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I've listened to enough hours of Sean Carrol's podcast to know that I SHOULD get the joke...

Shout out to the fellow PBS SpaceTime viewers who saw this and went “nice.”

Has he already received a cease and de-Sitt' order?

I wonder where a door that welcomes de Sitter would lead. Probably a much better place than the current world.

Womp womp

I am going on a picnic and I'm not taking de Sitter.

Says Hilbert

I had to look it up and I’m glad I did. Talk about esoteric physics jokes!

Well, that's niche. Guess it looks bigger when you're inside 😁

Oh yeah? Well you're not allowed in De Sitter's Universe!

Everything wrong with society was planned out by a bunch of liars that dressed up fancy and met in the middle of a crop circle. That's my Con-Formal Field Theory

Here, just for the gist. The hairy parts can be skimmed. www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpr...

De Sitter came up with a mathematical model for space-time to satisfy the field equations of Einstein's theory of general relativity. The "curvature" of that model can be positive, zero or negative. When negative, it is called an Anti-de Sitter Space. So the note on the door is a pun on that.

I know, I've seen plenty of math memes about 57's faux-primeness

As a Dutchman: This rampant anti-Dutch sentiment has gone too far! Too far, I say! Boo! Boo! ... and FIE on you for your pun, sirrah. Fie! As a fan: Hee hee hee.

Which also feels like a lot of text for basically nothing can be done.

Ah, the old Einstein v De Sitter controversy of 1916-1917 and the rise of relativistic cosmology (how could I have spaced that?!)

Now I have to duck-duck-go Willem de sitter… brb

Do you Lorenz manifold your clothes?

Me too!

You fool! Willem will sit where he pleases!

True but all his contributions were in the 20th century, and they were very much "20th C physics".

Even more to the point, he was a (physics-minded) astronomer, at a time when astronomy and astrophysics were not synonymous.

I know at least three people whose office doors this will be on by the end of the day. Love it.

@qoteq.bsky.social

En ik vind dat als verbastering van de taal van ons kikkerlandje echt lelijk

unintentionally and in retrospect with a lot of foresight De Sitter brilliantly explained what goes on in the space between the ears of certain people on the (extreme) right side of the political spectrum. 🤪🤣😜😙 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_...

hey your latest comic's broken xkcd.com/3078

I had never heard of this man. He was apparently rather a big deal. National pride is a silly thing but I am not totally insensitive to it

📌

Now I finally know what string theory actually describes, amazing

Not even one? How mean! youtu.be/W7rSYzbpA8k?...

This joke is too dense and infinitely compressed to make any space for thought.

Standing room only

what did he try to sit on this time?

Poor De Sitter

Title text: "Our anti-de Sitter club is small at the moment, but I've started corresponding with the conformal field theory people." Alt text: https://explainxkcd.com/3077#Transcript

HyperRogue also comes to mind