this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
403 points (96.8% liked)

xkcd

10767 readers
134 users here now

A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
403
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by xkcdbot@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world
 

Title text:

Frankly, given their extreme gravitational fields and general instability, even 12-inch globes should probably be banned.

Transcript:

[A standard globe of the Earth is shown. It stands on a typical stand which holds it by two arms at the poles, so it can turn around like the Earth does. The Earth is turned so it shows Australia at the bottom and most of Asia, including the entire India to the left. Only the very tip of Alaska can bee seen of the Americas. Above the globe there is a double arrow that goes to two small lines that align with the edges of the globe (indicating the diameter). The arrow has been split in the middle and two lines of text is written in the gab. Above this text there is another line of text.]
Remember:
4 inches minimum

[Beneath the globe there are two small drawings. The left shows the Earth and to the left of the Earth there is a double arrow ending at two lines that indicated the diameter of the Earth going from top to bottom. The distance of this is written in inches to the left. From the Earth an arrow points to another drawing, this time the typical depiction of a black hole, with the "hat" shape. A warning sign is shown a the top right of the black hole with an exclamation mark inside.]
7/10"

[Caption Below the Panel:] The Earth's Schwarzschild radius is about 0.35 inches, which is why safety regulations require desktop globes to be at least 4 inches in diameter.

Source: https://xkcd.com/3086/

explainxkcd for #3086

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] abfarid@startrek.website 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Shouldn't 7/10" actually be 7/20"?

[–] vivendi@programming.dev 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What in the motherfuck are those numbers

What the fuck is wrong with your units

[–] LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world 6 points 18 hours ago

They’re literally called rational numbers

[–] EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 day ago

Notice how the lines the 7/10" is attached to go from one side of the miniature globe to the other? This indicates that measurement is meant to be a diameter. Looking back at the paragraph before he talks about 0.35" being Earth's Schwarzschild Radius. Radius is half of diameter so doubling that radius you get 0.7 or 7/10" across at which the Earth would become a black hole.

That's what that mini diagram is showing.

[–] Gieselbrecht@feddit.org 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The same question is in the discussion section in ExplainXKCD, so I can confidently use the reply given there: No, 7/20" is the radius, but 7/10" is correct for the diameter.

[–] abfarid@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago

Oh right, didn't pay enough attention. But it was the first thing I saw in the morning.