Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for April 29, 2024

Three space facts

One time I was 5,001 miles big and had to lie down.

Wames Jebb

R Crumb is the guest artist for today’s strip.

and sees ships approaching on the horizon. He says to his first mate “Arrrr Matey, fetch me me red shirt”.

“But why, Captain?” the Mate says.

“If these be enemies and we must defend our ship I don’t want me men to see me bleed”.

The mate fetches the shirt as the Captain looks out again, this time seeing a fleet of Pirate Ships gaining on them. He turns to the first mate again:

“Arrr Matey, fetch me me brown pants”.

I knew Jimmy Buffett was up there somewhere.

There’s no lime juice and no agave cacti in that quadrant, Number One.

I doubt there will be humans around in 600 million years to observe this lack of solar eclipse. Let’s leave a note for the bugs.

In 7 billions years there won’t be any sun, so that could be a problem

600 million years. So, who is going to be around to confirm or deny the validity of that statement? Within 600 million years my decomposed body will reconstitute into a mermaid goddess. You just wait and see.

No solar eclipse means no complaints of eye damage hundreds of which have been reported in the news lately. Some fools just don’t listen!

I don’t think I’ll care about eclipses 600 million years from now.

In 600 years there’ll be no humans here anyway so what will it matter?

the eclipse shadow cartoon appears to emulate R Crumb’s artwork in a primitive fashion

Well, there is a planet out there made entirely out of diamonds, which scare the bejesus out of the De Beers, so a margarita between two young (proto?) stars stands to reason. I mean in this universe what is possible probably exists on an otherwise unimaginable scale.

Of course this hints (slightly) that our universe is just a microscopic part of something larger. That diamond planet may be on some creatures wedding finger and the margarita a simple spilled wedding toast.

The claim is that in 600 million years, there will be no more total Solar eclipses. There will still be annular and partial Solar eclipses.

About 1.6 billion years ago, the first annular Solar eclipse on Earth occurred.

Sooooo? Catch it while you can?

You lost me on that margarita thing…

In a billion or so years, the sun will start the process of growing into a red giant, so it’s probably for the best that the moon stops blocking it earlier than that

….and a eclipse will turn you into Lena the Hyena???

Space margaritas!

The Moons shadow is traveling at Mach 6.5 and not a single sonic boom could be heard.