2511: Recreate the Conditions

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Recreate the Conditions

Title text: We've almost finished constructing the piña collider.

Explanation

Scientists recreate conditions of things to gain scientific knowledge on a topic to better be able to observe why or how things happen. This could be done by making miniature versions of events and simulating events using safe methods.

In this comic, Megan's lab discovered that the conditions during the seconds after the Big Bang were extremely hot and unpleasant. They have thus decided to attempt to recreate the conditions of a tropical beach in 2014 instead (7 years prior to when this comic was released). Here, the joke is that instead of recreating a condition for scientific study purposes, Megan and her crew were simply trying to create a pleasant environment for recreation, in the sense of personal enjoyment.

The title text is a reference to 1949: Fruit Collider a pun of piña colada (Spanish for "strained Pineapple") and a particle collider: the Spanish word "colada" is pronounced similarly to the English word "collider". Taken literally, "piña collider" would be a pineapple collider, which may be interpreted as a fruit juicing machine for making piña coladas.

Transcript

[Megan is standing, pointing a stick at a poster of a particle collision, (as it looks when measured in a particle collider), where many other particles emerge from the central collision, a black spot, with many thin curved lines going away from it, and two larger beams going straight in. Above the upper part of these lines there are three lines of unreadable text, three unreadable labels are written over three of the lines, and there are two unreadable lines of text at the bottom one at each side of the poster.]

Megan: Our lab was trying to recreate the conditions that occurred seconds after the Big Bang.

[Megan is standing with arms lifted to each side, stick in hand, looking straight out, in an otherwise empty panel.]

Megan: But it turns out they were extremely hot and unpleasant.

[Megan points at another poster with the stick. The poster shows a picture of a beach, with the sun over the ocean, a palm tree bending in over a parasol stuck in the sand. At the front there is a small table with two drinks on it.]

Megan: So now we're trying to recreate the conditions that occurred on this tropical beach in early 2014.

Megan: Honestly don't know why we were doing that other thing.

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Discussion

Notice that the picture of the palm tree looks kind of like the spray of particles in the first slide. Barmar (talk) 05:03, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

No...? Not at all... --Kynde (talk) 12:14, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

One goal of particle colliders such as LHC at CERN is to recreate conditions similar to those few seconds after the Big Bang, but they have still not destroyed the earth. -- 162.158.129.67 (talk) 06:08, 4 September 2021‎ (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

That we know of... 162.158.159.71 12:41, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Well we may not know their goals... But if you read this they have not (yet) destroyed the Earth --Kynde (talk) 12:14, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

You cannot rule out that we are speaking(/typing), unknowingly, from the afterlife/data-backup-and-simulation to which we (or, possibly, each still cogent individual, with or without a solipstic-inclination to each (my!) personal experience) are treated to the 'continuation' of our existence(s) due to something that happens at the very moment the false vacuum decays, or whatever.

(Or, on another track, we have irretrievably and inevitably doomed the Earth already, it is just a convenient fiction that it has not yet concluded its nigh-on imminent final destruction, having been already seeded by enough nanosingularities/strange-particles/antichronons/cavorite/Vogons.)

((Or both!)) :P 172.70.34.91 14:31, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I believe one of Tom Scott's oldest videos is about a pina collider that he built. 172.70.130.211 13:24, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Here it is Rtanenbaum (talk) 16:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

People designing particle accelerators have observed that one problem with new accelerators is attracting qualified people to come work there. This was a particular problem with FRIB in Michigan, due to the weather/climate. The obvious solution is to plan to build an accelerator in a place to which lots of people would like to relocate, e.g., Tahiti. Sorry, I can't find this in print; it was just less-than-fully-serious conversations at conferences.172.68.141.225 01:13, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I doubted that there are so many particle accelerators that scientists would be choosy about the location and wouldn't jump at any chance they had. Then I found that there are over 30,000 particle accelerators in the world Ten Things You Didn't Know About Particle Accelerators Rtanenbaum (talk) 02:37, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

It's just the big ones which are rare. However, just the big ones have any chance to recreate big bang. -- Hkmaly (talk) 00:49, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

People qualified to build particle accelerators typically have skills that make them quite attractive to tech companies. So their choice isn't between East Lansing and unemployment. 172.68.133.87 02:51, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

This comics resembles final picture and title text from https://what-if.xkcd.com/129/. 172.68.244.173 11:27, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

The "don't know why we were doing that other thing" may be a reference to what JFK said in his To The Moon speech: "...and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." 162.158.88.245 08:56, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

"We do what we must because we can." Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 10:12, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

"For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead." Alexvoda (talk) 8:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if the 2014 reference is related to some personal experience from Randall, from vacation or whatever. Also could be related to climate change or the beach being now unpleasant because too many people discovered it 172.68.102.181 10:53, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Or it's just some random year. 356 Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 09:18, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I thought it was a piñata collider