Title text:
A lot of the highway department’s budget goes to adjusting the sign whenever the moon passes directly overhead.
Comment on xkcd #3174: Bridge Clearance
probable_possum@leminal.space 23 hours ago
True. But wind sheer in the lower atmosphere could be an issue. Sometimes the moon gets in the way, too.
logicbomb@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 23 hours ago
Not just the moon. You can’t just drive here with a 46 billion light year tall lorry without crashing into some stars, galaxies, black holes and what not.
PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Really?
Can we calculate this? Let’s do specs first. Let’s say we only drive until the next overpass, which is likely in the next few km , let’s say 5. And we drive 40kmh so for 450 second the lory is swinging around the universe trying to hit anything. Would it?
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Yeah, but the earth is also rotating and orbiting the sun, which is rotating around the galaxy, which is itself moving.
Top of that lorry is gonna be traveling light-years at relativistic speeds.
PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Yep, but universe is so empty.
skibidi@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Well… Earth’s rotation would mean that the top the lorry would be moving at 3.3 million light years per second … Or you know, about 100 trillion times the speed of light.
That might break some things.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
At this point I’m actually curious about the mass of the lorry.
I wonder if we could estimate the mass of a lorry, 2.5 meters wide, 20 m long, 46 billion light years tall. Let’s assume it’s filled with jars of peanut butter.
Now that I think about it, it could be too tall, possibly a tipping hazard.
Snazz@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Unless the lorry was driving over the exact geographic north or south pole.
Side note: the tallest lorry where the top doesn’t move faster than the speed of light at the equator is 3.8 light hours tall, which is weird to think about because the top doesn’t start moving until well after the bottom has reached it’s destination.
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
The mass of the universe is not distributed evenly, so it gets really complex. However, as semi-qualitative assessment, I can say that the vast majority of the universe is just empty space, so you should be fine for the most part. However, the longer you allow the top of the lorry to scrape the edge of the observable universe, the more likely it is to hit something.
Think of it like throwing darts. The more you throw, the more likely it is for you to hit the bullseye. If you keep on driving your lorry for an hour or two, the top has already swept across an enormous arc and probably plowed through multiple galaxies along the way. Keep on sweeping and eventually you’ll smack into something.
MintyFresh@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Some hydrogen definitely