this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts
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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:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- 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
- Posts must be original/unique
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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.
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Can you describe what mechanism of shrinking you're referring to? I assume you're talking about some sort of compression where atoms remain the same size but get closer together.
That wouldn't work. You would need to change the orbital sizes, bonding forces (EM strong and weak, at least), and flow of time exactly in lockstep. Any deviation would show up in quantum mechanical experiments. None of these appear to have simple relationships to each other. It would be a huge new lump of physics to allow this to happen.
The more likely explanation is that space has a very slight tendency to expand. It would need intergalactic (not just interstellar) distances to be detectable. We also know that (very strongly suspect) that space expanded rapidly in the very early universe. Space then collapsed into a cooler, more stable state. It was initially thought the expansion tapered off to zero, but it might be slightly positive still.
I'm asking you.
You're the one who made the suggestion, I'm just pointing out the problems you would need to overcome.
I'm asking are you suggesting it's a compression were talking about?
Compression of size is getting smaller, your claim/idea.
Ultimately, the ratio of intergalactic distances to atomic ones are changing in an unusual way. We have made the assumption that it is the single factor changing, and not a dozen, in lockstep, that don't seem able to change that way.
Not necessarily. That's your application of my idea.
If the application of an idea is both in-line with its definition and shown to be inconsistent in foundation or correctness then the idea is either wrong, not sufficiently defined, or both. In lieu of a redefinition, it can be presumed wrong.
These are the natural shocks that test hypothesis and theory.