91–100 of 220 posts
Fun fact: given that the meter is defined in terms of speed of light (and cesium frequency), "changing the speed of light" is a counterfactual impossibility, what is actually changing are some other fundamental constants.
I think the old SciFi classic "Zone of Thought" and the other book which name escapes me now explorer this idea, although not 5Km/h. To stop a 'blight' in the universe, some natural laws have to be changed wherever it starts to spread, is the story premise if memory serves me.
I think the old SciFi classic "Zone of Thought" and the other book which name escapes me now explorer this idea, although not 5Km/h. To stop a 'blight' in the universe, some natural laws have to be changed wherever it starts to spread, is the story premise if memory serves me.
I think the old SciFi classic "Zone of Thought" and the other book which name escapes me now explorer this idea, although not 5Km/h. To stop a 'blight' in the universe, some natural laws have to be changed wherever it starts to spread, is the story premise if memory serves me.
"A Fire Upon the Deep" and "a Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge
The Forever War series changes the speed of light at the end to mess with the mortals, not to prevent any calamity however.
Feels like W goes back (instead of forwards like in an FPS), and S goes forward. Is that intended or just my keyboard being weird? EDIT: ah, by setting 'Speed of light' parameter to 40km/hr I find it a bit more intuitive
Some time ago I had the following shower thought: "the Speed of Light is pretty slow" How i got there: The closest major galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda, and is 2.5 million! light-years away. And this is the CLOSEST galaxy, the universe is extremely big. Of course that as you get closer to C, the traveling object will experience time dilation (relative to observer), so the time passed will be less. At 99.999% C,…
if we add more 9s, is it possible to reduce that number to within a human lifespan?
Some time ago I had the following shower thought: "the Speed of Light is pretty slow" How i got there: The closest major galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda, and is 2.5 million! light-years away. And this is the CLOSEST galaxy, the universe is extremely big. Of course that as you get closer to C, the traveling object will experience time dilation (relative to observer), so the time passed will be less. At 99.999% C,…
> At 99.999% C, the traveler would take ~11,000 years if we add more 9s, is it possible to reduce that number to within a human lifespan?
At 99.999% of C, the Lorentz factor is ~223.6.
It grows pretty quickly as you add more 9s to the fraction. Every two additional 9s multiply the Lorentz factor by ~10.
So at 0.99999999999 c, it'd be ~223,607x.
2.5M years / 223,607 is: ~11 years
Of course this is all highly theoretical.