2903: Earth/Venus Venn Diagram

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Earth/Venus Venn Diagram

Title text: Actually, the fact that Mars is still orbiting safely over here means that it was technically an *Euler* apocalypse, not a Venn one.

Explanation

A Venn diagram illustrates the relationships and differences among sets by showing common and distinct elements, using overlapping circles (or other shapes). This comic is both a Venn diagram and a proximity illustration of Earth and Venus colliding, physically 'overlapping' each other.

• As a proximity illustration, it depicts Earth and Venus smashing into each other, resulting in "shockwaves and production of impact ejecta" occurring where they collide. The relative circle sizes are accurate; the circumference of Venus is 5% smaller than Earth's.
• As a Venn diagram, it shows a collision moment in which the commonality between Earth and Venus is "shockwaves and production of impact ejecta" at the spot of intermingled Earth-Venus overlap.

Shockwaves are intense, high-pressure waves caused by the immense force of the impact, that propagate through the materials of both planets faster than the speed of sound.

Impact ejecta are the materials expelled from the impact site, consisting of molten rock, vaporized material, and solid debris, flung out at high velocities due to the energy released by the collision. The production of impact ejecta would indeed occur in the overlapping impact area.

The title text is another xkcd joke about the difference between a Venn diagram and an Euler diagram, which is similar to a Venn diagram except that it's acceptable to have circles (or other shapes) that do not intersect if there are no common elements between those sets. The observation that Mars is still orbiting by itself makes Mars an additional set (out of the frame of the diagram), in addition to - but not intersecting with - Earth and Venus, making this technically an Euler diagram. Therefore if the Earth-Venus collision is a "Venn apocalypse," the inclusion of Mars as a non-intersecting entity makes this technically an "Euler apocalypse."

As a thought experiment, if you expand the diagram infinitely, a "Venn apocalypse" would consist of every body in the universe being in the process of colliding, simultaneously. This would be very dangerous.^{[citation needed]}

Similar jokes

This joke is similar to the 'Pie chart' meme, showing 'pie I have eaten' and 'pie I have not yet eaten' as a mathematically conventional pie chart formed by a photograph of the actual subject of the chart: a real-world partially-eaten pie.

Transcript

[Two circles are drawn so they overlap. The segments of the circles that overlap are drawn in dashed lines. Each circle has a label and text are written in the central overlapping part the circle. Above the circles there is a caption:]

Earth/Venus Venn Diagram

Left: Earth

Right: Venus

Center: Shock-waves and production of impact ejecta

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Discussion

See also 2721: Euler Diagrams 108.162.245.49 07:13, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Isn't this also a sexual innuendo? I mean... shock waves producing ejecta? Venus? anyone? 162.158.189.33 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Sure, as always it is only mentioned, whenever there is not a sexual innuendo by scientists, as collisions and planets and diagrams turn them on. Sebastian --172.68.110.65 11:56, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

That is really funny. But no there is no sexual reference in a collision between planets. What is in the middle is what would happen in the collision zone. Venus is the name of a planet here... --Kynde (talk) 12:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

All a matter of perspective - depends how Earthy your interpretation is.172.71.242.176 14:55, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Rename the "Venus" circle to "Theia" and you get The Giant-impact hypothesis for the creation of the Moon. Meteo (talk) 13:11, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

I didn't get this at first, but I broke down laughing once I did, I can't quite pinpoint why but this is top tier xkcd right here. Terdragontra (talk) 19:53, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

The "Citation Needed" on "This Would Be Dangerous" is killing me. OmniDoom (talk) 01:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Minor update, just read 285: Wikipedian Protester and that just makes everything even better. OmniDoom (talk) 01:33, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

"Everything in the universe colliding at once would be dangerous." YOU DON'T SAY! Psychoticpotato (talk) 21:35, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

who tf keeps vandalising this place--162.158.74.24 11:01, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

idk, but it's not funny. --1234231587678 (talk) 20:32, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

fr. like, JUST STOP IT ITS USELESS AND ANNOYING 42.book.addict (talk) 21:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The Venn diagram explanation sounds flawed: "As a Venn diagram, it shows that there is a region of one sphere that is still recognizably Earth, a region of the other that is still recognizably Venus, and a region common to both that consists of "shockwaves and production of impact ejecta," and that this area of overlap is now neither Earth nor Venus, but an intermingled combination of the two." - But a Venn diagram is about logical relations, so the shapes and sizes of the areas are irrelevant. To me, that's the whole point of the joke, that it's really hard to see a drawing of round planets when your mind is trained to see a drawing of abstract logical relations under the title "Earth/Venus Venn Diagram". (Like, I stared at the comic blankly for minutes, thinking, why the heck should Earth and Venus only have shock waves and impact ejecta in common...) Transgalactic (talk) 16:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

The fact that Venus and Earth have, in a fact-only reading, potentially more things in common isn't really an issue. That would presuppose that Venn and/or Euler diagrams must show everything possible in any given (possibly composite) region. Although the Venn must have a sub-region for every possible combination of possibilities (or none), and the Euler must have one for every combination (of featured sets) that has an item requiring placing, you don't need to place every possible entity anywhere it can be. (You can, by logic, e.g. the subsets A-and-not-B, B-and-not-A, A-and-B and neither-A-nor-B in an A+B diagram, but even then you don't need to give C and not-C additional). Something that might feature in both Earth and Venus (logically, like... solar neutrinos? the remains of some of earth's spacecraft?) could be placed there, but we also don't list all the things in neither (ice volcanos, the Greater Magellanic Cloud, colourless green ideas sleeping furiously) in the surrounding not-either space.

ok, I get it, I should have written, "why should Earth and Venus' most relevant commonalities be shock waves etc." Transgalactic (talk) 15:00, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Anyway, this is more a case of the joke. You see a diagram, perhaps others see a representation of a collision (and argue that the shockwave is probably not confined to the combined "volume that was" of both bodies, and impact ejecta is probably jetting out of the collision zone (well into space, and some is probably raining down on the 'safe' edges of the respective planets - all in all just adding to the current problems, though it's doubtful that it changes the ultimate fate of everyone, or not, if they have sturdy enough umbrellas). And it works (FCVO 'work') for both viewpoints. 172.70.90.220 19:00, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how this answers my point, so I edited the explanation to clarify the difference between the illustration of an Earth/Venus collision and the representation of Earth/Venus logical relations. Transgalactic (talk) 15:00, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry to break it to you, guys, but a Venn diagram cannot show a "collision moment". It's about abstract relations of commonality and difference. In this case we can infer that the diagram can only apply during a collision event, but the Venn diagram doesn't actually say so. If you feel that talking about separate "Venus" and "Earth" entities etc. is overly complicated language, fine, find a way to cut away the clutter, but please don't turn the whole explanation of the Venn diagram into an explanation of something that isn't a Venn diagram. Transgalactic (talk) 21:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)