this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

It took me awhile to understand the punchline (god is saying the speed of light is 1 dumbass, not calling the person a dumbass as I first thought). Does that mean the speed of light is slow?

[–] chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 hour ago

I think it means the instead that we made up measurements to measure the speed of light, but the God in this meme doesn't use manmade measurements, so it's just 1 (like 1c). Since the speed of light is the max theoretical speed of anything in the universe, it makes sense that anything else could be measured in fractions of it.

[–] Sunsofold@lemmings.world 104 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

1 Dumbass = 299 792 458 m/s

Thanks, God. We'll spend the next 3000 years obsessing over that.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 17 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

that is the linear rate at which dumbassery expands, yes. also light, but that's because as yet tachyons remain hypothetical/fictional and i figure dumbassyons would travel faster than light were it possible.

like how sometimes you can look at someone or something and think "some dumbass is going to do some dumbass shit here soon" even though the dumbassery has not yet begun.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 8 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Dumbassion pilot wave theory

[–] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

Dumbassions Creed

[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Is it "dumbass" (a single word) or is it "dumb/ass" (relation)?

[–] nexguy@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

So dumb/ass = c

Multiply both sides by ass.

Dumb = c*ass

Hmmmmmmmm

[–] Sunsofold@lemmings.world 4 points 5 hours ago

Fucking knew it, Cassandra!

[–] thewebroach@lemmy.world 124 points 10 hours ago (13 children)

Both meters and seconds are units of Earth specific measures of space and time. Pretty sure at a cosmic scale god would give fuckall about how we measure and name our shit

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Actually most constants have been standardized to natural sources. A meter is now a fixed (small) fraction of the speed of light in vacuum. A second is pegged to the duration of a Cesium isotope spinning or something. Just that the multipliers are chosen to be convenient to us.

Should we need to talk measurements with aliens, we can, and can convert between their units and ours.

[–] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

SI being capable of interspecies translation is an interesting thing I hadn't considered.

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 hours ago

What's more profound is that math is universal - after some teething pains with regards to understanding conventions, any alien technology should be comprehensive by us, and vice versa.

[–] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

What about imperial system?

/hj

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

Technically a second is an arbitrary measure of a proprty cesium133. Now, anyways

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 133 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

If a god existed and gave a so much of a shit about our masturbatory habits he’d be at least tangentially aware of what the fuck a meter was.

[–] ThunderQueen@lemmy.world 45 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

For a second i thought you were calling the metric system masturbatory and then i remembered that christians really do think god watches them jork it. Kinky

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[–] Typhoon@lemmy.ca 16 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Also "in a vacuum" would be assumed, since almost the entire universe is a vacuum.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 16 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

i've just figured out how the religious universe ends. some physicist explains to their god that a lot of their assumptions were based on something being in a vacuum, and then their god says "what vacuum? you mean all that sparse hydrogen?" so the physicist says "let's find out what happens when you have a real vacuum" and then the universe ends at the speed of dumbassery.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 8 points 5 hours ago

Ah so THAT'S the resolution to the false vacuum hypothesis

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[–] RQG@lemmy.world 210 points 11 hours ago (8 children)

dumbass is a nice name for a speed unit.

[–] dumbass@aussie.zone 1 points 6 minutes ago

I wholeheartedly agree.

[–] Wfh@lemmy.zip 28 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

MFW I get a ticket for going 5.374x10^-8^ dumbasses in a 4.633x10^-8^ dumbasses zone

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[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 77 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

There are various systems of units where select physical constants are set to 1. A handy comparison chart is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_units?wprov=sfla1

It turns out you can't harmonize all the physical constants. Some will necessarily end up as some non-round number.

Most of them have speed of light = 1, but some have it as 1/α where α is the fine-structure constant (α = e² / 4πε₀ħc ≈ 0.007297)

[–] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

I like the Stoney Units, I feel appreciated.

[–] zakobjoa@lemmy.world 55 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I understand nothing I've just read but I'm glad you science folk have fun and funding.

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 35 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Fun yes.

Funding? What's that?

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