Talk:1515: Basketball Earth

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 18:35, 22 April 2015 by 173.245.50.107 (talk)
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Apologies to the first editor, who made a snappier version of what I wrote. For the record, whilst fighting a dodgy internet connection I eventually ended up replacing the following...

 Cueball is seen trying to explain the relative sizes of the earth and moon by comparing the earth to a basketball and the moon to what looks like a golf ball. This explanation is constantly thwarted by passerby interacting with the basketball while Cueball is explaining it.
 For the title text, the answer is zero, since it is against basketball rules.

...with what I tried to keep short during my own writing from scratch. I also ommited several other concepts of my own thought: The fact that Blackhat must have used a very light-touch to only generate a megatsunami (albeit already unimaginably large, at Earthball's scale); The possibility of recursion (including something like the Men In Black 'cat collar' allusion); and that in the universe of the comic strip there is only one actual basketball (the Earthball itsself), although I like how we both had the idea that the basketballs upon Earthball would not have counted in a game of basketball with an Earthball-scaled hoop, due to quite obvious interpretations of the sport's regulations. 141.101.98.67 05:11, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and reversion is invited, if deemed preferable. As is amalgamation, and refinement and re-replacement by something even better, of course. As per the standard Wiki creed. Much as I am cringing at having upset the original contributor, I'm quite happy to be gazumped in turn. 141.101.98.67 05:14, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

If you look at the third frame of the Blackhat sequence and compare it to the frames underneath, you can see that he didn't just touch the Earth or an ocean--he actually rotated it 90 degrees.108.162.221.115 09:38, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Well spotted! Edit that in! (Do it quickly with a pre-prepared edit. I kept getting hit by edit-conflicts, which I set about to resolve amicably without reversing anybody else's input; only to get hit by further edit-conflicts by the next person to come along and improve overlapping pieces, whom I also strived not to disregard.) 141.101.98.67 09:57, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
No he didn't. the Earth always rotates from the first panel to the next. So that it is in a different position when Black Hat touches it, to where it was the panel before does not imply that he rotated the Earth. If anything he only rotated it a few degrees, as it had already rotated most of those 90 degree from panel 1 to panel 2 before Black Hat reaches the Earth. As far as I can see there has not been any change to include this yet. So that is good. --Kynde (talk) 10:41, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I really love this comic. It is great fun. Thanks Randall, happy Earth day. --Kynde (talk) 10:42, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

... a tennis ball an average 7.2 metres away, while the Sun would be 26 metres across and 2.8 km away. 108.162.250.165 13:25, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

It's 13:23 right now, but the clock of explainxkcd.com says it's 13:37. 108.162.221.201 13:37, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

If we assume 9,000,000 basketballs sold every year (bbs.ClutchFans.net), one basketball lasts about 10,000 bounces (SoTrueFacts.com), and there's between 2,500 and 3,000 bounces per game (Answers.com) we can extrapolate that on average a basketball doesn't live for more than a year, and the number of basketballs sold replace those which have lifed-out. Let's build in a 10% slush factor and say there 10m basketballs produced in the world last year. Let's further say that there's an extra 1m basketballs sold every year which don't get regular use and are in some kid's room and those have been accumulating for about ten years (different kids get basketballs every year which end up in their bedrooms). Dunking a basketball gives two points, and at 20 million basketballs, that gives 40 million points – and a safe bet you're going to make it to the playoffs that year. Jarod997 (talk) 13:51, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible that the megatsunami is actually caused by the gravity of the scale Moon (it being way too close to the scale Earth)? This is a major problem that most children's books (or adult's books or websites) have. They scale the planets/moons/stars but not the distance. As the comment above, to get normal tides, the tennis ball should be 7.2m away at this scale. --Gravitron (talk) 14:06, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I find it interesting that Randall makes the same mistake a lot of people make reguarding the distance between the earth and moon at that scale. I was watching Veritasium (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz9D6xba9Og) on Youtube a while back and the guy there was asking people how far away a tennis ball sized moon would be from a basketball sized Earth. Most people made the distance way too small, very similar to how far away they appear in the comic. In reality they would be something like 10 times that distance. Usually Randall is more accurate than this. 108.162.221.171 14:09, 22 April 2015 (UTC)Agent0013

Unless he was simply trying to compare the relative sizes. It's possible after that he would get in to the relative distance between the two - but good point. Jarod997 (talk) 14:12, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
It seemingly got lost when trying to resolve edits, but I'd calculated and intended to add that (for the size of a baseball, so a tennis ball would slightly different) 110 Moonball diameters separation between the two. Of course no human has (personally) seen that from a proper perspective, i.e. far enough away to get both bodies in the same convenient vision at the same time whilst off to the side. (Even the Apollo astronauts only got to look at one over the top of the other, at various times, or by panning between the two whilst in the midst of their trans-lunar trajectories.) But there's surely been a space probe or two with a suitable imager been tasked towards such a shot whilst off mostly perpendicular to the Earth-Moon and a decent distance away to get both in the same shot without distortion... 141.101.98.67 17:52, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree with the claim (at a couple points in the article) that *all* life would be extinguished by any of these manipulations. 2-4 may kill off most or all macroscopic life, but microbes would survive all of them (unless Megan has bleach in that sports bottle). If 3 or 4 shattered the earth, that might extinguish all microbes, but even that I doubt. The only case I can imagine would be if 3 or 4 caused it to spiral into the sun. Djbrasier (talk) 14:10, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Title text might be reference to HHGTG: “ Ford Prefect: I read of one planet in the seventh dimension got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole, killed ten billion people. Arthur Dent: Madness. Total madness. Ford Prefect: Yeah. Only scored thirty points too. ”198.41.241.91 14:23, 22 April 2015 (UTC)



I admit that I'm super-confused by the structure of the comic. The explanation here describes possible consequences for the actions, but as depicted, only the first has any "real world" effect. I too would expect the water bottle to cause a deluge, but it doesn't seem to. What's going on? Mattdm (talk) 15:40, 22 April 2015 (UTC)


The hoop in panel 16 seems too high, unless both Cueball and Megan are under 5 feet tall. --PsyMar (talk) 17:11, 22 April 2015 (UTC)


Happy Earth Day everyone. Today is the day we regret everything we do to the earth, and the next is the day we forget all that. The Goyim speaks (talk) 17:59, 22 April 2015 (UTC)


Why the whole paragraph about it being a baseball? We have no indication of what it is, so why not just say "if it's a tennis ball..." 173.245.50.107 18:35, 22 April 2015 (UTC)