Serious Units Fables: main force, top speed, full power

Part 7 — How the Universe is Like a Planet

A planet has a top speed for surface traffic — the speed at which you become weightless and enter a surface-skimming orbit — and the universe, in partial analogy, also has a top speed. The space of special relativity resembles the surface of a planet in the limited sense of having its own kind of speed limit. The speed of light is the fastest anything can go unless it somehow breaks the rules, perhaps by going outside of ordinary space, something vaguely analogous to "leaving the planet's surface."

A planet also defines an idea of maximal force — the planet's own weight. Presumably nothing on the planet, no part of it, can weigh more than the whole. This maximum force can be calculated by squaring the speed a couple of times and replacing each quartic mile-a-minute unit by E15 ocs, or, if you prefer tons, a trillion of those. Curiously, the universe also has an idea of main force and it is calculated from its top speed exactly the same way! To calculate from 10⁷ miles a minute, our figure for the speed of light, you just square 10⁷ a couple of times, which gets you 10²⁸ quartic units, and replace each quartic unit by a 10¹⁵ ocs. It comes out 10⁴³ ocs, and that's the force!

This force is the most any two distinct bodies can attract each other gravitationally — the limit exists because space itself collapses when things that are too massive get too close together. It can be thought of as a "buckling strength" limit of space — when things attract each other very much they simply merge and then are no longer two distinct things.

10⁴³ ocs is nature's unit of force, in the same way that the speed of light is the natural speed unit. People sometimes refer to it as 10⁴⁰ tons, which makes sense if you think of a ton as 1000 ocs.

How about extending the analogy to include fireworks? The entire universe's full power can be calculated the same way as the luminous power of a planet's New Year's display. It's simply main force pushing at top speed. In the planet's case this was the planet's weight multiplied by its surface orbit speed and in the case of the universe it is ten-to-the-fortythree oc multiplied by ten-to-the-seven miles per minute, which makes full power come out to ten-to-the-fifty ocmiles per minute — 10⁵⁰ ponies.

If the universe's full power of 10⁵⁰ ponies were channeled into creating stars out of nothing it could create a hundred thousand suns in the time it takes to snap your fingers. Imagine snapping your fingers at a regular tempo of twice a second and seeing a hundred thousand sun-like stars come into being with each snap.

Top speed, main force, full power…in a little while we will be seeing how best to grasp the idea of the universe's core frequency, a universal natural hum or clocktick.