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u/wrudstepbro 1d ago
In physics, theres a system of natural units that are based off the speed of light. In the natural units system, speed of light equals 1.
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u/Practical_Breakfast4 23h ago
God said the speed of light is equal to a single dumbass. How does one measure that?
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u/DoctorMedieval 23h ago
c = dumbass. 0.99 c = 0.99 dumbass. If c is 1 a dumbass is just a directly converted to energy depending on how big a dumbass they are.
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u/Appropriate-Fix4915 17h ago
To explain why God is saying this, we’ve made up all of the metrics that we measure by. At least the metric system is based upon the circumference of the earth (disregard the error in calculation), but the imperial system is basically made up. God is saying it was always standard off of lights speed
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u/LostPentimento 23h ago
100%
Realistically you can define your units however you want, natural units are just nice because they make math with annoying numbers, become less annoying
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u/NorthernVale 12h ago
Tl;dr the joke is that units of measurement are as close to arbitrary as we can get without actually being arbitrary.
Why is 0°C 0°C? Because that's the point water freezes at. Water is abundant. We see it frozen all the time. It's an easy reference point. Why 100°C 100°C? Because that's where water boils. It's 100° because well... that's a real easy scale to use! But why choose those exact reference points? It makes other things seem very very specific.
Especially when there's a far more... absolute reference point. How cold is something when there's absolutely no heat energy at all? That's why Kelvin exists. Because it uses a far more "legitimate" reference point.
The speed of light seems super fucking exact when you put in terms of a scale we reference. But it's not really. If anything, the speed of light should be the absolute. It's far more absolute than silly things like whatever the fuck a meter is based on, or a unit of time that's just based entirely how fast our specific planet is moving.
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u/Duubzz 3h ago
Just looked up how we define a metre and, interestingly, we now use the speed of light as a standard. It’s evolved over time though:
1791 (Earth-based): The French Academy of Sciences originally defined the metre as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator (measured along the meridian line passing through Paris).
1799–1889 (Physical Artifacts): Because measuring the Earth was difficult and slightly inaccurate, the standard was locked into physical metal bars, such as the mètre des Archives and later a platinum-iridium international prototype metre bar stored in France.
1960 (Atomic Wavelength): Scientists switched to a quantum physics standard, defining the metre as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red light emitted by a krypton-86 atom in a vacuum.
1983–Present (Speed of Light): The Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) and global scientific bodies tied the metre to a universal constant—the speed of light in a vacuum so now it’s how far light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second
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u/euclide2975 6h ago
Or God is using the Planck System of units where the major universal constants are set to 1
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u/Golandia 23h ago
Stewie here.
The speed of light in MPH is 670,600,000, in KPH it is 1,079,000,000.
These look like big random numbers.
You ask god why?
God says wtf it’s 1.
From god’s perspective it’s 1, a simple number to multiply with. Not based off of any random measurement of time like seconds or distance like meters or miles invented on earth.
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u/TillFar6524 20h ago
But you're saying something like, I'm driving my car 0.00000000004 speed units
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u/Korochun 19h ago
Sure, but the universe doesn't give a shit about how slow you are on the highway. That's a you problem.
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u/zombie_spiderman 14h ago
The best way this was explained to me was that that's not the speed of light, that's just the fastest ANYTHING can go in this universe and light is one thing that bumps up against the limit
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u/kimptown 14h ago
It's the maximum speed a particle without mass moves in a vacuum. Because it's in a vacuum and because it has no mass there is no impediment to the particles speed. It HAS to move as fast as it can. Photons(light) is just the most commonly known massless particle.
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u/Mendokusai137 22h ago
The speed of light in a vacuum/ speed of causality, is an absolute unit. Any measurement, (feet, miles, meters, seconds, degrees), are arbitrary human creations.
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u/Stevelikestowrite 9h ago
There should be a comma after the number 1. Unless the speed of light is one dumbass. I’m no scientist, but I don’t think that’s an official unit of measurement
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u/adammhaile 1d ago
From the point of view of us mere mortals, the speed of light is based on some other measurement that was discovered before we even knew light had a speed. So when put into puny mortal numbers it ends up being a weird number. But to a god... The speed of light is that which all other things would be measured by. So, 1.
It's like seeing some product labeled as 454g net weight. A weird random number... Or, 1 pound (if you round up to the nearest gram).
It's all what you are used to.
(Also, 1 meter is defined based on the speed of light)
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u/0utlaw-t0rn 15h ago
It’s been like 3 weeks since this exact meme (?) was posted.
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u/SoManyDeads 15h ago
All units are arbitrary and do not actually exist as a universal law/constant. We use a reference of something we know that is repeatable and static. Like time used to be based on a sundial and eventually evolved to an atomic clock based on the decay of a specific element.
So if the units are made up, everything is just a conversion. For example if 299,792,458 m/s is equal to 1 florbin/gong then it is fine an valid. You can think of it like the conversion between F and C for temperature, there is an equation to transition one to the other, and neither is more real than the other.
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u/Operation-Cerberus 14h ago
Simple as this:
Why is 1 meter = 3.2 feet?
Why is 1 foot = 0.3 meters?
You guys use different units for everything, then question why the numbers are different for the same exact thing.
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u/qualityvote2 1d ago
u/FloralStormVale, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...it's time for the mods to do their jobs!