This Is A Light-Nanosecond!

less than 1m read

·Nov 10, 2024

I trimmed my beard yesterday, so I'm feeling a bit like a baby today. But look at the trimmings! Specifically this one that is 2.4 fortnits worth of beard growth. How do I know? Well, because of this tool I made. This about 5 years ago to free people from the tyranny of standard units. It measures in weird units like beard fortnits, the typical length of beard grows every 2 weeks.

It's also got light pico seconds, how far light travels in a trillionth of a second. If you didn't get one 5 years ago but you're subscribed much later this year, three boxes from now you'll get one in a special Legacy box we're making. The entire ruler is exactly one light nond long. This is how far light travels in a vacuum in 1 nond.

Everything I see from this distance, I'm seeing as it was a billionth of a second ago. It's a reminder that you live in the past because light has a finite speed. You do not see things as they are; you see the universe only as it was. Also, you're going nowhere if you fall asleep tonight in the same bed you woke up in this morning. Your average velocity for the day will be zero.

The Future of Koalas | National Geographic

5 Websites I use as a Value Investor

View All

Things You Don't Need To Be Successful

All right. So a lot of people aren’t going to agree with this list because honestly, they’re looking for excuses. But reality is, there are things you don’t really need in order to be successful. Even though it might seem that way. We know this from perso…

How I made my life a video game

(Piano music) - So I’ve talked on this channel before about how I think there are a lot of parallels between video games and real life. In a video game, as your character progresses through the game and you upgrade your stats and make more money, you’re a…

Should You Move Your Company to Silicon Valley? - Eric Migicovsky, Pebble Founder

Today I want to talk about the question: Should you move your company to Silicon Valley? This is a question that’s pretty close to my heart because I started my company, Pebble, in Waterloo, Ontario, and I decided to move my company to Silicon Valley afte…

Unadopted amendments to the Bill of Rights | US government and civics | Khan Academy

Hi, this is Kim from Khan Academy. Did you know that what we call the First Amendment today was actually the Third Amendment in the original draft of the Bill of Rights? In fact, there were more than 200 proposed amendments, which were whittled down to ju…

Touring the Vulcan Rocket on the Launch Pad - Smarter Every Day 297

In this video, we’re going to walk right up to a huge rocket on the launch pad. Not only are we going to walk up to it, we’re going to walk right up to the hot, naughty bits. That’s what I call it. We’ve got two liquid engines, two solid engines. They’ve …

The Illegal and Secretive World of Chameleon Ranching | National Geographic

Chameleons have a lot of crazy things going on and are pretty unique in the lizard world. They have these independently rotating googly eyes, this prehensile tail which is basically a monkey tail they can use like a fifth limb, and spring-loaded tongs tha…

This Is A Light-Nanosecond!

More Articles