361
submitted 22 hours ago by xkcdbot@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world

xkcd #3283: Size and Lifespan

Title text:

With their 13 years recording and performing together and two humans worth of mass, the White Stripes are sandwiched neatly between gray wolves and blue whales.

Transcript:

Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com

Source: https://xkcd.com/3283/

explainxkcd for #3283

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Oinks 14 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I can at least think of a few counterexamples:

  • Cats live longer than dogs.
  • Small stars live longer than large stars (by dramatic amounts).
  • Black holes larger than the ~10^10 kg mark shown here live a lot longer than any other object with the same mass. A hypothetical moon mass black hole can most likely outlive every single star in the universe.
  • Protons are smaller than anything in this chart yet are believed to decay over an extremely long time scale (>10^34 years).
  • Even smaller particles like electrons likely live forever.
[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Those particles are exactly the kind of exception I was looking for. Tiny things that last a long time. The opposite kind of exceptions are probably impossible since making large things takes a lot of time. You would need to have something the size of a galaxy that lasts from Monday evening to Thursday morning.

[-] ElBarto@piefed.social 2 points 6 hours ago

The graph has a couple of those "counter examples".

this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
361 points (100.0% liked)

xkcd

17233 readers
434 users here now

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

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS