consequences. However using very advanced technology, or even violating physics law, for ''very mundane'' ends is a very common in xkcd, so using time travel to prevent useless conversation is not surprising from Megan.

In either case if future-Megan did not finish the conversation she would not know it was unimportant, thus indicating that she actually did. So by coming back she now changes her own (and Cueball's) future. But maybe she knows this will not change anything, just save her self from wasting time. Of course the general implications of being able to travel like this are enormous, and the {{w|Grandfather paradox|paradoxes arising}} from such a possibility endless. For instance the future Megan could now describe to the present Megan how to make the time machine. But why not have gone even further back making it possible to travel in time even earlier etc. (And of course the whole going back and killing one of parents before they even meet, like the idea in {{w|The Terminator}} movie). Generally time travel is a [[:Category:Time travel|recurring theme]] in xkcd.

It is possible that [[Randall]] may have had some conversations like this, where after having spend a lot of time getting nothing out of it himself, would have wished his future self had come back to tell him to just leave the conversation now.

In the title text present-Megan asks future-Megan about her futuristic googles and what they are for, presumably assuming they are needed for the time travel (maybe it is the backpack?) However it turns out it's just some old and broken {{w|Google Glass}}. The only reason future Megan wears these is that she attended a party at the club that had a 2010's night theme.

This is an indication of how far from the future she has traveled, as Google Glass was first released in the 2010's. It is not clear whether she is wearing Google Glass because it became popular in the 2010's or because it was an esoteric piece of hardware that people would readily associate with the 2010's. Also a 90s party may be thrown today, but not a 2000's party. So it is safe to assume that Megan is at least from the 2030's. Also people attending retro dress-up parties frequently make mistakes and do not dress up exactly in-style, creating some anachronisms, especially if they dress up like they did many years ago.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is facing Megan, talking to her.]
:Cueball: I've been reading about time travel.
:Megan: Cool! I did my thesis on time travel!

:[Cueball is now gesturing toward Megan. An electrical charge of some sort is shown occurring outside the panel in the bottom right corner behind Megan.]
:Cueball: Nice! So you know about closed timelike curves?
:Megan: Yup. Thesis.
:Cueball: Apparently wormholes can use exotic matter to–
:Megan: I know. Like I said–
:Charge: <big>''Bzzzt!''</big>

:[Megan has turned away from Cueball to the right. Megan from the future, wearing sunglasses, a headset and a machine strapped to her back has entered the frame from the right where the charge appeared.]
:Future-Megan: You can skip this conversation. It doesn't turn out to be important.
:Megan: Oh, thank God.

:[Cueball is standing alone, the two Megans have left the panel.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Time travel]]

911: Magic School Bus

2016-07-07T15:00:48Z

Prinsburglar: /* Explanation */ corrected spelling of Phoebe

{{comic
| number = 911
| date = June 13, 2011
| title = Magic School Bus
| image = magic school bus.png
| titletext = At my OLD school, we used Microsoft Encarta 2005.
}}

==Explanation==
"{{w|The Magic School Bus}}" is a series of educational children's books in the US that was adapted in the mid-nineties into an animated television show. The series centers on a class of children whose teacher {{w|Ms. Frizzle}} makes use of the titular magic school bus to take her students on a variety of magical field trips that allow them to experience various scientific topics first hand, such as the inner anatomy of the human body, the effects of friction, what goes on inside a beehive, and many others.

In this comic, however, Ms. Frizzle initially takes the students onto the bus apparently for one of these field trips to explore the way batteries work, but then for whatever reason, she has the students get off the bus again and simply resorts to looking up the {{w|Wikipedia}} article about {{w|Battery (electricity)|batteries}}. The implied joke is that, with the advent on resources like Wikipedia, it's no longer necessary for Ms. Frizzle to take the students on half-hour long trips in the bus to experience whatever phenomenon they are studying that day (which is what the third panel symbolizes) - Wikipedia effectively answers the question quickly and easily. An alternative answer is that Ms. Frizzle has just gotten lazy, and has resorted to looking up the answers to the students' questions on Wikipedia instead of taking them on field trips. The alternative seems more likely, since the third panel shows them still going on an adventure, however briefly it takes to get to the library/computer lab.

The red and white cubed rocket in the bottom of the third panel can possibly be a reference to The Adventures of Tintin, in which Tintin goes to the moon in a rocket that is similar, if not identical, to the one depicted.

The child who is asking the question looks similar to Wanda, one of the regular students in the class who often asked the questions that set the field trips in motion. Ralphie, the student in the second panel with the backward hat, was another student who often asked these questions. The students in the class were shown to be from many backgrounds (i.e. some of the students were black, another was Asian, etc.), something Randall appears not to have added into this comic, despite it being in color.

The title text is a reference to Phoebe, one of the students in Ms. Frizzle's class, who would regularly make a remark beginning with "At my old school..." (Phoebe used to go to a different school, unlike many of the other students in the class) to express wonder at how unusual were the events of Ms. Frizzle's field trips (e.g. "At my old school, we never rode on bees!"). Phoebe actually said that so much that in an episode where she goes back to her old school, the sign out front labels it as "Phoebe's old school".

{{w|Encarta|Microsoft Encarta 2005}} was a digital encyclopedia that was often used in school settings for learning with the aid of computers. Arguably, with the advent of Wikipedia, programs like Encarta have become relatively less widely used, which is part of the joke in the title text.

==Transcript==
:[A girl sits at a desk in a classroom, and the teacher stands before her. The teacher has a blue dress and blonde hair piled on her head in a bun. The girl raises her hand, the teacher raises both arms above her head, a pointer in one hand.]
:Girl: Ms. Frizzle, how do batteries work?
:Ms. Frizzle: To the bus!

:[Ms. Frizzle and the children are shown getting onto the bus.]

:[The bus, with Ms. Frizzle at the helm and a child's face in every window, soars through a rainbow void filled with a giant amoeba, a rocket, an epicyclic gear, a planet with rings, and a Feynman diagram.]

:[The bus is parked, and the occupants have gotten out. The children stand around Ms. Frizzle, and she stands at a desk with a computer on it, typing.]
Computer: WIKIPEDIA - BATTERIES

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]

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1716: Time Travel Thesis

911: Magic School Bus