Title text:
They're up there with coral islands, lightning, and caterpillars turning into butterflies.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3135/
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
1056 points (99.4% liked)
xkcd
12906 readers
516 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well, tides on moons (eg around gassy supergiants :)) are fairly usual.
So perhaps it's not as much as the tides being "sci-fi" (sci??) but the relative size of Earth's Moon (it's basically a binary planet situation where they orbit around each other).
So, the sheer size of our moon as seen from the planet's surface is the rarity.
(Then again, on a moon around a supergiant the same experience could be had from one tiny beings pov.)
Ugh, there you go talking smack about my mamma again! Dammit, Evil Shrubbery!
Dense at the core, but what escapes is free for all the solar system to enjoy.