2041: Frontiers
| Frontiers |
 Title text: Star Trek V is a small part of the space frontier, but it's been a while since that movie came out so I assume we've finished exploring it by now. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
This comic refers to four remaining final frontiers of human discovery and implies that other fields of research aren't a challenge anymore. Randall states that this is based on popular usage which he probably analyzed by using a popular internet search engine.
Outer space is so vast in size it's impossible for humans to discover even just all stars in our Milky Way galaxy within a lifetime.
The oceans are deep, very deep. The vast majority of the deeper oceans hasn't been visited by humans and there is still much life we don't know.
The human mind is not only complex but also irrational which makes it even harder to discover.
Alaska is the largest state in the US by area and also the most sparsely populated. Many places in Alaska exist that have been only partially explored today. Randall was probably inspired by the TV series Alaska: The Last Frontier, which plays off of the state's official nickname of "The Last Frontier".
The humor from this comic comes from the fact that many readers would likely consider space, the oceans, and the human mind as a very different category of frontier than "Alaska" (for example, space is infinitely vast whereas Alaska is more populated than the US state of Wyoming).
The title text refers to the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier released in 1989. "Final frontier" is a recurring motif in the Star Trek franchise (coming from the opening narration for Star Trek: The Original Series) and is used to describe the exploration of the "outer space", which remains a big frontier to humans both in real life and within Star Trek. Randall however jokingly posits that the frontier to be explored is the film itself, and assumes that based on the fact that this movie has been out for a while (nearly thirty years) the movie should be fully explored in all its details by now.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- [In a single framed picture a hand drawn rhombus is shown. At the inside a few small arrows pointing to the four sides. The text in the middle reads:]
- Human achievement so far
- [Text above the top left side:]
- Space
- [Text above the top right side:]
- The oceans
- [Text below the bottom left side:]
- The human mind
- [Text below the bottom right side:]
- Alaska
- [Caption below the frame:]
- Final remaining "frontiers," according to popular usage
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refresh comments!Discussion
What about Missouri though?
"Around 95% of the oceans haven't been explored and mapped by humans."
Is there a source for this fact? It isn't even clear what the sentence is saying. Is this a fraction of the surface of the ocean? The ocean floor? The water column? What counts as "exploring" a part? Do you just have to see it from a distance, or go there yourself, and if so, how close do you have to get? Will a ship that's twice as wide explore twice as much ocean per mile? That doesn't seem reasonable. How will we know when we are done exploring the ocean?
Also, if that does refer to some actual figure, it's probably out of date by now anyway. EebstertheGreat (talk) 06:15, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
