# ­xkcd thread

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Tags:** comic-strips\
**Created:** [May 28, 2020, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574 "2020-05-28T00:57:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4521

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**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2025, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/4521 "2025-06-26T16:37:49Z")

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The silly part of course is that weather balloons have a finite lifespan, primarily due to loss of lifting gas as the balloon undergoes thermal cycles of expansion and contraction. [Superpressure balloons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpressure_balloon) suffer less from this but weeks or months aloft is still a significant achievement.

It’s been suggested that microscopic glass hollow spheres filled with dry nitrogen could behave as high-altitude aerosols with persistence times in the decades. But that would be a geoengineering feat no one is brave enough to try.

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