2013-03-11
Explanation
This comic contrasts "My fantasies before studying physics" with "My fantasies after studying physics," both set on a Star Trek-style spaceship bridge. In the "before" version, the alien officer reports they're under attack, and the captain confidently orders: "Fire a plasma burst, then evasive maneuvers while we ready the space-marines." In the "after" version, the same alien reports an attack, but the captain can only clutch his head in anguish as he tries to process the technical details: "The ship is shaped like an infinitely thin elliptical ring with an eccentricity of 0.271812, whose gravitati--" while screaming in frustration.
The humor captures a common lament among science enthusiasts: that learning real physics ruins the fun of science fiction. Before studying physics, you can enjoy space battles at face value -- just fire weapons and do cool maneuvers. After studying physics, your brain can't stop trying to work out the actual physics of the situation, turning an exciting fantasy into an agonizing math problem. The specific detail about an "infinitely thin elliptical ring with an eccentricity of 0.271812" is a perfect parody of how physics problems are formulated, always with oddly specific geometric constraints that make the calculation tractable but absurd in practice. It's a self-deprecating joke about how scientific knowledge can be a curse that strips the magic from imagination.