Comic #5058: configurations

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Description

Here's the transcription of the text in the comic:

Panel 1:

• Character 1: "Technology isn’t ever new. It’s just configurations of stuff that’s been around for billions of years."
• Character 2: "Did you know that in Gabon scientists discovered the remains of a “natural” nuclear reactor?"

Panel 2:

• Character 2: "It’s really not surprising. You just need some uranium deposits that get surrounded by water and BAM! Controlled fission."

Panel 3:

• Character 2: "It gets weird if you apply this generally. Like… A photograph is just the right chemicals on a more or less flat surface. In principle, there could be a selfie of a Tyrannosaurus somewhere, waiting for us to find it."

Panel 4:

• Character 3: "Sagan said, 'If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.' But, actually, the 'you' is unnecessary."

Panel 5:

• Character 3: "Human life, culture, civilization… It’s just a sequence of technically permitted, but ever more unlikely physical configurations."

Panel 6:

• Character 4: "So everything is meaningless?"
• Character 3: "No, there’s a clear meaning for human life, and it runs throughout history - to find weirder and weirder configurations."

Panel 7:

• Character 3: "…and use them to explore the heavens and plumb the Planck-scale."

Panel 8:

• Character 3: "Mostly it’s for food and TV, but yeah, that too."

Panel 9:

• (Visual of three figures looking into the night sky)

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