Talk:2761: 1-to-1 Scale

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 11:05, 11 April 2023 by 172.71.242.87 (talk)
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Really want an explanation for this one. Melomaniac (talk) 03:23, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

My comment got deleted by a bot!!! 2659: Unreliable Connection (talk) 03:23, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

RIP... Melomaniac (talk) 03:25, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
No, UC, it just got overwritten by the 'bot, when it did its job and (re)created the whole initial state of the various pages to depict the new comic coming out. (Noting that you'd not set them all up fully/correctly.)
That you had spotted it already and had just gotten in ahead of the 'bot clearly isn't something it was prepared to handle. But as someone spotting it can usually wait a short while for the 'bot to catch up, I don't think it's a problem. In fact, you could have just copied your old contributions into the now receptive page(s), with nary any comment. Too late now. 172.70.90.101 03:44, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
This may have broken the next link on the previous page. --172.71.160.36 06:41, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

The lines represent the surfaces of the planets I think, so it's basically all the planets overlaid on top of each other. 172.71.142.35 03:28, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Yup, I think it's what he meant - but I find it unlikely that the gas giants would have this clear cutoff of a "surface". 162.158.189.241 03:34, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
If there is a gas - liquid phase transition (and I think at least the gas giants have them): Why not? OK, you could see "rain" as blurring a clear cutoff, but wouldn't that also apply to Earth, then?Tier666 (talk) 08:04, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I’d think the same citation as stands for ridiculously large would also cover larger than currently exists on earth, and his that citation is not in fact needed? 162.158.174.186 06:53, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It seems like the gas-covered worlds are explicitly those with clearly cutoff "surfaces," so maybe in those cases the cutoff is some specific gas density -- which occurs at a consistent radius throughout the planet, thus creating a flat surface. While for rocky worlds (except Venus, which is treated like a gas planet here), a density cutoff can lead to bumpiness due to terrain. Trimeta (talk) 03:57, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

On Twitter there seems to be concern that all planets are depicted flat. This may make this a contribution/mockery of the ongoing Flat Earth discussions in some corners of the internet. --198.41.242.132 06:49, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

The display for an uncropped version of the image would not only be larger than any display on earth. It would be larger than earth. 162.158.86.243 06:59, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

By necessity, at least as large as Jupiter. Maybe slightly above two Jupiters (max dimension squared compared to display height*width of any common aspect ratio) if you wanted to not overlay any of the others at all. And make the lower limit a packing-problem, then add a buffer so there isn't the actual need for any to touch. 172.70.90.253 10:02, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

1-to-1 scale means 'assume all planets are the same size,' right? I see Earth's grass is shown to be as large as Martian rocks, because Earth is a third again as large. (At the scale where grass is visible, Earth looks flat.) At first I thought the point was that altitude variation in cloud-tops varied so little that a gas giant shrunk down to Earth size would be featureless and have a distinct edge, but that's wrong. Ground isn't cloud-tops. Do gas giants have any solid ground? We've seen Jupiter eat comets, and it makes sense they would've collected at least some minerals and metals. According to [Astronomy], gas giants have Earth-sized solid cores. I'm guessing gas giants' immense gravity compresses their cores into featureless spheres, which, if scaled to Earth-size and viewed at the scale where one could see grass, would look flat. Yes? EllenNB (talk) 10:14, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Gravity itself won't compress (and 'flatten') the cores. "Shell theory" shows that gravitational force only counts from the proportion of the body that is within the radius of the bit you're concerned with. But there'll also be the external pressure (from being at the bottom of a thick atmosphere that ultimately is above far more of the planetary mass) and possibly a degree of compression density to make any Earth-sized core slightly heavier than if it was just a bare core of the same size but shorn of outer layers.
As to flatness, I can take you to very flat stretches of Earth and very lumpy bits (depends which direction I go, from where I am now), all within 30 minutes' drive. We can'teven know how representative a sample of planetary cross-sections we are seeing (once we get over the issues of gas/space boundaries for gas-giants), but I bet there are bits that resemble the diagram... If you really want it to be so real. 172.71.242.87 11:05, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

There are several pieces of information here that are featured but don't make sense to me. What's the function of the dark polygon in the center? Why are the lines showing each surface going in random directions? Why is the surface of each planet so flat at a full scale rendition? When I look out my window at full sized Earth, it's not flat. It's quite bumpy, actually. But perhaps he doesn't mean these are full size, he might be saying that they're all shrunk, but the same amount, so 1:1:1:1:1... but even then, I'm totally lost.


Is this an ant on earth, over the letters "EA" ? On my monitor, set for my less-than-perfect vision, it is 15mm long, which (at a 1:1 scale) makes it a cow ant, or a large african ant. I guess people with normal vision get fire and carpenter ants instead? 172.68.50.73 11:00, 11 April 2023 (UTC)