xkcd

by **XRayA4T** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 8:51 am UTC

What about TauTona Mine : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TauTona_Mine
It starts about a mile above sea level and is 1.4 miles below sea level at its deepest.

by **dtilque** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:33 am UTC

ckbryant wrote:Who is Burt Khalifa?

That's a lettering error. It's Burj Khalifa, but the R and J are run together and makes the J look like a T.

by **GulliNL** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 10:27 am UTC

dtilque wrote:
ckbryant wrote:Who is Burt Khalifa?

That's a lettering error. It's Burj Khalifa, but the R and J are run together and makes the J look like a T.

Bad Kerning I think.

by **rara_bb** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 11:48 am UTC

d0rk wrote:Try resizing the x-axis so its top matches the sea level.. Randall scares me sometimes...

I'm pretty sure it's only in your head (and he's not in it).

by **Owly** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 2:15 pm UTC

The door/song thing could be referring to the Celine Dion song from the Titanic movie and its horrible tendency to get stuck in one's head.

"Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you're here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on"

by **californian** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 2:17 pm UTC

Sorry, but the use of "Fun Fact" for a fact about 3 tragedies that killed over 1300 people struck me as a little insensitive. "Interesting Fact" perhaps?

by **tkdmathgirl** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:11 pm UTC

J L wrote:
DragonHawk wrote:I don't get the Title Text. "James Cameron ... didn't know its song would be so beautiful. He didn't close the door in time. He's sorry." Song? Door? (Obviously referencing the door in the comic, but I get the feeling it's referencing something else, too.) Anyone have a clue to spare?

That damned "song could be so beautiful" quote has been on the tip of my tongue since Monday, and still I'm stuck, and my Google-Fu fails me. It should be some SF&F reference to things-better-not-known-to-man, like "Don't look into the light" -- actually anything from Lost to Poltergeist. Please, anyone ...? I do feel guilty for asking.

Pretty sure this refers to a quote from "The Search for Delicious" by Natalie Babbit. However I can't find the book right now, and don't remember the exact plot developments leading up to this quote. It had something to do with Ardis the mermaid, who lost her doll behind a door that could only be opened with a magic flute. It was a beautiful story... wish I could remember better!

by **elements** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:21 pm UTC

My brother forwarded this to a friend, who forwarded it to a friend who has worked with James Cameron on the Challenger Deep dive. She showed it to James, and "dude - he LOVED it. Especially the "russians are awesome" part. as for the secret door he said 'i'll never tell....'"

by **twcarlson** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 4:43 pm UTC

RAGBRAIvet wrote:
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.

From my scuba diving experience I seem to remember that every 30 feet or so adds 1 atmosphere of pressure. My calculations based on the density of water give 34 feet.

The line appears to be at around 150 feet, so that would be about 4.4 atm or 65 psi.

by **Chicagojon** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 4:55 pm UTC

I'm a big Sperm Whale and emperor penguin fan so those weren't surprising, but the Leatherback turtle boggles my mind. I know they're huge (8'? 10'?) but that's frighteningly deep. Off to google for more info

by **Tabasco** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 5:26 pm UTC

Awesome infographic. I love when Randall does these, and I'm sure he'll do a poster before long.

I never knew the Copiapó mine in Chile had helix-shaped, spiraling tunnels ... neat.

Seems everyone has their pet thing they wish was included, but there's only so much room. That said, when he does the poster, I hope he includes these items:

Makes for a good story, even if it's not true
Regarding the Kola Borehole, mention the rumor that they only stopped when the temperature suddenly spiked and they heard tortured screaming ... see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax

Amazing and unexplained
Regarding the mysteries of the deep, make some mention of the "Bloop" -- the loudest sound ever heard in the ocean, as yet unexplained ... see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop

Unexplained "Quackers" Following Soviet Subs
Another mysterious ocean noise phenomenon -- this time, it was strange quacking noises that would follow Soviet subs during their patrols, over the course of 3 decades. The noises appeared to display intelligence -- showing obvious interest in the passing submarine, circling around it, trying to actively avoid sonar pulses, and so on. The speed of some of these objects (estimated from Doppler shift of their sound frequency) was in the range of 200 km/h, much higher than any then-known man-made vessel. Strangely, the noises became more common when the cold war was at its most tense points ... as though the source of the noise was concerned about world war III ... and as the tensions lowered, the frequency of these noises also dropped ... see # 8 on this page http://www.smashinglists.com/10-unexplained-sounds/
There was once a Wikipedia page on this topic, but it was deleted a few weeks ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quacker_(sound)
Perhaps it's just a ghost story.

by **keithl** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 5:28 pm UTC

hordriss wrote:
d0rk wrote:
Spoiler:
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

They are pretty close, aren't they?

spoiler spoiler:

Well, not really. I measure the 1000 meter graph tick at 252+/- 1 pixels down from the top. The 2000 meter graph tick is at 377+/-1 pixels from the top. The difference is 125 pixels, so 1 pixel is 8 meters. Some really clever person might measure the numeric values of the tick pixels and find the mean position of the hand-drawn graph ticks within a fraction of a pixel, refining the "offset" in my eyeball measurement.

The little white horizontal line is at exactly 290 pixels from the top. Which interpolates to 1304 +/- 8 meters. Too far from 1337 meters, suggesting a not-very-precise coincidence rather than an intentional easter egg . Since there are no other references in the drawing to programming or alcohol, this could be a reference to any number of numbers, or an incompletely erased mistake. Or an invitation to lunch at 1:04pm, seafood sounds good, but I'm running late, how about 1315?

BTW, I was confused by d0rk's drawing, because it was clipped to the right (and not obviously) on my display, showing a horizontal red line going nowhere in particular. Zooming out on the browser revealed the arrowhead far to the right, pointing at the white horizontal line.

Still, it is comforting to know that there are participants in this forum who can see patterns in just about anything. I am not alone! Except for the voices ... the voices ...

by **Tabasco** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 5:31 pm UTC

GulliNL wrote:
plankton pie wrote:Also, sorry if I'm being slow, but:
i) why is the Marianas Trench shown in brown, and not in black to indicate that it is in the ocean?
ii) what are the horizontal diagrams of the Marianas Trench and the Mauna Kea supposed to indicate?

For me (to answer your number 2) it made very clear that when you look at a map and you see a point at almost 11.000 meters below sea level, it doesn't mean it's a chasm per se. Apparently the gradient of the 'walls' of challenger deep aren't that steep at all. It's a nice reference point, for me at least it is.

Also I think Mr Munroe wants to point out the actual height of Mauna Kea when you would drain the ocean, which is pretty high in fact.

I don't believe that's a cross-section of the Marianas Trench, but instead shows its length compared to its depth. When you look at videos like these, the sides seem rather steep indeed:
Google: marianas trench fly through

by **Tabasco** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 5:38 pm UTC

kest23 wrote:This reminded me of this: http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2033/1277552972510.jpg (I'm not sure if this is the original - it's the best version I found on Google.)

That's pretty cool. Can anyone tell if the 2nd-to-last caption (near the colossal squid) is shown in a known human language, or is it just for fun?

I tried finding the original on TinEye, but no dice ...

by **captnemo** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 6:20 pm UTC

Zinho wrote:Seconded. Here's another way to think about it: Imagine that you're the scuba diver, with lungs full of air at the same pressure as the water around you. If you dive below this line then when you open the flow valve from the tank the air in your lungs would get compressed into the canister instead of flowing out like you'd want it to. That line is therefore the theoretical maximum scuba depth, based on Randal's research into scuba tanks. There are other practical limits, like oxygen and nitrogen poisoning, or the anesthetic effect of noble gasses like Helium; these explain why the scuba record is nowhere near the tank pressure line.

I'm amusing myself, however by imagining that the pressure limit were the only one we were concerned with. A scuba tank could be charged far beyond its rated surface capacity if we could pre-position it at great depth and fill it on-site using hoses from the surface. Such a tank would explode if brought to the surface without depleting the air, but as long as it stayed submerged the water pressure would compensate for the extra air pressure keeping it safe for use during the dive. And now I can rest contented that I've solved a problem that no one will likely ever encounter

It's not as unlikely as you may think- during saturation dives, divers have been know to wear tanks for emergency use and while these are filled at the surface and sent down on the outside of the bell usually, I could see a future where they were filled inside the pressurised enviornment. Also since you mentioned the effects of gasses on diving limits have you looked at the partial pressures? This is were we get some really interesting mixes used for deep dives. Since the pp increases the amount (percentage)of O2 needed is less. I've been on jobs where the percentage of O2 in the mix was below 4 percent. We'd have to have different mixes for ascent as you pass out with that little O2 at the surface. :shock:

by **Tyrannosaur** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 11:06 pm UTC

SirMustapha wrote:Rebecca Black GROKS the days of the week.

Well, 4 of them.

thearbiter wrote:Nothing is more boring than discussing grammar and spelling on the internet, but I really had to add a +1 to ST's post. Complaining about a question mark here is pedantry beyond belief.
Apeiron wrote:Subjunctive mood is archaic and should be forgotten to make subject verb agreement more consistent.

All I can say is LOL. "Should be forgotten"? According to whom? It is good writing style to include the subjunctive and I will think better of those who do. Of course I won't kick up a fuss when someone fails to use it but it's pretty ridiculous to say that people should abandon it because it's archaic (it really isn't).

Yes. As long as I live, there will be at least one person still using the subjunctive.

by **scharb** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 2:36 am UTC

bmonk wrote:I was amused by the inclusion of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

You know who WASN'T amused? The wives and the sons and the daughters.
...You insensitive bastard.

by **scharb** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 2:37 am UTC

dtilque wrote:
ckbryant wrote:Who is Burt Khalifa?

That's a lettering error. It's Burj Khalifa, but the R and J are run together and makes the J look like a T.

GASP! Keming!

by **submariner** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 5:06 am UTC

I can't speak for the russians, but the depth for ohio class submarines is wrong

by **SEE** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 5:24 am UTC

BlitzGirl wrote:I presume the Russians stopped drilling their hole through the center of the Earth because they realized they would emerge not in China, but in the middle of the Southern Ocean. I know I was disappointed when I found out that only South Americans could make it to China that way.

http://www.freemaptools.com/tunnel-to-o ... -earth.htm

The lovely thing is that you can dig a hole from Formosa to Formosa.

by **GulliNL** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 6:54 am UTC

Tabasco wrote:
GulliNL wrote:
plankton pie wrote:Also, sorry if I'm being slow, but:
i) why is the Marianas Trench shown in brown, and not in black to indicate that it is in the ocean?
ii) what are the horizontal diagrams of the Marianas Trench and the Mauna Kea supposed to indicate?

For me (to answer your number 2) it made very clear that when you look at a map and you see a point at almost 11.000 meters below sea level, it doesn't mean it's a chasm per se. Apparently the gradient of the 'walls' of challenger deep aren't that steep at all. It's a nice reference point, for me at least it is.

Also I think Mr Munroe wants to point out the actual height of Mauna Kea when you would drain the ocean, which is pretty high in fact.

I don't believe that's a cross-section of the Marianas Trench, but instead shows its length compared to its depth. When you look at videos like these, the sides seem rather steep indeed:
Google: marianas trench fly through

You sir... might be right...

by **Sandor** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:48 am UTC

Tabasco wrote:I don't believe that's a cross-section of the Marianas Trench, but instead shows its length compared to its depth. When you look at videos like these, the sides seem rather steep indeed:
Google: marianas trench fly through

Nah. From the description of one of those videos:

The Mariana Trench may be the deepest place in the world's oceans, but these videos have the vertical dimension strongly exaggerated to further enhance the visual effect. The maximum depth of the trench is a little greater than 11 kilometers, but its width is over 50 kilometers. The color scheme chosen is arbitrary but represents a typical color for the ocean bottom.

They're not kidding about "strongly exaggerated".

by **Elfwreck** » Thu Apr 12, 2012 11:25 pm UTC

Tabasco wrote:
kest23 wrote:This reminded me of this: http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2033/1277552972510.jpg (I'm not sure if this is the original - it's the best version I found on Google.)

That's pretty cool. Can anyone tell if the 2nd-to-last caption (near the colossal squid) is shown in a known human language, or is it just for fun?

I tried finding the original on TinEye, but no dice ...

It's in Alphabet of the Magi font (available at http://www.dafont.com/alphabet-of-magi.font), originally invented by Paracelsus, and it says "!!!!!!apta Cthulhu
rlyeh ptghan"
...or something much like that. All the numbers & punctuation are the same symbol, so maybe that's "66666apta Cthulhu" there at the beginning.

(Apparently the combination of Cthulhu & occult fonts is what it took to get me to register to make a comment.)

by **xtifr** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 2:00 am UTC

Lieutenant Geyser Shitdick wrote:
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?

I believe it's a reference to this comic: http://xkcd.com/969/

I thought it was a reference to this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096754/ but it's been years since I've seen that, so I'm not entirely sure.

by **rickpaulos** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 6:03 pm UTC

Noting the 3 ships/sub that sank in water depth less than their length reminded me of 3 ships that sank in water depth less than their width.

Chicago, 1915, the Eastland. Capsized at dock in the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue, killing 844 people.
English Channel, 2002, the MV Tricolor. Car transporter. 106 feet wide in 98 feet of water (depending on tides). 3,000 cars killed.
Italy, 2012, the Costa Concordia, struck and stuck on rocks. 30 people killed.

Rick

by **Zub** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 11:15 pm UTC

There is a secret song at the center of the world, and its sound is like razors through flesh.

by **hifi** » Sat Apr 14, 2012 11:23 am UTC

rickpaulos wrote: 3,000 cars killed.

I chuckled heartily.

by **icefest** » Sat Apr 14, 2012 11:43 am UTC

I am surprised nobody has suggested including the submarine K-278 Komsomolets
Design depth of 1250m, crush depth of 1500m
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-278_Komsomolets

by **dmean** » Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:42 pm UTC

Oracle wrote:Way to go David Bowie. I love under pressure but you are also way out there man. I really like this chart.

Ah, I get it now. I thought he was either saying Bowie and Mercury were deep, or one was abyssal and one was plain.

by **webgiant** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 2:44 am UTC

wisty wrote: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.

Cthulhu is a lot shallower than 11km, more like 5km. R'lyeh ("ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn") is more like 5km down, given Lovecraft's South Pacific coordinates that put R'lyeh halfway between between New Zealand and the southern tip of Africa, at about the 5km depth mark.

Which means that whatever door James Cameron found, it was to something OTHER than R'lyeh, and about 6km deeper than R'lyeh. Maybe it was Dagon's winter home.

by **eran_rathan** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 12:46 pm UTC

webgiant wrote:
wisty wrote: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.

Cthulhu is a lot shallower than 11km, more like 5km. R'lyeh ("ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn") is more like 5km down, given Lovecraft's South Pacific coordinates that put R'lyeh halfway between between New Zealand and the southern tip of Africa, at about the 5km depth mark.

Which means that whatever door James Cameron found, it was to something OTHER than R'lyeh, and about 6km deeper than R'lyeh. Maybe it was Dagon's winter home.

The Bloop was recorded as somewhere near R'lyeh.

(Its wikipedia, it must be true [citation needed]).

by **hp_laserjet** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:23 pm UTC

keithl wrote:
Some really clever person might measure the numeric values of the tick pixels and find the mean position of the hand-drawn graph ticks within a fraction of a pixel...

Sometimes i can't back away from a challenge. So I initially wanted to write a line-tracing algorithm to capture the mean sea-level, since it varies, and then do the same with line-profiles for each of the 1,000m graph ticks so as to average out any hand-drawn inconsistencies before capturing the '1337' line itself.

But then I remembered the most excellent WinDig. This is a free program made for digitizing analog graph data back into digital form. It was written in the Windows 3.11 era, so it has a clunky interface, yet it still totally rocks. Big ups to Dominique Lovy, the author. This tiny program came in very handy during my post-grad physics studies so I was pleasantly surprised to see it still around.

keithl wrote:
The little white horizontal line is at exactly 290 pixels from the top. Which interpolates to 1304 +/- 8 meters.

I get 1306.7 +/- 1.2 meters. After photoshop rescaling 1 pixel was about 4m so that's a pretty good result (it interpolates a thick line to find the middle).

So could be 1305m, 1306m, 1307m or 1308m, assuming a 1 sigma (68 percent) confidence interval. Do those numbers mean anything to anyone? Someone that actually followed LOST all the way to the final season, perhaps?? Or is Randall simply laughing uproariously at the thought of geeks hyperfocusing over hidden minutae by purposefully putting in hidden extras? I know I would laugh.

Also got:

Cork into champagne bottle: 210m (really?)
Scuba record: 458m
Water into a scuba tank: 2077m

P.S. By the way, all the extra-large data visualisations are just awesome. Comic 526 (Metric conversion guide) is my favourite of all time.

by ***Kat*** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 9:15 am UTC

Does anybody keep a list of links to these poster style comics?

by **fingew** » Sat May 12, 2012 2:43 am UTC

Did anybody else get the reference to Oil Barons?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_Barons

by **Tabasco** » Sat May 12, 2012 5:51 am UTC

I noticed this video of an odd creature about a mile below the surface; it reminded me of this poster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E-8_wDgN7c

by **Fire Brns** » Mon May 14, 2012 2:12 pm UTC

fingew wrote:Did anybody else get the reference to Oil Barons?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_Barons

Maybe but that is kinda what all 2D representations of oil deposits look like. The oil gets squished between layers of sediment and forms those horizontal lines.

by **Phizzy** » Fri Jul 13, 2012 7:00 pm UTC

The illustration shows that Lake Huron is deeper than Lake Michigan, when in fact Lake Michigan is nearly 200 feet deeper than Lake Huron.

by **Pfhorrest** » Fri Jul 13, 2012 9:14 pm UTC

Something just occurred to me.

If oil is decomposed organic material, how does it get that deep? Shouldn't it be up near the surface around where we find fossils? Or is the organic material that became oil way, way older than I thought it was, and has been that thoroughly buried?

by **J Thomas** » Fri Jul 13, 2012 10:14 pm UTC

Pfhorrest wrote:Something just occurred to me.

If oil is decomposed organic material, how does it get that deep? Shouldn't it be up near the surface around where we find fossils? Or is the organic material that became oil way, way older than I thought it was, and has been that thoroughly buried?

That's the deepest they'd ever tried.

People argue about where the oil comes from. The majority view is that it comes from algae a very long time ago, whose carbon content turns into hydrocarbons and seeps upward.

The minority view is that very deep sources can turn carbonate rock and water etc into methane under intense heat and pressure. The methane then seeps up however it can, and if it gets caught under an impermeable dome then bacteria can get energy by rearranging it into bigger compounds, particularly cyclic and polycyclic ones.

If the majority view is right, then the oil and methane both come from fossils, and when it's gone it will be gone at least until new fossils have time to make more.

If the minority view is right, we will never completely run out of methane because more is being produced all the time. The rate that it's produced is unknown but probably not real large. Still it provides hope. If we can get many millions of tons of methane a year from down in the mantle or something, we'll never run out and there will never be a fossil fuel shortage.

by **Pfhorrest** » Fri Jul 13, 2012 11:23 pm UTC

J Thomas wrote:If the minority view is right, we will never completely run out of methane because more is being produced all the time. The rate that it's produced is unknown but probably not real large. Still it provides hope. If we can get many millions of tons of methane a year from down in the mantle or something, we'll never run out and there will never be a fossil fuel shortage.

Presumably even if that minority view is right, we will eventually run out of methane anyway because there's still a limited amount of carbon in the rock, unless it's being cycled back into rock in some comparable timely fashion (and not just turning into mulch and CO2). Is it just that "eventually" is negligibly short of "never" in that case?

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