Both meters and seconds are units of Earth specific measures of space and time. Pretty sure at a cosmic scale god would give fuckall about how we measure and name our shit
Fictional
Submitted 2 weeks ago by NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/0a529044-c9e6-4acd-a774-e00d799df750.jpeg
Comments
thewebroach@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
4am@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
If a god existed and gave a so much of a shit about our masturbatory habits he’d be at least tangentially aware of what the fuck a meter was.
ThunderQueen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
For a second i thought you were calling the metric system masturbatory and then i remembered that christians really do think god watches them jork it. Kinky
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
It’s neat to think about what units an alien civilization would come up with independently. Like the Plank Distance is fundamental to physics, so they’d probably have something for that.
Degrees Celsius is based on freezing and boiling point of water, so if they came up with a base 10 numbering system and water is key to their biology, then they’d probably come up with that.
A calorie is the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1L of water by 1C. A liter is a volume of a cube 0.1m on each side. The meter was originally ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and north pole (and subsequent redefinitions are based on that original measurement). They wouldn’t come up with the meter, and they wouldn’t come up with liters or calories, either.
MasterOKhan@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Water’s boiling point and freezing point depends on the pressure of the local atmosphere unfortunately! But I like your logic.
VoterFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Hopefully they’d come up with a better numbering system than base 10. Base 10 is the worst part of metric tbh.
TheFogan@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Degrees Celsius is based on freezing and boiling point of water, so if they came up with a base 10 numbering system and water is key to their biology, then they’d probably come up with that.
Waters boiling point isn’t a constant though… it’s dependent on the atmosphere.
Hell there’s also no telling if our preference to base 10 is relative to our number of fingers so neither of those are givens.
gloktawasright@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You might enjoy the book Project Hail Mary if you haven’t read it!
icelimit@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Actually most constants have been standardized to natural sources. A meter is now a fixed (small) fraction of the speed of light in vacuum. A second is pegged to the duration of a Cesium isotope spinning or something. Just that the multipliers are chosen to be convenient to us.
Should we need to talk measurements with aliens, we can, and can convert between their units and ours.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
SI being capable of interspecies translation is an interesting thing I hadn’t considered.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah in 2019 we even managed to get the pesky kilogram defined by a natural constant.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
1 Meter = x umthilions plancs. There, retrospectively defined. In that sense.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Well, akshually they started out as being earth specific, as convenient ways to measure human-relevant amounts of space and time, and were standardized after that. So really God still wouldn’t care to use meters or seconds, but would probably have their own units which could also be standardized with natural phenomena.
Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml 2 weeks ago
Right but the actual quantities are arbitrary. A metre is a fixed fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum, but it’s an arbitrary fraction chosen because it was convenient. We could just as well have chosen it to be half or twice as long. Same with the second. And the kilogram, etc.
Typhoon@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Also “in a vacuum” would be assumed, since almost the entire universe is a vacuum.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
i’ve just figured out how the religious universe ends. some physicist explains to their god that a lot of their assumptions were based on something being in a vacuum, and then their god says “what vacuum? you mean all that sparse hydrogen?” so the physicist says “let’s find out what happens when you have a real vacuum” and then the universe ends at the speed of dumbassery.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Except all the gases and dust. What we know as space vacuum is not empty. Go to a great void for real vacuum.
petersr@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think that is the joke of the posted image.
AoxoMoxoA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
People always forget about the rest of the universe. Drives me nuts sometimes
Windex007@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Technically a second is an arbitrary measure of a proprty cesium133. Now, anyways
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
1 Dumbass = 299 792 458 m/s
Thanks, God. We’ll spend the next 3000 years obsessing over that.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
that is the linear rate at which dumbassery expands, yes. also light, but that’s because as yet tachyons remain hypothetical/fictional and i figure dumbassyons would travel faster than light were it possible.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Is it “dumbass” (a single word) or is it “dumb/ass” (relation)?
nexguy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So dumb/ass = c
Multiply both sides by ass.
Dumb = c*ass
Hmmmmmmmm
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Nah, C is C. Who cares about the current hot measurements of space and time on a little rock, outside of us?
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
There are various systems of units where select physical constants are set to 1. A handy comparison chart is on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_units?wprov=sfla1
It turns out you can’t harmonize all the physical constants. Some will necessarily end up as some non-round number.
Most of them have speed of light = 1, but some have it as 1/α where α is the fine-structure constant (α = e² / 4πε₀ħc ≈ 0.007297)
zakobjoa@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I understand nothing I’ve just read but I’m glad you science folk have fun and funding.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Fun yes.
Funding? What’s that?
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
IMO it might be better to only look at natural units that don’t depend on the specific properties of matter (i.e. proton mass, electron charge, …)
arguably, there could be an alien civilization in our universe that is purely made of exotic matter somewhere really far away, we simply haven’t found it yet. It’s purely made of exons and kaions and yppsons and particles that don’t exist on earth, where an exon has a positive charge of 1.456… proton charges and an yppson has a negative charge of -4.132… proton charges and so on.
therefore i consider physical constants such as ħ and c and G more fundamental than e and such, because those numbers would be the same even for exotic matter, i claim.
then, is that reduced set of natural constants harmonizable?
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
A quick glance at the summary table can answer that. Planck units seem to do the trick.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I like the Stoney Units, I feel appreciated.
Acamon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Anyone come up with a good measure of distance that makes the speed of light a nice round number? I like the metric system, but the meter feels pretty arbitrary. We could do better!
jumperalex@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not arbitrary.
Since 2019, the meter has been defined as the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second, where the second is defined by a hyper-fine transition frequency of caesium.
verdare@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I mean, that is pretty arbitrary. The reason the divisor is that specific constant is because we already had meters before we knew the speed of light.
marcos@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You are correctly trying to say it’s well defined, but you are complaining about the wrong comment. You should check the meaning of “arbitrary” again.
Anyway, it’s not entirely arbitrary because it was created to represent a “round” fraction of the Earth’s circumference that is similar to the length of a person’s arms. But it deviated from that too, so it’s subjective how much that counts.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not arbitrary, pretty close to 1/40000 the N-S circumference of the earth
shneancy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
c is pretty round (universal symbol for the speed of light)
aside from that, nothing. as science and maths are mere attempts at describing the universe all our units are arbitrary, decided to be the way they are purely because you just need to pick something to be your reference point.
at no point has a true non-artificial unit emerged, there is no constant size of anything that could aid in that (one contestant for that title could be the planck lenght but that’ss just incredibly inconvenient to use. "honey could you pelase move the couch 6,25 × 1034 planck lengths to the left? [1m])
TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Proton masses, the distance light travels in a vacuum in a certain time, and cesium oscillation times are quite constant.
anzo@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
fwiw, engineers round Pi and are fine with it…
MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Math isn’t arbitrary. Otherwise there wouldn’t be constant debate about whether it’s a human creation or fundamental to any existence.
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I like the idea of basing everything off fractions of the speed of light, but still keeping base ten. Define 1 year as the time it takes for Earth to go around the sun(somewhat arbitrary in that its human centric, but the alternative seems to be defining it based off an arbitrary phenomena or an arbitrary factor of the planc length). Define 1 month as one tenth of that, and so forth. Admittedly our days wont line up with the day night cycle, but who needs that? Days are arbitrary anyways, and only matter to ensure your factory workers show up as soon as theyre legally allowed to.
i_love_FFT@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
In many advanced physics fields, they use an arbitrary unit system in which c=1, making equations easier to write down. E=m
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
That is the least arbitrary unit system. It’s the only unit that actually matters. Meters are arbitrary, in that it’s a number chosen to be useful to humans. The speed of light isn’t. It’s a measurement of a natural phenomenon, which we didn’t decide. (arguably, the time measurement is arbitrary though.)
turdas@suppo.fi 2 weeks ago
The meter isn’t really arbitrary, even when you ignore the description by @jumperalex. It was originally defined as 1/10,000,000th the distance from Earth’s pole to the equator, which is a pretty reasonable basis to use by 1791 standards.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s pretty damn arbitrary on a universal scale
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
That’s still arbitrary. The definition is just something that gave a result that was a useful scale for humans. There’s no reason to pick that over, say, the average distance to the moon, or something else. That distance is just fairly easy to measure and reasonably consistent over time. There are other choices for it though. The 1/10,000,000 is just whatever number was needed to make it useful. Nature doesn’t care about that distance, unlike the speed of light.
ozymandias@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
The common octopus can grow anywhere from 1 to 1.3 meter
that is not arbitrary at all!
TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I have for my worldbuilding project, but it’s not famous or anything.
In base 12, there are 2 000 000 000 cesium oscillations in a tik (about 1.12 seconds), and light travels 80 000 000 mata in a tik (a mata is about 0.85m)
Asetru@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I think it’s (1 Planck length / 1 Planck time). If you take the smallest distance that exists and divide it by the shortest amount of time that can pass, you have exactly c.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
If you take the smallest distance that exists and divide it by the shortest amount of time that can pass
btw that’s a nonsensical argument. there can be both space and time smaller than that.
unrealMinotaur@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I would like to give a massive shout out to the fact that a foot is only 5mm off from being a light nanosecond. (Pure coincidence, but imagine if the next God emperor of America changed the foot definition by 5mm to make a truly science based unit of measurement.)
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The speed of light is one lightyear per year
Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Only problem – which year? They’ve got different lengths.
cynar@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We do, light travels 1 lightsecond per second.
Oh, and 1 lightpicosecond is around 2.998mm.
100 lightpicoseconds is also very close to 1’.
Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Just use the speed of light as base and measure the distance in time units (implying *c). 100 psc (lightpicoseconds) are a bit more than 1⅛ inch, 4 ~ 1 mm, 1 nsc (lightnanosecond) is 1 foot or 29.9 cm, 1 μsc (lightmicrosecond) ~ 299 m. Would be totally possible. Within city boundaries we should introduce a speedlimit of 1 pc (picolightspeed), pretty easy to implement.
absentbird@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Just use meters and round up to 300 million m/s for the speed of light.
null@piefed.nullspace.lol 2 weeks ago
A Lightyear?
TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Year is an incredibly arbitrary length
MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Anyone come up with a good measure of distance that makes the speed of light a nice round number? I like the metric system, but the meter feels pretty arbitrary. We could do better!
Originally, the meter was defined as one ten millionth the distance from the north pole to the equator, as it runs through Paris. The unit and system were picked for ease of use for day to day activities. It is also tied to the attributes of our planet, which is also how we derived the time units that we use.
That’s the opposite of arbitrary, no?
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 2 weeks ago
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The actual answer is because the universe had to pick a finite number and it probably doesnt use meters as an internal measurement ruler for scaling so
MrConfusion@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nice description. I enjoyed your argument. Just a small correction from my side, neutrinos aren’t massless. They are very, very low mass though, and so naturally move very close to c.
buttnugget@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It doesn’t make sense to me to read it as a single unit of dumbass. I think it’s supposed to say “1, dumbass”. God admonishing the person.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Speed of light in a true vacuum.
Speed of light through any non-vacuum decreases.
The speed of causality remains the same.
dukatos@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Because the CPU runs at 300GHz.
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
There is no god
reddifuge@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
God has no place in science.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Can somebody reupload the image at a non-feddit.org host? Feddit is incredibly annoying in that it geoblocks most of Asia.
–
Wait what? Why?
Well apparently asia is the source of a lot of scraping traffic, and they’re an European focused website, so they went with the nuclear option of blocking the entire continent and change. Never mind that as one of the bigger instances on the Threadiverse, they’re degrading the user experience for an entire continent. I brought the issue up to them previously, but they didn’t seem too concerned about it.
Example of degraded user experience for Asia: Image
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It took me awhile to understand the punchline (god is saying the speed of light is 1 dumbass, not calling the person a dumbass as I first thought). Does that mean the speed of light is slow?
bufalo1973@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Is there a unit for the distance light travels in a Plank time?
fargeol@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
“Okay, but why the fine-structure constant?”
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Then what is 2?
EldenLord@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Physicists all around would start crying, that’s for sure
stupidcasey@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What? Light doesn’t have speed, speed would imply some sort of relative movement that would require something like 3 spatial dimensions but even then everything would move at the same “speed” if you add up the dimensions the real question is why are you moving through space? And that gets into causality and a bunch of other God stuff you wouldn’t be interested in.
SmackemWittadic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Speed of light in vacuum is c. So, 1 c = 1 dumbass
icelimit@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Insert Einstein quote about stupidity
RQG@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
dumbass is a nice name for a speed unit.
FinalRemix@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And as we know, dumbasses are quick.
Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Nothing travels faster than stupidity.
solomonschuler@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
“I was wondering where the units went” noted: c = 1 dumbass ≈ 3 * 10^8 m/s