• JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    You’re just knowledgeable enough to know that Earth moves, but not intelligent enough to know that there’s no absolute reference frame it moves in respect to.

    If you don’t continue travelling with the Earth along its path when you time travel, you could literally end up at any random point in the universe, unless you pick a different, arbitrary, body to move in reference to.

    • dovahking@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      But the universe is also constantly expanding. So the frame of reference becomes obsolete because it’s at an entirely different point in space now.

    • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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      10 months ago

      Then there’s you who forgot that we actually do have a universal reference frame with the cosmic microwave background.

      • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        The CMB is everywhere, and anywhere in the universe it’s the same distance from a hypothetical observer. I fail to see how you can use it as an absolute reference frame.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
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      10 months ago

      Nah, I know the thing with reference points, but that’s a matter of navigation and relativity.

      In reality, a point in space is a point in space, like, a specific “pixel” of the Universe (oversimplified) that might be occupied with something or not.

      We just can’t anchor this point since we don’t know what reference is absolute and the laws of physics can be applied to every inertial reference, so this doesn’t help.

      • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        It’s not that we don’t know which reference point is absolute, but there are still absolutely defined ‘points in space’, it’s that there is no absolute reference point, and so there are just ‘points in space’ relative to whatever arbitrary body you decide to make your reference frame.