Editing 485: Depth

{{comic
| number    = 485
| date      = October 6, 2008
| title     = Depth
| image     = depth.png
| titletext = The Planck length is another thousand or two pixels below the comic.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic is a companion piece to [[482: Height]], which explored a {{w|logarithmic scale}} from the edge of the observable universe down to the Earth's surface. ''Depth'' continues the process, viewing logarithmically smaller scales from Earth's atmosphere down to the interior of a single {{w|proton}}. This combination is reminiscent of Charles and Ray Eames' 1977 short film [http://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0 Powers of Ten].

Starting from the Earth's surface, the view descends into a house, a tower PC, its CPU, and eventually a proton inside a silicon atom, with various humorous inconguities.

What should be a computer mouse is an actual rodent, yet still somehow plugged into the PS/2 (6-pin mini-DIN) connector that is clearly labelled.

From a possibly punning connection between a chip's connector pin to the pin of "how many angels can dance on the head of..?" fame, we are given a joke based upon a 2's-complement overflow/rollover condition, changing from maxint (greatest positive) to minint (greatest negative).  A negative angel might well be a demon.

A blood-sucking insect appears to be 'leeching' a torrent.

<!-- Someone must understand the 'rice' thing, or have something interesting to say about the "Upcoming Segfault" bit, but not me. -->

There is a suggestion that the computer concerned is being Rick-rolled, seeing that it contains the observation (at probably the scale of memory address storing circuitry in the CPU's cache) that there is at least one pixel's-worth of Rick Astley's image being stored at the moment but, one imagines, probably enough for the current video frame.

A "fork();" command points at one of several unlabeled spermatazoa.  Both the 'fork' function (mostly in various C-family programming languages) and the spermatazoon (after joining with an ovum, one of which ''is'' labelled slightly higher up in a position appropriate to its corresponding size) are capable of spawning 'child processes'.

Peter Norton is famous for being the person behind Norton Antivirus <!-- Note, I expected this to be a reference to The Fantastic Voyage, at first... -->, who is therefore appropriately attacking a virus.  Though in this case a bacteriophage, rather than informatic malware.

Showing the relative scale of carbon nanotubes, the suggestion is that these then lead on to a more megastructural Space Elevator, for which carbon nanontubes are often cited as a suitably strong component needed for the cable.

In the {{w|electron cloud}}, the squiggles made out of arrows are {{w|Feynman diagram}}s.

Such a diagram, in the shape of a stick figure, is saying "Sup?", which may reference both the "Wassuuup..!" meme and the "Sup" particle (supersymmetric partner 'squark' to the Up quark).

An 'iPod Femto' is shown (presumably at the femtometre level of scale), as a pun on the 'iPod Nano' (which, despite its name, is ''not'' mere nanometres in size).

Brian Greene is a theoretical physicist and {{w|Popular science|pop scientist}} who discusses the nature of the universe. The picture of him knitting is a pun on his book and PBS miniseries, {{w|The Fabric of the Cosmos}}.

The {{w|Planck length}} is the smallest theoretically measurable distance, due to the {{w|Uncertainty principle}} of quantum mechanics. Planck length is vastly smaller than any known particle, and modern physics is a long way from being able investigate such a scale. 

[[1162: Log Scale]] is another comic about the use of log scales.

==Transcript==
:Sizes Accurate on a vertical log scale
:[Series of images of characters doing various things. The things they are doing are listed in left to right order]
:Man and woman playing in a ball pen 
: Woman using witchcraft to ban vista "Out, Vista!"
:Two girls play Rock Band 
: Man and woman are having &quot;fun&quot; on a shaking bed.
:[Below this series of images, an image of a man on the computer]:
:Man is on computer and the image expands as it goes down. Here are the labels from left to right, up to down:
:CD 
:DVD
:Case
:North Bridge
:PS/2
:Mouse (a physical mouse)
:RAM
:CPU Socket Pin
:32,767 Angels Dancing (one more and they'd roll over and become 32,768 Devils), Rice, Torrent (a bug), CPU, upcoming segfault
:dust mite
:hair
:OVUM
:Data (a pixel on Rick Astley's shoulder), rust mite, fork();
:Peter Norton fighting a baxteriophage
:memory
:carbon nanotubes
:space elevator
:a line of silicon (Si), Electron Cloud, a man made out of arrows saying "sup?"
:silicon nucleus
:IPod femto
:Brian Greene knitting furiously ''clank, clunk''

{{comic discussion}}
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