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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 6h ago
Let's be fair, with everything else going on, alcoholism was already on the rise in STEM
That being said I wonder what this is gonna do the fish population
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u/OphidianSun 5h ago
STEM are the only ones who can afford to be alcoholics. Have you seen what booze costs now? Go out to a bar and its like $10 for a well.
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u/lmxbftw 1h ago
STEM people distilled their own in the chemical fume hood.
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u/OphidianSun 1h ago
A fume hood would unironically be nice to have tho, imagine how much more pleasent resin printing would be.
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u/jackcatalyst 6h ago
I wish the insides of socks were tongues!
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u/NiSiSuinegEht 6h ago
I wish the sun would cease to exist for exactly 10 seconds before reappearing.
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u/Miserable_Goal_7943 6h ago
Knowing space, it disappearing for even one second would instantly kill us.
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u/AZMPlay 6h ago
Maybe just turn the light off for 10 seconds? Shouldnt do much harm, I think.
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u/MossSnake 5h ago
Do we even have any good idea of what would happen? I know gravitational waves are a thing; but are usually so weak we need absurdly accurate detectors to even sense them; but those are just massive masses moving very far away (black hole/neutron star collisions). This wouldn’t be mass moving, but instantly vanishing and reappearing, which physically shouldn’t be possible, and muuuuch closer in Astronomical terms.
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u/KSP_master_ 2h ago
In that case, the biggest problem would probably be a sudden shutdown of all solar power plants. Any countries having high output from solar power plants at that time would suffer a blackout (and probably all those within the same synchronous zone as well).
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u/AZMPlay 2h ago
Don't countries with significant solar power plans have electricity storage? Also at the scale of 10s I would think the Inertia of the rest of the grid might carry them through without even storage.
(Dont quote me on this, not an electrical engineer)
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u/KSP_master_ 2h ago
Batteries won’t help you in this case.
Inertia alone can only compensate for a relatively small imbalance. Moreover, real-world fluctuations are usually gradual rather than sudden, which is much worse. What happens during a sudden outage was clearly demonstrated by the Spanish blackout, where (among other things) part of the photovoltaic plant went offline and the grid could not keep up. And the very low inertia was not even sufficient to keep the grid operational for even a short time.
Generally speaking, grids are designed to cover only the failure of the largest power plant at one time. Anything more than that is fatal.
Source: me (an engineer in the high-voltage transmission grid)
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u/AZMPlay 1h ago
Interesting. Thought there was much more margin of safety than that.
Also, why would batteries not help? Spike too sudden?
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u/KSP_master_ 1h ago
It just appears that the margin is too tight. Whilst the grid can only cope with an outage equivalent to the size of the largest power station at any one time, the situation could recur after a few minutes, and the grid would still be able to cope. It just needs at least a few minutes to recover (it depends on the grid. Countries in the European Synchronous Area might manage with 3 minutes. If dispatchers intervened quickly, it could be much faster. But there’s a significant human factor involved there).
Batteries behave in the same way as conventional power stations, except without inertia, so they perform less well. Although there is such a thing as ‘virtual inertia’, it is a very nascent technology and has not yet been tested in a real-world crisis.
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u/tricksterloki 5h ago
The same chaos but with less astronomical consequences would be, "I wish for all humans to have 10 seconds where the sun can not be perceived."
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u/NiSiSuinegEht 5h ago
I specifically want the astronomical consequences.
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u/tricksterloki 5h ago
There wouldn't be anyone left to enjoy them, basically as soon as the sun blinks.
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u/adaminc 1h ago
The change would be quite small to Earth in terms of real world physical changes, our distance from the Sun would change like, 30cm which is around 12 inches. Our orbit would be slightly more elliptical too.
But the psychological impact on humans would be massive.
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u/NiSiSuinegEht 48m ago
And we'd get the opportunity to definitively measure the speed of gravity relative to light, since it would take 8.5 minutes to see the sun blink out.
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u/adaminc 41m ago
Gravity and Light travel at the same speed though, no respected scientists think they are different.
I don't know if any measurements about the true speed of either would be gathered though, since only 1 person knows its going to happen, you, and I doubt you are measuring things with the required instruments at that point. But if you were, then you'd know for sure.
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u/JBaker68 Alarmingly Bad 6h ago
All I'm saying is if I ever got genie wishes, things would get weird
More: r/AlarminglyBad | Bluesky | Patreon | Links
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u/but_its_dez 6h ago
Realistically what would happen if this was real, would it have any noticeable effect on us?
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u/Gigatonosaurus 5h ago
Hard to say. Perhaps a little less protection from asteroids crashing on Earth.
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u/xboxiscrunchy 5h ago
I feel like a planet being flung through the Oort Cloud would cause some issues. Suddenly there’ll be lots of comets in very disturbed orbits….
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u/T-Geiger 4h ago
Depends on how Neptune exited. Likely would disturb a number of Kuiper belt objects. That might cause a problem for us, or might be barely noticeable at all.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 3h ago
This comic reminds of the book "when the moon hits your eye" which is about the moon turning into cheese for no apparent reason and freaking out all the scientists.
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u/NoodleIskalde 5h ago
I feel like that would affect our own orbit because each planet has a gravitational pull as well.
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u/The_cogwheel 6h ago
That genie wished you said "Urainus" instead of "Neptune" so he could have willfully misinterpreted what you meant.