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Leprechauns live on the night side of the Sun to avoid being incinerated, that's why we can't see them from this side.
 
Leprechauns live on the night side of the Sun to avoid being incinerated, that's why we can't see them from this side.
 
Zetfr 12:46, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 
Zetfr 12:46, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
:The night side... Of the sun... Is there a cartoon about this? I feel like there needs to be a cartoon about this. Just one observation: On the night side of the sun, there's no moon? Or if there is, what's lighting it up?  ;D  This is even better than the "dark" side of the Moon. [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 15:33, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
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:The night side... Of the sun... Is there a cartoon about this? I feel like there needs to be a cartoon about this. Just one observation: On the night side of the sun, there's no moon? Or if there is, what's lighting it up?  ;D  This is even better than the "dark" side of the Moon.
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:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 15:33, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 
::Reminds me of this [https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/7awoek/nepal_space_exploration_flag/dpdetpi/ Reddit conversation] [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.138|162.158.167.138]] 09:42, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 
::Reminds me of this [https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/7awoek/nepal_space_exploration_flag/dpdetpi/ Reddit conversation] [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.138|162.158.167.138]] 09:42, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
:::That ''is'' amusing. On that flag, I'm more concerned with why there's a massive explosion depicted on the moon at the top of the flag: It can't be the sun, because the sun goes behind the moon, not the other way around, therefore that starburst must represent a catastrophic explosion of some kind. It's like a space exploration flag made for people with no understanding of astronomy. [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 19:03, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 
  
 
"far more than a [...] leprechaun's pot of gold" - I'm pretty sure a leprechaun's pot of gold is self-refilling, and therefore infinite.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.204|162.158.111.204]] 13:06, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 
"far more than a [...] leprechaun's pot of gold" - I'm pretty sure a leprechaun's pot of gold is self-refilling, and therefore infinite.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.204|162.158.111.204]] 13:06, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
:Oh no, the pot is just a container they had handy; The pot of gold is the measure of their ransom. ... No idea why I feel so sure of that. I don't think I want to re-read all the lore I studied as a kid to find the source... [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 15:33, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
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:Oh no, the pot is just a container they had handy; The pot of gold is the measure of their ransom. ... No idea why I feel so sure of that. I don't think I want to re-read all the lore I studied as a kid to find the source...
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:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 15:33, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
  
 
did anyone else notice that the cone from the clouds to your eye isn't actually a cone, since it's slightly truncated at the point, otherwise we'd see an ideal point (i.e. not see it.) just me, then. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.170|162.158.88.170]] 13:08, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 
did anyone else notice that the cone from the clouds to your eye isn't actually a cone, since it's slightly truncated at the point, otherwise we'd see an ideal point (i.e. not see it.) just me, then. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.170|162.158.88.170]] 13:08, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 
:Wellllllll the cone comes to a point inside your eyeball, assuming you have perfect far vision, and then redisperses to project the image onto your retina upside-down and backwards.  But we're really starting to split the hairs of 'what is a rainbow' here, as the rainbow is visible from a wide variety of vantage points, and the paths of light (and positions at which the light bounces off the cloud particles) are all different, some minutely, some vastly.  Our eye is not a pinhole camera, and different views of the rainbow will enter it and hit the retina at slightly different spots.  But the rainbow isn't this set of particular projections.  It seems more arguable that the rainbow is either the rough set of cloud vapor that happens to reflect the light from the areas the rainbow is visible combined with this light reflected (a partial, fuzzy circle, and a partial, fuzzy cone) ... or simply the phenomenon of the water and light forming this image to us.  Where is the rainbow????  If you move closer, it will move too!  It's over there if and only if you are over here.  It's certainly in that direction ... right?  Or is it just in your brain?  Maybe the rainbow is in your eyes for perceiving scattered light at all.  Rainbows kind of violate the consensus we've come to in language about referring to objects.  Perhaps they show that our language is insufficient to describe all of our experiences accurately.  It looks pretty in the sky over there.  That's a rainbow!  It looking pretty in the sky with a curved band of color.  Like a blur.  Where is the blur?  Okay; now I agree with Randall; the rainbow exists on your retina, and in the projected image you see, which forms a cone shape.  But somebody else can see the same rainbow, and their cone is different!  So clearly that's insufficient.  It's like having the idea of a shared projected image.  Like a reflection.  Where is the reflection?  There we go.  Perhaps if the reflection is in the mirror, the rainbow is in the clouds.[[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 18:26, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 
:Wellllllll the cone comes to a point inside your eyeball, assuming you have perfect far vision, and then redisperses to project the image onto your retina upside-down and backwards.  But we're really starting to split the hairs of 'what is a rainbow' here, as the rainbow is visible from a wide variety of vantage points, and the paths of light (and positions at which the light bounces off the cloud particles) are all different, some minutely, some vastly.  Our eye is not a pinhole camera, and different views of the rainbow will enter it and hit the retina at slightly different spots.  But the rainbow isn't this set of particular projections.  It seems more arguable that the rainbow is either the rough set of cloud vapor that happens to reflect the light from the areas the rainbow is visible combined with this light reflected (a partial, fuzzy circle, and a partial, fuzzy cone) ... or simply the phenomenon of the water and light forming this image to us.  Where is the rainbow????  If you move closer, it will move too!  It's over there if and only if you are over here.  It's certainly in that direction ... right?  Or is it just in your brain?  Maybe the rainbow is in your eyes for perceiving scattered light at all.  Rainbows kind of violate the consensus we've come to in language about referring to objects.  Perhaps they show that our language is insufficient to describe all of our experiences accurately.  It looks pretty in the sky over there.  That's a rainbow!  It looking pretty in the sky with a curved band of color.  Like a blur.  Where is the blur?  Okay; now I agree with Randall; the rainbow exists on your retina, and in the projected image you see, which forms a cone shape.  But somebody else can see the same rainbow, and their cone is different!  So clearly that's insufficient.  It's like having the idea of a shared projected image.  Like a reflection.  Where is the reflection?  There we go.  Perhaps if the reflection is in the mirror, the rainbow is in the clouds.[[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 18:26, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
::Two monks were watching a flag flapping in the wind. One said to the other, “The flag is moving.”
 
::The other replied, “The wind is moving.”
 
::Huineng overheard this. He said, “Not the flag, not the wind; mind is moving.” --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.170|162.158.88.170]] 13:58, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 
  
 
I think the logic of the title text is: gold is at the other end of the rainbow is there, because in that moment the person (his/her brain) is thinking about the gold. To put in a dumber way: when you think about gold, then gold is in your brain, ergo if your brain is one end of the rainbow, and you're wondering if there's gold at the end of the rainbow, then in a self-fulfilling way, it is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.238.82|162.158.238.82]] 13:53, 19 January 2018 (UTC) .tnm
 
I think the logic of the title text is: gold is at the other end of the rainbow is there, because in that moment the person (his/her brain) is thinking about the gold. To put in a dumber way: when you think about gold, then gold is in your brain, ergo if your brain is one end of the rainbow, and you're wondering if there's gold at the end of the rainbow, then in a self-fulfilling way, it is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.238.82|162.158.238.82]] 13:53, 19 January 2018 (UTC) .tnm
  
:I don't think the current title-text explanation makes any sense: The title-text portion of the comic doesn't seem to reference leprechauns at all. Was the comic edited after being posted? [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 15:33, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
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:I don't think the current title-text explanation makes any sense: The title-text portion of the comic doesn't seem to reference leprechauns at all. Was the comic edited after being posted?
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:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 15:33, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
  
 
:I fixed the title text explanation. Also does this comic imply that if someone thinks about carnivorous giant neon zombie tomatoes while looking at a rainbow, then they exist at one end? ;) [[User:PotatoGod|PotatoGod]] ([[User talk:PotatoGod|talk]]) 15:45, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 
:I fixed the title text explanation. Also does this comic imply that if someone thinks about carnivorous giant neon zombie tomatoes while looking at a rainbow, then they exist at one end? ;) [[User:PotatoGod|PotatoGod]] ([[User talk:PotatoGod|talk]]) 15:45, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
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::The color a cell on your retina sees is not from a single ray. It's from multiple rays that have passed through the area of your pupil, from the area of the sun disc, through the areas on the surfaces of the water molecules that produce the correct angles for each combination of points in your pupil and on the sun given the index of refraction for the water.  That's why rainbows look so blurry!  [[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 20:39, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 
::The color a cell on your retina sees is not from a single ray. It's from multiple rays that have passed through the area of your pupil, from the area of the sun disc, through the areas on the surfaces of the water molecules that produce the correct angles for each combination of points in your pupil and on the sun given the index of refraction for the water.  That's why rainbows look so blurry!  [[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 20:39, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 
: I think the reality is that it isn't a two-ended cone, it's just... a cone. Wide end at the sun, point on your retina, rainbow is where the cone is bent back, bounced in your direction. Megan's explanation is probably just a simplification due to it being difficult to think of the sun as anything but a point. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 00:06, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 
: I think the reality is that it isn't a two-ended cone, it's just... a cone. Wide end at the sun, point on your retina, rainbow is where the cone is bent back, bounced in your direction. Megan's explanation is probably just a simplification due to it being difficult to think of the sun as anything but a point. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 00:06, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
:: Given the sun's great distance from the Earth and the Earth's minuscule size in proportion, it is safe to assume that all light rays from the Sun are parallel.  This is an assumption made in countless contexts and is close enough to reality for all practical purposes.  As such, you've got parallel rays from the sun that get refracted by the rain drops, causing some wavelengths to focus on your retina, forming a cone (with the point at the focal point of your eye's lens).  So the shape we're probably really talking about is a cone from your eye (apex) to the apparent position of the rainbow and a cylinder from there to a similar-sized circle on the sun's photosphere.  At least it seems plausible to me. [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 21:32, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 
  
 
Extra credit to Baffo32 for "the value of gold would plummet astronomically". :o) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.204|162.158.111.204]] 23:42, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 
Extra credit to Baffo32 for "the value of gold would plummet astronomically". :o) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.204|162.158.111.204]] 23:42, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 
The accuracy of Megan's statement is being discussed in https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/24590/how-much-gold-is-there-in-our-sun and their conclusions are contradicting the one published here. I haven't still checked but I think somebody should.--[[User:Pere prlpz|Pere prlpz]] ([[User talk:Pere prlpz|talk]]) 11:46, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 
 
Relating to the trivia section, couldn't you hold the gold and increase the supply at roughly the growth rate of the economy, which would keep the value consistent? (I mean, technically you couldn't store that much gold, but since we're considering selling it I think we can assume you have a Bag of Holding or something and can store it.) I don't know if I'm misunderstanding economics with this idea though. Also, I don't know how long it would take to sell everything with that strategy, but I imagine you could get your future generations into the scheme, and they could profit too. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.230.172|198.41.230.172]] 12:04, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 
 
I wonder if the light which refracts in the raindrops to create the image of the rainbow actually come from ONE POINT on the surface of the sun, or come from a 'circle' on the surface of the sun with a radius the size of the apparent rainbow. (The sun is, after all, SEVERAL TIMES the size of the earth.) I remember in physics classes we always treated 'rays of sun' to be parallel to each other, but that may have just been due to the angle between them being so very small. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.79.29|162.158.79.29]] 17:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 
 
The author giving 0.3ppt of gold has misinterpreted the referenced paper. The values in the paper are NOT ppt! The concentration (mass fraction) is calculated as 197 * 10^(0.32 - 12). The value of 0.32 is from the table in the paper, and the value of 197 is the atomic mass ratio of Au to H. This gives a mass concentration of 0.4ppb (0.4 x 10^-9). I have not changed the explanation of the comic because it would require a complete rewrite. Note that other sources give different values for Au. For example, [[http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~patscott/publications/ApSS_328_179.pdf]] gives a value of 0.92 in the Sun's photosphere, which, if assumed to hold for the entire sun, gives a mass fraction of 1.64ppb! [[User:Sigma9|Sigma9]] ([[User talk:Sigma9|talk]]) 01:27, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 
 
Megan says in panel 3: “One end of that cone is your retina”. Another cool thing about this comic is that the neural cells tiling your retina, transducing photon energy into neurochemical signals and thus beginning the pathway through which visual information is transmitted to the rest of your brain, are your “cone” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoreceptor_cell photoreceptors]. So - at the end of all those “inside-out two-ended” optical cones, arising from each point emitter in the sun, are a set of neural cones essential for discerning the rainbow’s poem-inspiring colours. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow Unweave the rainbow], indeed! ☺ - Andrew [[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.58|162.158.2.58]] 03:41, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 
 
; "Inside out"?
 
 
No-one's worked out what an "inside out" cone is then? [[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.70|198.41.238.70]] 07:50, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 
: The "inside out" cone is a reference to the second cone, between the circular reflection of the light and the point it is received in the eye. This cone is "inside out" because the surface which is usually on the interior of a hollow cone is on the outside of the completed shape. A hollow cone would typically be closed off by a circle where the rainbow appears, but because the shape is formed by the path of light from the sun, the shape is instead closed by another cone outside of the one in question - because the closing cone encompasses what is usually considered the outside of the cone in question it becomes the inside, and vice versa, making the cone "inside out"
 
:--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.7|162.158.158.7]] 23:11, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 
::The problem with that is that if the cone doesn't have an end cap then it doesn't *have* an inside and an outside, being topologically equivalent to a disc. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.44|172.70.86.44]] 10:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 

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