XKCD: It's more than a comic

More ocean draining

That's the same one from last week. Must be a mistake.

Edit: Oh, it's part 2. Interesting.

edited 16th Jul '13 8:27:29 AM by Fighteer

This cracked me up.

That bobcat joke is a Running Gag on xkcd. And the "New Netherlands" is a Running Gag from the last What If?. I love how Randall takes such a technical subject and makes it entertaining to read about.

The Newtherlands!

I purely love his ability to run a joke so far into the ground that it comes out again like a perennial flower. I will never get tired of the bobcat.

I didn't pick up on that at first

Time is starting to get really interesting. They are inside a real castle where they might get answer to the rising sea.

Damn that was funny. The first appearance of the stars on the map would have made me do a Spit Take if I'd been drinking at the time.

#1239: Social Media

"Would you care to make a statement in response to the massive volume of Facebook posts condemning the recent North Korean nuclear strike on San Francisco?" ^note Edited because SF makes more sense for NK to attack. If it matters.

edited 17th Jul '13 7:02:17 AM by Fighteer

A bit late, but regarding the ocean on Mars... I realize that he did the problem in two halves: first he drained the oceans on Earth down to nothing (minus the now-unconnected seas) and then he added that volume of water to Mars. But... assuming that there's an actual portal of some sort and not just a magical relocation of water, wouldn't the water pressure from Mars eventually slow down and shut off the incoming water, creating some sort of equilibrium? Given that most of Earth's water went through the portal, it seems like that would happen sooner rather than later. Even given Mars' lower gravity. As fun as exploring the topography of Mars might have been, it just seems weird to ignore this, and not even handwave it.

edited 18th Jul '13 3:55:19 AM by Clarste

One supposes that the water is being dumped onto Mars from a height; otherwise, yes, that is a definite issue.

Edit: Remember, though, the thing about Randall's What Ifs is that the premise, however ridiculous or impossible, is treated seriously and the consequences of it explored. For purposes of the thought exercise, it doesn't matter how the portal works, any more than it matters how you get a petawatt hair dryer.

edited 18th Jul '13 8:57:39 AM by Fighteer

Doesn't Mars have a lot less gravity than Earth, or did I get it mixed up with a different planet? (Or possibly moon? I dunno.)

38% of Earth's, per Wikipedia. Which contributes to atmosphere loss and would also reduce the pressure of surface water.

I assume it was a one-way portal.

If I remember correctly, Earth is the most massive rocky planet in the solar system. Which makes it pretty easy to guess whether is has more or less gravity than any given object. Gas giants are kind of on a different scale. ...come to think of it one of their moons might be heavier than Earth though. Off the top of my head I would guess "no", but it seems possible.

The Titan and Ganymede are apparently slightly larger than Mercury but much less massive. Ganymede is also the most massive moon, so yeah, no such luck.

edited 18th Jul '13 6:15:17 PM by Arha

It would help to think of Mars as being halfway between Earth and the Moon, in terms of gravity.

That's not actually true, but it helps one understand the idea.

Earth is larger than any of the Gas Giants' moons, yes. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is larger than Mercury, though. I'm also unsure about whether or not Earth is bigger than Venus. I think it is, but the difference in mass there isn't terribly significant.

edited 18th Jul '13 6:16:24 PM by Gilphon

Anyway, the point being that despite what science fiction tells us about every other alien species coming from planets with higher gravity, we've never actually encountered a place you can stand that has higher gravity than Earth.

...obviously most aliens are extrasolar though.

The cores of the gas giants, Jupiter in particular, may be solid, but the kind of life that could stand on that and not be squished into paste by the pressure is not anything we'd recognize in our wildest imaginations.

That is true, is no more true than is it about the cores or Earth, Venus and Mars.

You shouldn't be acting as if the cores of the gas giants are surfaces, is my point.

Venus has a bit over 80% of the mass of Earth, and about 90% of the surface gravity.

Now I'm imagining alien lifeforms that evolved under such high pressures, and need a pressurized suit to be able to explore other places. Like, I dunno, the Volus?

If I recall correctly, the mass of the gas giants phases more or less smoothly from gas to liquid to solid as you go down; there's never any 'surface' to stand on. Notional gas-giant-evolved life forms would be more likely to float in the atmosphere.

Well, probably the liquid phase portion, if anywhere.