2014-05-28
Explanation
The Joke
The comic begins with a child telling adults the classic belief: "Every time a child says 'I don't believe in fairies,' there's a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead." An adult responds with a question: if fairies are real and exist millions of miles away, wouldn't a fairy dying instantaneously when a child speaks imply faster-than-light communication? The adults realize "This is huge."
The final panel shows a news headline: "12 Year Old Overturns Einstein's Physics" with the subheading "Proposes fairy-killing as method of superluminal communication."
The Humor
The comedy comes from applying rigorous scientific reasoning to a whimsical children's fairy tale. The belief that fairies die when children deny them (popularized by J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan) is taken literally and analyzed for its physical implications. If saying "I don't believe in fairies" causes an instantaneous death at a remote location, this would violate Einstein's theory of special relativity, which states that no information can travel faster than the speed of light.
The absurdity escalates when this childhood fancy is treated as a legitimate scientific breakthrough, complete with a sensational news headline. The comic also pokes fun at clickbait science journalism that sensationalizes findings, and at the idea that a child's playground logic could "overturn" one of the most well-established theories in physics.
References
- The fairy belief originates from J.M. Barrie's 1904 play "Peter Pan," where the audience is asked to clap to save Tinker Bell.
- Einstein's special relativity (1905) establishes the speed of light as the universal speed limit for information transfer.
- "Superluminal communication" refers to hypothetical faster-than-light information transfer, which would violate causality under standard physics.