249
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by xkcdbot@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world

Title text:

In addition to gravity, burritos interact through the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces, which is believed to be a major contributor to their popularity.

Transcript:

[Cueball and Ponytail are standing in front of a pentacle with lit candles at the corners. A black sphere, the oracle, is floating above the middle of the pentacle.]
Ponytail: Dear oracle,
Ponytail: What is the nature of dark matter?
Oracle: It's about 20 pounds.

[Close up of oracle]
Off-panel: What?
Oracle: Dark matter is a particle. It weighs about 20 pounds.
Oracle: It only interacts through gravity.

[Same view as first panel]
Cueball: Only gravity, huh?
Cueball: So none of our experiments are really going to tell us any more about it, then.
Oracle: Afraid not.

[Same view as first and third panels, except Cueball lifted his forearm.]
Cueball: So what do we do?
Oracle: You should go out for burritos.
Ponytail: How will that help?
Oracle: Well
Oracle: Burritos are pretty good.

Source: https://xkcd.com/3085/

explainxkcd for #3085

top 5 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Tja@programming.dev 14 points 3 weeks ago

If a particle really only interacted with gravity, would it pass through matter? AFAIK "touching" things is electron repulsion...

[-] Sasha 10 points 3 weeks ago

Looking at it from a quantum field perspective, pretty much. If the only interactions are through gravity then the underlying field's evolution can't be influenced by anything else, I have no real idea what the implications of that would be because we don't have a QFT for gravity.

[-] PunnyName@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago

Mmm. Burrito.

[-] bloup@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 3 weeks ago

This is a funny comic, but it really does disturb me how certain most theoretical physicists are about the nature of dark matter, despite there not really being any good philosophical reason for us to expect these anomalies to be caused by a particle that interacts non-gravitationally.

[-] Natanael@infosec.pub 7 points 3 weeks ago

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/dark-matter-flies-ahead-of-normal-matter-in-mega-galaxy-cluster-collision

Here's the best evidence of difficult to detect matter likely being real. You wouldn't see such a shift in gravity if there aren't matter unaffected by friction

this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
249 points (100.0% liked)

xkcd

11040 readers
419 users here now

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

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS