3112: Geology Murder

Geology Murder

|< < Prev #3112 (July 7, 2025) Next > >|

Title text: After determining that his body was full of pipes carrying iron-rich fluid, our current theory is that the dagger-shaped object precipitated within the wound.

|< < Prev Random Explanation Next > >|

Explanation

Someone has been stabbed to death and two geologists are examining the corpse. However, rather than using forensic science techniques that might be typical for investigating a murder, they inappropriately apply geological analyses, leading to some unlikely suggestions about what occurred. Firstly, they note that the victim is lying "uncoNforMably" (not "uncoMforTably") on the bench. An unconformity in geology is a gap of missing strata between an upper and lower layer, in this case implying that there is missing information about how the man came to be lying on the bench, or referring to the discontinuity between the material of the bench and that of the body with its clothing.

The "iron-rich intrusion in his back" refers to the dagger that presumably killed him. An intrusion is rock formed when magma slowly cools below ground, and the geologists are speculating that the dagger formed after steel flowed into place in and on the body (and somehow became dagger-shaped). The dagger is "iron-rich" because it's made of steel, which is composed largely of iron.

"Clastic" refers to rock made up of broken pieces of older rocks. In this case it would suggest that a rift - a gap or fissure - opened up in the person's back and the dagger fell in. Having long linear gaps appear is something that happens to the Earth's crust, and can lead to clastic rock when other rock is swept into the gap. While skin fissures are a real condition, and some genetic conditions such as ichthyosis can cause them, they don't normally cause rocks or daggers to collect in people's backs.^{[citation needed]}

In geology a "pipe" is a structure formed by magma, geysers, or hydrothermal vents. The "pipes carrying iron-rich fluid" would be similar to a mineral rich hydrothermal feature like a geyser or a black smoker on the seafloor. In this case they are the person's blood vessels, as blood has a large amount of the molecule hemoglobin, which has iron atoms in it that help it transport oxygen. The geologists speculate that the iron precipitated - sedimented out - out of the blood to form the dagger, which is highly unlikely. This is the kind of geophysical process which tends to produce veins of minerals in actual geology, but is not generally associated with veins in the human body. Notably, the Great Oxygenation Event, when oxygen-producing organisms first created an oxidizing environment on Earth, resulted in dense precipitation of iron-rich compounds in the oceans. However, metallic iron was not created; even the environment before the Great Oxygenation Event wasn't reducing enough to create metallic iron.

Transcript

[There's a lab bench with a dead Cueball-like person lying on it, with a dagger sticking out of his back. Cueball is standing to the left of the table, Ponytail is standing to the right looking at the dead body. All three are wearing lab coats.]

Cueball: We found him lying unconformably on the lab bench. I wonder if the iron-rich intrusion in his back is related.

Ponytail: It could be clastic. Maybe a rift opened in his body, and the intrusive material later fell into the hole.

[Caption below the comic:]

The Geology Department investigates their first murder

  Add comment        Create topic (use sparingly)       Refresh 

Discussion

Is it just me, or is xkcd.com being non-responsive? Obviously, it has been successfully grabbed from by the BOT, and I even checked a few "is it down" sites... which say that it's up. But I'm getting nothing back but spinny cursors, going to either xkcd.com or any xkcd.com/<number> ...with no other reason to believe that 'it is just me', like other clearly running places also not being reachable in my own case. 92.23.2.228 20:09, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

It worked fine for me on the first attempt, so I guess it's just you. But when I was submitting the transcript here I got a "make sure you're logged in" error. Resubmitting (without having to re-login) worked. Barmar (talk) 20:25, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

And I got the same error when first submitting the above comment. Barmar (talk) 20:25, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

The transcript silently corrects the spelling error (?) in uncomformably. 208.82.100.219 21:00, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

The transcript has been fixed, and it was not a spelling error - it's a geology word. 208.82.100.219 03:52, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

It's been intermittently non-responsive and/or landing on error pages for over a month. Speculation ranges from issues with the server to issues with the content-delivery-network (CloudFlare), to a deliberate attack, to AI-scraping bots, to an iron-rich penetration from an alternate universe (just added that one to the list), and probably more. 64.201.132.210 21:07, 7 July 2025 (UTC) [Update: I meant explainxkcd is intermittently non-responsive. xkcd seems as responsive as the rest of the web lately. 64.201.132.210 16:08, 8 July 2025 (UTC)]

Unless you mean explainxkcd.com (which I know is suffering, in those ways, but for longer), I actually haven't seen xkcd.com itself be like this. Recently or otherwise. Anyway, still not working for me, still is working for the "is it down" sites. Nor have I got anything strangely redirecting in my hosts file, etc. Also can ping (www.)xkcd.com perfectly happily, tracert gives no particular surprises (e.g. signs of being inconsistently MITMed), and I seem to get 100% connectivity with a different device at the same time as 0% with this one. So, it looks like "it's just me" in a weird way that ...I shall have to spend some personal time/effort getting a rational explanation for. Hmmm. 92.23.2.228 22:06, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

>"100% connectivity with a different device at the same time as 0% with this one." This month, Cloudflare has been snooty, just at my favorite desktop. And on several sites, from APnews to odd hobby sites. All my newer laptops get in fine. I think Cloudflare is complaining about my aging O/S, which is silly (I am gonna infect them??) However I usually get the same robot-check, not a stall or spinner.

I haven't noticed xkcd.com being non-responsive but I have noticed this site non-responsive from time-to-time. 47.248.235.170 22:05, 7 July 2025 (UTC)Pat

Hmm. If material from the banded iron formations was mixed with coal, and subjected to the heat and pressure that create metamorphic rock, would iron be created? There would still be the problem of keeping it free of ground water so it didn't go back to iron oxides. BunsenH (talk) 04:48, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Honestly, it feels like the level of evidence and rigor for a lot of evolutionary theory is about on par with the title text. Though I doubt that that was Randall's intent. 2001:8003:6490:9700:66ED:199B:93A7:45ED 06:43, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Haemoglobin is not particularly iron-rich - it contains a single atom of iron. Blood is iron-rich because it contains a lot of haemoglobin. 148.64.15.78 07:54, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Each Heme group has a single iron, but there are multiple hemes(/haemes/hæmes) in a full hemoglobin(/haemoglobin/hæmoglobin) protein structure. (Yes, vastly outnumbered by the rest of the carbons, etc, but still not a singular iron.) 92.23.2.228 20:50, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

The Earths crust is about 5% iron by mass. To a geologist "iron rich" would normally be somewhat over that, say 15%. In comparison the human body is below 0.01% iron (4g/50kg) and blood is perhaps 0.1% iron. Not sure if a geologist would be impressed that blood is perhaps 10 times the concentration of the surroundings, or so depleted compared to most of the materials they study.76.180.44.2 18:30, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Would it be worth pointing out that geologist are unlikely to act with the urgency required by a murder investigation?2602:FF4D:128:D56:11B8:2B25:5D50:F4D5 23:56, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

They'll get there eventually. Implacably. Leaving no stone unturned. BunsenH (talk) 04:32, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

Where does the part about "pipes carrying iron-rich fluid" come from? I don't see that in the comic or title text or transcript. Bmwiedemann (talk) 06:40, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

Check the title text on the comic: "After determining that his body was full of pipes carrying iron-rich fluid, our current theory is that the dagger-shaped object precipitated within the wound." 163.116.145.31 14:20, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
        Add comment