Clever, I like it. I wonder how many people read it and have no clue what it means.
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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Exercise for the reader: Assuming average human eyesight, how many picoseconds away from a collision are you if you can read that size of text and the relative velocity between you and the car ahead of you is large enough that the red label is sufficiently blueshifted to look blue?
for 800nm to 400nm, we need gamma=2. So v~.86c. At 20m this gives you ~80ns.
For perspective, this speed is:
- 928 157 450 kilometers per hour
- 576 730 301 miles per hour
In one second, you would travel around:
- 258 000 kilometers
- 160 000 miles
Which is around 6.43 times around the Earth's equator.
But how many Olympic sized swimming pools full of jello?
About 3 large boulders the size of a small boulder.
Did you see the boulder post too?
We are all the size of boulders on this blessed day.
Depends on the flavor
So, some paint might get exchanged?
It was a graveyard graph.
He caught up in a flash!
The sticker should also say something like "But don't worry, we're going to be evaporated in a huge explosion anyway, due to the gigantic release of energy when you crash into my car in a few nanoseconds."
does the observer have to be able to see the sticker with normal human eyesight? if so that constrains distance (which maybe doesn't matter?)
At that point it’s like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey
I want to know how fast you need to go to be color shifted on a traffic camera. The more I think about it the less likely getting enough light to be picked up by the camera might be an issue even with perfect placement
So 75000km/s is too fast? Boooo, get off the road grandad!
So is the reader fast or would it work the other way where the car with sticker is fast?
Even then, a BMW would tailgate and flash its headlights at you on a German autobahn.
Anyone would do that on an autobahn, get out of the passing lane slowpoke xD
Best thing is when small car from 1990 push away large bmw or porsche because they have 900 hp engine with dual turbo and nitrous injection.
I love sleeper car.
If the sticker is blue, one or the other of you is about to cease being biology and start being physics.
I am not sure i understand. Is it something to do with redshift?
Yup. Here's a neat visual and more info on the page where I found it:
https://stickmanphysics.com/stickman-physics-home/unit-10-waves/doppler-effect/
Damn it. Imgur is blocked in the UK. Cant see that image.
you're going way too fast, shifting into UV now
UV is blocked in the UK.
Probably for the better. Even with it having Milla Jovovich, it wasn’t very good.
Oh, I didn't realize. I wanted to upload it, but Lemmy wouldn't let me, so I just picked somewhere. Try the original link:
No, it has to do with blueshift.
Right, thanks for the explaination...
Incidentally, my limited understanding and 5 seconds of research tells me the blueshift and redshift are directly related. One is linked to lower speeds and one to higher speeds. The sticker itself is red, so the joke is saying you must be travelling at some fraction of the speed of light to see the sticker as red and if you were going slower it would appear blue.
So it would seem to me in my very limited understanding that this is in fact, to do with redshift....
I was trying to be funny, but the 2 are related as in they are opposite cases of the same underlying phenomenon.
The sticker itself is red, so the joke is saying you must be travelling at some fraction of the speed of light to see the sticker as red and if you were going slower it would appear blue.
I'm not sure if you actually understand it and just did a brainfart while typing, or actually don't understand it well, so I'll just explain...
- In both cases (redshift and blueshift), you need to be going fast enough relative to the sticker for either of them to happen in any noticeable way. Although it still happens even if you are going only 1 cm/s
- The sticker is red and you will see it being red if you are not moving relative to the sticker. i.e. if the car is parked and you are just standing behind it, it will be red (don't take my word for it. Go stand in front of a red thing and look at it to find out that you see red colour)
- If you are going away from the sticker, you will observe a redshift. And since the sticker is red (let's assume for simplicity that it is the reddest of red (whatever that would mean)) the redshift will make it go infrared and hence you won't be able to see it with human vision.
- If you are going towards the sticker, you will observe a blue shift and you can use the crude, but useful
VIBGYORto deduce that if you are not fast enough to see Blue, you can expect to see either of Orange, Yellow, Green. - This effect is similar to the phenomenon that occurs to sound. i.e. when a car comes towards you with the horn continuously blowing, you will hear a higher pitch and when the car with the horn blowing is going away from you, you hear a lower pitched horn sound. The reason this is more easily observable with sound, is because sound in air is slow enough for us to notice this.
Bonus: I was playing the game X4: Foundations and realised that they actually have simulated this effect in the in-game sounds, which was an impressive little detail and I loved it.
No, it's just that democrats tend to drive faster than republicans because of their better cars and increased motivation to get out of red states
Best kind of science joke: funny and educational. Bonus points for making people think about Doppler before speeding.
If that sticker is blue, only the laws of physics can judge me.
Hey I used I have one of these. Slightly different design though. Was always my favourite sticker.
This was good, had a hearty chuckle
Mine was sensible.
Doppler
Make it green, and add the line "If this sticker is red, then I'm going too fast"
The color also depends on the ink's near-infrared reflectivity (since the sun and halogen headlamps emit infrared, that will get shifted into the red to green parts of the visible spectrum when red becomes blue)
Light speed? No! Engage Ludicrous speed!
Put on f-777