this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 days ago (3 children)

And to add the cherry on top, should you ever reach his arbitrary speed limit, it distorts time itself. Even if you flew through space at c for a little weekend getaway, you'd return to a now foreign world only to find time had skipped forward +2,000 years, your entire family and social circles long dead from old age with societal and technical advancements beyond what you could have ever thought possible, completely isolating you. You're now doomed to live in an unfamiliar world where not a single human speaks your language nor can they relate to you in any meaning way.

AKA, gods speeding ticket.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 days ago (2 children)

We don't know how big is the universe beyond the observable universe.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (3 children)

What is observable is constrained by cause and effect. To see something, information must come from there to us. That cause and effect relationship cannot happen faster than lightspeed.

We therefore have no evidence for anything other than the observable universe. Claims about anything else run into Russell's teapot issues. We can speculate, but it's ultimately nothing more than a story.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

Yeah, but we can estimate. I'm confident it's at least 11 in size.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago (3 children)

99% of the universe is nothing. Wouldn't that really be the dick move?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago (4 children)

The universe is basically 100% empty. An atom is more than 99.9999999 empty space.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Say that again when a brick made of 99,9999999% empty space hits you!

(Mustn't be a hard hit, maybe more like a soft touch. For science, you know.)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, is it really fair to say my client hit him, when the brick is essentially 100% empty space? And isn't he also essentially 100% empty space so can he even be hit?

But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a wookie from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about that; that does not make sense! Why would a wookie, an 8 foot tall wookie, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two foot tall ewoks? That does not make sense!

But more importantly, you have to ask yourself, ‘what does that have to do with this case?’ Nothing. Ladies and Gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case. It does not make sense! Look at me. I’m a lawyer defending a major record company, and I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you’re in that jury room deliberatin’ and conjugatin’ the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

Yeah, I rounded down.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

99% of the universe is nothing.

Worst video game developer ever.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

Clearly it was made by Bethesda.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

It's actually just our solar system, the rest is just rendering tricks making us think there's distance

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Broad as an ocean, deep as a puddle. Oh great, more rock.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (11 children)

Hear me out. It doesn't even matter that it's 96 billion light-years away if you're traveling at light speed. Because if you can travel at light speed, time would be frozen for you relative to earth time.

So if you're in a spaceship traveling at light speed to your destination, it would feel like you gotten there in an instant.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Also, due to length contraction, at light speed the universe isn’t 96 billion light years wide, it’s 0 anything wide.

At light speed there is no time and no distance, the origin is the destination. You won’t even experience a single tick of Planck time to get there. Instantaneous.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Doesn't it also require infinite energy to do so if "the thing" has mass at all?

ie. Our description of physics breaks down at such extremes, so in truth, we have no fuckin' idea, just a best guess? (Thus far)

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (7 children)

Do you believe that the wide expanses of our planet Earth were crafted for the common ant to explore?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (11 children)

There is no evidence that the Universe is bounded at all. For all we know, it is infinite in spacial dimension.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Wait, now that I think about it, the observable universe have precisely that length because the speed of light, doesn't it?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago

Its a combination of the speed of light and how inflation has varied the size of the universe. Light's only been able to travel about 14 billion light years since the universe began but those further regions used to be closer so light from them was already part of the way here when they vanished over the cosmic horizon.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

There is idea in the three body problem novels:

Tap for spoilerThat the speed of light was infinity at the birth of the universe but sentient species reduced the speed of light several times as a offence/defense mechanism to protect themselves from others.

The mere though of that is dreadful to me.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Dark Forest Theory is probably wrong. In-universe, the series unknowingly undermines it with communication tech that can transmit instantaneously. That would take away the assumption that civilizations can't effectively communicate over interstellar distances and build trust.

In reality, it's something of an extension of the "every individual for themselves" mindset of evolution--something White Supremacists have loved. Kin Selection Theory does away with that. There is a basis for building trust and working together within evolution. The precursor ideas were even done in Peter Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution" over a century ago. Kin Selection Theory put a mathematical foundation on it.

I like the book series as literature, and the Netflix series has been OK so far (not great, but OK). Liu Cixin himself, however, has some really shitty opinions that come through the text.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Anything capable of altering fundamental physical parameters like that will be unknowable to us. We'd be like bacteria are to a human.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (10 children)

Its probably for the best.

If humans are able to get to another planet with life on it we would probably do horrific unspeakable things to the aliens.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Common trick map builders do, if you need to teleport the player for a scene e.g. they're in a dream, but you dont want to load a whole new map you put the scene in the main map but someplace it cant be seen and is unreachable.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

I love map breaking. It's also fun to see what developers didn't use.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

To be clear it's lightspeed in space time, we "just" need to get rid of time to conquer the space.

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