3 ms·
The concept applied to particle physics, courtesy of Sir Terry Pratchett: "The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the
by JorgeGT 6y ago
The concept applied to particle physics, courtesy of Sir Terry Pratchett:
"The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed."
- DavidSJ 6y agoWhat is the theoretical treatment of relativity of simultaneity for kingons in Minkowski spacetime? Or worse, what if spacetime is curved?
- formerphsicistR 6y agoI'm not saying this to be pedantic (I loved the joke), but to share the coolness of special relativity to others who may read your post. The fundamental particles, kingon, queons and republicons, all travel at the speed of light, and are presumably massless. In the timeframe of the photons, and other politicons, they travel instantly from point A to B; so they communicate the King swap instantly. The solution of the paradox is that each object has a unique inertial frame. Therefore, the King is not dead until the light cones of the dying King and his subject intersect. If the Queen of England dies in London, she's still alive to her subjects in Auckland for 4 hundredths of a second until the news reaches them through the center of the earth. That's 40ms for light to travel through the Earth. Lag in New Zealand must suck.
- p1necone 6y agoLiving in New Zealand I can tell you that in reality it's much worse - we usually get > 300ms ping to game servers in europe, best to stick with US west coast where it's more like ~150ms. A straight line right through the earth would be great. Luckily a lot of really big games have servers in Australia now though. I miss the days where player hosted dedicated servers were the norm and you didn't have to rely on the publisher deeming you important enough to have one close to you.
- formerphsicistR 6y agoout of curiosity, after I posted my comment, I pinged a few servers in NZ, and I got 300ms like you said. Ouch. But a fiber through the core of earth wouldn't help much. 80ms vs 120 ms for light to do the round trip.
- ludwigschubert 6y agoThanks for illustrating that aspect of space time!
- brandmeyer 6y agoI feel like there is still a "three-body problem" information paradox in there involving the heir.
- formerphsicistR 6y agoI thought of that; but like the best teachers who don't know the answer, I left it as an exercise to the reader ;)
- mLuby 6y agoIn romance languages, these monarchy carriers aren't particles, but reyes.
- hippira 6y agoThank you, I got a good laugh out of “republicon”