3212: Little Red Dots

Little Red Dots

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Title text: After a lot of analysis, I've determined that they're actually big red dots; they're just very far away.

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Explanation

This is one of 69 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a LITTLE RED BOT. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

The little red dots that the comic refers to are something of an astronomical mystery, discovered by the JWST telescope. They may be powered by very, very old black holes from 400-700 million years after the Big Bang, with the light from when they were young. The comic purports to give the responses of several different experts in unrelated fields when asked to identify them:

• According to the entomologists (scientists who study insects and related arthropods), they are clover mites (Bryobia praetiosa) — very small red arachnids.
• According to the computer scientists, they are stuck pixels — pixels that do not work properly, and are stuck to one single color (red in this case). This is a plausible concern, but presumably should already be handled through calibration processes.
• According to the dermatologists (doctors who specialize in skin disorders), they are cherry angiomas — harmless, non-cancerous skin growths made of clusters of dilated capillaries, appearing as bright red, smooth, or slightly raised spots.
• According to the graphic designers, they are colors of type Jasper (● #d73b3e) or Vermillion (● #e34234, sometimes called Cinnabar).

Quite obviously, all of these, if not completely incorrect, are fully unrelated to astronomy.

Part of the punchline is the shift in focus: instead of trying to identify the object, the designer is nitpicking the description of "red dot." Additionally, the graphic designer is also requesting Cueball's color settings, implying they believe the reason Cueball calls them "red" is due to poor display settings, and not due to using the common term for the color. There is a certain amount of insight here, as the JWST only observes orange to far-infrared light; this is to enable it to see very distant objects, whose blue and ultraviolet emissions have been redshifted into longer wavelengths. Converting observed wavelengths into rest-frame wavelengths is a process subject to error, and then falsely-coloring the object so that it may be visualized by human eyes is another such.

The title text states that the little red dots are actually big, far-away dots, which is a play on the phenomenon of relative perceived size, where larger objects that are further away can appear the same size as smaller ones that are closer to the viewer. As with most objects observed in space, particularly deep space, these objects are indeed very large on a human scale. They are also larger than astronomers expected them to be.

Transcript

[Caption above all the panels:]

Astronomers asking researchers from different departments to help them identify the "little red dots" in JWST images:

[In each panel, Cueball stands at the left of an easel. The easel is shown each time as having a black image with three red dots on it. At the right of the easel in each panel is a different character looking at the image on the easel and commenting on it. At the top of each panel is a caption indicating the type of researcher commenting on the image.]

Caption: Entomologists

Megan: Clover mites.

Caption: Computer scientists

Knit Cap: Stuck pixels.

Caption: Dermatologists

Ponytail: Cherry angiomas.

Caption: Graphic designers

Hairy: No, those are vermillion, or maybe jasper.

Hairy: Can I see your color settings?

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Discussion

Everyone why is absolutely nothing here yet Ehogin (talk) 03:08, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Because this comic came out like 2 hours ago. Xkdvd (talk) 04:17, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Yeah by the amount of people who read xkcd you would think at least 100 people saw this and did not do anything for two hours Ehogin (talk) 04:45, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Its not a question of how many people read xkcd, its how many people use explain xkcd, and edit, and know what to put here. EDIT: forgot my signature. oops. Xkdvd (talk) 04:51, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

OK, we want something here? I get Clover Mites a lot. On the patio table, on the deck chairs. On the car, but I fooled them this time: I got a cherry-red car. Maybe they got into the JWST? --PRR (talk) 05:32, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Current title text explanation seems like a bit of a stretch to me; see 2359 for a more refined take on explaining a very a similar joke. 204.77.3.72 08:32, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Sure, whatever you say Father Dougal. --2A10:D586:3E93:0:21B8:BB66:6F56:9A06 08:53, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Ha, you beat me to it. The title text, to me, seems an obvious allusion to Father Ted's famous "THESE cows are small, but THOSE cows are far away..." scene. But probably isn't, in this case. 136.226.55.1 17:21, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

TV criminologists: a pattern centered on the killer's home. 194.75.188.171 11:15, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if it is "nitpicking" per se (though admittedly that is a clever pun, even though nits are generally brown and are rarely red). It could be that the graphic designer is genuinely interested in helping identify the color. Cwallenpoole (talk) 12:41, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

My complements to whomever added the color dots; nicely done. -- Dtgriscom (talk) 12:54, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I've added a link to the oldest (so far) black hole discovery -- dww-uk 2a12:f43:143e:0:e14c:82a5:e0bc:8959 (talk) 13:19, 26 February 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Small red arachnids... seem familiar to anyone else? GreyFox (talk) 14:49, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Note: While the graphic designer might be accurate, for an astronomer, any color that is even slightly "orange" is designated as "red", similarly anything slightly "green" is designated as "blue". Analagous to how any atom with more protons than helium is called a metal in astronomy. Galeindfal (talk) 15:53, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I think any explanation of a comic with an acronym in it should include an explanation of what that acronym is...for those of us who can't remember? (JWST) I also don't know how to insert this "user" signoff? 68.55.172.115 (talk) 16:18, 26 February 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

For a user signoff, you put four tildes at the end of your post(this is a tilde: ~ ). JWST stand for "James Webb Space Telescope". Xkdvd (talk) 17:15, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

...and the instructions are at the top of this very page's 'source' (hidden, unless editing, but that's when you need to know).

For me, right now, I have to switch to the symbolic keyboard then to the second symbolic keyboard, to find the "~" 'key'. Physical keyboards might have it either near the Enter key (like my UK keyboards, shift-'hash symbol'/"#", not to be confused with the 'pound symbol'/"£" that's shift-3!) or up in the top-left key (US-style 'default' layouts, where it should be just to the left of the "!", i.e. shift-'back apostrophe'). Non-anglo keyboards might hide it away somewhere else, or even need something special that doesn't show on your keytops at all, perhaps because of having to show the more common local versions of letters-with-various-other-diacritics.

You can also press the penultimate button just above this edit textbox (between the "no-W", for temporary disabling of wikimarkup, and the black-line on the end of that set of icon-buttons, which gives the Horizontal Rule markup; it's supposed to be a "signature" in icon form, but wouldn't blame you for not realising this). It actually gives you " --~~~~" (the double-hyphen isn't necessary, it's just a historic "signature marker" from decades ago when it mattered more in text-only messages, like email and usenet, but it also doesn't hurt). But, at the very least, it saves you having to find the tilde on your (on-screen?) keyboard if you're not too sure where to find it. 82.132.236.204 17:46, 26 February 2026 (UTC)
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