explain xkcd:Museum

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all xkcd comics, and only 61 (1.9%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!

Latest comic

Go to this comic explanation

Proof Without Content

|< < Prev #3201 (January 30, 2026)

Title text: There's also a proof without content of a conjecture without content, but it's left as an exercise for the reader.

|< < Prev Random Explanation

Explanation

This is incomplete: This page was created as an exercise for the reader. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This comic refers to a proofs without words, which rely on images or other geometric tools to visually demonstrate a concept without further explanation. The comic gives an example of a proof without any content at all, which proves its own existence.

This proof requires the conjecture to be stated, which could be construed as content.

This can also be a parody on scientists doing empty papers sometimes as an inside joke, such as a comprehensive overview of chemical-free consumer products – the point with that paper being that the lay meaning behind "chemical-free" can be considered technically nonsensical given that anything physical contains chemical elements, so no products can be free of them. (And, even in the various more vague senses that may be intended, it isn't necessarily as good a selling point as it may try to suggest.)

The title text refers to another proof without content, that a conjecture without content could exist. This would imply a conjecture-proof pair with no content whatsoever. This could only be discussed indirectly, which is why it is mentioned and left as an exercise for the reader. Alternatively, the exercise could be forming the conjecture and proof itself if the comic is interpreted as a blank sheet of paper.

Transcript

This is one of 41 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Within a panel, two boxes stacked vertically. Each one has a label above it.]

Conjecture:

[Within the box]

It's possible to construct a convincing proof without words, pictures, or content of any kind.

[The next label]

Proof:

[The box underneath this label is empty.]

[Caption under the panel]

Proofs without words are cool, but we can go further.

  Add comment        Create topic (use sparingly)       Refresh 

Discussion

Maybe it's more of statistics than exhibitions. --While False (speak|museum) 21:17, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

pixels-assembly-3.png

how is it 0 bytes?? i see that it is shown as 0 bytes on the wiki, but the file itself, when downloaded is 5kb! how???108.162.221.209 16:41, 4 October 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

If the question is how it can be written like that here, the answer is that I used the numbers of the wiki. —While False (speak|museum) 19:18, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, should have made it more clear. Do you know why it is shown as 0 bytes on the file page? 172.70.134.103 12:37, 7 October 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

There's always the possibility that this is actually the Null image under the .png file format. Every other .png is defined by the delta required to display the desired graphic when starting from the baseline of this 'ur'-image, but if you ever wanted to display that graphic the undocumented format specifications allow you to omit all unnecessary bytes (including the magic header bytes) and it will happily produce its hardcoded "it's a PNG!" preprocessing template, which happens to be this image. Obviously, the PNG spec (and, ultimately, the original ancestor of the detailed source code tree for every subsequent implementation) was written before Randall ever got anywhere near to drawing this image so the chances are slim that he just happened to luck upon the exact image that happens to have a 100% compression rate because it just happened to consist of something Randall wanted to draw, and in the manner of Randall's artistry. But it's a non-zero likelihood that an arbitrary artist might draw exactly the same image as a purely arbitrary "index null" page's collection of pixels and so... This might not be the Best Of All Worlds, but there has to be some highly fortunate occurance to balance out all the unfortunate ones, statistically, and this is ours!

(Or maybe there's a minor bug/data-error in the way the wiki database serves the front-end webserver, but I can't ask you to believe something as trivially random as that!)) 172.70.90.245 15:03, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
        Add comment

Is this out of date? .

New here?

Last 7 days (Top 10)

Rank Score Pages Changes Username 1 22 18 22 TheusafBOT 2 18 15 17 Qwertyuiopfromdefly 3 14 9 16 Elizium23 4 13 13 13 Victoria 5 13 7 15 BunsenH 6 8 5 8 DollarStoreBa'al 7 6 2 7 Megan 8 6 2 6 R128 9 6 2 6 1234231587678 10 5 5 5 DKMell

Lots of people contribute to make this wiki a success. Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have just joined. You can do it too! Create your account here.

You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.

• If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this Wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.

• Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.

• You can browse the comics from List of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.

• There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!

Rules

Don't be a jerk!

There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.

If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.

Please only submit material directly related to (and helping everyone better understand) xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited). Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.

If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.