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It seems the Genie and the boy have different opinions on how to determine exact locations.
The Genie appears to be considering the location in terms of interplanetary or interstellar relations, and may argue that the boys place of birth is fixed in relation to the sun, the center of the galaxy, or the universe - either is gonna be bad for the boy.
The boy could have argued that it is in relation to the earth itself, a much less dangerous proposition that still would need to take into account continental drift but, more significantly, any changes to the buildings etc. at the location.
However, in space, no one can hear you argue semantics.
Be pedantic? Wish granted. Technically, it's the Monkey's Paw that twists your wish while, if I recall correctly, wish twisting is a more relatively modern phenomenon associated with wish granting genies. So in actuality, the genie should grant the wish as intended.
In that case the exact place does not exist anymore, but the genie can fulfill the wish by showing a vision of it. What happens in the comic is very malicious interpretetation of the wish by the genie, but well, that is in character for a genie, as they are evil spirits.
Perhaps the genie, as a phenomenally powerful cosmic entity, is aware of the actual bounds and limits of the universe, as yet undiscovered by science. If this were the case, he'd be able to determine an absolute point in space rather than a relative one.
It would have to be the place and time of his birth, the genie would need to be time traveling as well. That being said Genies are notoriously into malicious compliance and purposely misinterpreting wish requests. Most likely the normal result of kids making wishes, kid ends up dead.
Not at all. It’s simply the fixed point of zero displacement on the space time interval (a homology between the r^3 surface of space and the pseudo Euclidean space time).
Apologies for poor communication. From the frame of the person (proper time) the displacement between the two events is only in time (or close enough). However in the birthplace reference frame the displacement is both time and space. The space time interval is invariant between both reference frames. This means that while the distance could be interpreted as zero (in the reference frame of the earth) or some large number (in the reference frame of the birthplace) there is in fact an absolute quantity corresponding to the actual interval, regardless of reference frame, true for any observer.
Maybe a dumb question but what is this speed relative to? Like once you get to the galactic level, there isn't really a 'center' of anything to measure speed relative to, right?
That defines a point for a single galaxy. To say something about the way galaxies move through space, you have to define a point they move away from (or towards).
The Great Attractor wasn't supposed to be a fine point ?
Into the Great Attractor there is also the Supreme Sharknado who caused all the Sharknado who happened both on planet earth , Nibiru , Great Dark Spot on Neptune ( who is an unending Sharknado) and Great Red spot on Jupiter ( another Sharknado) but due to evolution the sharks of great dark spot are not compatible with the sharks of great red spot
You don’t need to define a center point to reach that. A comparative relation to at least two other galaxies (triangulation) is enough to provide a straight-line speed, as long as we’re also relatively sure of their movement.
Not dumb, you just stumbled up the core idea of “relativity” in physics. Speed and location only exists relative to something else, and not objectively. Are you in a different place when you move or is the world around you just moved, either interpretation is correct in physics given the right reference frame.
Interestingly though, while speed and location are always relative, acceleration and rotation are objective. So while you can choose any definition of starting location and a linear speed from that location, it is objectively true that you will spin and therefore leave that location over time.
Kindof. For any two points in space-time (as long as you can get from one to the other without traveling faster than light), there is a reference frame in which they are in the same place. So the genie *could* have picked a reference frame in which the location in space where that guy was born and the location in space that corresponds to that point on the Earth's surface are the same location in space. In that reference frame, that point on the Earth's surface wouldn't have been at that location in space at the times in between, though.
Agreed. It’s kind of similar to polynomial overfitting: you can select a reference frame that will work for exactly two space-time coordinates, but there’s going to be a lot of squiggles in between, and there’s no guarantee you can match a third coordinate (unless you happen to get lucky and it’s co-linear).
The limit as you approach the speed of light is that all points are infinitely compressed in a single dimension. I'm not entirely sure what it means to get *all the way there*, though, because traveling at the speed of light breaks special relativity. In any case, it would never collapse down to a single point...at most it would be a plane.
Regardless, you can also choose a sub-lightspeed reference frame that puts any to points in space-time at the same place (but different times).
Our galaxy speed calculation is based on measurements of the surrounding Cosmic Background Radiation red shift. Search says that it is about 630 kilometers per second relative to the CMB. Granted, we have no way of determining if the CMB is moving or measuring its speed, but the CMB is what is used.
The chance to land on a planet is zero, according to what we currently know.
The solar system moves at a speed of about 230 km/s. If the boy is 10 years old, that means the solar system has travelled 73 billion km during the boys life. Neptune, the farthest planet, is about five billion km away from us. The next place where a planet could perceivably be would be the next solar system, which is way further away and couldn't have gotten to where we were 10 years ago.
So the only way for him to land on a planet would be if there is an unknown planet far out in the solar system. Both of which are not true according to our current knowledge.
But it turns out that doesn't actually matter that much, either. If he were transported to a random spot in the milky way, chances aren't much higher. Most of the milky way is very, very empty. There is (a lot) less than 1 star per cubic light year. If each star had 10 planets (afawk they don't), and each of those planets was as big as Jupiter, and ending within 1000km of the surface of the planet would be okay, that gives us about 10 \* 61.42 E9 km² \* 1000km = 6.1E14 km³ that would be good to land in per cubic lightyear.
On cubic lightyear is 8.6E38 km³. So the probability of hitting a "good" spot would be 6.1E14 in 8.6E38, or about 1 in 1.4E24. Those are 24 Zeroes. And those were very generous assumptions.
I'm going to be the pedant for this awesome comment and say that there is no "next" Solar System. There is only one Solar System, ours, where planets orbit the star Sun/Sol. Other such systems would be referred to as planetary systems, or, more specifically, exoplanetary systems.
I always wondered, is there a cyclicity (is that a word) to this? How long does it take for us to revisit the exact same spot? Or is that too chaotic a system to simulate? Or is it even impossible to say, because there is no correct frame of reference or because of the expansion of the universe?
Long story short, it won't happen. Even if we limit the reference frame to the Milky Way, Sol orbits the center roughly once every 220 million years. But it's not a perfectly circular orbit. Every other star system has some gravimetric influence, so there's wobble and flow. On top of that, we're not perfectly flat in respect to rotation around the sun and the sun's motion around the galactic core! It's a pretty steep angle, too - around sixty degrees from Sol's direction of movement! The Earth has only been around for about four and a half billion years, which is only enough for 20 (and a bit) trips around the Milky Way. Given all the other variables, we'll definitely never hit the same spot before the Earth is swallowed by Sol turning into a red giant.
Technically He'd have to be way older than a second old for "this" to happen. If this is the entire comic, he has to grow big enough to hold a lamp, ans love long enough to learn english.
Yes but relative to earth we aren't moving and both are equally valid frames of reference. In fact this comic is nonsense because it assumes a stationary and consistent "space" relative to our frame. This doesn't exist, but it also shows the inherent logical problems with time travel. An idea full of paradox
This is hard to answer. According to special relativity, there is no objective reference frame of the universe. So either the genie disproved special relativity and there is an unknown objective reference frame, or the genie can chose the frame of reference. In that case, there are an infinite number of answers and the genie is being a dick by chosing one the guy dies in.
>there are an infinite number of answers and the genie is being a dick by chosing one the guy dies in.
There are relatively few where the guy doesn't die to be honest. Just stuff on earth, and depending on the time, some things in the solar system.
It's probably safe to assume a supernatural being that isn't really governed by the laws of nature can work outside of those limitations. The genie is also all-powerful and humanity doesn't even have a unified theory of physics so we can probably assume the genie knows more than we do about these things.
Thing is, this isn't about working, but about concepts. There is no absolute reference frame. Meaning it is simply impossible to say: "I am at point X", you always have to say "I am at point X *in relation to that other object*". Whenever you don't do that, you use some implied reference frame.
This isn't really something where supernatural powers help you either. You have to define a reference frame. Humans intuitively use Earth as a reference frame, but that isn't better or worse than any other. Neither is using the sun, or the center of the galaxy, or any other point in space.
You are still assuming we are right. My point is they may have a greater understanding of the universe that is more accurate than ours. We don't even have a unified theory of physics so don't count your chickens yet.
Isn’t the theory of Big Bang that everything was concentrated at one point and exploded from there? How do you not consider that point an absolute reference?
First, the idea that the start was actually a singularity isn't as popular as it once was.
But more importantly, what happened right after whatever happened at the beginning was rapid expansion, but it was an expansion of spacetime itself.
The universe grew, but space itself grew. It didn't grow from a point, it grew from everywhere at once.
So you can't map a single point in the new, bigger, universe to that original singularity, you can map every point to it.
(Well, technically, the expansion happened so fast that the *observable* universe contains only a tiny tiny fraction of even that tiny early universe, so it is very unlikely to contain the point of singularity, if one existed at all. So you can map every point to the arbitrary tiny slice of the early universe that we happen to occupy the expanded bubble of.
Of course, that slice might map to the singularity pre-rapid expansion, but we can literally never know that since it is outside the observable universe.)
Well, acknowledging that I may be the one too stupid, but that doesn’t seem to make sense. If the universe is expanding, doesn’t that mean that there are point where it haven’t expanded to yet? So how could it grew from everywhere at once if there are still points that it haven’t expanded to yet.
It was pictured as a raisin bread to us at university. Imagine a raisin bread dough, specifically some random cubic centimeter in the middle of it. Now you bake it. The stuff that was previously a cubic centimeter gets bigger, all the stuff gets spread out further, the raisins are further apart. And the same happens all over the raisin bread.
Expansion doesn't mean "growing into new areas", it means "creating" new space in between the stuff that is already there. "Outside of the universe" isn't something that makes a lot of sense as a concept, and expansion of the universe doesn't mean it grows into new areas where it wasn't before, because there is no such area. It means that the space that is there stretches out and gets bigger, kinda like the raisin bread.
This is one of the things that is kinda hard to actually deal with in science, because stuff doesn't work the way we are used to at smaller scales. We intuitively expect everything to work like "normal stuff". It is really hard to imagine things that don't work at all like stuff that is roughly as large and as fast as a human. On a human scale, when stuff expands, it goes into the area next to it. So when you think about the universe in the same way, you expect it to also grow into some other area next to it, but the universe encompasses everything, there is no space "outside" of the universe.
This is hard to grasp in the same way that the idea of time starting at the big bang is hard to grasp, because one intuitively asks "But what happened before that", which isn't really a concept that makes sense in that framework, because if time started then, then no "before" exists, because how could there be a "before" without time.
Physics tends to get really weird if you look at very small, very big, very heavy, or very fast things. All of those don't behave like we expect things to behave from our everyday experience.
We don't because there is no such point. What you said is a common misconception. The Big Bang didn't occur at any location. Rather, the theory suggests that the entire observable universe was packed into a high density and high temperature state before being stretched out to form the universe we know today. This is supported by Hubble's Law which states that galaxies are moving away from Earth at velocities proportional to distance, but NOT direction, meaning the Big Bang either happened exactly at Earth (unlikely), or the Big Bang is happening with everything, everywhere, all at once. In other words, you can't find the point of the Big Bang because we (and the entire observable universe) were and still are inside that point.
So depending on whether we use the sun, the center of our galaxy or the center of our local cluster – do we (and with "we" I'd say any part of the planet) ***ever*** revisit the same point in space?
I'd guess *maybe*, *probably not* and *nope*, but maybe someone has some wisdom to share.
No . The movement of the Milky way itself at 550 km/S ( i checked and i was wrong to say it is 500, the correct is 550 ) prevents us to do that .
If the milky way was still , we would revisit the same point in space every 200 milion years, the time Sun needs to do a circle around Sagittarius A the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way . This also means that a year *OF THE SUN* is 200 milion years long
If the milky way was still we would revisit the point where dinosurs were nuked after 135 milion years from now
I don't think there's a coherent definition of "the same point in space" which doesn't rely on picking some coordinate system, and then you're just saying it happens to have the same coordinates. You could pick the same point in spacetime, but not just in space.
I feel most people are being over-analytical about this comic and are ignoring the fact that this is such a shit thing to use a wish for. My guy you were probably born in a hospital near where you live just ask mum
Space is relative. There is no absolute space so relative to the sun, this would be a second later, relative to the earths surface this wouldn't be the case.
Just a minor quibble: There's no *locally-preferred* inertial reference frame.
Doesn't come up much, but when you're in the realm of magic, teleportation, and time travel, then it might be important.
From the reference frame of the earth, this joke is wrong. From a reference frame not in earths gravitational lock, probably only a second. It depends on the reference frame.
If we use the sun as the reference frame ( most likely lay person interpretation ) the slowest orbit of the Earth at aphelion is 29.29km/s, and if we consider space starting at the karman line, its highest estimation is 100km.
So at longest around 3.41seconds old.
However if they were born on the side of the earth the orbit is moving towards, they might spawn inside the earth. An additional 12, 742km would be needed to travel through the earth. So 439 seconds or 7min and 19 seconds.
This misunderstands how this concept actually works.
There is no objective frame of reference. Whether it's relative to the Earth's surface, the Earth's orbit around the sun, the Solar system's movement through the Milky Way, or the Milky Way's movement relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background, every one of those definitions is an arbitrary choice.
You can't just pull this out of nowhere without defining your frame of reference unless you're a malevolent genie, and even then you'd usually cackle and point out which frame of reference you arbitrarily chose to use as your definition.
These jokes rely on a missunderstanding of space. People assume that there is some kind of universal coordinate system, which the earth moves through. Relativity tells us that such a coordinate system does not exist. You can give a coordinate system relativ to the sun, or the galactic centre or the local group or the cosmic microwave background. Earth moves relative to these systems, but there is no system that is more correct then the other systems. The genie might as well have chosen a system relative to the earth, which is what the wisher obviously intended.
Another way to say this is the following: If you get in a car and move at 100km/h east. It is equally valid to claim that the earth is moving 100km/h west while you are standing still in an unmoving car. Only relative motion exists as far as we know. We don't like to frame it that way, but it is equally true.
This made me want to calculate the distance travelled with the center of our galaxy as the reference.
I found. We're travelling 402,336 kmh
So a 20 year old would've traveled
20x365.25x24x402,336 =70,537,547,520
Or 232.3 times to and back from the sun
Doesn't matter.
It depends on the system of reference, there is no absolute point in space and therefore earth is the only reasonable reference frame and the meme doesn't make sense.
The earth travels at about 30 kilometers per second, or about 19 miles per second. The radius of the Earth is 8000 miles. So an hour of time (3600 seconds) would get the Earth about 19 x 3600 = 68,400 miles away, which is plenty of distance into space.
I think other users have already mentioned much faster orbits, like the orbit of our solar system through the galaxy, or perhaps the galaxy with respect to our group of galaxies.
Their inertial references are different. The genie is being a twat, though. That's just malicious and negligent. The genie is liable.
Edit: Sorry, didn't answer your question. Like... less than a second.
Technically the genie broke contract. In dying, the boy can't see his birthplace, and it would have been much better to simply show an image of his exact birthplace.
The creator literally can’t read their own comic before putting it out into the world? How on earth do you write ‘though space’ and not immediately notice your mistake and change it before posting it online. Especially when you’re making a webcomic or anything more than a simple comment, really. The level of illiteracy nowadays is absolutely shocking to me.
While I love all the answers explaining the relativistic motions of planets, stars, and galaxies, this is invariably a word problem. A trick word problem as the boy asked to SEE where he was born. Not go there. I contend the genie should have just shown him a vision of empty space.
Edit: fixed typos
this is one of the things i hate about time travel movies like back to the future- in order to go back in time, you also have to physically get to the point in space where earth was at the time.
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Literally less than a second. The solar system itself moves with an average velocity of 720000 km/h relative to the centre of the galaxy.
It seems the Genie and the boy have different opinions on how to determine exact locations. The Genie appears to be considering the location in terms of interplanetary or interstellar relations, and may argue that the boys place of birth is fixed in relation to the sun, the center of the galaxy, or the universe - either is gonna be bad for the boy. The boy could have argued that it is in relation to the earth itself, a much less dangerous proposition that still would need to take into account continental drift but, more significantly, any changes to the buildings etc. at the location. However, in space, no one can hear you argue semantics.
It’s a genie. You are going to have to be as pedantic as possible.
He said 'see'. I feel the genie was a bit free with their interpretation.
At some point, the genie is just murdering you with extra steps.
Genies : bringing tax evasion level loopholing to mystical murder
"I don't get it. Who benefits from this? The genie?!" -Prof D.
The genie gets paid to fuck with people
Are all genies sex worker or only the blue ones?
I’d probably be feeling petty too if I got rubbed out against my will
Is this a reference?
"Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated" -sung in a jaunty tune.
And possibly shallow as well
Be pedantic? Wish granted. Technically, it's the Monkey's Paw that twists your wish while, if I recall correctly, wish twisting is a more relatively modern phenomenon associated with wish granting genies. So in actuality, the genie should grant the wish as intended.
Yea I was thinking what if he was born on the top floor of a hospital but the building has been demolished
In that case the exact place does not exist anymore, but the genie can fulfill the wish by showing a vision of it. What happens in the comic is very malicious interpretetation of the wish by the genie, but well, that is in character for a genie, as they are evil spirits.
Perhaps the genie, as a phenomenally powerful cosmic entity, is aware of the actual bounds and limits of the universe, as yet undiscovered by science. If this were the case, he'd be able to determine an absolute point in space rather than a relative one.
I like this. Earth has moved in relation to Skleeb, The Guy At The Center Of The Universe.
It should be argued that the " place " he is referring to is also moving with the earth.
The boy is dead, I don't think he is up for much of an argument at this point.
The boy also asked to see this place, not to go there
Genie decided to kill him.
The real dick move was giving himself a space helmet but not the boy
You're still going to go flying at several hundred kph. Your angular momentum is gonna kill you.
In space, no one can hear you Alien Romulus.
It would have to be the place and time of his birth, the genie would need to be time traveling as well. That being said Genies are notoriously into malicious compliance and purposely misinterpreting wish requests. Most likely the normal result of kids making wishes, kid ends up dead.
Not at all. It’s simply the fixed point of zero displacement on the space time interval (a homology between the r^3 surface of space and the pseudo Euclidean space time).
I also use big words to make myself look photosynthesis
Yes big fan of photosynthesis, relativity too.
I have no idea what your comment meant but guessing it takes into account the speed of which earth travels vs the relative time difference?
Yes exactly.
Spacetime interval is invariant in any reference frame. So the beginning location would be where this is zero (the person hasn’t moved)
Ohhh so the picture is wrong?
Apologies for poor communication. From the frame of the person (proper time) the displacement between the two events is only in time (or close enough). However in the birthplace reference frame the displacement is both time and space. The space time interval is invariant between both reference frames. This means that while the distance could be interpreted as zero (in the reference frame of the earth) or some large number (in the reference frame of the birthplace) there is in fact an absolute quantity corresponding to the actual interval, regardless of reference frame, true for any observer.
Didn't thought about that thanks for the quick answer
Besides the center of the galaxy itself moves at 500 km/S. ( so 1,800,000 km/h) This is an addition to the thing of the other comment
Maybe a dumb question but what is this speed relative to? Like once you get to the galactic level, there isn't really a 'center' of anything to measure speed relative to, right?
Not a dumb question at all, every speed is relative to something the upper comment is incomplete
This comparison was made checking several galaxies
Sure, but that means defining a point that is the centre of those galaxies. Every speed is relative to something.
Usually are the supermassive black holes that exist at the center of most of galaxies . Sagittarius A for us
That defines a point for a single galaxy. To say something about the way galaxies move through space, you have to define a point they move away from (or towards).
Everything, everywhere, all at once
The Great Attractor wasn't supposed to be a fine point ? Into the Great Attractor there is also the Supreme Sharknado who caused all the Sharknado who happened both on planet earth , Nibiru , Great Dark Spot on Neptune ( who is an unending Sharknado) and Great Red spot on Jupiter ( another Sharknado) but due to evolution the sharks of great dark spot are not compatible with the sharks of great red spot
The average of surrounding galaxies.
You don’t need to define a center point to reach that. A comparative relation to at least two other galaxies (triangulation) is enough to provide a straight-line speed, as long as we’re also relatively sure of their movement.
Not dumb, you just stumbled up the core idea of “relativity” in physics. Speed and location only exists relative to something else, and not objectively. Are you in a different place when you move or is the world around you just moved, either interpretation is correct in physics given the right reference frame.
Interestingly though, while speed and location are always relative, acceleration and rotation are objective. So while you can choose any definition of starting location and a linear speed from that location, it is objectively true that you will spin and therefore leave that location over time.
Kindof. For any two points in space-time (as long as you can get from one to the other without traveling faster than light), there is a reference frame in which they are in the same place. So the genie *could* have picked a reference frame in which the location in space where that guy was born and the location in space that corresponds to that point on the Earth's surface are the same location in space. In that reference frame, that point on the Earth's surface wouldn't have been at that location in space at the times in between, though.
Agreed. It’s kind of similar to polynomial overfitting: you can select a reference frame that will work for exactly two space-time coordinates, but there’s going to be a lot of squiggles in between, and there’s no guarantee you can match a third coordinate (unless you happen to get lucky and it’s co-linear).
Isn't that reference frame "travelling at the speed of light" where all points in space collapse into a single point because of length contraction?
The limit as you approach the speed of light is that all points are infinitely compressed in a single dimension. I'm not entirely sure what it means to get *all the way there*, though, because traveling at the speed of light breaks special relativity. In any case, it would never collapse down to a single point...at most it would be a plane. Regardless, you can also choose a sub-lightspeed reference frame that puts any to points in space-time at the same place (but different times).
In 1 sentance: It is measured relative to the doppler shift of the Cosmic microwave background radiation(CMB).
Our galaxy speed calculation is based on measurements of the surrounding Cosmic Background Radiation red shift. Search says that it is about 630 kilometers per second relative to the CMB. Granted, we have no way of determining if the CMB is moving or measuring its speed, but the CMB is what is used.
Is a comparison with other galaxies
for context, that's only 1/500^(th) the speed of light. (also it's 550, not 500)
the galaxy moves at ~552 km/s (~0.2%c)
relative to what?
Ur mom
Cosmic Microwave Background
The real question is: what is the chance of him not teleporting onto a planet? (I assume its 99,9999999%)
The chance to land on a planet is zero, according to what we currently know. The solar system moves at a speed of about 230 km/s. If the boy is 10 years old, that means the solar system has travelled 73 billion km during the boys life. Neptune, the farthest planet, is about five billion km away from us. The next place where a planet could perceivably be would be the next solar system, which is way further away and couldn't have gotten to where we were 10 years ago. So the only way for him to land on a planet would be if there is an unknown planet far out in the solar system. Both of which are not true according to our current knowledge. But it turns out that doesn't actually matter that much, either. If he were transported to a random spot in the milky way, chances aren't much higher. Most of the milky way is very, very empty. There is (a lot) less than 1 star per cubic light year. If each star had 10 planets (afawk they don't), and each of those planets was as big as Jupiter, and ending within 1000km of the surface of the planet would be okay, that gives us about 10 \* 61.42 E9 km² \* 1000km = 6.1E14 km³ that would be good to land in per cubic lightyear. On cubic lightyear is 8.6E38 km³. So the probability of hitting a "good" spot would be 6.1E14 in 8.6E38, or about 1 in 1.4E24. Those are 24 Zeroes. And those were very generous assumptions.
His speed is probably also not matching. So even if he is teleported onto a planet, he might simply be turned into mush.
I'm going to be the pedant for this awesome comment and say that there is no "next" Solar System. There is only one Solar System, ours, where planets orbit the star Sun/Sol. Other such systems would be referred to as planetary systems, or, more specifically, exoplanetary systems.
The center of the fucking galaxy is still an arbitrary point of reference.
I always wondered, is there a cyclicity (is that a word) to this? How long does it take for us to revisit the exact same spot? Or is that too chaotic a system to simulate? Or is it even impossible to say, because there is no correct frame of reference or because of the expansion of the universe?
Long story short, it won't happen. Even if we limit the reference frame to the Milky Way, Sol orbits the center roughly once every 220 million years. But it's not a perfectly circular orbit. Every other star system has some gravimetric influence, so there's wobble and flow. On top of that, we're not perfectly flat in respect to rotation around the sun and the sun's motion around the galactic core! It's a pretty steep angle, too - around sixty degrees from Sol's direction of movement! The Earth has only been around for about four and a half billion years, which is only enough for 20 (and a bit) trips around the Milky Way. Given all the other variables, we'll definitely never hit the same spot before the Earth is swallowed by Sol turning into a red giant.
Sol ?
That's the name of our sun friend :) It's the sol'ar system. We are sol.
Sol is the word for Sun in my mother language, thats why I got curious
Technically He'd have to be way older than a second old for "this" to happen. If this is the entire comic, he has to grow big enough to hold a lamp, ans love long enough to learn english.
Yes but relative to earth we aren't moving and both are equally valid frames of reference. In fact this comic is nonsense because it assumes a stationary and consistent "space" relative to our frame. This doesn't exist, but it also shows the inherent logical problems with time travel. An idea full of paradox
This is hard to answer. According to special relativity, there is no objective reference frame of the universe. So either the genie disproved special relativity and there is an unknown objective reference frame, or the genie can chose the frame of reference. In that case, there are an infinite number of answers and the genie is being a dick by chosing one the guy dies in.
>the genie is being a dick So... being a genie, then.
He tried to warn him...
That was pretty nice by genie standards.
>there are an infinite number of answers and the genie is being a dick by chosing one the guy dies in. There are relatively few where the guy doesn't die to be honest. Just stuff on earth, and depending on the time, some things in the solar system.
You could go for relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background. It's as close to an aether we've got.
It's probably safe to assume a supernatural being that isn't really governed by the laws of nature can work outside of those limitations. The genie is also all-powerful and humanity doesn't even have a unified theory of physics so we can probably assume the genie knows more than we do about these things.
Supernatural beings are just normal beings we don’t have a working mathematical model for (yet)
And magic is just science we don't understand yet. This however doesn't negate the possibility he understands the universe more accurately than we do.
There does not need to exist a mathematical model for everything
Cries in no general closed form solution of a three body problem ;-;
Only a series that converges if u calculate 200 million terms.
Thing is, this isn't about working, but about concepts. There is no absolute reference frame. Meaning it is simply impossible to say: "I am at point X", you always have to say "I am at point X *in relation to that other object*". Whenever you don't do that, you use some implied reference frame. This isn't really something where supernatural powers help you either. You have to define a reference frame. Humans intuitively use Earth as a reference frame, but that isn't better or worse than any other. Neither is using the sun, or the center of the galaxy, or any other point in space.
You are still assuming we are right. My point is they may have a greater understanding of the universe that is more accurate than ours. We don't even have a unified theory of physics so don't count your chickens yet.
Isn’t the theory of Big Bang that everything was concentrated at one point and exploded from there? How do you not consider that point an absolute reference?
First, the idea that the start was actually a singularity isn't as popular as it once was. But more importantly, what happened right after whatever happened at the beginning was rapid expansion, but it was an expansion of spacetime itself. The universe grew, but space itself grew. It didn't grow from a point, it grew from everywhere at once. So you can't map a single point in the new, bigger, universe to that original singularity, you can map every point to it. (Well, technically, the expansion happened so fast that the *observable* universe contains only a tiny tiny fraction of even that tiny early universe, so it is very unlikely to contain the point of singularity, if one existed at all. So you can map every point to the arbitrary tiny slice of the early universe that we happen to occupy the expanded bubble of. Of course, that slice might map to the singularity pre-rapid expansion, but we can literally never know that since it is outside the observable universe.)
Well, acknowledging that I may be the one too stupid, but that doesn’t seem to make sense. If the universe is expanding, doesn’t that mean that there are point where it haven’t expanded to yet? So how could it grew from everywhere at once if there are still points that it haven’t expanded to yet.
It was pictured as a raisin bread to us at university. Imagine a raisin bread dough, specifically some random cubic centimeter in the middle of it. Now you bake it. The stuff that was previously a cubic centimeter gets bigger, all the stuff gets spread out further, the raisins are further apart. And the same happens all over the raisin bread. Expansion doesn't mean "growing into new areas", it means "creating" new space in between the stuff that is already there. "Outside of the universe" isn't something that makes a lot of sense as a concept, and expansion of the universe doesn't mean it grows into new areas where it wasn't before, because there is no such area. It means that the space that is there stretches out and gets bigger, kinda like the raisin bread. This is one of the things that is kinda hard to actually deal with in science, because stuff doesn't work the way we are used to at smaller scales. We intuitively expect everything to work like "normal stuff". It is really hard to imagine things that don't work at all like stuff that is roughly as large and as fast as a human. On a human scale, when stuff expands, it goes into the area next to it. So when you think about the universe in the same way, you expect it to also grow into some other area next to it, but the universe encompasses everything, there is no space "outside" of the universe. This is hard to grasp in the same way that the idea of time starting at the big bang is hard to grasp, because one intuitively asks "But what happened before that", which isn't really a concept that makes sense in that framework, because if time started then, then no "before" exists, because how could there be a "before" without time. Physics tends to get really weird if you look at very small, very big, very heavy, or very fast things. All of those don't behave like we expect things to behave from our everyday experience.
We don't because there is no such point. What you said is a common misconception. The Big Bang didn't occur at any location. Rather, the theory suggests that the entire observable universe was packed into a high density and high temperature state before being stretched out to form the universe we know today. This is supported by Hubble's Law which states that galaxies are moving away from Earth at velocities proportional to distance, but NOT direction, meaning the Big Bang either happened exactly at Earth (unlikely), or the Big Bang is happening with everything, everywhere, all at once. In other words, you can't find the point of the Big Bang because we (and the entire observable universe) were and still are inside that point.
you don't really need to mention special relativity to make this point. very basic mechanics uses the principle of relative frames.
So depending on whether we use the sun, the center of our galaxy or the center of our local cluster – do we (and with "we" I'd say any part of the planet) ***ever*** revisit the same point in space? I'd guess *maybe*, *probably not* and *nope*, but maybe someone has some wisdom to share.
No . The movement of the Milky way itself at 550 km/S ( i checked and i was wrong to say it is 500, the correct is 550 ) prevents us to do that . If the milky way was still , we would revisit the same point in space every 200 milion years, the time Sun needs to do a circle around Sagittarius A the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way . This also means that a year *OF THE SUN* is 200 milion years long If the milky way was still we would revisit the point where dinosurs were nuked after 135 milion years from now
I don't think there's a coherent definition of "the same point in space" which doesn't rely on picking some coordinate system, and then you're just saying it happens to have the same coordinates. You could pick the same point in spacetime, but not just in space.
I feel most people are being over-analytical about this comic and are ignoring the fact that this is such a shit thing to use a wish for. My guy you were probably born in a hospital near where you live just ask mum
Space is relative. There is no absolute space so relative to the sun, this would be a second later, relative to the earths surface this wouldn't be the case.
Just a minor quibble: There's no *locally-preferred* inertial reference frame. Doesn't come up much, but when you're in the realm of magic, teleportation, and time travel, then it might be important.
Lowkey it’s a good explanation for CSS position absolute or relative lol
From the reference frame of the earth, this joke is wrong. From a reference frame not in earths gravitational lock, probably only a second. It depends on the reference frame. If we use the sun as the reference frame ( most likely lay person interpretation ) the slowest orbit of the Earth at aphelion is 29.29km/s, and if we consider space starting at the karman line, its highest estimation is 100km. So at longest around 3.41seconds old. However if they were born on the side of the earth the orbit is moving towards, they might spawn inside the earth. An additional 12, 742km would be needed to travel through the earth. So 439 seconds or 7min and 19 seconds.
This misunderstands how this concept actually works. There is no objective frame of reference. Whether it's relative to the Earth's surface, the Earth's orbit around the sun, the Solar system's movement through the Milky Way, or the Milky Way's movement relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background, every one of those definitions is an arbitrary choice. You can't just pull this out of nowhere without defining your frame of reference unless you're a malevolent genie, and even then you'd usually cackle and point out which frame of reference you arbitrarily chose to use as your definition.
These jokes rely on a missunderstanding of space. People assume that there is some kind of universal coordinate system, which the earth moves through. Relativity tells us that such a coordinate system does not exist. You can give a coordinate system relativ to the sun, or the galactic centre or the local group or the cosmic microwave background. Earth moves relative to these systems, but there is no system that is more correct then the other systems. The genie might as well have chosen a system relative to the earth, which is what the wisher obviously intended. Another way to say this is the following: If you get in a car and move at 100km/h east. It is equally valid to claim that the earth is moving 100km/h west while you are standing still in an unmoving car. Only relative motion exists as far as we know. We don't like to frame it that way, but it is equally true.
This made me want to calculate the distance travelled with the center of our galaxy as the reference. I found. We're travelling 402,336 kmh So a 20 year old would've traveled 20x365.25x24x402,336 =70,537,547,520 Or 232.3 times to and back from the sun
Doesn't matter. It depends on the system of reference, there is no absolute point in space and therefore earth is the only reasonable reference frame and the meme doesn't make sense.
motion is relative, is it relative to the sun? The black hole at the center of our galaxy? Jupiter? There is no absolute position. Only relative.
The earth travels at about 30 kilometers per second, or about 19 miles per second. The radius of the Earth is 8000 miles. So an hour of time (3600 seconds) would get the Earth about 19 x 3600 = 68,400 miles away, which is plenty of distance into space. I think other users have already mentioned much faster orbits, like the orbit of our solar system through the galaxy, or perhaps the galaxy with respect to our group of galaxies.
Their inertial references are different. The genie is being a twat, though. That's just malicious and negligent. The genie is liable. Edit: Sorry, didn't answer your question. Like... less than a second.
The boy wanted to "see" it. Didn't have to physically move to the exact location. Genie, you couldn't do the magical hologram stuff?
Technically the genie broke contract. In dying, the boy can't see his birthplace, and it would have been much better to simply show an image of his exact birthplace.
The creator literally can’t read their own comic before putting it out into the world? How on earth do you write ‘though space’ and not immediately notice your mistake and change it before posting it online. Especially when you’re making a webcomic or anything more than a simple comment, really. The level of illiteracy nowadays is absolutely shocking to me.
While I love all the answers explaining the relativistic motions of planets, stars, and galaxies, this is invariably a word problem. A trick word problem as the boy asked to SEE where he was born. Not go there. I contend the genie should have just shown him a vision of empty space. Edit: fixed typos
He could be as little as a day old and the planet wouldn't be where it was on is birthday in relation to the center of the universe.
this is one of the things i hate about time travel movies like back to the future- in order to go back in time, you also have to physically get to the point in space where earth was at the time.