Editing 2414: Solar System Compression Artifacts

{{comic
| number    = 2414
| date      = January 20, 2021
| title     = Solar System Compression Artifacts
| image     = solar_system_compression_artifacts.png
| titletext = Most of our universe consists of dark matter rendered completely undetectable by our spacetime codec's dynamic range issues.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a MISSING PHYSICAL PHENOMENON LOST DUE TO HIGH COMPRESSION. More on the title text - Dark matter and dynamic range issues need to be explained in more detail. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{w|Voyager 1}} is a [[:Category:Space probes|space probe]] launched by the United States in 1977. Originally designed to study the outer planets of the {{w|Solar System}}, it is now several decades into an extended mission beyond Neptune.

When images are compressed by a {{w|lossy compression}} format (e.g. {{w|JPEG}}), visual artifacts are created. The Voyager probe has made history for passing many milestones of our solar system. Randall here is suggesting that the probe has passed the artifacts. This cannot be true, as the solar system does not have compression artifacts{{Citation needed}}. However, the slightly discolored regions often created by compression may be a metaphor for the region of space that that solar radiation prevents from being a complete vacuum. Voyager 1 has passed through numerous such boundaries, as mentioned previously in [[1189: Voyager 1]].

Compression artifacts are often caused by large changes in coloration over a short distance, and Randall could feel that the drastic change in coloration from bright sun to dark vacuum could be creating a compression artifact around the Sun, somewhat like the Sun looking blurry due to low video quality. However, there is no definite region where solar radiation stops, only a boundary where it fades to a level lower than that of radiation from other sources. Some compression methods result in compression artifacts that behave in the same way, fading as the distance from the color boundary increases but never completely disappearing. (They may become literally unnoticeable because hexadecimal color values are discrete, but the compression artifacts will persist as slightly different RGB values before rounding to the nearest integer.)

The 'solar system' in the snapshot appears to be a 4-bit greyscale-plane at a more pixelated level than the image given. It can be picked out as being in 16 'banded' levels from the brightest (solar disc?) to darkest (extrasolar expanse?), with irregular or non-trivial transitional edges but no obvious or dominant dithering or noise. The Voyager image (and track) is overlaid at finer resolution in the white 'line drawing' format.

The 'apparent pixels' seem to be at a resolution of close to the order of 1AU². A rough count of the pixelation boundaries from the craft to the leftmost edge, plus an additional allowance for the likely radius of the 'sun' (or, rather, its solar wind density, or similarly represented measure) still beyond the edge, is surprisingly close to to the 150 AU or so of distance that Voyager 1 is at, currently. (For perspective, the Earth is then ''by definition'' 30ish of the lower-resolution 'pixels' beyond the left of the image just (or within) one 'pixel' from the spot inhabited by the Sun itself. - The overlaid Voyager 'sketch' then stretches out over maybe a dozen such low-res pixels/AU, which is equivalent to slightly more than the radius of Saturn's orbit or the entire diameter of Jupiter's!

In the title text the mystery of the undetectable {{w|Dark Matter}}, which is makes up most of the mass in the universe, is explained since this dark matter is rendered completely undetectable by our spacetime codec's {{w|dynamic range}} issues.

==Transcript==
:[Irregular bands of gray are shown, shading from a white circular segment on the bottom left side of the panel to completely black on the right. The bands have pixelated edges. A small white space probe is shown just outside the last dark gray band, in the completely black are. A dotted line starting from inside the dark gray ending at the space probe indicated that it is moving to the right out of the gray area. Close to the white area there are many bands packed closely together and with hard to define edges. But there are five gray areas clearly separated from the white, with a tendency to be elongated towards the space probes direction.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Milestone: '''''Voyager''''' has passed through the streaming video compression artifacts that mark the edge of the solar system

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Space probes]]