And so if (and I haven't checked, so colour me wrong if I turn out to be so) the complex has at least three FELs attached, it's reasonable to assume that the third of these (hierarchically speaking) has, like its brethren, a particle guidance system involved at some point to ensure the electron supply is suitably contained and piped into it. I think I would consider such systems (including the ones that 'extract' particles for use in off-ring experiments) worthy of the title 'guidance systems', albeit external to the particle as opposed to on-board like on a smart missile. It's true that particles being smashed are thrown together rather haphazardly (when compared, say, with collisions at the scale of vehicle crash tests), but there's actually quite a lot of sophisticated detection equipment used to work out the path of the particles so that guidance can be applied by magnetic fields (separately from the 'corner turning' ones and/or including those). Particle acceleration requires that the particles being accelerated be constrained within the ring (when being brung up to speed or collided within the ring's in-line experiment zones) or redirected out of the ring (or allowed to depart it, but still in a controlled manner) if being used for an out-of-ring experiment. Guidance System'? The FEL (Free Electron Laser, IIRC) itself is a tunable lasing 'cavity' for electrons that is magnetic, not optical, in nature, but (again, IIRC) is supplied with electrons at relativistic speeds by way of a particle accelerator (depending on which FEL, sometimes dedicated to the FEL and sometimes 'from a main multipurpose ring', such as the LHC might be). Maybe there's a confusion about the phrase 'the particle accelerator's tertiary F.E.L. I don't think there's a joke here regarding 'particle accelerators not having a guidance system' (paraphrasing the first paragraph of explanation, currently). The fact that the reference of something bad happening is to the Black hole theories comes from the fact that the comic was drawn the same time the theories were most predominant. This is possibly even another take by xkcd at conspiracy theories such as the one in In this comic too he presents conspiracy theories against each other, the black hole with the guidance system. I spent all night reading, and now I can't stop talking like this.Īdd a comment! ⋅ add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ refresh comments! Discussion It wouldn't smash the right tiny things together. Guidance System? Cueball: We can't put the broken part in the machine. Transcript Left Cueball-like guy: Do you have any thoughts regarding the particle accelerator's tertiary F.E.L. This concept was later revisited in 722: Computer Problems, 1133: Up Goer Five and Thing Explainer (probably most notably), 1322: Winter and 1436: Orb Hammer. The implication is that more people would be drawn to studying mathematics and that (naturally) the world would be a better place because of this, ironically most likely true! using simple syntax similar to the style of the Simple English Wikipedia.įrom the title text, Randall believes that if people teaching advanced mathematics followed this style, their subject would be more accessible. In the actual comic, Cueball was able to effectively communicate the dangers of using a broken F.E.L. For example, the article for a particle accelerator describes it as 'a machine that makes really tiny things called particles travel at very high speeds.' This is similar to the simple response given by the responding Cueball. He uses simple phrases such as 'smash the right tiny things together' and 'that would be very bad'.Īs the caption below the comic notes, Cueball (probably Randall) has spent the previous night reading the Simple English Wikipedia, a simplified version of Wikipedia intended to be easier to understand, and now he finds himself using similarly simple syntax. The joke is that the other Cueball instead responds in a much simpler manner. As this is a fairly technical topic, we would expect a response filled with scientific jargon.

One Cueball asks the others about the 'tertiary Free-electron laser ( F.E.L) guidance system'. There are three Cueballs discussing a particle accelerator. Title text: Actually, I think if all higher math professors had to write for the Simple English Wikipedia for a year, we'd be in much better shape academically.

Simple writer xkcd