this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] superkret 152 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

A faster light speed wouldn't make a difference, since she made the universe 96 billion light years wide.

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 46 points 2 weeks ago (16 children)

Something tells me this isn't a bad thing. If there is an edge of the universe, it's probably going to be a very strange place.

[–] alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 54 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Indeed, but the way the math for expansion works is that there is something called a Hubble horizon and that makes it impossible to ever reach the edge, since it is moving away from us faster than light. (The limit doesn't apply to the expansion of space-time).

Quite a nifty solution by the Supreme Programmer to avoid us hitting the limits of the simulation. I couldn't have designed it better.

[–] smeenz@lemmy.nz 14 points 2 weeks ago

Well it was a more convincing solution than just having level crossing arms come down and an infinitely long train cross every time you get near the edge.

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 8 points 2 weeks ago

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever... But then you get to the end and then a giant gorilla starts throwing barrels at you."

--Fry, "Futurama"

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[–] positiveWHAT@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And Earth is already stranger than some would like.

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[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Tell me all your thoughts on God 'cause I would really like to meet her

Disclaimer: To any higher power listening, I am not done living and do not want to meet God/a god immediately. There's still plenty of candy left in this piñata.

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[–] joyjoy@lemm.ee 8 points 2 weeks ago

Stupid relative distance measurements ruining all our fun

[–] Maiq@lemy.lol 59 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour, that's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned a sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see are moving at a million miles a day. In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour, of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars. It's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light years thick but out by us it's just three thousand light years wide. We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point, we go around every two hundred million years and our galaxy is only one of millions of billions in this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding, in all of the directions it can whiz. As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed thereis. So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely is your birth and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space because there's bugger all down here on earth.

[–] ummthatguy@lemmy.world 28 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Gotta appreciate the classics.

[–] voodooattack@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

You lost me at miles

Edit: /s for brevity

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Same. Miles per second? What the hell kinda unit is that? Over here, we use Texases per lamb's tail shakes.

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[–] borax7385@lemmy.world 40 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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

[–] frezik@midwest.social 10 points 2 weeks 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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[–] JPSound@lemmy.world 40 points 2 weeks 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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[–] themoken@startrek.website 30 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Light speed is a "you must be this clever to participate" barrier to becoming an interstellar species, that's all. Even if it's not breakable, it just means you gotta be able to plan hundreds or thousands of years into the future.

[–] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 34 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

We can hardly plan 5 years into the future, let alone hundreds of thousands... It'd be pretty sad if the answer to the Fermi paradox is that everyone is too stupid to participate.

[–] qprimed@lemmy.ml 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

everyone is too stupid to participate

if they are anything like us, its probably for the best.

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I don't know, man, I kinda want to hear some of this Vogon poetry I've been hearing so much about.

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[–] smeenz@lemmy.nz 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's not "just" the speed of light though, light is limited by the speed of information, also known as the speed of causality. If you were to somehow exceed that, then your future light cone becomes very messed up, and effect starts to be possible before cause.

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[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

And sending a space ship at a good fraction of light speed to a nearby star uses more energy than our total civilization uses at the moment. We've got some work to do climbing up the Kardashev scale before we're anywhere close to that kind of travel.

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[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 21 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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

[–] DoubleSpace@lemm.ee 15 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

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

[–] ladicius@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.)

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[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 7 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, I rounded down.

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[–] racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

99% of the universe is nothing.

Worst video game developer ever.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 10 points 2 weeks ago

Clearly it was made by Bethesda.

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[–] peregrin5@lemm.ee 19 points 2 weeks ago

When the game is open world but no fast travel or mounts.

[–] jaschen@lemm.ee 19 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.

[–] deranger@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 weeks ago (4 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.

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[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 weeks ago (10 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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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Also the Universe: continues expanding

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[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 16 points 2 weeks ago

Don't forget the part where it's constantly expanding. So it's 96B ly so far.

[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 15 points 2 weeks 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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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 weeks 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?

[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks 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.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 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.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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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[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks 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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[–] yourgodlucifer@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 weeks 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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[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

I mean, have you seen the human back, fuckin psychopath LMAO

[–] vane@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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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