What seems wrong with the following dialogue?
"'...everybody expected you'd be gone for years!'
"'We were.'
"'No. I witnessed your transit. That was, uh, five months ago, no more.'" (p. 4)
After some calculations:
"'For us, approximately eight Terrestrial years have passed.'" (ibid.)
Interstellar explorers have lived for about eight years although only twenty weeks and three days have elapsed in the planetary system from which they had departed and to which they have returned. We have got used to it the other way around. Because of time dilation at relativistic speeds, less time elapses for the space travellers. However, that is not what we are dealing with here. It is further explained:
"'It turns out that the T machine is indeed a time machine of sorts, as well as a space transporter. The Betans - the beings whom we followed - calculated our course to bring us out near the date when we left.'" (ibid.)
This is neither Tau Zero nor Time Patrol but something else. Poul Anderson follows every possibility, of course.
5 comments:
FTL and time travel are, I'm told, fairly equivalent. If one, then the other.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I sure as heck don't pretend to understand either T machines or time traveling.
Ad astra! Sean
As I recall my modest study of special relativity:
If you do the Lorentz transform for a point in space-time *outside* the light cone from a reference point, then for an observer moving at one velocity it could be in the future of the reference point and in the past of the reference point for an observer moving at another velocity.
That is where FTL = time travel comes from.
I would want to look this up again to make sure I have it all correct.
I knew of the relativity of simultaneity but not that this was the basis of "FTL = time travel" but it seems to make sense.
Kaor, Jim!
I sort of, kinda, maybe get that much.
Ad astra! Sean
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