Thank you for this daily dose of existential dread 👌
Are they also unbound by momentum?
TIL that ghosts are pinned to the lumineferous aether.
With the Earth's elliptical orbit, momentum would only get you so far in terms of sticking with the planet.
relative to the galactic central point, per Eric Idle, the earth would be 200k/125 miles away in a single second, or relative to everything in the universe / background radiation, it would be 23,000 miles (37,000 km) away in a single second.
Preserving momentum in different directions and you quickly double it
Assuming an even rate of death, that's just under 2 people dying per second currently, so you wouldn't even be able to see the people who died before or after you if you retained human senses as a ghost.
If this were true we could then actually use ghosts to determine the "true" universal reference frame, right?

The butthole is what really makes this comic
Now we know what dark matter is
We already had a discussion about how that doesn't make sense with this different comic: https://lemmy.ml/post/14518058

Right, at the very least it would be a non overlapping spiral, as our sun orbits the galactic center
Who’s “we” tho? It’s like a 4 month old post.
Funny tho I wonder if the artist read that thread and got the idea for this comic or if it’s just a case of like minds.
I wonder …
Maybe ghosts are what dark matter is made out of.
Cats know this.
This is incorrect. Ghosts do have mass, they just don't interact with the EM force and only through the gravity, the strong and the weak interaction (and a fifth interaction that we don't know about). That's right, all that dark matter and dark energy is actually ghosts.
This is the best explanation I've heard for dark matter that doesn't involve the assumption that our cosmological models are completely correct.
Is the reference frame the CMB? You'd think you could just choose the reference frame at that point and move however you want, but arguing the physics of hypothetical metaphysical beings probably doesn't make much sense.
Eehh objects in motion stay in motion? Does that apply to ghosts? So would the ghosts fly off in straight lines since no longer subjected to suns gravity ??
Does newton's laws apply to massless objects?
What's stopping them?
(Pun very much intended)
The only things that aren't bound by gravity are massless. Massless things always have to be moving at the speed of light. So really the question is, what direction would the ghost shoot off to? Momentum would have to be preserved, so it'd be the opposite direction of where the corpse drops. Or maybe the corpse just move a teensy bit to the opposite direction of the ghost?
Note: this assumes Newtonian or at least semi classical physics. In general relativity, there is no such thing as being unbound by gravity.
By this line of thinking, dying in a mass tragedy might be the best thing that could happen to you. At least you wouldn't be in solitary confinement for eternity.
Yeah, but....imagine if I were in that mass tragedy with you. You're telling me you wouldn't rather be alone for eternity, than with me for eternity?
This actually explains a lot.
I have a memory of seeing this exact idea in another comic on here but can’t find it! (Assuming it is a case of multiple discovery and not plagiarism)
That explains why there are no ghosts.
No Earth ghosts, only... Space Ghosts...
Even the galaxy fucks off very quickly from you.
But now we know who inhabits all those spoopy voids.
I always thought that this would be a similar issue with time machines. Go back even 1 second and you're floating in the void.
Well, but general relativity teaches us that all coordinate systems (also constantly moving, but not accelerating ones) are equally relevant. This means that the one with earth as it's origin is as correct as one where with the center of the galaxy (or the sun ) as is every other. So the one where earth moves somehow through space is just as random as any other.
Relative to what? That makes no sense.
Relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background. Seems to be the closest thing to an absolute reference frame.
Awesome idea for a Lovecraftian horror story. Maybe the ghosts leave a scent trail that attracts a ghost-eating planet-sized alien
That alien's name?
Pac-Man.
But in which frame of reference? Our solar system is also moving, so is our galaxy, our universe is "expanding", and let's not even talk about the multiverse, that's overdone as it is.
That's the cool part about it! All we have to do is find a way to measure ghosts and we'll know what the correct universal frame of reference is!
We move (with the Sun) around the Milky Way at about 792.000 km/h. At that speed, you wouldn't even see the earth getting away from you.
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