Would be a nice thing, because atomic bombs wouldn't work at all. According to E=mc^2, the energy which would come out of a atomic fission would be hardly measurable.
Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
281–290 of 294 posts
Re: Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
#282looks like ur high
Re: Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “At 99.999% C, the traveler would take ~11,000 years to arrive to Andromeda.” So presumably this means 11k years from an earth point of view? But the traveler would still be alive and a very short time would have passed for him?
Nope! Far, far longer. I don’t know the specifics that the GP used but Andromeda is about 2,500,000ly away. An observer on Earth must perceive you as taking more than 2,500,000 years to get there, as you would have to have exceeded the speed of light to arrive any sooner. At 1g of constant acceleration you can reach Andromeda in just under 15 years of experienced time. An observer on Earth will perceive you as having…
So the question becomes where does the 11k come in? It was just wrong?
Re: Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
#284Re: Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
#285Re: Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
#286Re: Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope! Far, far longer. I don’t know the specifics that the GP used but Andromeda is about 2,500,000ly away. An observer on Earth must perceive you as taking more than 2,500,000 years to get there, as you would have to have exceeded the speed of light to arrive any sooner. At 1g of constant acceleration you can reach Andromeda in just under 15 years of experienced time. An observer on Earth will perceive you as having…
So the question becomes where does the 11k come in? It was just wrong?
Current me if I’m wrong but I think that was a calculation based on a specific velocity at some fraction of C.
Whereas a constant 1g acceleration would far exceed that fraction and thus shorten the time significantly.
Re: Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
On YT there is a video of a flight through the solar system at the speed of light starting at the Sun. It's a pretty boring video. You see very little movement and change over time. After 8 minutes Earth slowly passes by. After 44 minutes you reach Jupiter and the video ends.
If The Moon Were Only 1 Pixel (A tediously accurate scale model of the solar system) https://www.joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsys... has a button at the bottom right for 'C' which scrolls to the right at the speed of light on that scale. https://thinkzone.wlonk.com/SS/SolarSystemModel.php?scale=10... lets you make scale model calculations (useful if you're building one). The default model scale has th…
In Australia there is a scale model of the Solar System where the sun is the main dome of Siding Springs observatory and the planets are on billboards at scale size and distance. Pluto is several hundred kilometres away (and the size of a tennis ball on the billboard)
This discussion has made me wonder what it would look like to have a different scale where the distances are based on the “speed limit” (which is mostly 100km/hr)…so that earth, for example, would be 8min from the Sun. Neptune or Pluto would be 4 - 7 hours away.
It would still fit in Australia but be significantly larger.
Re: Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
#289This means that you hear thunder before seeing the lightning.
5 km/hr = 4.56 ft/sec. so lightning is seen 1157 seconds or 19 minutes per mile. as opposed to the usual zero.
Sound travels 1100 ft/sec and is heard the usual 5 seconds per mile after the strike, but 19 minutes before the flash. Per mile of distance away.
Re: Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?
#290This is a really cool way to make relativity feel intuitive. I’ve always found that the equations are much easier to understand once you have a concrete mental picture of what an observer would actually see.
I’m curious how you’re handling the visual distinction between time dilation/length contraction and the actual light-travel-time effects an observer would see. That seems like it could get surprisingly unintuitive once the scaled-down speed of light gets close to the objects’ velocities.