this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
376 points (98.5% liked)
Memes
15932 readers
1767 users here now
Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
- Wait at least 2 months before reposting
- No explicitly political content (about political figures, political events, elections and so on), !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca can be better place for that
- Use NSFW marking accordingly
Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
- Odota ainakin 2 kuukautta ennen meemin postaamista uudelleen
- Ei selkeän poliittista sisältöä (poliitikoista, poliittisista tapahtumista, vaaleista jne) parempi paikka esim. !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
- Merkitse K18-sisältö tarpeen mukaan
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Best intuition I've heard for this is that "things" can't move faster than light, but not everything is a "thing".
Imagine doing shadow puppets on the wall with a flashlight. You move the bunny left, shadow moves left. The further away the wall is, the faster the apparent speed of the shadow bunny. You might think that, far enough away and with a strong enough light, your shadow bunny would be racing across the sky faster than the speed of light -- and the crazy thing is, you'd be correct! The shadow (absence of light) can move arbitrarily fast. But the light itself is moving at its normal constant speed from the flashlight out into space, perpendicular to the travel of the bunny, like a garden hose spraying water. The time it takes for the shadow to even begin to move is governed by the speed of light. No information can be communicated faster than light because the light travels at the speed of light to illuminate the places where the shadow isn't.
Very eloquent explanation. The one glitch I must point out is that the shadow (or absence of light) can't move faster than light, because the shadow is information and information can't travel faster than light. If it could, you could use a sequence of shadows, coded by length and spacing, for FTL communication.
The shadow has no FTL information here. Watch https://youtu.be/JTvcpdfGUtQ
The shadow moving is more akin to bandwidth of transmission rather than speed of transmission. You still have to wait for the photons (so speed of light) for the information to arrive, even if the "speed" of the shadow appears FTL.