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When you call the Magrathean tech out for a service call

Take my planet... please!

Surprisingly, gas giant days can be very fast, Jupiter's day is like 12 hours.

Actually, gas giant days are much shorter than Earths, so it's a bad measurement, like feet compared to meters. Better measure with gas giant years, or ice giant days if you behaved well this Earth year

apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all.

I just hope that we got the extended warranty from Magrathea when we purchased this planet. Because, boy does it need fixing.

Congrats on your first NYT crossword appearance!

I love how in this universe a few people can discuss something like this so casually like it isn’t completely insane

The magnetic dip poles aren't even 180° from each other!

Once they’ve aligned magnetic N with rotational N, I hope they’ll move the N. Star to its correct position. Also, could the Ns be moved a bit so the three Ns (where the direction of map grid, magnetic and rotation Ns all align) is over England again? Preferably somewhere on the Greenwich meridian.

Awesome until the solstice comes along and casts a hemisphere into frigid darkness for a few months. They tidally decay too, and it just makes one big mess.

We have a VERY important question about what you mean by “day” here…

IIRC there were three types discussed: "whales" that drift through the atmosphere, "plankton" that the whales eat and which ride updrafts to higher altitudes and then fall back to lower ones where they reproduce and their spawn take their first ride up, and "sharks" that fly and hunt the "whales".

Sadly the most relevant Sagan work for our current moment seems to be _The Demon-Haunted World_.

Hovertext: "We're going to need to modify the surface to mount it on the test stand. Which ocean basin do you like the least?"

Wait, was that a celestial mechanic?

Time to get a second opinion, trying to move the poles around is what killed the Neanderthals!

Oh these gas giant rentals... can't get rid of the smell for days.

My understanding was that the mice spared no expense. They need to call Slartibartfast and see whether this is covered under Magrathea’s warranty.

And you could swim in lead! Cool!

I really enjoyed this one. Just tickled me the right way.

You can usually get coverage through your credit card.

We'd get used to it.

Jupiter is fine, the Jovians will welcome us. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory...

Title text: "We're going to need to modify the surface to mount it on the test stand. Which ocean basin do you like the least?" Alt text: https://explainxkcd.com/3192#Transcript