Title text: James Cameron has said that he didn't know its song would be so beautiful. He didn't close the door in time. He's sorry.
Heh. Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. I'd always known it as the Mariana trench, but apparently "Marianas" is correct also. Awesome achievement by James Cameron's team, btw. To boldly go...
Last edited by VectorZero on Mon Apr 09, 2012 8:24 am UTC, edited 1 time in total.
Very cool graphic however. I almost called you out for getting the depth of the oil well wrong but I forgot to account for the water gap. One thing you might want to note on the graphic is that the oil well you have drawn is the deepest well on record, and that while it was drilled by Deepwater Horizon it is not the Macondo well which blew out 7 months later. Very minor nitpicks though, very very cool graphic. Keep up the good work!
I love these style 'comics' of Randalls. The thing that suprised me was how deep the oil well went. I've known that they can be 5+km but never scaled it in my head with something like Challenger deep
So late but so worth it, I didn't spot the ballmer peak reference, but I love the mention of the sperm whales and the injuries they come up with. That's some scary shit right there.
Normally I don't create an account just to correct an apparent mistake, but...
It's not called the "Kora" Borehole. It's "Kola." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_borehole )
P.S.: If Mr. Munroe happens to read this...
I've been following XKCD since around the beginning. Even though I'm not educated enough to catch some of the scientific references... And even though I'm from South America and some cultural references might escape me as well thus...
I enjoy most strips a good deal, and absolutely love some of them. You've managed to keep my interest pretty much steadily all this time.
I believe you perform superbly within every genre that you take on. Some of my favorites include "A bunch of rocks" and "Everything," but that's just off the top of my head.
I hope you'll keep enjoying this work of art, and making more of it for many years to come.
I love the timely graphic! The only thing I would mention to note that Crater Lake, while drawn relative to depth, is not drawn relative to sea level (the surface of the lake is 1883m above sea level). I only mention this since most other things in the graphic appear to be relative to sea level (more or less).
(I know that would mess up the whole comparison, but the anal nerd/Oregon native in me would sleep better with an asterisk )
It always amazes me how damn shallow the ocean is, and how quickly 1ATM / 10m can stack up. At 500m (the range of a reasonable swimmer), you're out of the range of most subs. At 11km (~10 mins in a car), it's just you and Cthulhu.
Kola Borehole is called Kola 'Superdeep' Borehole. I like descriptive names of things, like the 'Large' hadron collider has had many people tricked when telling them to find out about 'Large Hadrons'
Awesome comic, I loved the stuff about corks and scuba gear.
d0rk wrote:Spoiler alert, I shat bricks when I saw it, you might not want to spoil that experience for yourself
Spoiler:
I don't get it.
It has to do with the red line provided by d0rk, which corresponds to the level of an un-labeled line section underneath the "champagne bottle" notation in the original. This line segment is approximately 1400m below sea level, and is apparently the "Balmer Peak" Easter egg that he mentions in his earlier post.
unklehomer wrote:sorry, but i'm gonna do it... i require clarifaction on 'bike tyre'... Road Bike [100psi]? cross country [~45 PSI]? trail bike [~20 PSI]?
But a great cartoon, I love the scale chart ones... #hopes for poster#
Has to be the road bike tire at a pressure of perhaps 110 psi (7 atms). It's too deep to be anything else, since every 10 feet of depth = approx 1 atmosphere (15 psi) of pressure.
d0rk wrote:Spoiler alert, I shat bricks when I saw it, you might not want to spoil that experience for yourself
Spoiler:
I don't get it.
It has to do with the red line provided by d0rk, which corresponds to the level of an un-labeled line section underneath the "champagne bottle" notation in the original. This line segment is approximately 1400m below sea level, and is apparently the "Balmer Peak" Easter egg that he mentions in his earlier post.
I'm not sure I get the door James Cameron opened reference. I can't find any article about an actual door, and I can't get what he's talking about otherwise. Hints?
Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Chan-Chu. But I think it's Colin -- Tim Vine
From the graphic it looks like it's at sea level, in reality its surface elevation is 456m. Lake Erie (174m) and the Dead Sea (-423m) seem to be drawn at the correct height, so it's clearly a mistake.
shashwat986 wrote:I'm not sure I get the door James Cameron opened reference. I can't find any article about an actual door, and I can't get what he's talking about otherwise. Hints?
Look around the deepest point depicted in the huge-sized, large image.
Also: oblique movie plot reference.
Also also: Thanks, Mr. Cameron, for not tugging on the chain of that huge plug down there.
d0rk wrote:Spoiler alert, I shat bricks when I saw it, you might not want to spoil that experience for yourself
Spoiler:
I don't get it.
It has to do with the red line provided by d0rk, which corresponds to the level of an un-labeled line section underneath the "champagne bottle" notation in the original. This line segment is approximately 1400m below sea level, and is apparently the "Balmer Peak" Easter egg that he mentions in his earlier post.
Thanks.
Alternatively, as the image is titled 1337.png, he's pointing out the marking of ... well.
d0rk wrote:Spoiler alert, I shat bricks when I saw it, you might not want to spoil that experience for yourself
Spoiler:
I don't get it.
It has to do with the red line provided by d0rk, which corresponds to the level of an un-labeled line section underneath the "champagne bottle" notation in the original. This line segment is approximately 1400m below sea level, and is apparently the "Balmer Peak" Easter egg that he mentions in his earlier post.
d0rk wrote:Spoiler alert, I shat bricks when I saw it, you might not want to spoil that experience for yourself
Spoiler:
I don't get it.
It has to do with the red line provided by d0rk, which corresponds to the level of an un-labeled line section underneath the "champagne bottle" notation in the original. This line segment is approximately 1400m below sea level, and is apparently the "Balmer Peak" Easter egg that he mentions in his earlier post.
Thanks.
I still don't get it.
Neither do I. I thought the Ballmer Peak was blood alcohol content related.
As Randall stated in a talk at... some university, the Ballmer peak lies between 0.129 and 0.138% BAC. These are rounded values, the actual peak lies at a BAC of 0.1337%.
The unmarked line in today's comic lies at a depth at exactly approximately 1,337m depth.
I didn't want to spoil the surprise, but apparently I've been a bit too cryptic
As Randall stated in a talk at... some university, the Ballmer peak lies between 0.129 and 0.138% BAC. These are rounded values, the actual peak lies at a BAC of 0.1337%.
The unmarked line in today's comic lies at a depth at exactly approximately 1,337m depth.
I didn't want to spoil the surprise, but apparently I've been a bit too cryptic
Hope that clears up any confusion
It's not a ballmer peak reference then, just that this line and the ballmer peak both reference 1337.
“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.” - Mark Twain
As Randall stated in a talk at... some university, the Ballmer peak lies between 0.129 and 0.138% BAC. These are rounded values, the actual peak lies at a BAC of 0.1337%.
The unmarked line in today's comic lies at a depth at exactly approximately 1,337m depth.
I didn't want to spoil the surprise, but apparently I've been a bit too cryptic
by VectorZero » Mon Apr 09, 2012 8:19 am UTC 
