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title text: You'd think the most expensive part would be the quark-gluon plasma chamber, but it's actually usually the tube to the top of the atmosphere to carry the cosmic rays down.

(xkcd.com/2982)
(explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php)

Single panel comic. Title: How water filtration works. There is a long snaking diagram of various apparatuses connected together. For the most part they are differently shaped little blobs with various ridges on them. The input is well water, which goes through the pathway in the following order. 1. water softener (looks like a box of sand) 2. reverse osmosis 3. ultraviolet sterilization 4. autoclave 5. condenser 6. regular osmosis 7. x-ray sterilization (radioactivity symbol on this blob) 8. carbon filter (this is unusually long to make a turn in the snake) 8a. neutron source (this is attached to the carbon filter as a small sphere radiating wavy lines) 8b. activated carbon filter (this is the region of the carbon filter after the neutron source, there is no line to distinguish between the filters) (alt-text continued in the next image)
(continued alt-text) 9. gamma ray sterilization (radioactivity symbol on this blob) 10. cosmic ray sterilization (blob has what looks like EeV gamma, which is taken to mean a quintillion electron volts) 11. electrolysis (H2O is being split into H and O) 12. two path ways, the upper is oxygen spallation where the O from the previous blob is turned into multiple H, the lower is just feeding through the H from the previous blob, the hydrogens all merge into one stream to continue 13. ionizer (H splits into an electron and a proton) 14. quark-gluon plasma chamber (electron and proton come together to make a quark-gluon plasma, which is a gassy blob) 15. hydrogenation (the quark-gluon plasma generates H) 16. nucleosynthesis (the H stream splits in two, the upper goes through a blob labeled P-P CN, comes out as He and C and then goes through a blob labeled Alpha and comes out as O, the lower stream just feeds through the H from the previous blob), the hydrogens all merge into one stream to continue 17. reverse electrolysis whose output is labeled "pure water" 18. a second input stream is labeled well water and joins the main stream at this point, the junction is labeled local minerals and probiotics added for taste and to support immune health 19. the output is labeled "to faucet"
7 September at 2:30 | Open on botsin.space
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