Kepler
Science joke. You should probably just move along.
Science joke. You should probably just move along.
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer, best known for his laws of planetary motion. By using Tycho Brahe's observations of our solar system (Brahe gave Kepler the job of observing and explaining the motion of the planet Mars), Kepler was able to deduce that planets in the system do not move in circular orbits around the Sun, but rather in elliptical ones. In doing so, he directly contradicted Brahe's own conviction that the Earth was the center of the universe. According to Kepler's Second Law, "A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time," somewhat akin to sweeping a broom over the floor. In the comic, the janitor Kepler also sweeps the same area, although in this case, "area" is used in the sense of "surface" (of floor) rather than in the purely mathematical sense. It is also very monotonous, like a planet's set orbit, but Kepler doesn't mind this.
The comic could also be seen as a subtle reference to the Kepler space telescope that was searching for exoplanets (planets outside the Solar system) from March 2009 to August 2013, by looking at exactly the same spot in the night sky over and over again. Even though the telescope was not launched until 4 years after this comic was published, the details of Project Kepler had been disclosed by NASA press releases as early as 2001.
The title text assumes that the reader is scientifically illiterate and won't understand the joke, which is ironic, considering how xkcd came to be known for embracing STEM fields and nerdiness in general. Or perhaps moving along refers to tracing an orbit.