this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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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.

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

explainxkcd for #3283

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[–] four@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Don't you mean the event horizon of the black hole? The actual matter of a black hole is in an infinitely small point, right?

[–] OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

The horizon is what defines the black hole. From the outside the mass distribution is not defined, as there isn't any experiment you can do that tells you about the internal structure. If you let a mass fall into a black hole you won't see it cross the horizon, just get asymptotically closer to it.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago

Very very small but not infinitely so. That would violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.