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xkcd #3283: Size and Lifespan (lemmy.nz)

submitted 4 days ago by xkcdbot@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world

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xkcd #3283: Size and Lifespan

Title text:

With their 13 years recording and performing together and two humans worth of mass, the White Stripes are sandwiched neatly between gray wolves and blue whales.

Transcript:

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Source: https://xkcd.com/3283/

explainxkcd for #3283

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[–] Oinks@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

I can at least think of a few counterexamples:

Cats live longer than dogs.
Small stars live longer than large stars (by dramatic amounts).
Black holes larger than the ~10^10 kg mark shown here live a lot longer than any other object with the same mass. A hypothetical moon mass black hole can most likely outlive every single star in the universe.
Protons are smaller than anything in this chart yet are believed to decay over an extremely long time scale (>10^34 years).
Even smaller particles like electrons likely live forever.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Those particles are exactly the kind of exception I was looking for. Tiny things that last a long time. The opposite kind of exceptions are probably impossible since making large things takes a lot of time. You would need to have something the size of a galaxy that lasts from Monday evening to Thursday morning.

[–] ElBarto@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

The graph has a couple of those "counter examples".

[–] PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Small dogs live longer than big dogs generally too