Hello All,
Something has be rattling about my mind for some time now. We know from "A Clone Of My Own," "When Aliens Attack," and so on, that scientists in the Futurama universe have increased the speed of light gazillions of times.
"Gazillion's;" that's a technical term...

This is the plot device the writers used to move the plots forward without ridiculously long travel times between stars, galaxies, etc.

It's a snide tongue-in-cheek creative alternative to "faster-than-light" space travel, doesn't violate Relativity, cosmology, causality, blah, blah blah...

All of this has been discussed 'round and 'round before, elsewhere in these forums, ad infinitum, and I don't want to become embroiled in that again.

What I want to discuss is this:

So just how fast is the 'new' speed of light?

Having far too much free time on my hands

Being scientifically curious, I did a bit of research, and found no threads that quite address this issue. If this has been discussed before, I didn't find it. Kindly point me towards said thread, and I'll be on my merry way...

Until then... Here goes:

In "The Route of All Evil," Dwight and Cubert send the crew on a fake delivery to Dog-Doo 8. In other words, to the edge of the universe and back. From "Teenage Mutand Leela’s Hurdles," we know the PlanEx ship has a top-speed of 99% the speed of light.

The trip, there and back, takes a week.

Hmm, I says, hmm... Current cosmology tells us the edge of the observable universe is between about 14-billion and about 42-billion light-years.

That means the PlanEx ship travels between 28 and 84-billion light-years in a week.

Let's take the lower number, as it will give us a lower limit for the 'new' speed of light, and the math is a mite easier.

Now, rightly or wrongly, I'm assuming the ship flies straight out there, full throttle, turns on a dime, and flies straight back, also full throttle. It reduces the guesswork.

There are about 365.25 days in a year, and the trip takes 7 days, or 7/365.25's Oy! So much for easy math... of a year. 28-billion light-years in 7/365.25 years. Or;

28-billion light-years = 2.8 x 10^10th power,

Divided by 7 / 365.25th's of a year,

Divided by 99%...

A little arithmetic gives; 1.47685E+12 light-years per year.

That is, 1.46208 x 10^12th power, 1,476,848,484,848, or;

About 1.477-TRILLION light-years per year.

*Whoof* That's a helluva hurry!

This means, the 'new' speed of light is 1.476-trillion times faster the 'old' speed of light.

As I recall from high-school physics, the speed of light is about 186282.4 (1.862E+5) miles per second. That is, the current, or 'old' speed of light.

<Zoidberg>
Again with the arithmetic?
</Zoidy>

Gives us 2.75111E+17, or 275,110,880,193,939,000 miles per second, that is... uh... just a second...

1e+03= Thousands,
1E+06 = Millions
1E+09 = Billions
1E+12 = Trillions
1E+15 = Quadrillions
1E+16 = Tens of Quadrillions
1E+17 = Hundreds of Quadrillions
DAY-amn!

A smidge more than 275-QUADRILLION miles per second!
DAY-amn, I repeat for emphasis.

Does this stand to reason?
Did I miss something?
Is the round-trip distance all wrong?

Please point out any flaws in my reasoning, but if you do, please say what’s wrong, why, and how to do it right?

Oh, and just in case anyone’s interested, I’m ignoring Relativistic effects, as the ‘frame of reference’ is the universe, not the ship.

From sun to earth surface, a beam of light takes 8 minutes to get here. FACT

not in futurama terms though, in real life.

@Futz:
True, most cosmological modles say the universe is on the order of 14 billion years old. One, the "Inflationary Modle," IIRC, says that for scientific reasons w-a-a-a-y over my pointy head, the universe expanded a lot faster than the speed of light in the first bits of a microsecond after the 'Big=Bang'. This is the modlel that tells us the universe could be up to about 42 billion light years in radius.
As for the universe being infinite... well... we just don't have the physics to say yet.
Still, it could be a gag, and I just don't 'get it'.
Hey, my gray-matter is so dense it absorbs NEUTRINOS!

@ Worble:
Yep. 93 million miles divided by the speed of light: Do the math!

@ Teral:
You are, as usual, correct. Thank you. If you have a better estimate for the round-trip distance, I want to hear it!

@ Canned eggs:
No arguments. The whole estimate hangs on how long the trip in "ROAE" was, and as I said to Teral, if anybody has a better estimate, I want to know it!

quote:

---

Originally posted by futz:
It's always described as infinite in the modern era... If you travel in a straight line long enough you'll wind up where you started.

---

Uh... not quite. IIRC, what you refer to is called the "Standard Modle." In it there's a difference between "infinite," and "unbounded." Think of the surface of a sphere as an analogy. Starting from any point, it is possible go in any randomly chose direction, travel the circumference, and wind up exactly where you started.

Did you find a edge? Nope.

My point; the sphere, while having no edges, does have a finite surface area. According to some theories, our universe is the 3-dimensional "brane" (as in skin, or membrane) of a higher dimensional shape.

But I'm certainly no expert in cosmology!

quote:

---

I've heard of "the Rules" being different in the initial microseconds of the the Big Bang but not of any Quasars or such being measured that far out. Please clarify if you can.

---

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking.

I'm told that in the initial 10E-43'rd of a second or so, the laws of physics as we know them hadn't gelled yet; allowing, among other things, the four forces of nature to behave like one force... or something like that...
Also, the universe was so-o-o-o-o hot to start out, whatever was there was far too hot (energetic) to condense into matter. Heck, I understand it took some hundreds of millions of years for the first stars to form.
So, Quasars? The last I knew, we hadn't figured out what they are, much less how they formed.

<Crickets chirp>

*Ahem*

I was actually hoping for a numerical estimate.

Oh, and it's only sorcery if you don't have the science to explain it.

Hmm, sudenly, I think you're right: it IS quantim sorcery!

Although some theories like "String Theory" posit vibrating loops of energy billions of times smaller than-

NRGH!

Y'got me off on a tangent again!

quote:

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Originally posted by futz:
Well if they changed it once maybe changing it at whim isn't a big deal. The PE ship drive is based on moving space around the ship, not the moving the ship through space.

---

Eh? I don't remember it mentioned that the PE ship used Warp Drive a la Trek?

Exactly how the PE ship's drive works has never been explained in any depth: That's part of the gag.

<Silence>

Hok-kay...

SO, does anyone have a better estimate for the PE ship's round trip in ROAE?

Anybody?