• @MalachaiConstant
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      422 months ago

      Upvoting because I’ve never seen this

      but also I am now sad

    • @quaternaut
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      302 months ago

      But what’s the frame of reference?

        • @xenoclast
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          Where’s the center ?

          Ps: i know the answer… this was a joke

            • @[email protected]
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              62 months ago

              I believe the current theory is that the big bang happened everywhere equally, like a stretch, so there is no specific spot we can point to where it happened.

              I wonder if Fido knows how to handle that in his calculations.

            • @xenoclast
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              22 months ago

              Oh boy you’re gonna have good time learning about the formation of spacetime!

              I’ll start you off. If space and time didn’t exist before the big bang…

              • @[email protected]
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                Yeah I read about it when the other guy responded.

                Guess you can’t trust everything they tell you in school!

    • @Daft_ish
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      -42 months ago

      Is it though?

      You’ve died, what’s there to be afraid of? You’re no longer a bag of chemicals what is there to feel?

      • 🦄🦄🦄
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        2 months ago

        In the comic you are still conscious. Forever. Not being able to move in any direction, the universe around you slowly drifting away. You will be swallowed by the darkness between the stars for a hundred billion years, all the while fully aware that you are completely and utterly alone with your own thoughts.

        • @Daft_ish
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          I guess. If consciousness alone is that unpleasant to you.

          • 🦄🦄🦄
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            62 months ago

            How long was the longest you have been alone with zero sensual input?

            • @Daft_ish
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              How long have you been a wantless senseless immortal spectre?

  • @Stiffneckedppl
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    562 months ago

    I was expecting to see a trail of ghosts left behind as the earth moves away.

    • @[email protected]
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      312 months ago

      There is the Great Ghost Cluster in the distant void, passing messages up and down its endless stream of ghost bodies in order to log world events at the speed of voice.

      • @[email protected]
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        82 months ago

        This is actually an awesome writing prompt: The older ghosts get updates from the younger ones, and send stories back from their own lives, like a long telephone wire…

        • @[email protected]
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          32 months ago

          That story wouldn’t get to the beginning of the line without being completely changed to be unrecognisable

          • @hamms
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            11 month ago

            That feels like practically a feature, when you have an eternity to fill and only a finite number of original stories with which to do so.

  • hswolf
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    462 months ago

    to be a little pedantic, if you take in account the rate of expansion of the universe, and take as a truth that the ghost stays stationary in spacetime, earth would disappear in an instant

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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      202 months ago

      The spirit is already moving at the same speed and in the same direction as the earth when it exits the body.

      • @braxy29
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        92 months ago

        😆 this comment really amused me, i guess the basic physics plus ghosts in the same matter-of-fact statement

      • @[email protected]
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        92 months ago

        That’s a fair point. So then one might expect the ghost to continue their motion tangential to the orbit of the earth, and so they’ll float away.

        However, the theory of general relativity suggests that gravity isn’t really like other forces. It doesn’t push or pull anything at all; but rather its bends the fabric of time and space. Objects ‘falling’ due to gravity, or ‘in orbit’ around a planet are actually moving in a direct straight line in curved space-time. And this is why gravity still applies to massless objects such as light. So then, I’d say the ghost would still be affected by gravity - and that their main concern would be falling into the earth rather than drifting away.

      • hswolf
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        42 months ago

        But that would imply that the ghost is a physical thing right?

        Does it come to existence when we are born? Or does it appear when we die?

        Does It behave like matter? If not, properties like velocity, inertia or energy wouldn’t apply.

        The comic is really amusing to bring forth these questions

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          Depends on if fell to your death or maybe crashed into something while driving uphill.

          I’m imaging in all these jumpers passing each other in the earth’s core now.

    • enkers
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      2 months ago

      Would that not depend on your inertial frame? Like isn’t the entire concept of being stationary relative to spacetime not an actual thing? I’m not trying to be pedantic, BTW, I literally don’t know the answer to my question.

      • @[email protected]
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        Yup. Same as the time travel meme that was on the front page recently, this relies on there being a fixed inertial frame which is not a thing in our weird universe.

    • hswolf
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      72 months ago

      which is all the more terrifying

  • @FMT99
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    452 months ago

    This implies there’s an absolute center to the universe relative to which the earth moves but spirits do not.

    • Psaldorn
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      352 months ago

      Or you just maintain your velocity at death. With no other forces, that’s the way you head forever

      • @[email protected]
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        62 months ago

        But this character died stationary on the floor. Unless it’s the Earth moving away from her as part of its normal orbit, in which case she’ll get to visit it again soon

        • JustEnoughDucks
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          292 months ago

          No because the sun and the earth are always moving in a line and an orbit in addition to their orbit.

          The actual absolute position would resemble a curving helix or something. Nothing in the universe is ever in the same general location twice for our current understanding. Everything is moving.

          • @[email protected]
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            52 months ago

            We don’t know if her drift axes are centered on the sun or not. I’m going to believe that they are

            • @[email protected]
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              22 months ago

              I love these discussions, they’re not possible but I always learn something. Why would you believe that her drift axis is aligned with the sun and not the earth? What about the moon or Mars? Why do you think that the sun is special?

              • @[email protected]
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                52 months ago

                The sun would be the natural parent coordinate system of Mars, Earth, and (grandparent of) The Moon. So I see her centered on either Earth, the Sun, the Centre of the Milkway, Centre of the Local Group, etc. etc.

                The speed at which she drifted through the wall wasn’t on level of thousands of km’s per second, it was on the order of a few meters per second.

                This would admittedly rule out the Sun, since the Earth has an orbital speed of 29 km/s around the sun[1], and a spin velocity of 0.5 km/s[2], giving a minimum of 28 km/s. If we factor in orbit of the sun from the Galactic Centre at 240 km/s, giving 240 +/ 29, which is still too high for our range. If we factor in the speed of the Galaxy, then we’re just adding more zeroes.

                What about the moon or Mars?

                So, to come full circle on my comment: Yeah maybe, the relative speed of moon and Mars would be on the order of meters per second that we see in the panel. I just don’t see why they of all planetary bodies would be chosen for ghosts, instead of other natural origins.

                1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_orbit
                2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_rotation#Angular_speed
                3: https://www.universetoday.com/133414/distance-speed-suns-orbit-around-galactic-centre-measured/

                • @[email protected]
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                  22 months ago

                  Yeah I thought that too, if the spirit isn’t gravitationally bound earth would move away from it considerably faster. This did get me to ask myself a good question. (This isn’t it) What if we assume the spirit in the comic is dark matter and preserved any momentum at the time of death? So Earth’s gravity is pulling on it but not enough to overcome the momentum the spirit had when it broke off from the body. The Sun and Earth could be special in that constructed situation. The question I thought was, does the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces have anything to do with keeping me planted on the planet?

              • Promethiel
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                22 months ago

                Ghosts are not matter. Thus they must be energy. But they’re still not massless. Uh uh, ghost wishes are like magnetism and uh…yeah, ghost wishes change axial drift, but only relative to things the spirit perceives as greater… fuck I need coffee to make this work.

          • @ripcord
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            22 months ago

            Not exactly. Things are moving relative to each other, but it really is all relative and local. There’s no central point in the universe that the earth is moving away from. The earth is moving relative to the sun. But relative to you, the earth isn’t moving. Relative to the earth, the sun is moving.

            There’s no reason for her to move away from the earth unless she’s being accelerated by something. It’s not like the earth would zip away because it is moving relative to some distant, arbitrary point and she suddenly becomes “stationary”. There’s no universal “stationary”.

            I guess where it gets messy is that the earth IS being accelerated to some extent by different things (other planets, the moon, etc). I’m not sure how much. So if she didn’t accelerate along with it at all, it would move away from her.

            • oce 🐆
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              2 months ago

              There’s no reason for her to move away from the earth unless she’s being accelerated by something.

              Isn’t the Earth accelerated by the Sun’s gravity, while she isn’t anymore? If yes, she would keep going straight while Earth keeps following its circular orbit, which is equivalent to her moving away from Earth.

              • @ripcord
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                2 months ago

                You know…I believe you’re right. If she somehow became totally massless.

                Edit: no, as other people pointed out it doesn’t make any sense that she wouldn’t be “affected” by gravity even with no mass.

                • oce 🐆
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                  12 months ago

                  Edit: no, as other people pointed out it doesn’t make any sense that she wouldn’t be “affected” by gravity even with no mass.

                  That’s the assumption in my comment: “while she isn’t anymore” accelerated by gravity. I think that’s what we could infer from the trajectory on the comics.

                • @Alk
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                  12 months ago

                  I think the existence of ghosts at all implies at the least some sort of spiritual plane or dimension that they’re partially in, or at the “worst” straight up magic wherein ghosts cannot interact with the physical world, even with gravity.

                  Being able to see may be part of that magic or a function of the spiritual plane as well.

                  That would, I think, be able to explain the events of the comic.

                  If instead we assume ghosts were entirely explainable by science, that could change things. We’d also have to account for the photons interacting with her and letting her see.

              • @[email protected]
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                22 months ago

                again, straight compared to what?

                there is no center of the universe, nor a universal grid that things can reference. one of the most fundamental tenets of astrophysics is that everything is relative and statements like “travelling straight” are simply nonsensical unless you specify what it’s travelling straight in relation to.

                • @[email protected]
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                  2 months ago

                  The… Earth and Sun.

                  Those are the reference frames.

                  You start by traveling with the Earth.
                  Gravity “turns off” for you.
                  The Earth then curves away as it orbits the Sun.

                  You just follow the tangent line.

            • @[email protected]
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              32 months ago

              If she is still affected by gravity, but passes through matter, she would immedietly fall through the floor and start orbiting the earth through the planet.

              Without gravity she would no longer follow the earth’s/sun’s/etc. orbit.

              • @[email protected]
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                12 months ago

                but the question is what would determine the trajectory then, there is no universal arbitrary straight line, that’s a concept that just doesn’t make sense under physics as we know it.

                Even massless particles gain an effective mass and thus interact with gravity/spacetime; according to everything we’ve observed and calculated so far the only sensible result is acting like light does, and weakly interacting with gravity.

                • @[email protected]
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                  32 months ago

                  Well, yea, idk how moving through spacetime without following it’s curvature would makes any sense. Which is what gravity is. Meaning the comic makes no sense.

        • @[email protected]
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          82 months ago

          If the only force no longer acting on her is gravity, she just instantly got a massive new vector

    • @[email protected]
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      102 months ago

      There absolutely is a coordinate system like that, in the comic it would be the spirit’s coordinate system with them at the center. There actually is an absolute center of the universe and it is you and me, and everything else in the universe is at the center of it’s universe (depending on your definition of the universe). That’s what special relativity is all about, each thing is at the center of it’s own universe and you have to translate any measurements between coordinate systems.

      All the comic implies is that a sprit doesn’t follow null geodesics, but that’s general relativity.

      • oce 🐆
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        42 months ago

        There actually is an absolute center of the universe and it is you and me

        I think that’s the observable universe, not just a specific definition of the universe. I believe the consensus is that the observable universe is only a part of the universe centered on each observer, and there’s no center to the “full” universe.

  • @Reddfugee42
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    342 months ago

    I always thought it funny that traditional ghosts can go through walls but are held up by the floor. Finally some consistency.

    • @KepBen
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      102 months ago

      They’re just behaving as they’ve been taught ghosts are supposed to behave.

    • @Wilzax
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      82 months ago

      That’s because floors aren’t part of their finished business, but walls are.

    • @[email protected]
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      72 months ago

      Just implies that ghost have some kind of interaction with gravity. Maybe ghosts make up dark matter.

      • @Buddahriffic
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        62 months ago

        If you just had interaction with gravity, you’d fall through the floor.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          The interaction is clear more complicated than just pulled down, it also causes interaction with normal matter but only in a direction of the acceleration from gravity.

  • @[email protected]
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    Nothing is as terrifying as SpaceEngine.

    Frankly. This… software rearranged my brain and changed me fundamentally.

    There are no words to describe being lost in the 10^27 of space. It’s just too much, you will go insane and if you survive you will lose the ability to talk with people, lose every single thing that you thought matters. You will be alone even in the busiest of places, some part of you forever stuck in the 10^27 of emptiness between Galaxy Groups.

    This isn’t a joke. Ignorance is bliss

  • @[email protected]
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    262 months ago

    So there’s just a long ass trail of ghosts floating in space?

    At least some sections would be heavily populated…

    • The Snark Urge
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      No, because the solar system is moving together along the outer edge of the cosmos Milky Way. I don’t know if there’s anything such as a cosmic absolute frame of reference for “no motion”, but (depending on what you’re motionless in reference to) you would likely never see another soul.

  • @RememberTheApollo_
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    232 months ago

    Should be a comet trail of ghosts drifting behind the Earth. She wouldn’t be alone.

  • go $fsck yourself
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    222 months ago

    Odd how they chose gravity, but not the fact the earth is both rotating and revolving around the sun. Even more than that, the entire solar system is revolving around the center of our galaxy.

    • Ephera
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      182 months ago

      The way I interpreted it, is that gravity normally holds you on Earth despite all the effects you listed, and gravity not affecting this ghost, that’s the problem.

      • @HeyThisIsntTheYMCA
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        12 months ago

        Gravity is just the pressure of all the ghosts keeping us down

  • ekZepp
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    2 months ago

    Thank you, just what I needed. More existential horror. 💀👍🏻

    • @[email protected]
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      22 months ago

      Well do catch up on SMBC if that’s actually your objective. His bits are deeper on all that than anything I’ve read without some good drugs.

  • @nexguy
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    182 months ago

    I always thought it was fun to imagine you are an immortal being and you get to walk around pranking people like jumping in front of a train but just bounce off or eating a sandwich with bleach but you are perfectly ok then one day the sun balloons and eventually the earth gets destroyed and you are wisked away then eventually trapped in the gravity well of a brown dwarf star and get sucked to the center for trillions of years.

    • @hypnicjerk
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      82 months ago

      terrorists and warmongers were the real good guys after all…?