Comment by notjoemama

Comment by notjoemama 3 days ago

9 replies

Light is comparatively and objectively slow in comparison to the distances that exist. Andromeda is 1M light years from us. From that perspective, 300k kph is oddly slow actually. I love the passion that you're brining to the table though. It reminded me of the blue giant stars whose lifespans can be as short as tens of millions of years, more often hundreds though. For billions upon billions, I suppose that would be white and brown dwarfs. Although, if we could orbit black holes and harness the energy of gravity, then we're really talking long time scales. Cracking the aging problem would allow us to think in very long timescales. But I do wonder whether the human psyche could handle such long lifespans.

bobbylarrybobby 3 days ago

> in comparison to the distances that exist

This leaves out the time component. Who's to say that a year is long? A galaxy a million light years away takes a million years to reach... and maybe that's a short amount of time, to the right observer.

  • mgraczyk 3 days ago

    Light could only go to Andromeda and back 1000 times before the sun burns out. That's not very many times IMO. On the scale of galaxies, light is slow relative to any timescale relevant to large objects.

    • morsch 3 days ago

      Carrying the metaphor further, that's closer than America was to Europe in the 18th century.

      • orra 2 days ago

        That's an interesting perspective.

        Tangentially, I've long wondered about sci fi like Star Trek. Namely, even with FTL, how large can your interplanetary alliance be? How far away can the parliament be? Over what distances can you defend against common enemies? Trade? Culturally exchange ideas?

        • mangodrunk 14 hours ago

          I have had similar thoughts as well. Assuming FTL isn’t possible, at some point it wouldn’t make sense to have a cohesive system. Say, there’s an outpost that is 30 years away by the fastest spacecraft.

    • darkwater 3 days ago

      How many times can you go from Lisbon to Beijing and back by car in your lifetime?

      • hollandheese 13 hours ago

        Surprisingly, about 1000 times if that was all you spent your adult life doing.

FridayoLeary 2 days ago

There's a great video is saw. In 30 minutes it goes through the entire lifespan of the universe.

Even after all the stars die, the white dwarfs will continue to glow. And after eons, the last black holes will evaporate. The point is that the age of stars is only a tiny fraction of the lifetime of the universe. Maybe the speed of light makes sense at that scale.

But... I'm not happy with that theory. In a relatively short amount of time the expansion of the universe will increase faster then the speed of light. Which means it will be impossible to ever get information from the other side of the universe.

I find it very unreasonable that the universe imposes a speed limit on everything and then completely ignores it.