Who would've thought that astronomy as a science only had like 500 years window to the clear sky... That any advanced enough civilization would as quickly and enthusiastically blot out their own skies for short term gains...
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Not any advanced enough civilization.
Though a civilization based on capitalism where the greediest fucks get to hoard wealth and resources and get away with doing what ever they want? Yes.
Wouldn’t it be wild to find out that the galaxy is teeming with advanced intelligent life but they want nothing to do with us because literally all of them are peaceful?
Would be the least surprising thing, out of all the advanced civilizations actually existing options.
ground based astronomy
Advancing astronomy would require more orbital telescopes anyway, which solve a bunch of problems, like atmospheric distortion.
The actual problem is, that we currently fund short term gains (sattelites for communication and navigation) more than we fund long-term societal gains (sattelites for orbital research).
it's bigger than that.
humans looked to the skies and saw gods, and now? most people haven't seen the stars anymore. we, humans have killed those gods and removed the stars from the skies.
Do you really not see stars where you live? No constellations, no Big Dipper, no Milk Way?
in a clear sky, maybe 20 stars. barely constellations, definitely no milky way.
Even in recent movies, when people look at the stars, they are mostly not there anymore.
An actually advanced society would fund science more effectively and actually have loads of orbital telescopes.
Don't forget "set the atmosphere on fire to put them up there"
Ah, but you're falling for the delusion that capitalism is inevitable...
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
I'm pretty sure this has never happened.
No, I never got to a happy place with this feature. I was trying to parse the wikitext (the markup language used for MediaWiki) but it's a hairy beast so I thought about parsing the output html instead. Then the site started being really unreliable and I put the transcriptions on the back burner.
"But company stock will go BRRRRRRRRRR!"
"Make it so."
feels like this could be a plot point in the Three Body Problem
Sure but let’s be honest, it would be ads.
They should make another comic about how the hell would you even be able to see it and how odd it would look from earth and would you use lights so you could see it? Idk would be a lot of lights and the space next to it would appear dark because light pollution, ect... Then again, it does say inaccurate.
low orbit sat bro... it is gonna be tight... it will be like the wizard of OZ