I have in fact seen some rather significant one-data-point, or even half-data-point, papers. For instance, there’s a relationship between the mass of a neutron star and its radius. Only problem is, nobody knows what that relationship is. It can be calculated from the equation of state of neutron star material, but nobody knows what that is, either. So the standard references on neutron stars all show a graph of radius vs. mass, along with a bunch of curves representing various models for the equation of state, plus a few data points with very large error bars in both directions.
Well, about a decade ago, there were some astrophysicsts who came up with a very clever way to very precisely measure the mass of one particular neutron star, and came up with a mass of twice the mass of the Sun. Their method said nothing at all about the radius of that star, but most of the equation of state models said that it wasn’t even possible for a neutron star to be that massive. So that one single half-data-point, nothing but a y coordinate, managed to singlehandedly rule out most of the popular models.
(to be fair, in order to get that one number, they needed to analyze a whole bunch of data points plotted on some other axes. But the end result was a single number, that would have justified a big fancy figure like that.)
That’s very interesting- thanks
But what’s the impact on overall life expectancy?
+/- 83%
Had to look this up:
Thanks! I hadn’t gotten around to looking it up.
Of course, it’s always difficult to tell, with these mostly-underground mega-organisms, which one is really the biggest in the world. But the XKCD strip neatly sidesteps that: If Pando gets its miles of lights, but none of the other contenders do, then it’s still clearly the world’s largest Christmas tree.
Does that mean L6 is a Hellmouth?
Wait, a new one today? That’s off-schedule.
And wait a moment, I’m just outside of Cleveland…
Long time ago, he used to post just after midnight on the scheduled day. Or maybe even earlier, I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, I dropped by the xkcd page just in case and this time it actually was up ahead of time.
I’m aware of that. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything clever to say about that.
Sure, but 6 PM is a far cry from “a little before midnight”. I’m curious to see whether another one drops today, or if he’s transitioning to a Tuesday-Thursday schedule, or something.
I don’t know when this one went up; I didn’t check the site very often yesterday.
It was some time before about 11 PM; that’s all I know.
“Instant Hydrogen” was a delayed laugh for me. I thought at first it was just random absurdity, before I realized what he was doing there.
Not to kill the buzz, but could you explain for us non-sciency types? Please?
Based on the symbols he’s using for the other isotopes, Instant Hydrogen is just a neutron. Which will decay after about 15 minutes into a proton and an electron (and neutrinos that everyone just ignores).