why it doesn't work 18

The is a re-upload: by popular request, this version offers a more detailed explanation of the concept (sound wave propagation)
If you enjoy it this way, future videos will also follow the same methodology. Thank you
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"Loopster" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons...
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#physics #space #sound

[@endarus6053]

This is the space version of “for now, lets ignore friction”

[@tomasbeltran04050]

😂😂😂

[@dam78]

it's not that

[@thatguy7612]

​@@dam78yeah it is it is basically saying the rod weighs nothing

[@dam78]

@@thatguy7612 the video doesn't talk about friction issue

[@alligator639]

@@dam78 r/wooosh

[@w4pz859]

At that distance everything solid and long acts like a spring

[@deuceisdaman]

😐🤭

[@sfsaviation]

even at regular distances solids act like springs. Nothing is truly "solid" in this universe

[@brokeandtired]

@@sfsaviation my 5 day constipation I had 2 months ago might disagree.

[@nonec384]

human scale and perception wise no most things act how thet act

[@AlqZ_theFox]

they actually always do, it's just unnoticeable And that's something fun to think about, everything's either a tight spring or a loose sprint, in varying degrees

[@YutRimJr]

All you need for it to work is troll physics

[@abulletant1147]

nah, just use radio waves. troll physics are too old anyway

[@user-fc2lx4ou2t]

@@abulletant1147 funny memes dont age, for example the gigachad wont die for a while

[@abulletant1147]

@@user-fc2lx4ou2t thats true. matter of fact its a aged meat

[@Ker0s3ne_158]

@@user-fc2lx4ou2t it already has

[@RedFloyd469]

@@user-fc2lx4ou2t Well, the gigachad meme isn't really a "funny" one on it's own. It may be used for that purpose sometimes, but it's mostly just another "my opinion/taste good, your opinion/taste bad" meme for circlejerkers.

[@JachymorDota]

Every day is a learning day. Today I learned a metal pipe has horrible ping.

[@H1i_big_strong]

h

[@Suckeychicken]

Dude that killed me

[@varnix1006]

Solid rods are just dense Slinkies.

[@torque8047]

Cursed knowledge

[@cyko5950]

spring theory

[@insanity4224]

Perhaps if I ask my wife to play with my slinky I’ll have more luck.

[@sminem6572]

Inb4 shitty horror writers make a scenario where youre the operator and all of a sudden you get “sos” in morse code from the other side

[@MessyMasyn]

just make him hold the rod and turn it

[@goosemchonk]

I know you're talking about the rod, but receiving a distress signal from Mars as an inter-planet radio operator would legitimately make a really good horror story.

[@mincat1412]

@@goosemchonkok but like wtf are you gonna do?? go there?

[@RedFloyd469]

@@mincat1412 1) It was never implied they would need to "go there". 2) Why not? 3) How is it relevant to the point of OP, being that it would make for a good horror story?

[@deuceisdaman]

Fr like fuck am I supposed to do

[@varietychan]

Imagine tilting the rod slightly and it flings the other person to the moon

[@emceeboogieboots1608]

In 53 days😂 dude is waiting for a push and ...Woah

[@juliopcrj]

"For now, let's consider a spherical chicken in vacuum"

[@ShuShiraKawa666]

😂

[@awesomelink2347]

A good example of this is if you take a Slinky, hold it by one end, let the other end dangle down, and drop it. It'll float until the dropped end reaches the floating end, for this very reason.

[@dosomestuff1949]

This is not the reason as to why that happens.

[@Lefkefb]

​@@dosomestuff1949its similar but cuz slinky is just a circulated long road

[@ThomasTheThermonuclearBomb]

@@LefkefbThe speed of sound is way faster...

[@Lefkefb]

@@ThomasTheThermonuclearBomb yes I know whats the matter did I say it isn't

[@ThomasTheThermonuclearBomb]

@@Lefkefb I mean if a slinky's delay in falling was caused by each molecule getting pushed at the speed of sound, it wouldn't appear to hover in the air like it does. It would fall instantly

[@Somebody71828]

Bro will be the type of parent that will turn a joke into a few hour conversation about life.

[@The0Zay_0]

I’m gonna hope this is a joke, I can’t tell due to no emojis and you have proper grammar.

[@Somebody71828]

@@The0Zay_0 Bro you don't need emojis to tell a joke just look at other comments 💀💀💀

[@The0Zay_0]

@@Somebody71828 but it gives context

[@Somebody71828]

@@The0Zay_0 normally I would add emojis on my other comments tho, I just thought it's getting too common for me

[@The0Zay_0]

@@Somebody71828 oh ok

[@deitznuts7133]

so, what you're telling me, is that all movement is REALLY slow, sticky piston flying machines?

[@-blaire-]

Not exactly; if you accelerate an object from only one end, then yes, it is capped at the speed of sound. However, when uniform acceleration is applied to an object (for example, if there were rockets lined up along the rod to push all parts of it at once), this limit can be overcome. Of course, we are still limited by the speed of light regardless, and to operate such a machine would be slower than radio communication anyway.

[@daanstrik4293]

Thats… not entirely inaccurate

[@Admiral45-10]

There is also another explanation: You probably saw that springs are not always the same - some are easier to compress or extend, some are more difficult - we call this factor an elasticity. Basically, every mechanical connection can be understood as a spring, just with different elasticity. This way, we essentially made a large spring from Earth to Mars - and this spring will contract in one point and push the ,,contraction" throughout the entire thing.

[@MattisProbably]

Even if we assume that the rod can't deform in any way, I want to see the absolute gigachad capable of moving a 55 million kilometer rod! 😁

[@ultimazilla9814]

me

[@WilcoVerhoef]

It doesn't have to move. When you push, the force can be felt by the person on the other side even if the rod stays stationary.

[@tedzards509]

And even then we would be limited by the speed of light.

[@alexeisenhauer5874]

hot 🥵

[@TheeSirRandom]

@@WilcoVerhoef Its a 55 million kilometer rod. All the force a human can apply would dissipate by the time it reaches the target.

[@RichieBre]

Super underrated channel. Even though the meme is intended to be stupid, explaining it in the way you do works really well for it. Also very short and sweet. Subbed!

[@NightBeWheat]

0:27 oh i wish i had a rod like that ;)

[@Nanbread-bw7nq]

did not expect the channel to be so small! your videos are really good

[@burnerbill7372]

1:19 college japanese class flashbacks

[@flameofthephoenix8395]

See this is the problem with rigid body physics engines. No object is completely rigid!

[@cmyk8964]

Summary: Ignoring the logistical and physics reasons why you can’t put a rigid rod between Earth and Mars, the force applied on the rod doesn’t travel instantaneously, or even at the speed of light. Each molecule in the rod can only disperse the force to the molecules close to it, not the other side of space.

[@VoxAstra-qk4jz]

The push would move at the speed of sound through metal. Also, orbits.

[@Mewdo45]

You'd have to push pretty hard for that to reach millions of kms

[@VoxAstra-qk4jz]

@@Mewdo45 I'm not saying the rod would move at the speed of sound, but that the *motion itself* would propagate at the speed of sound down the rod. The metal isn't 100% ridged, so the push moves as a wave down the rod. There's an AlphaPhoenix video that explains and demonstrates this much better than I can in a KZbin comment.

[@-blaire-]

I'm not sure if you just didn't catch it but both of these things were mentioned in the video, that was sort of the whole point. Firstly, we need to disregard orbits (and really many laws of physics). Secondly, the video only really exists to explain the concept of compression and rarefaction and the fact that the resulting wave would travel at the speed of sound, hence becoming significantly lower than radio communication - which obviously travels at the speed of light. Essentially - even if we assumed that we could somehow pull off the insane feat of engineering required to create such a contraption - it'd be absolutely useless when compared to more sophisticated communication methods.

[@noahtekulve2684]

In summary: After being pushed, a wave of slightly compressed rod will travel for 53 days before anything is felt on the other side. This is after ignoring many, many problems with location, distance, stellar obstacles, material strength and rigidity, and much, much more.

[@nicolopanti1169]

This idea is like what a 9 year old thinks when solving a problem that plagues humanity.

[@user-dn5lr6lp4k]

I did actually think that it is the future of communication when I was 10😂

[@DeJay7]

This is the result of calling the speed limit the "speed of light" instead of the "speed of causality".

[@MustDIEOracle]

I admire your dedication!) Looked all 18 parts, waiting for more)

[@ForeverFree2Play]

Without even watching the video I can immediately tell you that the longer something gets, no matter how solid it is, will be wiggly and bendy, especially when floating in space.

[@kingofawesomeness5375]

You ignored the asteroids, the weight of the rod, the moving of the two bodies and a bunch of other stuff. If you ignore just one more thing, the fact that the atoms have to push eachother, then it totally works!

[@cx4561]

Just wondering what happens if the rod is made out of solid neutrons. Since that material is so dense that virtually no space exists in between the individual neutrons in it, and that makes it impossible to compress. Assuming you are somehow able to push that rod weighing trillions of tons while on Earth, the Mars end of the rod should theoretically be able to instantly receive that input. Right...?

[@escise]

You simply won't be able to push it, because to push a thing you have to in fact create the compression, and this is impossible. Not saying that "solid neutrons" are impossible to be created stable enough to be a 55.5 million kms long rod

[@onionman8160]

For something to move, it must receive information compelling it to move. In a rod made of neutrons this would be transmitted by mesons i believe, as the nuclear force is repulsive at very close distances. Mesons themselves aren't massless so they don't even move at the speed of light. A major problem with faster-than-light events is that they allow time paradoxes, so most physicists are quite certain that it's impossible.

[@mitchjohnson4714]

Impossible to compress is impossible to exist.

[@Rezail_Uhhh]

But but but we can tell the aliens we have a giant rod!!

[@logosking2848]

before i watch, is this a 2 minute video just to say that compression waves travel slower than light speed, so it'll take time for message to move through the rod?

[@aaronh8095]

What if you had a pole a light-day long fastened into the earth so that it couldn’t move. Would the end rotate 2π times faster than the speed of light, because it would be traveling 2π times its length in a day?

[@-blaire-]

No, the pole would snap under the immense forces applied to it.

[@onionman8160]

Nope. Structural issues aside, a pole ultimately composed of molecules, which are themselves held together by electromagnetism. The force carrying particle of electromagnetism is the photon, which is of course limited by the speed of light. The very substance of the pole itself is thereby limited by the speed of light. The speed of light really is the ultimate speed limit.

[@thelaniakean]

It would take infinite energy to make the end of pole move to the speed of light

[@Dogempire-001]

Gonna say before I even watch the video the speed of push is as fast about as fast as the speed of sound knew it

[@cara-seyun]

All you need then is a material with a speed of sound greater then the speed of light

[@luizguipro4855]

@@cara-seyun that doesnt exist

[@cara-seyun]

@@luizguipro4855 and you know that how?

[@luizguipro4855]

@@cara-seyun ​ The video says that when you push something, the atoms move a little bit to its neighboring atom and then oscillate in its original spot, forming a mechanical wave that travels at the speed of sound of the material. If a material's speed of sound is greater than the speed of light, then that means that the atoms inside that material oscillate faster than the speed of light, which we know is impossible. May be wrong though

[@djmewtwo6981]

@@cara-seyunbasically, pushing an object is atoms pushing each other. That is speed of sound. For it to work properly you would need to hit the rod faster than the speed of light which makes the entire point of the rod existing useless

[@joshp3446]

I have literally been thinking about this for like 10 years, thanks

[@Blueybeak]

this is so weird to comprehend. Imagine pushing a door and it swings open 10 seconds later. bad ping existing irl is wild

[@alex2005z]

Thats a huge door you got there

[@mitchjohnson4714]

It's like swinging the door, but only the knob moves, then the edge of the door, then the movement travels toward the hinges and finally hits the hinges.

[@theoncomingstorm7903]

I doubt an asteroid would ever actually hit the rod if it existed. They really aren't that common in space relative to the actual size of space.

[@DavidplusNK]

That title is so blunt; I love it

[@professorhaystacks6606]

This is similar to the rod-and-hole paradox. The problem statement assumes the rod is perfectly rigid, when in fact no real rod is and if SR is correct (at least as a limiting case) then no real rod ever CAN be perfectly rigid.

[@brix_max]

Simply the mass of this thing 😂

[@Ale_4316]

Of course, it's the same reason we say electricity travels at light speed when really electrons in copper move at 2cm/s

[@bebbenbaby5361]

Wow, this was concise and fully clarifying. Thank you.

[@TheAntoine191]

Hopkins bars are using this property to get fast force measurements in impact scenarios. Usually impact force is mostly not usable because of the multiple wave propagations. The Bar will carry a single wave without reflection until the mechanical wave has gone both ways.

[@Sorrelhas]

This one I didn't get So if I push the rod here on Earth, the other end on Mars won't move immediately? There will be a period where the rod will be shorter due to compression?

[@Enderia2]

I mean, yeah. The rod would either be a. So high mass that you would need substantial force (like, a lot more than a human could do in like, their lifetime) b. So un-rigid that while it’s pushable, it would simply die for one it’s just simply 100% impractical either way Edit: and that was assuming it DOES move instantly. Electromagnetic forces cause the atoms in said rod to be repelled from each other… yet not really allowing themselves to fly apart completely. The atoms won’t move faster than the speed of light. They probably won’t move very fast at all.

[@mismis3153]

Think of it as flinging a rope. The wave will travel down the rope and reach the end. This is the same thing.

[@Sorrelhas]

I get it now, I guess it's just very hard to visualize

[@jksupergamer]

Forces don’t actually act instantaneously. Any changes in a force updates at the speed of light. Ex: if the sun disappeared, not only would there be light for 8 minutes but also we would orbit nothing for 8 minutes. Because all materials are just bonded through the electromagnetic force, it would take a little time for a force moving one end to affect the other.

[@mismis3153]

@@jksupergamer Well that's not exactly true. In a material, it updates at the speed of sound.

[@maxresdefault_]

Veritasium made a video about this year's ago! This kinda physics question is so nostalgic for me, reminds me of being a curious kid

[@jameshay7079]

Structural Engineer here. A rod of that length would have a very small global buckling load. Basically, it would bend like when you push two ends of a ruler together.

[@jowieonit]

reason: because c is the cosmic limit, the causality. so hypothetically if u nudge a pole from earth to mars it will only nudge at the speed of light from molecules to molecules

[@VoxAstra-qk4jz]

@@jowieonit Actually, it's the speed of sound in the metal, not the speed of light. Alpha Phoenix has a video where he tests this.

[@credge]

​@@VoxAstra-qk4jz A bullet, in about a thousandth of a second, can be accelerated (by a force applied at one end) to over 1/5 of the speed of sound within the bullet. If this was true, then the bullet should be visibly shorter when leaving the gun (by over 20%) when viewed on any sufficiently high speed camera than when the bullet is at rest (and there are tons of slow motion gun firings on the internet). In fact, a lead bullet (speed of sound of 1200 m/s) would be accelerated so quickly (compared to its own speed of sound) that it would leave the gun looking like a disc, which would then turn back into the shape of a bullet after the acceleration ceases upon leaving the barrel. So there is obviously more at play here; maybe Alpha's experiment only measured sound and not necessarily the maximum speed of movement, or maybe the limit is still sound, but when an object (like a lead bullet) is compressed by it's acceleration from one end, the speed of sound within it rises so quickly that the compression becomes small enough not to be visibly observed.

[@galoomba5559]

@@VoxAstra-qk4jz Yes, but you don't need to care about that to figure out that you will not exceed the speed of light

[@EventHorizonPrdctns]

Excellent, always assumed the atomic relationship (which I had never heard of knew about but also assumed existed) would transfer energy/force at somewhere close to the speed of light. So fascinating to learn it's the speed of sound!

[@sethb3090]

Going by my general knowledge of how stuff works (before watching) I'd say the answer is that the signal will travel at roughly whatever the speed of sound is in that medium.

[@musthaf9]

I think this idea rely on the thinking that the other end of the rod knows that it is being pushed or pulled at the exact same time as the pushing or pulling of one end of the rod. Well this is not true. Nothing is faster than the speed of light, not even "information". The "information" that the rod is being pulled or push also travel at the speed of light.

[@head_snapss7587]

I assumed in the first place you'd need a monumental ammount of force to even budge it completely forgetting about how particles in the pipe

[@doughboywhine]

I was pretty confused when a couple comments I recently got were on a video that no longer exists

[@Hard3R]

also you didnnt considerd the relativistic portion of it all. The rod would be subject to variations in its lenght because of the difference in gravitational pulls. Also the 53 days would be subject to relativistic time.

[@galoomba5559]

That's negligible here.

[@cry0genic784]

If you had a camera showing both rods and someone pushes it and it doesn't do anything on the other side my brain will break.

[@michka841]

you just answered a question I had since I was 10, thank you

[@perialis2970]

what about quantum physics? im referring to the superposition of 2 atoms being entangled with each other by making it so say if one atom is a 0 then the other is predetermined to be 1.

[@deananderson7714]

While quantum entanglement does work faster than light you can’t convey information with it since you have no control over which state which particle takes on. The speed of light only limits how fast information can travel. It’s not possible to send messages faster than light using entanglement

[@xenird]

It's like having a pair of socks with one sock being white and the other being black When you give a random sock to another person then look at your own you will know what color the other person has but can't transmit information this way

[@perialis2970]

@@xenird but what if you had control over what sock you can get?

[@galoomba5559]

@@perialis2970 You don't have control over that after you take the sock

[@perialis2970]

@@galoomba5559 yeah but what if u can

[@smass8586]

I also like the ignoring the inertia a rod of that size would have

[@IhateSpiders-po1ym]

0:48 Just get a guild navigator.

[@FunctionallyLiteratePerson]

They need melange for that

[@arxligion]

It's like a really, really hard spring

[@protorhinocerator142]

Short answer: It works at the speed of pressure, which is the speed of sound. I used to fantasize about this when I was 10. Then it suddenly hit me that it wouldn't work.

[@tegathemenace]

Engineers: We say 3mins is approximately 53 days

[@Chaoszwaihander3434]

Also without ignoring celestial bodies, Mars every 2 years finds itself on the other side of the sun relative to us, so the rod would need to pass by the sun

[@jotanuki]

I know its true but this makes no sense in my head, so the big rod turns smaller for 53 days? Like, if you pull 1 centimeter the rod become 1 centimeter smaller until the information hit the end?

[@outerspacedog]

think of it like a really long slinky toy. if you move one end a centimeter forwards, a wave will be created that moves through the entire slinky. the slinky will be one centimeter shorter for however long it takes for that wave to reach the other end.

[@finaldusk1821]

Alas, we're using brains and sensory organs optimised by evolution for relatively trivial tasks, like getting fruit out of trees. When we try using those same tools to understand the microscopic building blocks of reality itself, or the gargantuan distances between literal worlds...stuff quickly stops making sense unless we've spent years studying it.

[@-blaire-]

Yes, it does. The end of the rod we push on gets compressed (in your example, by 1cm) and that compression must travel all the way along the rod to the end, resulting in a "push". Obviously, at the scales we're used to, we don't perceive an object being pushed in this way at all. Nonetheless, this is always happening, it's just imperceptible in smaller objects as it happens so fast.

[@TheeSirRandom]

its a really long slinky. At a big enough size literally any material that exists works like how a spring does. This is true even at smaller scales we are used to, they are just so small that we cannot observe the changes no matter how long we try. Even with a microscope, if you pushed a meter long rod the change would be so small and so fast that you could not observe it. But at literally 55 million kilometers you will see that. Its literally explained exactly why this happens in the video. You can use logic to deduce that yes, it gets fucking smaller.

[@jotanuki]

@@TheeSirRandom rude.

[@smarty265]

or we just stay on earth and dont have to deal with space shenanigans and time

[@jojojorisjhjosef]

I had a fierce debate with chatgpt with this idea, cause I thought the electromagnetic force speed could be the speed (and ultimately is the speed) that determines the "communication" between the rods atoms (because bonds). But exceeding the couloumb force per atom would buckle the material, so yes electromagnetic force speed, but not because bucking (and you can use the same coulcoumb force to approximate the youngs modulus and thus the speed of sound in the material).

[@aralornwolf3140]

ChatGPT is designed to please the human... not to give factually correct information.

[@ollllj]

when you "think" that the speed-of-sound could ever be faster-than-light

[@0MasterOfDisaster0]

There is a nice video with experiment by alpha phoenix on this subject

[@markl4593]

Even if the rod were made of neutronium where there would be no compression - nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Entangled particles communicate instantly but they can’t convey information.

[@AiOinc1]

To the thumbnail, acceleration is not instant and the inertia of such a device, even made from the lightest materials in existence, if such a construct were even possible, would be so great that it would likely be practically immovable. This is not to speak of the rotation and orbit of the two planets, either. EDIT: He said this in the video and made another, better point after

[@jaykiknavenaga2121]

why not just get unobtainium which can bypass speed of light?

[@JustinMShaw]

Unobtanium is only good for withstanding infinite pressure. You need prettypleasefantasystuff to go faster than c.

[@jaykiknavenaga2121]

@@JustinMShaw 🤯🤯

[@NickAndriadze]

Yeah, it's definitely an inconception that you can just push or pull something arbitrarily long and have all of it move instantaneously. It still takes time for all of it to move, we just don't notice it.

[@Lexi_Zone]

Nothing is as solid as people think it is.

[@maltheopia]

0:45 - the Isaac Arthur SFIA background fanclub is now in session.

[@chengong388]

There really aren’t much rock in the way, space is EXTREMELY empty, including the asteroid fields. If you had a rod that connected earth and mars with a diameter of like a couple centimetres it would barely ever come into contact with anything bigger than a grain of sand.

[@galoomba5559]

Grains of sand moving at orbital speeds could still do significant damage to a rod.

[@chengong388]

@@galoomba5559 yea but irrelevant.

[@mlecz4152]

So what would happen when for 53 days both sides would constantly push each end of the stick?

[@alex2005z]

If they pushed with the same strenght at each time it could cancel out

[@AmmarMorocco29292]

Nerd mode has activated

[@ReonE60000]

I've read some quantum teleportation-related shit could be used for FTL communication.

[@bipolarminddroppings]

Even if it did work, what information could be shared just by pushing a rod once? It wouldn't work for the same reason entangled particles can't be used to communicate FTL, all you can know is that the rod was pushed...

[@user-fc2lx4ou2t]

As a 6 year old i thought of similar thing but with gears with gear ratio 1 to 1 before i realised that

[@PneumaticFrog]

6 year old? How do you even know how to type

[@user-fc2lx4ou2t]

@@PneumaticFrog i meant when i was 6, im 13 now. Although i knew how to write at 6 (im russian)

[@iplaygames1029]

​@@user-fc2lx4ou2t 2010?

[@xenird]

​@@PneumaticFrogthey teach that when you're like 5 or 6 lmao

[@yamiraguero5541]

Huh, and here i thought the information would travel at speed of light The more you know i guess

[@parmaxolotl]

I came up with this exact concept several years ago and recently revealed it to my friends, creating a new inside joke. And then you made this video. What?!!

[@outerspacedog]

that's exactly what happened to me, apparently I've never had an original experience before lmao

[@pup1030]

even in the original meme nothing is moving faster than light, the rod is just being pushed and pulled at a regular speed over an insane distance

[@haiperbus]

A rule about Lightspeed that's often not explained is that it includes information. Nothing that can cause change, or information itself is able to go somewhere faster than light can. The reason why strong gravity changes time like in the film interstellar is how the universe keeps that rule consistent

[@facelessman9224]

I came up with this idea when I was a child, but when I got older I realized it was stupid and wouldn't work.

[@PascalxSome]

AlphaPhoenix has an amazing video about this!

[@shuckLedurkins]

God I was hoping when he said “rod” the whole screen would just go blurry and pixilated

[@GeorgeWard14]

If you were right it would be impossible for things to break the sound barrier. The push from the engines would not reach the front of the plane somehow and the plane would just crumple at high speeds.

[@galoomba5559]

From the perspective of the plane, it's still, and sound waves can still move through it at the speed of sound relative to it.

[@redmuscle99]

Put a can on each end so we can talk to each other

[@ItsGamein]

What would happen if compression was impossible? Would the force required destroy the universe?

[@monkeyking9863]

hmm i dont know, i think we should test it out just in case

[@Appledirt]

This leaves me with a question i cant intuitively answer: How can things move faster than the speed of sound? With a supersonic jet for example, how come it doesn't just crumple into a pancake as though it hit a wall, as the front of it would effectively be a wall since it couldn't "react in time"?

[@thegodseeker6035]

Now what if it’s a rod made of Neutrons?

[@lyft4238]

No need a rod What about a quantum entangled communications array?

[@user-oe3kz8ww7d]

I thought this would work but yoi cant ignore all the reasons why you cant set it up, but actually it doesnt even if you do! This is wonderful! Still works with the Orson Scott Card setup tho, but that requires inventing a new kind of subatomic particle so who cares.

[@kuuluna]

Just don't think and it'll work

[@hoppop5979]

If you push the rod planets will go out their orbits

[@captainminnow]

So I get the basic premise, but don’t understand why sound is the limiting factor. We can have planes and rockets and missiles travel faster than sound travels through air, and their inherent elasticity doesn’t prevent it- what is going on here? Is the speed of sound within that plane substantially faster than it is within air or is there something else?

[@galoomba5559]

There's nothing preventing the whole object from moving at higher than the speed of sound. Only the speed of perturbations from one part of the object to another is limited.

[@GoofballPaul]

not enough magnets, that’s why it failed.

[@peterrenn6341]

Uh… Seymour. Always with the magnets! 😉

[@Little-Buster]

Could we have Comm Buoys for FTL communication?

[@kaizoisevil]

This goes at most at the speed of sound.

[@cleanerben9636]

ahhh but what if I put the rod through a wormhole? Checkmate. Also, could you not create a blanket of wormholes that shoot the energy of the sun directly back at it?

[@chir0pter]

what if you had a cosmic string of perfect stiffness tho, it's a fundamental particle so it can't compress

[@Jartious]

Well then just use something with infinite density so that there's no distance that the atoms have to- oh wait

[@lasagna3289]

Radiowaves travel at the speed of light!?