#relativity

[prokopetz]

Kerbal Space Program was once afflicted by a bug the fans dubbed the "Deep Space Kraken", whereby if you travelled far enough from the origin of the game's coordinate system, floating point rounding errors would cause your spacecraft's components to become misaligned and/or clip into each other, resulting in the craft falling apart or exploding for no obvious reason.

The bug was later fixed by defining the active spacecraft itself as the origin of the game's coordinate system. In effect, the spacecraft no longer moves; instead, the spacecraft remains stationary and the entire universe moves around it. Owing to how relativity works, to the player this is indistinguishable from the spacecraft moving about within a fixed coordinate system, and it ensures that the body of the craft and its components will always be modelled with maximal precision.

While elegant, this solution introduced a new problem: it was now possible, by doing certain stupid tricks with relativistic velocities, to introduce floating point rounding errors to everything except the active spacecraft. In extreme cases, this could result in the destruction of the entire observable universe.

Some might call this one of those situations where the solution proves to be worse than the problem. I call it a perfect expression of what Kerbal Space Program is truly about.

[todays-xkcd]

It says to cut the onions into 1/4" slices, but I'd better correct for length contraction.

Recipe Relativity [Explained]

[facts-i-just-made-up]

What does E = mc^2 actually mean?

Let's start at the very beginning, A very good place to start. When you read, you begin with A-B-C. In science, you begin with E and MC:

E, a quantitative property.

M, the mass of something there.

C, a speed as fast as light.

2, that stands for something squared.

So, if mass and light combined-

Square, and equal energy,

Then, in relative spacetime-

That will bring us back to E equals MC (squared).

That's all in a musical by Rodgers and Einstein of course.

[artbyzigzag]

Meep by ./\/\/\/

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[4gravitons]

Book Review: The Case Against Reality

Nima Arkani-Hamed shows up surprisingly rarely in popular science books. A major figure in my former field, Nima is extremely quotable (frequent examples include “spacetime is doomed” and “the universe is not a crappy metal”), but those quotes don’t seem to quite have reached the popular physics mainstream. He’s been interviewed in books by physicists, and has a major role in one popular physics…

[johbeil]

Old movie

“That’s an old movie – you can tell by the cell phones they’re using.”

Note This was said by a relatively young person (born in 1986). Makes me feel downright ancient because old movies to me are still those that were made in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. They definitely used rotary phones in those days - if any.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Originally published here.

[lemondemonlyrics-daily]

I’m falling up, they’re falling down

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Ideology wants to convince you that its truth is absolute. A novel shows you that everything is relative. The more ideological our century becomes, the more anachronistic is the novel. But the more anachronistic it gets, the more we need it.

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera 1929-2023 RIP

[hisirdouxcasperan]

Milo Murphy's Law episode 3A: The Doctor Zone Files ↳ A gif(set) for every episode of Milo Murphy's Law (5/73)

[memorymeblog]

[a-fox-studies]

bro theory of relativity gave me an existential crisis

[hellothereimhannah]

Off to work

[spockvarietyhour]

Congratulations to Admiral GildedPussyJuice Joshua Winterton, you survived this season of Gilded Age! I really thought you were gonna beef it before the season finale from um, strenuous husbandly duties.

[artbyzigzag]

Ruin by ./\/\/\/

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[rchetypal]

"Anything that is created has a dark and a bright side and one should have no illusions about it. If it is in any way good and ideal, it is good and ideal only for certain people; for others it is hell."

— Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar

[lanyrinthoflament]

Two-thousand year old wisdom, Marcus Aurelius