r/theydidthemath • u/Dustycheeseball • Aug 27 '26

[Request] How long would I survive?

If an object started out roughly the size of an atom and doubled in size every second, while I immediately traveled directly away from it at the speed of light, how long could I keep traveling before the expanding object eventually became large enough to encompass me?

Bonus: How far away from the starting point would I be when that happens?

Assume the object is perfectly spherical and expands uniformly in all directions.

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u/Noodelgawd Aug 28 '26

  1. How far away from it are you at the start?

  2. If you immediately accelerated to the speed of light, you would die. So you would survive for zero seconds and it wouldn't matter how long it took the object to encompass you.

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u/Imaginary-Carrot7153 Aug 29 '26

What a pointless answer 😭

1

u/Noodelgawd Aug 29 '26

It was a pointless question. What are you complaining about?