2640: The Universe by Scientific Field

|< < Prev Comic #2640 (July 1, 2022) Next > >|

The Universe by Scientific Field

Title text: The math and philosophy people also claim everything, but the astronomers argue that the stuff they study really only comprises a small number of paper surfaces.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by the UNIVERSE - 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.

Astronomy is the study of outer space and celestial phenomena. This comic makes a joke that most of the "universe" falls under the study of astronomy. Which makes sense because the "universe" is so vast and large and is not studied by other fields of science.

The volume of the observable universe is 3.566×10⁸⁰ cubic meters. The volume of Earth is 1.08321×10²¹ cubic meters.

1.08321×10²¹ m³ ÷ 3.566×10⁸⁰ m³ × 100% ≈ 3×10^-58%, which is scientific notation for the second of the two percentages, the first being its difference from 100%.

The title text says that mathematicians and philosophers claim that what they study also represents everything. But astronomers counter this by saying that they just study things that are written down, and this comprises just tiny amounts of "paper" on the Earth. This claim by mathematicians is also used in 435: Purity.

The adjacent fields of optics, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and geometry underpin almost all aspects of astronomy other than nomenclature, so the comic may be seen as biased by proponents of those disciplines. Other objections may include the fact that almost all individual people's subjective life experiences are overwhelmingly more involved with matters best described by fields other than astronomy, even in the case of professional astronomers (who often complain about how little time they can allocate to making actual astronomical observations.)

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

The Universe by Scientific Field

[A pie chart is shown.]

Astronomy

99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999997%

Other

0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003%

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

Discussion

I have a feeling reproductions of this particular XKCD will be popular on the doors of many offices in astronomy departments around the world. A bit like Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons are found everywhere in biology departments.

I just discovered Safari's "Live Text" feature. It allowed me to copy the numbers with all the digits, so I don't have to count them to create the transcript. But then someone else beat me to creating it. Barmar (talk) 22:44, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if we should mention the area of telescope apertures compared to, say, the surface area of all laboratory glassware or something like that. Too much of a stretch? 172.70.214.81 23:18, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy --162.158.129.117 00:40, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Agreeing with the argument in the current version of the explanation as I write: it is really, really hard to argue that astronomy covers more than physics, which lays claim to including all the physical sciences as subfields. Also, is "field" a pun on the force fields of ... physics? Nitpicking (talk) 03:32, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think most chemists would say that they're in a sub-field of physics, but chemistry is a huge part of astronomical spectroscopy. Similarly mathematicians relative to trigonometry. 172.70.211.36 03:47, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

There's a bit of a problem here. Yes, Astronomy is the study of pretty much anything that isn't Earth. But the other part is pretty much limited to studies of life on earth (biology excluding exo-/astrobiology as well as pretty much all branches of social sciences), studies of earths atmosphere (meteorology and related fields), studies of earths water (e.g. hydrology as well as aspects of biology and others), studies of earths lithosphere (terrestrial geology and subfields) and various tangential branches thereof (like studies of earth's past - as part of pretty much any subject mentioned before). Fields like physics (pretty much everything "real", i.e. 100%), chemistry (any condensed matter) or geology (any rocky bits) have claims to various (already "taken") parts of the universe. Mathematics and philosophy (mentioned in alt text) don't have a claim to much of anything "real" in the universe (except maybe the pieces of data storage (paper, brain, digital) used) but have a claim to all of the (not "real, I guess) sciences mentioned before. Of course, that makes them subject to, at least, physics, chemistry, biology and social (including historical) sciences in turn. - - - TL/DR: I seem to be in a bit of a mood to kill jokes today. 172.70.251.112 13:16, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

of course to continue the joke, while all those fields may have applicability beyond earth, the vast majority of what they actually study is ON earth (although to make the stretch, you have to consider any field that studies things off earth as a subset of astronomy, which would make for many very angry scientific debates... hmmm... science thunderdome, I kinda like this idea =D 172.69.71.127 15:05, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Don't feel bad. The entire second half of the explanation at present is devoted to casting the joke as absurdist exaggeration and hyperbole. 172.70.211.36 15:30, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Maybe the idea of the comic is that the diagram was created by astronomers to justify their existence, which explains the bias. Many lay people wonder why we spend so much money studying "out there" when there are so many problems here that could use the money (never mind that the fraction of government budgets devoted to astronomy is miniscule, and some of the discoveries do have terrestrial uses, particularly regarding climate change). And as alluded in the title text, other researchers could probably make a similar diagram that emphasizes their discipline. Barmar (talk) 17:01, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Climate change? Only thing astronomy can tell us about climate change is where to move to when we inevitably destroy Earths climate. -- Hkmaly (talk) 01:03, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

The greenhouse effect was originally described in terms of albedo when the absorption spectra of CO2 was first characterized, but I can't think of any other examples. 172.69.34.6 01:16, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Solar astronomy tells us what contributions are made by the sun and it's various cycles, general astronomy gives us orbital and therefor seasonal modifiers on that, both of which can then be accounted for to determine both local contribution, and expected trend changes. Further it gives both examples of what various conditions can result in (venus and mars especially) and even possible useful modifications we can make (eg solar shades for reducing, and reflectors for increasing solar effects, albedo modification for either). Not to mention minor things like knowing if a country sized rock might ruin our day --Not an Astronomer 172.69.70.155 15:54, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

There should be a large proportion for "Dark Knowledge" to imitate those astronomical summaries that try to emphasise how much of the universe is dark matter and/or energy 172.70.86.64 01:38, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

As to the alt text, you also have Max Tegmark, a physicist at MIT, who believes the entire universe is literally made of mathematics: Mathematical universe hypothesis. 172.70.211.52 06:54, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Could be... although just like Holographic Theory, and to some degree Simulation Theory we'd be hard pressed to tell a difference. As long as the rules are consistent, and resist self modification, there's nothing to say the experience from the inside is any different between, physical, simulation, holographic, or mathematical realities. Hard to know which box you're in if you can't look outside it to confirm what the walls are made of 172.69.70.155 15:54, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Quite true. Almost all of those "theories" aren't falsifiable, and therefore are technically metaphysics instead of genuine science. 172.68.132.96 22:24, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely. But it's definitely been made fun of by webcomics before, e.g. by: SMBC, so it's not outside the realm of possibility Randall may have meant that. 172.70.207.8 02:20, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

SMBC is a great comic. I wonder why it doesn't have an explanation wiki. 172.70.210.125 03:14, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

It's inexplicable...

 :) 172.70.85.177 11:45, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

I deleted this sentence from the explanation: "If we measure the universe by mass-energy instead, for example, the study of physics becomes non-trivial." I was planning to put an {Actual citation needed} tag on it, but it seemed to break up the explanation in an odd way, inside a paragraph front of a group of bullet points making similar arguments, so I'm moving it here for discussion instead. 172.69.33.149 17:33, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

"although one could argue back that theology is nothing more than writing fiction". yeah, and one could also argue that the earth is flat and that 2+2=5.172.71.134.216 04:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)