Finally! Recognition that almost all of our exoplanet “knowledge” is extrapolated from in some cases extremely tenuous data.
Hover text: “Sure, this exoplanet we discovered may seem hostile to life, but our calculations suggest it’s actually in the accretion disc’s habitable zone.”
Also that most of the ‘habitable’ exoplanets would make Mars seem like a tropic paradise.
New “what-if?” on shoving too much water in a too narrow opening:
Brian
At the limit, everything is a particle accelerator.
“Numbers can be tricky. On the day of my 110th birthday, I’ll be one day younger than John Tukey was on his.”
Wearing my software dev hat I’d say more accurately that “dates can be tricky”. But that doesn’t go as well with the theme of the comic.
Every year, as my birthday is approaching, I calculate the date on which it’ll fall that year. That is to say, when it will be an integer number of full years since the moment of my birth, with each full year being approximately 365.2425 days long. It isn’t always the same date.
I believe that’s why astronomers go by counting seconds from a starting Julian date. As of this posting it’s 2460846.118079
That’s a really good quote.
Unsurprisingly (since I have a background in astronomy), my birthday-calculating program is based on Julian days.
Oh, dear! So now I have to start calculating my sidereal birthdays and my solar birthdays separatedly?
I hope I don’t have to argue those with Julián and Gregorio, who are both quite the nitpicking nagging PITA personalities.
As a bonus, you can have the occasional leap birthday to keep things in sync.
For those born very near midnight we also have to contend with leap seconds.
Timekeeping gets very deep very quickly once you tear off the “No user-serviceable parts inside” sticker & unscrew the cover.
“We’re getting a lot of complaints from commuters who were routed onto a coaster, but the theme park patrons who spent hours stuck on an intercity line are also not happy.”
Does this mean we can expect a follow-up to Subways with amusement parks added in?
Anyone know what’s up with Munroe? It’s not like him to miss an update.
“‘This HAZMAT container contains radioactive material with activity of one becquerel.’ ‘So, like, a single banana slice?’”
It’s fun how some base units are so under- or over-sized versus normal human needs or concerns.
So, explanation? How much is a farad?