this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

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[–] RojoSanIchiban@lemmy.world 30 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

Mass distorts spacetime, which to an outside observer appears to change the direction light travels. The light travels in a straight line.

Gravity doesn't alter the particle's trajectory (or ours, for that matter). The warping of spacetime from Earth's mass causes our movement through space to accelerate "down" at ~9.8 m/s^2

So the ghosts are in the center of the Earth, in nearly literal hell.

[–] octoperson@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

They would fall through the center of the earth, continue back up through the mantle, pop up momentarily to spook someone on the opposite hemisphere, then repeat the whole trip in reverse with a period of about 40 minutes.

[–] RojoSanIchiban@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

Hm.. actually are they incorporeal AND massless, or just incorporeal?

If just incorporeal, you're right of course that initially after death they'd be falling back and forth, but over time through uneven gravity/curvature and through heat loss (stretching of unequal acceleration applied across the ghost essence, potential energy conversion, yadda), they should generally settle to the center after some time, unless there's a maximum natural pressure of ghosts at whatever temperatures they have, so they may spread out somewhere within the crust if there are enough of them.

If they're incorporeal AND massless, then I totally F'd up and they'd fire off at light speed as soon as they shed their mortal coil.

[–] DrQuint@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But light isn't a particle it's a wave. I mean, just look at it... Oh... Forget it. It's a particle.

[–] MrPoopbutt@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's neither a particle nor a wave, it's a photon.

A zebra is neither a horse nor a tiger, though it shares properties with both.

[–] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

If the spacetime is distorted, and the light no longer appears to travel in a straight line, does that not mean that spacetime itself and the light that travels in are no longer straight?

How can a straight thing be distorted but still be straight?

[–] ssboomman@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago

I think a better way of explaining it is with the idea of a shortest path, and not nessesarily a straight line. With two points in space the shortest path between them will be a straight line. If there’s a large amount of gravity tugging on space time the shortest path will be curved.

[–] RojoSanIchiban@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

That's called General Relativity and Reference Frames.

Start watching PBS Spacetime if you actually want to get into it.

You're also entirely missing the point of the comment that was a joke entirely re-explaining the "reason" for ghosts ending up at the center of the Earth, which is implied by the original comment.