Talk:2202: Earth-Like Exoplanet

I'm assuming this is in reference to exoplanet K2-18b? 108.162.241.52 18:30, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing. Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 18:41, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Note that K2-18b was actually "discovered" way back in 2015 by the Kepler Space Observatory. The recent news was the detection of water vapor in the atmosphere of the planet. Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 04:36, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm seeing the actual comic alt-text as "Fire is actually a potential biosignature, since it means something is filling the atmosphere with an unstable gas like oxygen. If we find a planet covered in flames, it might be an indicator that it supports life—or used to, anyway, before the fire." Note the tab before "actually" and the odd characters after "life". But that's not what it has on this site. Is that difference intentional?172.68.70.70 19:07, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I've noticed a similar difference on other pages. For me, there are glitches in the title text on many XKCD pages, but here they appear as I assume they should. DanTheTransManWithoutAPlan (talk) 19:23, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

AFAIS the XKCD-webserver claims incorrectly that the charset of the page is windows-1252. --DaB. (talk) 19:49, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes. If you change your browser's encoding to Unicode, it shows up properly -- though the tab before "actually" is still there. --Aaron of Mpls (talk) 00:24, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

A non-tidally-locked planet (like ours) needs to be firmly in a habitable zone (like ours) to allow the daily and seasonal cycles (like ours) to not send every square foot of the planet well outside any 'reasonable' range of conditions so that there's no possible adaptation possible by life (like ours).

OTOH, a tidally-locked planet probably sustains a belt of habitability upon it somewhere between the most sun-scorched face-centre and the most astronomy(-if-not-astronomer)-friendly area of the farside, and it may even let the lifeforms survive more extreme stellar 'seasons' than a swirling planet could, so long as that belt doesn't move so far as to 'lift off' either face, if there exist effective migration paths available for the mobile life and hibernation/aestivation states and hidey-holes for those that are forced/choose to be immobile.

There's the argument about a constant hurricane-force surface wind passing between hot and cold hemispheres, but that assumes a reverse upper flow in atmospheric cells (or a phase-cycle of liquid?) which would promote and reinforce elements of turbulance that might interact with 'surface' features (perhaps subsurface, in waterworld environment) to create areas that are lucuna in the chaos, 'islands' of calm.

Though with many theories of abiogenesis and evolution requiring some form of cycling conditions to filter out the unadaptable and promote the adaptable, so the actual 'interesting' zones are probably in habitable-edges surrounding the habital spots of constancy within the habitable belt upon the habitable-zone planet.

It's a bit moot how all this would work, though, given our knowledge based upon post-facto knowledge of a sample of one life-bearing planet. Hard to know how little or much Earth is typical compared with everyone else. At least until my people come back to rescue me, when I'll have to remember to catch up on the basic classes I've obviously missed. 162.158.34.210 22:01, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I thought "between the swinging blades" was just a metaphor - 162.158.214.148 05:41, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

It is and should be changed in the explanation. It is all the things mentioned by Megan that are the swinging blades--Kynde (talk) 07:42, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

But anyone who can give some examples where this sentense is used in the real world? I could not find much using google. Would like it in the explanation, better than what I have done so far. --Kynde (talk) 21:25, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

What came to mind for me is the blade-on-a-pendulum from Poe's short story "The Pit and the Pendulum", except that there were multiple ones that a life form would have to avoid being hit by. Do a google image search on "Pit and the Pendulum" to see what I am talking about. Redbelly98 (talk) 22:30, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

That's what came to my mind as well. Not necessarily from this short story, but just a general depiction of a hellish place with fire and deadly (torture) devices. Bischoff (talk) 07:10, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

I was reminded of the climax of Umberto Eco's novel "Foucault's Pendulum"... considering the previous comic, Randall may have been thinking the same.172.68.58.83

I am not sure it's a metaphor. I thought it was Randall's first (of two) instances of something too ridiculous to actually be observed, the other being the screaming. The other stuff mentioned before the blades are all plausible observations. Redbelly98 (talk) 22:30, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Mentions of swinging blades is just a trope of an absurd life threatening hazard. Anyway, mentions of them always remind me of this 19 year old joke article from the onion.--162.158.75.202 07:32, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm sure it is not meant as something they have detected, but the things she just mentioned are the swinging blades. She just tells the audience they found a Earth-like planet, but then she mentions four thing that doesn't look like earth, only that it is near the habitablezone and that there are water in the atmosphere. Someone put some silly video game comments in as if this was the plot and i t is not and I will revert it now. --Kynde (talk) 20:36, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

It sounds as if this planet was badly written. These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 06:26, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Interestingly, there are plants on Earth that use fire as part of their lifecycle; see Fynbos for an example. Of course, the optimal cycle there is about one big fire a decade; truly continual flames would eventually wipe out fynbos as well (but then what fuel is that fire burning? A fuel that lasts forever would revolutionise the energy industry...) - 162.158.42.46 07:35, 15 September 2019 (UTC)