2012-06-10
Explanation
This comic tells a cosmic parable. Beings outside our universe created it as an experiment to observe the behavior of life. Worried that different life forms might not be able to communicate, they built a universal language into the fabric of reality -- one based on physics and mathematics (shown as dots resembling a mathematical or binary encoding). This language was so universal that life could even use it to communicate with non-living objects, commanding rockets and machines through physical equations (F = mgIsp*etc). But when different life forms encountered each other, they both used this universal language to command non-life (weapons, rockets) to destroy the other. In the end, only non-life remains in a ruined, silent universe, and "all it can do is listen."
The comic is a dark meditation on the Fermi Paradox and the nature of technological civilization. The "universal language" is physics itself -- the laws of nature that allow any intelligent species to build technology. The bitter irony is that the very tool designed to facilitate communication between life forms instead enabled their mutual destruction, because the easiest application of physics is weaponry. The final image of a dead universe full of debris, where only inert matter remains to "listen" to the silence, is a haunting commentary on the possibility that intelligent civilizations inevitably destroy each other (or themselves) once they achieve sufficient technological capability. This connects to proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox such as the "Great Filter" hypothesis, which suggests that some barrier prevents civilizations from surviving long enough to make lasting contact.