Time, Relativity, and Howlers
Just want a first-blush overview for people on interstellar civilization measurement of time and relativistic effects.
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NOTE: This is hand-waving for purposes of willing suspension of disbelief in commercial fiction. I am not--and do not have time to become--a physics expert. Besides, the physics has to be totally bogus compared to what modern physicists believe to "explain" an interstellar civilization with commerce and war in the first place. Therefore, any resemblance to actual physics is totally coincidental.
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Say Earth is long forgotten, but everyone is standardized on Earth time--years, months, days, hours, seconds--minus leap years. "Ships' Standard Time."
Say there's a Quasar that's idiosyncratic enough to measure time by observation.
Say everyone measures what time it is relative to what time it is at that Quasar and just figure things up based on their distance from it and the speed of light, and set it as close as they can. It's the absolute definition. Ships traveling between systems all the time provides data to standardize down to agreed-upon seconds.
Say you have relativistic effects for normal space travel as you approach the speed of light, but all those relativistic effects cease the instant you enter hyperspace. Entry into hyperspace sets time on board ship to progression of time relative to the large massy systems and other matter around the entry point. Since it's a matter of the shape of space and there's an inertia-like factor involved, the mass of the ship does not distort the rate of time at the entry point. (Wave hands, pull hats out of rabbits, etc.)
Does anyone see any first blush reason why this hand waving doesn't sound good enough to fit the reader's willing suspension of disbelief?
Of course, ships keep on board clocks of ship subjective time to measure subjective age, etc., but unless you stay at high fractions of c for a good long while, it's not terribly substantial. And yes, this would mean you could get deliberate relativistic effects by entering hyperspace local enough to large, massy bodies moving fast subjectively to other bodies.
Again, anything about my hand-waving inherently make someone who isn't a physics expert fall on the floor howling and laughing?
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NOTE: This is hand-waving for purposes of willing suspension of disbelief in commercial fiction. I am not--and do not have time to become--a physics expert. Besides, the physics has to be totally bogus compared to what modern physicists believe to "explain" an interstellar civilization with commerce and war in the first place. Therefore, any resemblance to actual physics is totally coincidental.
-----------
Say Earth is long forgotten, but everyone is standardized on Earth time--years, months, days, hours, seconds--minus leap years. "Ships' Standard Time."
Say there's a Quasar that's idiosyncratic enough to measure time by observation.
Say everyone measures what time it is relative to what time it is at that Quasar and just figure things up based on their distance from it and the speed of light, and set it as close as they can. It's the absolute definition. Ships traveling between systems all the time provides data to standardize down to agreed-upon seconds.
Say you have relativistic effects for normal space travel as you approach the speed of light, but all those relativistic effects cease the instant you enter hyperspace. Entry into hyperspace sets time on board ship to progression of time relative to the large massy systems and other matter around the entry point. Since it's a matter of the shape of space and there's an inertia-like factor involved, the mass of the ship does not distort the rate of time at the entry point. (Wave hands, pull hats out of rabbits, etc.)
Does anyone see any first blush reason why this hand waving doesn't sound good enough to fit the reader's willing suspension of disbelief?
Of course, ships keep on board clocks of ship subjective time to measure subjective age, etc., but unless you stay at high fractions of c for a good long while, it's not terribly substantial. And yes, this would mean you could get deliberate relativistic effects by entering hyperspace local enough to large, massy bodies moving fast subjectively to other bodies.
Again, anything about my hand-waving inherently make someone who isn't a physics expert fall on the floor howling and laughing?