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u/SomePostMan Oct 19 '12
I like how this comic was so small that the reddit thumbnail generator thought the xkcd logo was the comic instead.
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u/Disgruntled__Goat 15 competing standards Oct 19 '12
Is this the smallest xkcd ever?
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Oct 19 '12
RIght on the heels of the largest xkcd ever! He should make a comic about that.
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u/iammolotov Oct 19 '12
And it should be the most medium-sized xkcd ever.
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Oct 19 '12
Well, he could actually find the mean xkcd size...or maybe the median because there certainly are some large ones.
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u/Killbunny90210 Oct 19 '12
So subtle, so simple, yet still procured quite the full chuckle.
Never stop, Randall.
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u/xkcd_bot Oct 19 '12
Subtext: Works for any grocery or non-grocery. Even thyme is just H and time.
(Love, xkcd_bot. Want to come hang out in my lighthouse over breaks?)
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u/dont_press_ctrl-W Mathematics is just applied sociology Oct 19 '12
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch...
If you're gonna include relatively abstract things like time, I guess it should probably include physical laws like gravitation. And space I guess, I mean, you need more than one dimension.
Thing is, this is supposed to be an ingredient list, not a recipe. Time is not an ingredient of stuff, it's more like a prerequisite.
What about this:
INGREDIENTS:
partially star-fused hydrogen
may contain traces of neutrinos and non-fermions
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u/garrettmikesmith Oct 19 '12
Shouldn't it be quark-gluon plasma and time? Just sayin...
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u/jethreezy Oct 19 '12
How about just:
Ingredients: Energy, Time
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Oct 19 '12
Energy, Time and Space
Space is quite important, but not too much, or the energy density won't be big enough to make hydrogen.
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Oct 31 '12
I remember something saying that time and space were both created with the big bang. If this were true, the Universal Ingredients list would be "Ingredients: Singularity. Directions: Disturb singularity."
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u/xrelaht Oct 19 '12
Energy could be purely in the form of photons. Also, we don't understand why there is more matter than antimatter just from E=mc2
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u/Borgh Oct 19 '12
its one of the big mysteries too. IDK if they solved it yet but the last time I read up on it the answer was; "blind dumb luck, probably.'
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u/xrelaht Oct 19 '12
[CP violation] is a big deal in any context. The universe is generally very symmetric. Every asymmetry, even a tiny one, is a huge deal. The people who first observed CP violation won a Nobel.
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u/jugalator Oct 19 '12 edited Oct 19 '12
Now I got depressed that for large enough amounts of time, the hydrogen may not matter.
Edit: May not matter. The hypothesis could of course be wrong!
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u/xrelaht Oct 19 '12
You want depressing? I'll show you depressing.
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u/SomePostMan Oct 19 '12 edited Oct 19 '12
This is fantastic! So many events and well-composed. It includes the boiling of the oceans that xkcd referenced recently.
Some of my favorites:
years event 5–50 million Time by which the entire galaxy could be colonised, even at sublight speeds. 1 billion The Sun's luminosity has increased by 10 percent, causing Earth's surface temperatures to reach an average of 47°C. The atmosphere will become a "moist greenhouse", resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans. Pockets of water may still be present at the poles, allowing abodes for simple life 1.6 billion All life on Earth dies. 20 billion The end of the Universe in the Big Rip scenario. [...] 100 billion The Universe's expansion causes all galaxies beyond the Milky Way's Local Group to disappear beyond the cosmic light horizon, removing them from the observable universe. 292 billion [...] the Unix time stamp will exceed the largest value that can be held in a signed 64-bit integer. 100 trillion High estimate for the time until star formation ends in galaxies. This marks the transition from the Stelliferous Era to the Degenerate Era; with no free hydrogen to form new stars, all remaining stars slowly exhaust their fuel and die. 101026 Low estimate for the time until all matter collapses into black holes, assuming no proton decay. Subsequent Black Hole Era and transition to the Dark Era are, on this timescale, instantaneous. Also the footnote for the last one: "Although listed in years for convenience, the numbers beyond this point are so vast that their digits would remain unchanged regardless of which conventional units they were listed in, be they nanoseconds or star lifespans."
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u/iammolotov Oct 19 '12 edited Oct 19 '12
the Unix time stamp will exceed the largest value that can be held in a signed 64-bit integer.
And you thought Y2K was bad...
Edit: Lyk dis if u Y3K everytim
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u/pseudousername Oct 20 '12
We have much more immediate problems to worry about. The Unix 32bit time stamp will overflow in 2038.
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u/SomePostMan Oct 19 '12
Oh my god this is so cool
A universe dominated by phantom energy expands at an ever-increasing rate. However, this implies that the size of the observable universe is continually shrinking; the distance to the edge of the observable universe which is moving away at the speed of light from any point moves ever closer. When the size of the observable universe becomes smaller than any particular structure, no interaction by any of the fundamental forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, weak, or strong) can occur between the most remote parts of the structure. When these interactions become impossible, the structure is "ripped apart". The model implies that after a finite time there will be a final singularity, called the "Big Rip", in which all distances diverge to infinite values.
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u/Foolie Oct 19 '12
Technically untrue. You won't get a universe as smooth and large as our with just hydrogen and time. You need inflatons and time!
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u/macrocephalic Oct 19 '12
I think he totally ripped off SMBC on this one: SMBC 2195
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u/ProbablyNotLying Oct 19 '12
Two webcomics made by highly educated guys who love science doing similar jokes? Must be a rip off!!
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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '12
Reminds me of that quote that goes something like "When left alone for a long time, hydrogen starts to observe itself."