2972: Helium Synthesis

|< < Prev Comic #2972 (August 14, 2024) Next > >|

Helium Synthesis

Title text: Our lawyers were worried because it turns out the company inherits its debt from the parent universe, but luckily cosmic inflation reduced it to nearly zero.

Explanation

This comic explores the challenges of obtaining helium. Hairy is leading a company meeting with Megan, Cueball, and Hairbun, who are discussing the recurring problem of helium shortages, a real-world issue due to helium's limited availability on Earth. Helium is a non-renewable resource primarily extracted from natural gas deposits and its scarcity can affect industries such as medical imaging, semiconductor manufacturing, scientific research, and party balloon supplies.[1] See also 2766: Helium Reserve.

Hairbun suggests investigating the origin of helium. Cueball's research reveals that most helium in the universe came from Big Bang nucleosynthesis, which occurred shortly after the Big Bang when the first elements were formed. It appears to have overlooked the fact that 99% of the helium on Earth has been produced from the slow radioactive decay of the decay chains of naturally occurring uranium-238 and thorium-232 (which in turn came from r-process nucleosynthesis scattered from merging neutron stars;[2] see 2826: Gold) emitting alpha particles that are identical to temporarily ionized helium, with only the remaining one percent originating from the Big Bang.

Hairy assigns the team to figure out how to recreate Big Bang nucleosynthesis, which in real life is not actually possible for a contemporary business organization.^{[citation needed]} Nonetheless, the team somehow builds a machine capable of it. They are successful, likely obliterating themselves and at least all the closest galaxies in the process.

The final panels show the creation of a second Big Bang followed by the next 14 billion years of that new universe, culminating with the same characters in an identical meeting, presumably having arisen from the same series of post-Big Bang events as in the original universe. This suggests a cyclic universe in which events repeat themselves exactly (which chaos theory implies would be extremely unlikely.^{[actual citation needed]}) They are facing the same predicament: helium shortages have become a problem, and they once again need a more reliable source. The implication is that this is a recurring cycle, a religious/philosophical concept called eternal return that occurs in many world religions (such as Hinduism's Cycle of Yugas of creation and destruction), but centered here on the helium needs of a unnamed, resourceful company.

Another possible interpretation is that the new Big Bang does not destroy the existing universe, but creates a new one connected in some way to the old, from which helium can be extracted. This new universe's inhabitants would eventually develop the same problem with a shortage of helium, causing them to create another new universe to get helium from it, ad infinitum.

The title text is a wordplay on the concepts of cosmic inflation and monetary inflation. In economics, monetary inflation is the rate at which the cost of goods and services increases over time (one can also think of this as the value of money falling). If the interest rate on a debt is less than inflation, then the relative cost of the debt decreases over time. Cosmic inflation is a theory in cosmology that describes the rapid expansion of the universe just after the Big Bang. The joke imagines the original company as having incurred a significant debt (perhaps as a result of the costs of building the Big Bang machine), which has now been inherited by its subsidiary. Somehow, thanks to the effect of cosmic inflation, this debt was diluted (perhaps physically across the ever-expanding vastness of space), reducing it to almost nothing. See also 2688: Bubble Universes.

Transcript

[Hairy sits on an office chair at the head of a conference table and has his hands on the table, with Cueball and Megan also at the table.]

Hairy: These helium shortages every few years are such a pain.

Hairy: Our company needs a reliable source of helium.

[The same situation, but now Hairbun is also seen at the table on the left side of Cueball. Cueball holds a cellphone in his left hand, which Megan and Hairbun look at.]

Hairbun: Where does helium come from, anyway?

Cueball: Hmm, apparently most of it is from "Big Bang nucleosynthesis"?

Hairy: Well, let's figure out how to do that.

[Hairy, Megan and Hairbun are working on a large machine labeled "Big Bang Nucleosynthesis," with Megan holding its wired control device in her left hand.]

[Two panels depict another Big Bang, followed by various stages of cosmic development, including galaxies and planets forming, shown in white on a black background.]

[The scene returns to the same conference room setup as before, with the characters in the same positions (although Hairy's hair is subtly different from the first frame). Text at the top of the box reads: "14 Billion Years Later"]

Hairy: These helium shortages every few years are such a pain.

Hairy: Our company needs a reliable source of helium.

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

I had imagined that, rather than destroying the entire universe, they just somehow made a big bang INSIDE THE MACHINE that they could somehow obtain helium from safely. 141.101.109.166 07:34, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I get the impression that, like an abbreviated version of the cyclical Big Bounce hypothesis, they did indeed recreate the conditions for a (sufficiently similar) universe.

The question as to whether they obliterated their current one (in a short-sighted and paperclip-maximiser-like effort that disregards the safety of their current existence) or create a new instance of universe-within-the-universe (like 2688: Bubble Universes, presumably with some way of bringing the stuff out) is left open.

If the latter, it could be that the reason why each universe's helium-users are chronically short of helium is that their universe has been used as a source for the next-universe-out's helium by the equivalent outwards recursion of the very same people. (The former would imply a kind of The Last Question situation, only not with the same timing.) 162.158.74.118 08:25, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you probably couldn't create a big bang in the lab capable of replaying the events of the current universe exactly without obliterating at least, as the explanation says, all the closest galaxies. If new inflation pushes the existing universe apart, it's still smeared quite thinly outside the new expanding edge.

You think in such three-dimensional terms - and I don't mean it as a praise, just like the Borg Queen. -- Hkmaly (talk) 03:07, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

But I really like the idea, it's kind of like Rick's car battery in Rick and Morty, one of my favorite episodes. 172.70.210.4 08:34, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

What if inflation doesn't disturb the matter and space around it, it just shrinks the apparent size of the matter inside it to create the expanded space relative to observers inside, by curving the interior spacetime and distorting the gravitational field to block it from its surroundings? 172.70.206.45 10:04, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Black hole universe, anyone? https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.11608 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71eUes30gwc 172.71.147.192 18:16, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Universe within a (continuing) universe isn't exactly hard to imagine. 162.158.33.216 13:07, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Could this comic maybe be a reference to a certain popular space video game? Sadly, in what I call a reverse spoiler, I cannot tell you which game I mean without massively spoiling that game. I hope some people know which one I mean and can reply basic on that guess. Fabian42 (talk) 09:30, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

If it's Outer Wilds, there's nothing here that's a gameplay spoiler, is there? Just for a pretty small part of the story, right? 162.158.187.55 10:08, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

[not OP] It's a pretty big story spoiler and it could be considered a gameplay spoiler indirectly, or it could if there was more specifity. It's fine to discuss it here. Most xkcd fans would love that game even if they can only watch play-throughs, I reckon. So I consider the discussion here a net positive, really, and I suspect most of the authors would too. 162.158.91.36 17:19, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

This is also a bit reminiscent of the classic Perry Bible Fellowship comic "Reset". 172.68.144.140 03:29, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I wonder whether the cyclicity in the comic is an intentional play a cyclic universe theory. 162.158.210.47 11:46, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

It's certainly a recurring (NPI!) theme in Randall's works, in various forms (as noted all over this article/Talk-page), so I'd be absolutely amazed if it really isn't anything at all to do with it. 172.70.91.54 12:15, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I think I've read too much Casey and Andy but I thought that machine should be called a Big-Bang-Nucleosynthesis-O-Mat. WhiteDragon (talk) 14:55, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I have never heard of C&A before. Thank you so much - I should be sleeping now - guess what I'm doing instead? L-Space Traveler (talk)

THE REASON U HAVE A LACK OF HELIUM IS STARZ JUST EXTRACT IT FROM STARZ (but leave red giants alone, they only have hydrogen left.)172.69.130.71 06:45, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

agreed. just extract helium from starsI HAVE NO NAME (talk) 06:51, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

i spent 90 percent of my vpn on looking at xkcd. I should really take a break.Pizzalord3k (talk) 10:44, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

It's hard to know why you would need to use a personal VPN to check here (specifically), but it seems like you're binge-browsing. You may well be 'caught up' soon and perhaps before hitting any quota/recharging limit.

And can we take it that all contributions from User:I HAVE NO NAME (and User:I HAVE NO NAME2) are now part of the above username's history? I hope things settle down for you (and us) shortly. Please do enjoy making useful edits, by whatever name you do. All helpful contributions are tautological helpful... 172.70.160.248 11:06, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

The reason i use vpn is because I'm travelling right now. Here's a hint about the country I'm going to. CLUE: they have a very strict firewall.I HAVE NO NAME (talk) 07:18, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

You know, that always confuses me. Any nation (there's one very obvious one, another that I suspect doesn't so much as firewall as restrict all connections from the ground up, yet another possible candidate with a mix of self-isolation and partly imposed disconnection, probably a smattering of "I'd have to check on the map" territories) that would go so far as to make it impossible to directly connect to an obscure webcomic wiki yet even allows encrypted traffic in and out between basically any part of the wider internet (including all those places that they are really concerned with anyone sending things to or receiving them from) has more than a few problems with priorities and how to make them effective.

I mean, they now can't even tell the difference between someone who is uploading a video review of the latest Taylor Swift song and one who is exporting vital military secrets.

Ok, they do still have an idea of who is tunnelling out, electronically speaking, but (without subverting the whole concept of a VPN, at source, which is always a remote possibility) they can't really sieve those results any more meaningfully (e.g. to work out who is coordinating a physical attempt to 'tunnel out').

Which makes me think that it's either not very well thought out (content to just restrict 'normal' citizens, and left to keep track of the relative few exceptions to this policy to then surveil/monitor in other less convenient ways) or exceedingly well thought out ('They' actually have wide-open backdoors into all common VPN solutions, and They are cleverly allowing anyone with anything to hide to think they're lost in amongst all the masses of relative drivel, and perhaps the targets might even drop their guard further and accidentally use http: instead of https: when connecting to the CIA webmail system, etc... ;) ).

...but we digress. Well, certainly I do. Ignore me. (Enjoy your trip, whoever you are. But why are you spending so much time on here, when you probably have so much more to do and see!) 172.70.91.77 12:54, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Transcript: "Hairy's hair is subtly different from the first frame" Hairy's hair is subtly different in ALL THREE frames. These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 01:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Rewrite it as you think best. The first two frames aren't radically different (and logically could follow without much explanation, both being OriginalUniverse!Hairy, and then after althe whole recreation of Creation you only have the indication that it's NewUniverse!Hairy instead (by one interpretation) by that universal timeline subtly changing uead-hair fashion/maintenance/attitude as the one thing that looked changed. And nothing else. (Not really definite about it being exactly that. It was just a better form of wording than it was immediately previously...) 172.70.160.221 07:43, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Any speculation as to who/what maintains financial records for 14 billion years from a dead universe? Maybe God is the ultimate accountant? These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 01:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)