Try to make sense of what you see below.
What's it called?
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asked Sep 7, 2022 at 3:30
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1 Answer
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The answer to this puzzle is:
What?! Stiv, did you just mash the keyboard?!
Nope, allow me to explain... First, the significance of the five images:
1. The position on a clock of 55 minutes past the hour.
2. If you rotate the number '69' by a quarter turn it resembles the astrological symbol for CANCER (♋︎).
3. This is a picture of an Emergency Room, or ER. Because it is crossed out in the image, we need to remove the string 'ER' from 'CANCER' to produce CANC.
4. The outline of the US state of Rhode Island, abbreviated to RI.
5. A picture of Leonhard Euler, whose eponymous number is the mathematical constant 'e'.
Put these all together and you have 55 + CANC(-er) + RI + e, or 55 Cancri e.
But what does this even mean?! Well, this is actually:
the name of an exoplanet (hence the title's use of X-O-P as a hint). In fact, it is a very significant one, as when it was first identified in August 2004 it was the very first 'super-Earth' (i.e. a planet larger than our own, found in another solar system) discovered around a 'main sequence' star.
Whether or not the name is 'pretty cool' (or something Elon Musk might call his next child) is for you to decide!
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4$\begingroup$ To those who will ask 'HOW did you find this?!' I had come up with plausible interpretations for each symbol, and googled rot13(kvpnapevr) in the hope something outside my sphere of knowledge might turn up. Google then suggested this answer as an alternative, and one Wikipedia rabbithole later I'd learned an awful lot about something far outside my sphere indeed! Thanks Prim3numbah for an educational start to the day :) $\endgroup$– StivCommented Sep 7, 2022 at 8:33
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$\begingroup$ Glad I could help :D It's also actually called "Qvnzbaq cynarg". I initially wanted the title to be "pretty cool nick". But changed it because I thought the 55 would be a giveaway. You never know with PSE :) But your answer is ofc what the rebus stands for. Well done! $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 7, 2022 at 9:07