505: A Bunch of Rocks - Revision history

Lettherebedarklight: /* Trivia */ add Category:Comics with a Spanish translation

2025-12-15T08:58:55Z

‎Trivia: add Category:Comics with a Spanish translation

FaviFake: added Category:Comics featuring real people using HotCat

2025-05-11T10:09:49Z

added Category:Comics featuring real people using HotCat

FaviFake: added Category:Comics featuring Donald Knuth using HotCat

2025-05-11T09:45:12Z

added Category:Comics featuring Donald Knuth using HotCat

172.70.131.204: /* Transcript */

2025-02-28T19:11:07Z

‎Transcript

172.70.160.228: Undo revision 358419 by The-Ergster (talk) Can't see any rockets. Just rocks. (I mean, pebbles are "rock-ettes", maybe... ;) )

2024-12-02T15:44:15Z

Undo revision 358419 by The-Ergster (talk) Can't see any rockets. Just rocks. (I mean, pebbles are "rock-ettes", maybe... ;) )

The-Ergster at 14:45, 2 December 2024

2024-12-02T14:45:12Z

172.70.110.118: /* Explanation */ grammatically incorrect, no need to repeat time

2024-11-12T03:10:17Z

‎Explanation: grammatically incorrect, no need to repeat time

FaviFake: not that large Undo revision 356335 by 172.71.218.98 (talk)

2024-11-10T12:01:03Z

not that large Undo revision 356335 by 172.71.218.98 (talk)

172.71.218.98 at 22:50, 9 November 2024

2024-11-09T22:50:29Z

172.71.147.171 at 04:07, 25 October 2024

2024-10-25T04:07:31Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 08:58, 15 December 2025
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 Cueball mentions that if we see an artifact flutter in and out of reality, he must have made a mistake in the last "billions and billions of millennia."  This implies that the small period of time the artifact is present in his time is much longer than our universe has existed. That is a ''very'' long time. However, because it was a really long time, the difference could be [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect more than just a small mote of dust disappearing]. It is also possible, however, that it took billions of years to simulate an instant in our universe.
-The line "I've rederived modern math in the sand and then some," is possibly referring to "Surreal Numbers: How two ex-students turned on to pure mathematics and found total happiness" by Donald Knuth, in which a young couple finds themselves stranded on a deserted island (similar to Cueball), and spend much of their time deriving the properties of surreal numbers from a few base axioms.
+The line "I've rederived modern math in the sand and then some" is possibly referring to "Surreal Numbers: How two ex-students turned on to pure mathematics and found total happiness" by [[Donald Knuth]], in which a young couple finds themselves stranded on a deserted island (similar to Cueball), and spend much of their time deriving the properties of surreal numbers from a few base axioms.
 The title text suggests that {{w|Rule 34 (Internet meme)|Rule 34}} should be called on {{w|Elementary cellular automaton#Random initial state|Wolfram's Rule 34}}. Rule 34 (see [[305: Rule 34]]) is a humorous rule of the Internet that states, "If you can imagine it, there is porn of it. No exceptions." Wolfram's Rule 34 is a cellular automaton. Therefore, the title text says that either someone has made pornography featuring the cellular automaton in question, or someone has used the cellular automaton to produce pornography. Which, of course, Cueball in the comic has, since his universe presumably contains naked people. And literal pornography.
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 [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 [[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
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 [[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]
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 :[The next four panels take up the second line of the comic.]
-:[Cueball stand in the desert.]
+:[Cueball stands in the desert.]
 :I never feel hungry or thirsty.

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:44, 2 December 2024
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−	~~[[Category:Rockets]]~~

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:45, 2 December 2024
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	[[Category:Footnotes]] <!-- * Turing-complete -->		[[Category:Footnotes]] <!-- * Turing-complete -->
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 ==Explanation==
-[[Cueball]] awakens to find himself trapped for eternity in an endless expanse of sand and rocks. At first, he uses this time to derive all of mathematics and physics, plus more, including {{w|quantum mechanics}} and {{w|general relativity}}. Next Cueball creates a computer that can process any possible function, out of rocks and rules for the interaction between rocks. He then simulates a particle followed by the interactions between particles, followed by the entire universe. The amount of time it takes to simulate the change in the universe merely from one instant to the next takes an extremely long time, as the time it takes to update just one row of rocks would be eons, assuming a realistic time to place each rock.
+[[Cueball]] awakens to find himself trapped for eternity in an endless expanse of sand and rocks. At first, he uses this time to derive all of mathematics and physics, plus more, including {{w|quantum mechanics}} and {{w|general relativity}}. Next Cueball creates a computer that can process any possible function, out of rocks and rules for the interaction between rocks. He then simulates a particle followed by the interactions between particles, followed by the entire universe. The amount of time it takes to simulate the change in the universe merely from one instant to the next takes is extremely long, as the time it takes to update just one row of rocks would be eons, assuming a realistic time to place each rock.
 Cueball is using the rocks to build a {{w|cellular automaton}}, a computational model based on simple rules to advance from one state to the next. Certain cellular automata are {{w|Turing-complete}}, which means that they can be used to represent any conceivable algorithm if expanded infinitely, including simulating the physics of the universe. He specifically seems to be running Wolfram's {{w|Rule 110}}, which is capable of universal computation. When using Rule 110 for universal computation, one builds a background pattern, which can be seen in the comic as the pattern of smaller triangles, and then performs computation by sending out "rockets" to collide and interact with each other. Cueball can simulate the functioning of an entire universe because he has unlimited time and space (and rocks).

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:01, 10 November 2024
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−	~~[[Category:Large drawings]]~~

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:50, 9 November 2024
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	[[Category:Programming]]		[[Category:Programming]]
	[[Category:Footnotes]] <!-- * Turing-complete -->		[[Category:Footnotes]] <!-- * Turing-complete -->
		+	[[Category:Large drawings]]