Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn’t work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn’t really any point in being there.
Practically anything can go faster than Disc light, which is lazy and tame, unlike ordinary light. The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles—kingons, or possibly queons—that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.
Terry Pratchett
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Have we broken the bad news barrier? Science is amazing!
Natanael@infosec.pub 1 year ago
“'A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on”
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Douglas Adams
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 year ago
Homie had such an awe inspiring mastery of the English language.
Natanael@infosec.pub 1 year ago
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It turns out the bad news particle is composed of one up ass, one strange ass, and one dumboson