what a beatiful green car
Pretty sure the sonic boom of this car passing will kill this poor man
Well, when that finally happens the car will be fine, far away from Earth.
thats one FAST car
And one fast head turn
Only as it’s moving away.
But why is the car stretched? And why doesn’t it appear rotated?
The poster you are replying to is pointing out the inaccuracies that this comic didn’t consider relativistic effects.
But does it affect the object that is emitting the wave?
How would you rotate it?
If you look at an object that is moving near the speed of light, it appears rotated, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrell_rotation.
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyowwwwwwwwwwww
One shift
Two shift
Red shift
Blue shiftDamn, remember when Valve made half life games? It was a better time back then.
Half life : alyx is not that old.
I’d call that half like with an asterisk.
Why?
Because it’s not as easy to get to where you can play it? People don’t write off new games in a series that require a $1,000 PC upgrade, why is a VR headset you can get for much cheaper any different?
If it’s not the barrier to entry, is it the format? Is Metroid Prime not still a Metroid game? Is Ocarina of Time not a Zelda game?
Yes
Well I disagree with you on every point, then:
-
Ocarina of Time is a Zelda game.
-
Metroid Prime is a Metroid game.
-
The Witcher 3 is a Witcher game.
Ergo, Half-Life : Alyx is a Half-Life game.
-
Okay, just back of the envelope math. Assuming the car is truly 550nm, so the blue car is 400nm, and the red car is 700nm… How fast is the car going?
Napkin math says 0.27c.
Δλ=λ(V/c)
Now someone else can figure out the kinetic energy of the car and why the whole continent just exploded…
Why explode, the car didn’t accelerate or interact with the continent
Even ignoring the tires interacting with the road, you have air molecules. I don’t think that would be enough to destroy a continent, but it would be very destructive.
Here is a cool What If? from xkcd about throwing a baseball at 0.9c.
Wow, that seems to be the very first What If ever!
Sound like a ton worth of mass would do a lot of damage indeed
For the same reason this baseball causes an expanding plasma-ball disintegrating everything. Fusion with air molecules that can’t get out of the way fast enough https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/
Did you take into account that the car is not driving directly towards the viewer?
I ain’t doing hyperbolic equations on my napkin ;)
now calculate the Lorentz contraction
Instructions unclear, car stuck in dick.
OK now how fast did old man’s head move
Okay, napkin math… his nose is about 20cm long, and assuming it rotated about a perfect circle. The car moved say 10m. At the speed the car is moving, it covers that distance in ~120ns. So he has to move the end of his nose around a quarter circle of radius 20cm in 120ns. Let’s say 30cm total movement, for easy math. 0.25cm/ns or 0.00025m/ns. The speed of light is 0.300m/ns, so we’re talking about ~0.001c at the tip of his nose. Which is incidentally very close to the speed of sound in air.
So, probably not quite a sonic boom off the end of his nose. Assuming my math is correct. Very strong neck muscles. Also, he’s been vapourized.
I think you missed a factor of 1000 when comparing against the speed of sound in air. I think it should be almost 1000 times the speed of sound, so definitely sonic boom and definitely vaporised!
It’s very possible. Napkins are notorious for stealing orders of magnitude.
What is a factor of 1000 between friends anyway? (Especially cosmologist friends)
Ah this is so great. In the transonic regime (just below 1.0 Mach) the air moving over the surface of his nose will break the speed of sound as it gets out of the way.
So about 180 million MPH. I hope he doesn’t get a ticket!
someone else can figure out the kinetic energy of the car and why the whole continent just exploded…
It’s not on fire or melting the asphalt beneath it, so it must be really aerodynamic, and have really low rolling resistance tyres…
YEA! SCIENCE JOKES!
Here’s the original image. It was originally posted in 2017 and has been shared so many times it was difficult to find a good copy. I had to use wayback to get this copy.
I love it!
deleted by creator
You can either know the position of the car or the momentum, but not both.
This is also playing on red-shift/blue-shift.
They are the same effect just using different kinds of wave.
what do you mean “also”?
If that guy is keeping track of that car, his neck is def broken
Everything around the car would be broken too, including the car
