Editing 1515: Basketball Earth

A {{w|Basketball (ball)|basketball}} is about 25 cm in diameter and from this it can be inferred that the Moon should then be less than 7 cm in diameter, a typical size for other smaller balls in different sports. Cueball handily illustrates this with two "balls" of the relevant sizes. At first you think that they just look like the Earth and the Moon. But they are invisibly suspended, and — as seems clear from the first row of panels — they are actually the real Moon and Earth shrunk to the relevant size, hence the title ''Basketball Earth''.

This would place Cueball and his "friends" in {{w|God}}-like positions, outside Earth. Maybe they are even in a different dimension, since they can stand and observe the system.

But before Cueball can finish with this common type of comparison, he is interrupted and must begin all over again. We thus never learn what object he would have compared the Moon with. It seems, likely, however that he would use another ball for the comparison. And the best ball to use would be a {{w|tennis ball}}. See the same sort of comparison of Earth/Moon with basketball/tennis ball in this illustrative video that asks the question: [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/02/24/how-far-away-is-the-moon/ How far away is the Moon?]. From this it is also obvious that the system Cueball shows is not to scale with regard to that distance, which should be 7.37 m! This is not necessarily a mistake of the comic, since Cueball never claims that these two balls are in orbit or that they are even the real ones. He is just (in vain) trying to make a size comparison of the two. (Though perhaps further exposition and demonstration might take place after the size comparison.)

This is similar to a scene in "{{w|Men in Black II}}" where K messed with a globe that actually is a small planet, and his finger become visible in the sky of its inhabitants.  It is also similar to a "Pearls before swine" strip where the character Pig encounters Atlas and the earth in a diner, points to where he lives, and accidentally pokes himself on the eye. It is also reminiscent of {{w|Deep Impact (film)|Deep Impact}} in which a meteor strike causes exactly such a tsunami to hit the {{w|East Coast of the United States}}. Since Black Hat puts his finger down in the Atlantic Ocean, the tsunami would hit all bordering coastlines. Since the coast seems to be an eastern coast (assuming a vantage point of South --> North), and because Randall lives there, the city could be {{w|New York City}} or {{w|Boston}} or one of the other large US cities on the East Coast. Of course, the wave would also affect the coast line (far into land) for all the other continents.

The second interruption occurs when [[Megan]] arrives and pours liquid (perhaps water) from a sports {{w|water bottle}} onto the Basketball Earth, seemingly flooding its entire surface. This would cause {{w|List of flood myths|extensive flooding}}, almost certainly extinguishing all multicellular land-dwelling life. The most familiar analogous situation is from the {{w|Bible}} in the {{w|Genesis flood narrative}} about {{w|Noah's Ark}}. The deluge from Megan's bottle would also change the composition of the ocean and create enormous churn and pressure changes, with widespread or catastrophic effects even on multicellular marine life.

In the third interruption a cat walks into shot and then playfully attacks the Basketball Earth rolling around with it like it would do with a ball of {{w|yarn}} (see real life example in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1rTAI2aExI this video]).

In the fourth and final interruption, [[Ponytail]] uses Basketball Earth as an actual basketball. She comes running by Cueball, grabs the Basketball Earth, probably bouncing it off the floor while {{w|Dribbling#Basketball|dribbling}} towards the {{w|Backboard (basketball)|basketball hoop}} where she actually jumps in an attempt to {{w|Slam dunk|dunk}} the Basketball Earth. This would ''not'' be good for any residents of Basketball Earth; the combined pressure, movement, and impact damage from this simple sequence would surely kill off all complex life on Basketball Earth.

:[In the next scene we see a megatsunami on the verge of crashing down onto a coastal city with skyscrapers. The A's are cut of on each side of the panels frames, i.e. they begin outside and finishes outside the frame.]

:[Zoom out from Cueball who continues to watch while Ponytail reaches a basketball hoop and jump towards it with the Basketball Earth, obviously in an attempt to make a slam dunk.]

[[Category:Animals]]