this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
292 points (95.3% liked)

Showerthoughts

35182 readers
1369 users here now

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.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Maybe they could have their own talk show. And it could broadcast coast to coast

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

*ghost-to-ghost

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Are you getting enough oxygen? flex

[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 years ago (4 children)

If they're unaffected by gravity, chances are they don't have mass. If they don't have mass, they're not constrained by the Higgs field, which in turn means that they can never move at any velocity below light speed.

Their unfortunate fate is to roam across all of space at the maximum possible velocity in perpetuity.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

Their unfortunate fate is to roam across all of space at the maximum possible velocity in perpetuity.

On the other hand, it all happens in an instant to them.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nah we're by a catholic cemetery. They definitely have mass. I suggest instead they all fall to the Earth's Core since learning to ghost fly probably takes more than 80 minutes, and once you're down in the ghost orgy why leave?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

fall to the Earth's Core

we can save them, but I'll need a rat, a giant nuclear drill train, and a family of orcas

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Can't you theoretically just move super fast but across a very small distance? They could just "stay" with the Earth, moving with it as needed, maybe eventually they'd learn to do that automatically as well.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

And experience no time.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So everyone who ever died spends all eternity consciously drifting in space.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago

So eventually, the ghosts stopped thinking.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Massless light is still affected by gravity, though...

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (12 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

It was a joke -- it behaves as a wave until you observe it; then it collapses into a particle.

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago

This sounds like it should be the premise of a Doctor Who episode.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Or they’re flung in a straight-line tangent out from Earth’s orbit, like water drops flying off a spinning sponge

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I misread ghosts as "goats"

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Goats can climb anything, so maybe they climbed all the way into space?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

I think about the same thing every time I watch a time travel movie or show.

They should teleport into empty space every time

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I guess that depends on whether you only travel through time (time vs space), or whether you follow the time-line back (aka. travel through time and space, kinda like both you and I are doing right now).

EDIT: there's also the reference point, and whether you can bring a physical vessel, or have to possess your younger self.

Back to the Future appears to be using a kind of relative spatial reference point, and you bring your body along the ride.

Contrary, Steins Gate (the part shown in the series) uses a body as reference, and has you "possess" said body. Though it hints that Back to the Future-like travel is also possible.

Not sure if I can name any story where time and space are disconnected.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Larry niven and the known space universe. Doesn't have time travel, but does have a form of teleportation, where you have to offset the energies for velocity changes between teleport target and teleport destination.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Ahh, enjoyer of time travel movies and anime!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

There's scifi that did this. The series Seven Days is one example

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Which is why they're usually just temporary visitors to Earth. The planet is actually passing through them, so they fade in, crying their despair at their lonely fate, and fade back out...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So…we’re flying through a universe filled with ghosts and the appear as we happen upon them as we glide through space. Which is truly fascinating since most ghosts people see appear to be humans or humanoids clad in local clothing from the most recent three centuries of Human fashion. It’s mind boggling to think how many recent-development earths must have passed just in front of us over the billions of years of universe for us to see such spirits.

Either that or there are a lot of liars and hallucinations out there. I know which one of these options I believe in!

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You just made death infinitely more scary

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I'm so sorry

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If that were true, they'd speed away from us at about 900mph.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Much faster than that, even. The surface of the planet moves at up to ~1000mph relative to the earth’s center of mass, but once you factor in the orbit around the sun, the orbit around the galaxy, and even the galaxy’s motion, you’re looking at miles per second instead of mph.

One article I found when googling this says that measuring relative to the cosmic microwave background, we are moving at 390 km/s.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Relative to what, though? A lot of lore has ghost tied to locations on earth, which are typically fixed places. I guess if there was some kind of astology ghost tied to certain stars it might rocket off in some unexpected way.

Maybe that could be a tool in some exorcist’s bag. Convince a ghost it’s tied to some stars, and trick it into changing its frame of reference.

Sorry, adhd, just saw the microwave background part. What i said still makes sense though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think this might be the most fun answer, that the ghost decides its own frame of reference and can be tricked to choosing the wrong thing then just fly off into space at incredible speed.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Are they also inertialess? Being immune to gravity won't make them just stop; stop, relative to what?

So, they continue in a straight line, while their body moves in rotation with the Earth's surface × orbit around the sun × orbit around Sagittarius A × whatever movement the Milky Way is making based on the local cluster... I wonder how much angular movement the supercluster is making.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

If ghosts are real... then every living thing, cockroach, dogs, fish, fleas, birds, they get ghosts too, billions upon billions of ghosts flooding, saturating the universe.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

Inb4 they have miniscule but non zero mass, and they're the actual dark matter

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

So if they don't experience gravity they are made of neither matter nor antimatter.

load more comments
view more: next ›