Lightspeed, Timedebt, and the EU ( possible SbS/DJ Spoilers)

Hey, all. This particular subject has been on my brain for a while now, so I figured Id post my query on here in hopes of finding an answer or a bit of insight at least. Anyway, Im currently reading Orson Scott Card's Speaker For The Dead, the second book in his Ender series. Im only about 60 pages into it, ( NO SPOILERS PLEASE!!!)but Ive already noticed a common thread that these books and the Hyperion series share.

In these books, whenever the characters travel bewtween star systems, they are obviously travelling at lightspeed. But the difference between these books and SW EU is a big one. The characters in these books incur something called timedebt. For example, let's say character X is travelling to a star 70 light years away. Because of lightspeed character X will only lose, for the sake of argument, two or three years, while the folks he left behind on Earth have lost seventy and are probably long dead.

My question is this : How come we dont see this in SW ? Some may try and easily explain this by saying that the planets may be too close for people to incur timedebt, and that may be the case. But what if you were leaving from the Deep Core and aiming to head for the Unknown Regions or the Tingel Arm, or even Tatooine ? I find it highly unlikely that travellers would not lose any time at all travelling such distances. Maybe this explains all of the recent problems with character ages (i.e, Kyp, Jaina, Jacen).

Please post your thoughts and theories, my friends. They are most appreciated !

 

I think lightspeed is perfectly desined in sw. I havent read the book of which you speak of, but maybe there technology is supirior?

 

I dont know, 'Dude. Im fairly certain that there wasnt anything special about these ships, except the fact that they have lightspeed capability. In fact, in a later book in the Hyperion series (by Dan Simmons), the Pax (an interstallar govt based solely around the Roman Catholic Church) creates a faster ship that does not require that the passenger incur timedebt. But, the journey is so rough and fast that human physiology cannot handle it and they die en route. They are then Resurrected at the end point. But I digress...

But I do agree that SW seems to have 'perfected' lightspeed travel for the sake of their universe.

 

Hyperspace works differently than lightspeed. With hyperspace they are actually entering another dimension. That totally effects space in time in a way they never lose much time at all, and make it to there stops very quickly with no dept of time on the part of the those living on other planets outside of it in realspace.

 

There are no planets in hyperspace.

 

Correct, but there are mass shadows though from real space.

 

Yeah, but my question is, how do you get to otherspace? Which of corse is stupidly lame, and should be trashed.

 

The whole business of FTL physics is never really discussed in SW, just like it isn't in Trek and Babylon 5. All 3 stories are light or soft SF.

The details of FTL physics, which DVader316 is considering in light of Dan Simmons Hyperion series is also dealt with in:

Uplift Storm trilogy by David Brin

Which cheats in a technical sense much as SW does in a non-technical way.

A better view of actual effects can be found in David Zindell's trilogy A Requiem For Homo Sapiens and its predecessor Neverness.

In these books pilots rework the laws of space and time to go from point to point, speeding up and slowing down time: the first for reducing journey time, the second for calculating the mathematics needed to create a hyper journey.

When they return real time can catch up with them, aging or even killing a pilot. Zindell' series is set far future where the effects of quicktime as it is called can be dealt with by rejuvenation technology.

As to the central Q of why these effects never crop up in SW, they are primarily hard SF concepts, which is a strata of SF that SW has never really gone into. Rogue Planet was probably the closest and that was written by a hard SF auhor Greg Bear.

Jedi Ben

 

It is quite simple when you think of it...

In the Speaker for the Dead, there is still the absolute barrier of light speed. Using conventional physics, as you approach the speed of light, you age more slowly than people not at that speed.

Star Trek/Star Wars gets through this with FTL travel. Since our physics do not offer theories regarding what goes on faster than light, we can not dictate that ST/SW is incorrect.

Star Trek goes many times faster than light and is on some kind of exponential speed chart where Warp 1.0 = Lightspeed, and Warp 10?(been a while since I looked that up) is occupying all points at the same time (Freaking fast).

Star Wars goes into another dimention that has different rules regarding speed and time.

In our galaxy, it may be more feasible to go to some other dimention than it is to try to get past our physics... However, at the subatomic level of things, certain particles are known to spontaeously move from place to place, thereby breaking the speed of light.

 

"The whole business of FTL physics is never really discussed in SW, just like it isn't in Trek and Babylon 5. All 3 stories are light or soft SF."

Actually it's the difference between einstein's theories, and quantem physics.


"Star Trek goes many times faster than light and is on some kind of exponential speed chart where Warp 1.0 = Lightspeed, and Warp 10?(been a while since I looked that up) is occupying all points at the same time (Freaking fast)."

That is a quantem physics theory(Or should I say hypothesis, I don't if they have been able to test it, of have evidence of it yet, ).

Timedept(or "Relativity of time", IIRC) is standard einsteinian physics.

 

I have really never been intrigued enough to look into it Val.

I found the explanations in hard SF intriguing, but not really needed in SW where the story is not really focused on the mechanics and physics of the world. They are present but not explained in copious detail.

Jedi Ben

 

They could use wormholes and stuff like that. I dunno just thought I would toss something out.

 

The only explanation is that the characters are not travelling at anything close to the speed of light. In that case, to cover the distance between planets, they would need to either decrease the distance or increase the speed of light. I have no idea how the latter would be done, but decreasing distances may be possible with wormholes.

 

Very cool, guys. Thanks for all the info !