a sword made by a four-armed armorer on Marduk;
a view from the moon of the giant planet, Osiris, where frozen gases resemble amber;
horns from a hunting trip on Rama;
a statue of a god from Dagon.
Each of these planets is named after a Terrestrial deity.
Because the Terrestrial Dominancy is oppressing the Kithmen on Earth, the captain and mates of the Shaun's ship consider a thousand year excursion into new regions, the point being that the Dominancy will not last for a thousand years! But the Kith do not know what they will return to after all that time. Will Earth still need whatever they have to sell? Will Kith Town still even exist? Later, we learn that it will be empty except for robot caretakers. See The Venture League.
Time dilation is like one way time travel. An astronomer that I knew claimed that this application of time dilation is invalid because the time gained on the outward journey would be lost on the return journey. My problems are, first, that I do not understand relativistic physics and, secondly, that I have to ask how the universe knows which is an outward journey and which is a return journey.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The Star Empire/Dominancy seen in "Ghetto" and its revision as Chapter 21 of STARFARERS was nearing its END, and probably collapsed within a couple of centuries after the events in that story. So it was rational of the officers of the Shauns ship to plan a really long journey before coming back to an Earth where the oppressive Dominancy no longer existed.
I disagree with the gentleman you mentioned. I thought the explanations by Anderson and other writers how a STL drive coming close to the speed of light causing dilations in time vis a vis Earth and such a ship very convincing.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Drat, I forgot to mention how that four armed armorer from Marduk reminded me of the four armed Gorzuni of Anderson's Technic Civilization stories. We first see the Gorzuni as barbarian raiders of a collapsed Commonwealth and later, under more civilized leaders, an ally of the Empire. And many Gorzuni left their home world to become mercenaries or serve as bodyguards (such as Leon Ammon's bodygard).
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I do have a physics background, although I only got a B.A. before shifting to Materials as a graduate student, and I believe that what that astronomer said is not the usual view of physicists. We know that time dilation is real, because, for example, unstable particles moving at relativistic speeds have longer half lives (as observed by us) than particles moving at lower speeds. I don't believe it matters which direction they're moving in, or even whether they're moving in circular particle accelerators.
Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen
Kaor, Nicholas!
Cool! You have a solid background in physics! I'm relieved that I can continue to have trust in how Anderson and other writers explained the relativistic time dilation effect. A phenomenon he used in other stories involving STL drives--such as the "History of Rustum" stories.
Sean
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