#3238: Soniferous Aether
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Transcript
[Ponytail is addressing an unseen audience in front of her while she holds her hand out towards them. She is standing on a podium with Cueball behind her. Cueball holds an arm out behind him indicating a screen behind him showing a graph with three sinus waves with different wavelengths. The top has two cycles, the middle four cycles and the bottom one cycle.]
Ponytail: We all know the speed of light is constant for all observers.
Ponytail: But our experiments show that the speed of sound changes based on the observer's motion.
Ponytail: Thus, we posit the existence of the Soniferous Aether, a medium that fills the space between us and carries sound waves.
[Caption below the panel:]
Sometimes physicists forget that air exists and rediscover it from first principles.
(Sourced from explainxkcd.com)
Title text:Imagine you could ride alongside a sound wave. It would probably be pretty cool, right? We're putting in a departmental budget request to buy a really fast plane so we can check it out.