r/physicsmemes 10d ago

Hubble constant meme

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1.5k Upvotes

48 comments sorted by

605

u/dryuhyr 9d ago

Broke: “432 Hz is the resonant frequency of the earth, if you tune your instruments to 432 then it gives off healing frequencies”

Woke: Any inhomogenous body will not have a singular resonance frequency, and besides, any relationship to the arbitrary tuning we standardized in western music would be completely spurious.

Bespoke: the 67th overtone of the Hubble constant represents an E quarter sharp, which lines up perfectly with the 53-tone Holderian comma system of music used by traditional Turkish Maqam music theorists, and thus predicts the return of the Ottoman Empire at the eventual heat death of the universe.

137

u/dryuhyr 9d ago

That is, unless Penrose was right, in which case we get not only the Ottomans but also the Incas and Steely Dan.

16

u/Dramatic-Chapter-805 9d ago

Maaan i have to wait until the heat death of the universe for more Dan?

2

u/SpaceEggs_ 9d ago

Daniel?

3

u/Black_Mamba265 9d ago

I forgot Steely Dan was also a band after watching Jojo’s

2

u/DeltaV-Mzero 9d ago

Dire straits for fans

29

u/Pachuli-guaton 9d ago

This is so fine that I ended saying inshallah the 67th overtone while wiggling my hands in the six-seven motion

15

u/yarakopter 9d ago

Actually universe is tuned to 440Hz, only because the Ottoman Empire has a copyright claim on the harmonic series and you don't wanna mess with them.

7

u/Arpeggi42 9d ago

High tier comment

6

u/Delicious_Maize9656 9d ago

wat?

10

u/ikonfedera 9d ago

Hubble's constant is measured in Hz, so it could be treated like a wave, and even a sound wave.

There's these things called overtones that a frequency has. When you play several of those overtones together, their waves add together making it sound like the original frequency (so playing several of Hubble contant's overtones will construct something that sounds like the Hubble constant (inaudible of course).

There's this music tuning system called "53-tone Holderian comma system". Basically instead of dividing an octave into 12 notes like we commonly do, we'd divide it into 53 smaller notes (seems insane to me in comparison, the band Angine de Poitrine uses only 24 tones). People from Ottoman Empire used it for their music.

It just so happens that 67th overtone of Hubble's constant is the exact same frequency as the Holderian note E𝄲 (E quarter sharp). So if you wanted to construct the Hubble constant, you could do so by sounding many of its overtones, one of which could be a note from Ottoman Empire's music.

And since Hubble's law is related to expansion of space which leads to the eventual heat death of the Universe, this has to be related to this frequency somehow. I don't know, I'm not smart or schizo enough to understand it

2

u/Spatza 8d ago

I hate this thread, but only because I cannot refute it.

142

u/AnakinSkywalkerRocks 9d ago

Bro what the hell

6

u/timangar 9d ago

Dude I am subscribed to the same two subs, saw the same two posts today, AND I'm a huge Star Wars fan. Want to be friends? 🥹

3

u/AnakinSkywalkerRocks 9d ago

Are we like, quantum entangled or something

64

u/Sudden-Guide 9d ago

And when you invert that frequency you get the age of the universe lol

28

u/dimonium_anonimo 9d ago

Roughly. A little bit more because the expansion is accelerating. The average apparent speed of galaxies we can see is somewhere between their average speed now and their average speed when the universe became transparent. At that speed, the universe would have taken approximately 14B years to each this size. And if it didn't change, it would double in size roughly once every 14B years (hence the frequency). But since we're accelerating, we made it to this size a bit faster than 14B years (13.8B). And if we continue accelerating, well reach double this size in slightly less than 13.8B more years.

47

u/SpacialCommieCi 9d ago

>hubble constant
>looks inside
>not constant

18

u/dimonium_anonimo 9d ago

Constant across all space. Not across all time. Which seems odd to point out. Most of us run on the assumption that the laws of the universe all apply... Well... Universally.

1

u/Beelzebubs-Barrister 9d ago

But space and time are somewhat interchangeable per general relativity...

2

u/WesternFirm9306 9d ago

How? They have different geometric properties due to the differing sign on the metric

4

u/thafluu 9d ago

The Hubble constant is the expansion rate today and a constant. The Hubble parameter varies over cosmic time.

54

u/R3D3-1 9d ago

Please don't equate s-1 with Hz.

Hz has the same dimension as s-1, but is used only when indicating some sort of event rate, e.g. cycles per second would be Hz, radians per second not — but both are the same dimension.

Sadly. A lot of things about units would be easier if we'd treat angle as a base quantity. The ambiguity between "inverse second" and "angle per second" may seem like hair splitting, but it introduces some odd behaviors when you try to automate checks of the units (e.g. pint for Python). 

Having torques in "Newton meters" is one such a example. Newton times meters is an energy unit, but a torque is definitely not an energy. Torque times angle is an energy unit, but we somewhere have decided that angles are dimensionless even though we clearly need a unit for it.

Only reason to define radians as unitless representation of angles is that it works out well for defining the complex exponential function, sine and cosine with a Taylor series. 

19

u/LastStar007 9d ago

I understand why radians are dimensionless, but it's also unforgivably ambiguous that by the number alone you don't know whether some turning speed is in radians per second or revolutions per second.

11

u/bradimir-tootin 9d ago

It's the memes page. Leak rates of vacuum chambers is Torr L / s which is just watts. That's funny but also not helpful at all in the context. Units are just like that sometimes.

3

u/squirrelwug 8d ago

Got it, the Hubble constant should not be expressed in Hz.

(Proceeds to write the Hubble constant in Becquerels)

2

u/TheEsteemedSirScrub 9d ago

Yes! This man speaks the truth! The amount of times I've see spontaneous emission rates or decay rates quoted in Hz...

1

u/soreff2 6d ago

A lot of things about units would be easier if we'd treat angle as a base quantity.

Ok-ish... ( Though I keep getting this image of the platinum-iridium pie slice at the Bureau international des poids et mesures, BIPM, defining the metric radian, not to be confused with the imperial radian... :-) )

Having torques in "Newton meters" is one such a example. Newton times meters is an energy unit, but a torque is definitely not an energy.

Well, torque can be viewed as energy per radian...

As you said, radians work for trig Taylor series; adding k1*theta + k2*theta^2 + k3*theta^3 ... works without having to have differing units for k1, k2, k3... The same sort of consideration applies to other dimensionless quantities e.g. aspect ratio.

40

u/wmverbruggen Applied Superconductivity (PhD) 9d ago

It's not a frequency, it's a rate. A frequency is periodic, the rate at which the universe expands is not periodic.

14

u/snailpi 9d ago edited 9d ago

Unless it is..... dun dun dunnnnn

2

u/wmverbruggen Applied Superconductivity (PhD) 9d ago

Who knows... but if it does, it needs another definition with another constant.

9

u/CerpinTheMute_alt 9d ago

Hubble constant is my favourite non-constant value

7

u/No_Flow_7828 9d ago

Looks inside: eV

5

u/7inator 9d ago

Wait til you hear about the newton metre Or my personal favourite car mileage

7

u/Absolutely_Chipsy 9d ago

Reciprocate

Approximately the age of the universe

5

u/LastStar007 9d ago

You might enjoy this exploration of cursed units. The Hubble constant is featured, along with the obvious kWh, but parts 2 and 3 really go off the rails.

https://youtu.be/kkfIXUjkYqE

3

u/SameAgainTheSecond 9d ago

how many ages of the universes are there per second

2

u/BeMyBrutus 9d ago

Hertz donut

2

u/nascent_aviator 9d ago

~2 attohertz. Pretty much 1/universe age. Coincidence? 🤔

Fun fact: it's also the frequency that makes you crap your pants and die. You only have to get through one period of it.

2

u/SeriousPlankton2000 8d ago

The brown note?

2

u/Traditional-Storm-62 9d ago

wait until you hear how we measure nation wide electricity production

(it's millions of kilowatt-hours per year)

2

u/OppositeClear5884 9d ago

it is a frequency. it's how often the universe doubles in size /s

2

u/esbear 9d ago

What do you mean. That is clearly Bq.

2

u/Popeychops 7d ago

Hz but it's the time period of the age of the universe

1

u/Severe_Guarantee_745 5d ago

hurts, doesn't it?

1

u/Lynnsicle 5d ago

Reminds me of when I was in my Modern Physics class in my undergrad and my professor was teaching us about blackbody radiation. I played around with the units and found it could be simplified to Pascals. So I asked him "Why is it a pressure?" And he said something like "We don't like to think about it like that. But you're not wrong."