Interstellar Asteroid
Every time we detect an asteroid from outside the Solar System, we should immediately launch a mission to fling one of our asteroids back in the direction it came from.
Every time we detect an asteroid from outside the Solar System, we should immediately launch a mission to fling one of our asteroids back in the direction it came from.
ʻOumuamua is the first detection of an interstellar asteroid passing through the Solar System originating from another solar system.
Megan's list of objects with a similar shape ratio:
- The 1:4:9 monolith from the sci-fi movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- A Star Destroyer, a spaceship in the Star Wars universe. This one seems particularly unlikely, as the Star Wars mythos is set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and rarely (if ever, depending on the continuity) strays outside of said galaxy.
- Huge eggplant emoji (🍆, U+1F346 Aubergine, commonly used to represent a penis).
- Statue of "Weird Al" Yankovic, an American singer and parodist.
- iPhone XXXXX, likely making fun of Apple's iPhone X and larger in size. Multiple X's generally have a sexual connotation (see 1571: Car Model Names).
- Voltron, a giant robot from the animated series Voltron: Defender of the Universe.
- A giant space coffin with someone inside.
As soon as Megan lists off the last item, she is about to start speculating within her own speculative scenario about who or what might be in the coffin before Cueball interrupts her. Cueball attempts to bring Megan back down to earth by reminding her that she has too little data to work with (one data point), but Megan is far too excitable to listen to reason. A good example of the dangers of speculating irresponsibly, it would seem.
It could also be argued that Megan with this makes fun of many news outlets whose first reaction to a new space body often seems to be to search for something to compare its shape to, such as with the 'rubber duck' comet. Making fun of media covering science news is a recurring theme on xkcd.
The title text suggests taking reciprocal action by sending asteroids away when the solar system receives them. This would, of course, be difficult, given the amount of energy needed to shift asteroids outside of the Sun's gravity hold. On top of that, it appears to imply that some non-human entity is sending these rocks, which is an inane idea. This could be a reference to the movie Starship Troopers, where a race of aliens mankind is at war with supposedly hit Earth with asteroids. Given that a typical interstellar traveler -- like the one spotted now in real life -- spends millions of years getting from one star system to another, the movie's idea is plain stupid; in fact, the movie gives no proof the aliens were actually responsible, leading to a common fan theory that the asteroid was indeed random space junk and the aliens are being framed by the human government as pretense for war.