If you hold the meteor too long, it may imprint on you and form a contact binary, making reintroduction to space difficult. ⌘ Read more
If you hold the meteor too long, it may imprint on you and form a contact binary, making reintroduction to space difficult. ⌘ Read more
![[Political pundit on the ScrabbleTV News channel] "After four years of defying orthographic pressure, Joe ceded the top of the ticket to Kamala, who--after considering Josh, Mark, Andy, Roy, and Pete--picked Tim."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/vice_president_first_names.png) ⌘ Read more
This only makes it more urgent that we adopt my roadmap for the next 10 years, which should put us solidly in the lead. ⌘ Read more
He was the first person to land a 900, which is especially impressive because pulling off a half-integer spin requires obeying Fermi-Dirac statistics. ⌘ Read more
Calligraphy exam: Write down the number 37, spelled out, nicely. ⌘ Read more
Buildings constructed from softer materials were damaged by chili pepper impacts to the storm's high Richter-Fujita-Scoville-Mohs hardness rating. ⌘ Read more
Thankfully for everyone involved, the Winter Olympics officials spotted me and managed to stop me before I got to the ski jump. ⌘ Read more
People think power over ethernet is so great, and yet when I try to do water over ethernet everyone yells at me. ⌘ Read more
Hard to imagine political rhetoric more microtargeted at me than 'I love Venn diagrams. I really do, I love Venn diagrams. It's just something about those three circles.' ⌘ Read more
We were going to try swordfighting, but all my compiling is on hold. ⌘ Read more
IMO the thymus is one of the coolest organs and we should really use it in metaphors more. ⌘ Read more
Einstein's theories solved a longstanding mystery about Mercury: Why it gets so hot. "It's because," he pointed out, "the sun is right there." ⌘ Read more
Anadromous fish are more vulnerable in rivers, since the lack of salt means you can quickly crack passwords using rainbow trout tables. ⌘ Read more
![Hint: If you ever encounter this puzzle in a crossword app, just [term for someone with a competitive and high-achieving personality].](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/a_crossword_puzzle.png) ⌘ Read more
Attention all passengers: This is an express sequence to infinity. If your stop is not a power of two, please disembark now. ⌘ Read more
Ugh, and we JUST went through this yesterday with javelin. ⌘ Read more
’"‘”’" means "I edited this text on both my phone and my laptop before sending it" ⌘ Read more
They originally came here to try to investigate our chemtrail technology, and got increasingly frustrated when all their samples turned out to just be water ice with trace amounts of jet exhaust. ⌘ Read more
The worst was the time they accidentally held the can upside down and froze all the Earth's magma chambers solid. ⌘ Read more
Although Kansas is widely thought to contain the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states, topologists now believe that it's actually their outer edge. ⌘ Read more
We're right under the flight path for the scheduled orbital launch, but don't worry--it's too cold out for the rockets to operate safely, so I'm sure they'll postpone. ⌘ Read more
If you repeatedly rerun the development of technological civilization, it turns out that for some reason the only constant is that there is always a networking utility called 'netcat', though it does a different thing in each one. ⌘ Read more
An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill. ⌘ Read more
In contrast to Pascal's Wager Triangle, Pascal's Triangle Wager argues that maybe God wants you to draw a triangle of numbers where each one is the sum of the two numbers above it, so you probably should, just in case. ⌘ Read more
'Oh yeah? Give me 50 milliscore reasons why I should stop.' ⌘ Read more
In addition to eating foxes, rabbits can eat grass. The grass also eats foxes. Our equations chart the contours of Fox Hell. ⌘ Read more
The ten-way tie was judged a ten-way tie, so no one won the grand prize, a rare fishing monopole. ⌘ Read more
I'm an H⁺ denier, in that I refuse to consider loose protons to be real hydrogen, so I personally believe it stands for 'pretend'. ⌘ Read more
Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay. ⌘ Read more
It's believed that Golgi was originally an independent organism who was eventually absorbed into our cells, where he began work on his Apparatus. ⌘ Read more
My bold criticism might anger the hot air balloon people, which would be a real concern if any of them lived along a very narrow line directly upwind of me. ⌘ Read more
PERPETUALLY OPTIMISTIC CASE: Early in the execution, our research group makes a breakthrough on proving P=NP. ⌘ Read more
Cosmologists estimate the spaghetti strand to be about 200 septillion calories, though it could be higher depending on the nutritional value of dark matter. ⌘ Read more
Sorry to make you memorize this random string of digits. If it helps, it can also double as a mnemonic for remembering your young relatives' birthdays, if they happened to have been born on February 5th, 2018. ⌘ Read more
Karpov's construction of a series of increasingly large rice cookers led to a protracted deadlock, but exponential growth won in the end. ⌘ Read more
I can't believe they wouldn't even let me hold a vote among the passengers about whether to try the loop. ⌘ Read more
Sometimes, you can tell Bloom filters are the wrong tool for the job, but when they're the right one you can never be sure. ⌘ Read more
==COSMOLOGY==> 'Uhhh ... how sure are we that everything is made of these?' ⌘ Read more
This PSA brought to you by several would-be assassins who tried to wave me in front of speeding cars in the last month and who will have to try harder next time. ⌘ Read more
Certain hybrid events can only happen in certain locations where all the conditions are present; chasers flock to the area in and around Kansas known as tumbleweed-colliding-with-possum alley. ⌘ Read more
From Google Trends, it looks like the lag between people Googling cocktail recipes and 'hangover cure' is 14 hours. ⌘ Read more
While it seemed like a fun prank at the time, I realize my prank fire extinguishers full of leaded gasoline were a mistake. ⌘ Read more
The company tried to document how often employees were celebrating Software Testing Day, but their recordkeeping system kept mysteriously crashing. ⌘ Read more
Poor Weeoming. ⌘ Read more
The Doppler effect is a mysterious wavelength-shifting phenomenon which seems to primarily affect sirens, which is why the 🚨 emoji is red. ⌘ Read more
It's not far from the sign marking the exact latitude and longitude of the Earth's core. ⌘ Read more
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Concealed mostly beneath the surface, sharks are the icebergs of the sea. ⌘ Read more
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Okay, this eclipse will only be visible from the Arctic in February 2063, when the sun is below the horizon, BUT if we get lucky and a gigantic chasm opens in the Earth in just the right spot... ⌘ Read more
Fun fact: The standard North American NAD83 coordinate system is misaligned from the actual Earth, off-center by about 7 feet. Someone knows where I am, and I'm in the wrong place. ⌘ Read more
First comes blood / Then we perish / Then comes Death in his Eternity Carriage. ⌘ Read more
If you're really savvy, you can hide an entire set of illicit transactions by timing them to draw what looks like a graph inset. ⌘ Read more
The most rare, top-tier eclipse photo would be the Solar Earth Eclipse, but the Apollo 12 crew's attempt to capture it was marred by camera shake. They said it looked spectacular, though. ⌘ Read more
The Credible Machine ⌘ Read more
The rare compound solar-lunar-nephelogical eclipse ⌘ Read more
A partial eclipse is like a cool sunset. A total eclipse is like someone broke the sky. ⌘ Read more
Cesium-133, let it be. Cesium-134, let it be even more. ⌘ Read more
𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓬𝓪𝓹𝓲𝓽𝓪𝓵 𝓛 𝓲𝓼 𝓹𝓻𝓸𝓫𝓪𝓫𝓵𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓸𝓼𝓽 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓽𝓸 𝔀𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓼𝓮 𝓺 𝓲𝓼 𝓪𝓵𝓼𝓸 𝓪 𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻. ⌘ Read more
The Mercator projection drastically distorts the size of almost every area of land except a small ring around the North and South Poles. ⌘ Read more
You know that asteroid that almost destroyed Earth in the 90s? Turns out the whole thing was secretly created by Michael Bay, who then PAID Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to look heroic while blowing it up! ⌘ Read more
If you pick a low enough orbit, it gives you a lot of freedom to use a lightweight launch vehicle such as a stepladder. ⌘ Read more
Astronomers are a little unsure of the applicability of this index, but NASA's Planetary Protection Officer is all in favor. ⌘ Read more
Doug's cousin, the one from London, runs a Bumble love cult. ⌘ Read more
Just think of all the countless petty squabbles and misunderstandings, of all the fervent hatreds, over so insignificant a thing as the direction and duration of a rocket engine firing. ⌘ Read more
I love their cover of 1,200 Balloons, Dalmatians, and Miles. ⌘ Read more
'At the stroke of midnight, your brother will be hurtling sideways at an altitude of 150 meters' is a regular physics prediction about your nonmagical trebuchet, whereas 'you are cursed to build a brother-launching trebuchet' falls out of the Lagrangian. ⌘ Read more
Actually, the fact that Mars is still orbiting safely over here means that it was technically an *Euler* apocalypse, not a Venn one. ⌘ Read more
If you find an ash deposition layer from a year in which an eruption destroyed an island that had Camellia sinensis growing on it, you can make a Gone Island Ice_τ. ⌘ Read more
!['Thank you for the loveliest evening I've ever had...' [normal] '...east of the Mississippi.' [instant intrigue!]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geographic_qualifiers.png) ⌘ Read more
'Hey, can you call my cell?' '...I'm trying, but it says this number is blocked?' 'Ok, thanks, just checking.' ⌘ Read more
![[later] I'm pleased to report we're now identifying and replacing hundreds of outdated metrics per hour.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/goodharts_law.png) ⌘ Read more
"Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!" ⌘ Read more
When Pope Gregory XIII briefly shortened the light-year in 1582, it led to navigational chaos and the loss of several Papal starships. ⌘ Read more
Also, we would really appreciate it if you could prominently refer to it as an 'eHit'. ⌘ Read more
![[earlier] "Your vintage-style handmade chest business is struggling. But I have a plan."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/treasure_chests.png) ⌘ Read more
Focus of your research: EXTREME PETTINESS AND UNWILLINGNESS TO LET ANYTHING GO ⌘ Read more
Baseballs do present a challenge to this theory, but I'm convinced we just haven't found the right seasoning. ⌘ Read more
It's a linear extrapolation, Michael. How big could the error be? 10%? ⌘ Read more
I'm sure the building inspectors will approve my design once they finally manage to escape. ⌘ Read more
Good to be a little wary of advice that sounds too much like a self pep talk. ⌘ Read more
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Subway refuses to answer my questions about whether it's an International Footlong or a US Survey Footlong. A milligram of sandwich is at stake! ⌘ Read more
In addition to 'squishy', after reviewing my submitted intraplate ground motion data, the National Geodetic Survey has politely asked me to stop using the word 'supple' so often when describing Midwestern states. ⌘ Read more
Dr. Petroff has also shown that the Higgs boson signal was actually sparks from someone microwaving grapes, the EHT black hole photo was a frozen bagel someone left in too long, and the LIGO detection was just someone slamming the microwave door too hard. ⌘ Read more
Any time I misspell a word it's just because I have too much integrity to copy answers from the dictionary. ⌘ Read more
A video can have a log scale that's misaligned with both the time AND space axes. ⌘ Read more
They didn't bring us a gift, but considering the kinetic energy of a bottle of wine at orbital speed, that's probably for the best. ⌘ Read more
For decades I've been working off the accumulated rotation from one long afternoon on a merry-go-round when I was eight. ⌘ Read more
After some account issues, we've added 6 new people from the beach house rental website support forum. ⌘ Read more
A left-handed sheet bend creates a much weaker connection, especially under moderate loads. ⌘ Read more
A lot of sentences undergo startling shifts in mood if you add 'like this one' to the end, but high on the list is 'I'm a neurologist studying dreams.' ⌘ Read more
They're a little cagey about exactly where the crossover point lies relative to the likelihood of devastating effects on the planet. ⌘ Read more
Hypothermia of below 98.6 K should be treated by leaving the giant molecular cloud and moving to the vicinity of a star. ⌘ Read more
The Range Mischief Officer has modified the trajectory to add a single random spin somewhere in the flight, but won't tell us where. ⌘ Read more
It wasn't originally constitutionally required, but presidents who served two terms have traditionally followed George Washington's example and gotten false teeth. ⌘ Read more
The HVAC bill for installing the Gulf Stream was enormous. ⌘ Read more
High-speed collisions at the Baby Park track may support the hypothesis that Daisy is her own evil twin, a theory first suggested by Nintendo in the game Majorana's Mask. ⌘ Read more
Benthic Santas weren't even discovered until the 1970s, but many scientists now believe Christmas may have originally developed around hydrothermal vents and only later migrated to the surface. ⌘ Read more
A really mean prank you can play on someone who's picky about words is to add a 'definitely->definitively' autocorrect rule to their keyboard. ⌘ Read more