2y ago

There are less than 1000 people who can claim to be on Earth for the second or more time. Everyone else is still on their first visit.

22 comments

Oh, the first time I read this I had a completely wrong idea what it was about. I thought it was talking about like the Dalai Lama having being reincarnated or something.
- Same. I was wondering how we count the number of people who claim to have been reincarnated.
No one has gone far enough from earth to not be influenced by its gravity. Therefore anyone who has jumped into the air has been off the earth.
- Nothing is far enough from Earth to not be influenced by it's gravity, since gravitational interaction has infinite range. Even though it weakens over distance, it never reaches zero
  
  Technically correct but there is a reason why people talk about a body’s sphere of influence.
More like 24. Low Earth Orbit is just hanging out in the porch. :)
- And https://xkcd.com/893/ is arriving.
- That's under a thousand isn't it? :P
  
  Touché!
But how many people have escaped the influence of Earths gravity altogether? None?
- Right. The farthest people have been is the Moon, which is still gravitationally bound to the Earth. Plenty of spacecraft have been out of Earth's gravity well, and also a car, but no humans.
  
  What do you mean? I thought the car had an astronaut suit in the drivers seat containing the dessicated corpse of the real Elon Musk, after being murdered, memory-absorbed, and doppelganger-ed by the current version.
- You would never escape the influence of Earth's gravity, as far as I know.
  From what I understand everything in the universe has a slight gravitational effect no matter the distance, it's just that the effect get infinitesimally small, but never reaching zero.
  
  This is the reason why theoretical physicists and engineers rarely have fun together at parties.
  
  I knew as soon as I typed this that someone would bring this up. 😵‍💫
- that's not on the surface of earth. we all know what the post meant, that would be just pointlessly pedantic imo.

22 comments