Some Questions for a Scifi Short Story

[Pollux V]

+What is the rate of time dilation when travelling at the speed of light? What is the proportion, I guess--if I'm going, let's say, 9/10s the speed of light (167,400 m?k?per second) and I travel at that speed for 24 hours, how many days or hours went by outside the craft I was travelling in? Is there a mathematical formula I could use? One of my ideas for the story is a device called a Relativity Inhibitor. This device "magically (more or less)" draws a bubble from another dimension where physics are different around the craft that is travelling at very high speeds. However the bubble breaks down for some reason, and the craft immediately slows down to as close to the speed of light as is measurable before time outside the craft stops for the people inside it. The people inside weren't quite expecting that and so of course they totally flip out. I hope I have my rudimentary astrophysics right, so correct me if you find any mistakes.

+If I was inside a craft travelling through the Orion nebula, would I be able to see the Nebula around me, and if so, what would it look like? Is there a map of the stars inside the Orion Nursery, with names that I could use?

+What materials are there that you can think of that are rare on Earth but are common in space, specifically in the Orion Nebula? Do you think it would be profitable for a corporation to be mining these minerals?

Thanks for taking the time to read through and hopefully answer my questions. I'll undoubtedly have more. Take care!

[Nova1021]

This site has the formula for Time Dilation (http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html), hopefully that helps...

As for travelling in the nebula, I can't say for sure, but I doubt you'd be able to see much since it's so huge.

I don't know much about what rare elements might be in the nebula, but I did a bit of searching and came up with this:

http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/01_releases/press_090601solar.html

Specifically, this grabbed my attention:

The isotopes--special forms of atomic nuclei, such as aluminum-26, calcium-41, and beryllium-10--can form in the X-ray solar flares of young stars in the Orion Nebula, which behave just like our Sun would have at such an early age. The finding, based on observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, has broad implications for the formation of our own Solar System.

I don't know of any uses for such rare isotopes, but they are there, so maybe you can come up with something. ;)

[Pollux V]

Thank you very, very much Nova. This will help a great deal.

[Pollux V]

Say I'm on a starship going a few hundred times c. I can do this because there is a device onboard that pulls a bubble of another dimension around the hull of my ship, one that not only allows it to go at such a fast speed but also keeps the effect of Relativity from occuring. The people inside the ship experience time at the same rate as the people outside. However, the bubble is breaking down and I need to slow the hell down, because as soon as it does break my speed will drop to an infinitesimal fraction below c, and whole human lifetimes will fly by outside my window. I don't want this to happen for all the obvious reasons.

Luckily, there's a gas giant just ahead of me a few times the size of Jupiter. If I fly through its core, well, just above its solid core, can I, with the help of the working braking devices onboard, of course, slow the ship down to under 1/4 c before the bubble collapses?

[blackholesun]

Originally posted by Pollux V
Say I'm on a starship going a few hundred times c. I can do this because there is a device onboard that pulls a bubble of another dimension around the hull of my ship, one that not only allows it to go at such a fast speed but also keeps the effect of Relativity from occuring. The people inside the ship experience time at the same rate as the people outside. However, the bubble is breaking down and I need to slow the hell down, because as soon as it does break my speed will drop to an infinitesimal fraction below c, and whole human lifetimes will fly by outside my window. I don't want this to happen for all the obvious reasons.

Luckily, there's a gas giant just ahead of me a few times the size of Jupiter. If I fly through its core, well, just above its solid core, can I, with the help of the working braking devices onboard, of course, slow the ship down to under 1/4 c before the bubble collapses?

That's up to you. Do you want a story with a happy or sad ending?

Edit: There we go. Down to ONE post....oops.

[Pollux V]

Heheheheheh.

[Pollux V]

I want to survive.

[blackholesun]

Originally posted by Pollux V
I want to survive.

Well make it possible but have half the crew die in the process. Make it sound like it was a risk that had to be taken to matter what the cost.

[eburacum45]

Well, either you are in warp or you aren't-
but if you are slowing down to sublight speeds using the mass of this gas giant you will impart a heck of a lot of energy to the gas giant.
so I suggest it will flare up brilliantly with a hydrogen fusion reaction at the entry and exit points -
you had better escape from the vicinity as rapidly as possible before these flares torch your ship.
_________________
SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

[Pollux V]

Are there any scientific links you could post, by any chance? Either of you?

No, the whole crew has to survive. The ship I'm the captain of is a troop transport, carrying 10,000 men in cold sleep. They're supposed to be reinforcements for a distant battle, but for *sets up the plot *some inexplicable reason the ship's field is collapsing and it's about to travel a few thousand years into the future. Humanity is depending on me!

[Nova1021]

Realistically, I don't think a gas giant would provide enough resistance if you're going that fast, you'd just plow right through and not notice, probably destroying the planet too. That's assuming your ship is pretty much invincible. If it isn't SUPER strong, it would probably vaporize when it hit the planet.

So how fast is this dimensional bubble degrading? Could you make a series of glancing blows at several planets or stars to slow down? Or maybe have one of your engineers find a way to use the dimensional technology to slow the ship down. Maybe make a dimensional "sail" and catch the wind of an active star to help slow you? Though even an active star's wind won't push hard at all, so nevermind about that idea.

The problem is, you're going REALLY fast, so even if we disregard relativity, it's gonna take a whole lot of energy to slow you down. For kinetic energy the formula is 1/2mv^2=K so, just to give an idea I'll assume your ship is 100,000,000kg

200c=200 (3.0x10^8m/s)= 6x10^10 m/s

(1/2)(100,000,000 kg)(6x10^10)^2=
1.8x10^29 joules!!!

I'm having trouble coming up with a way to slow such a large, fast ship down in any reasonable amount of time. I'd say your best bet would be to find some way to use the advanced technology on the ship to slow it down. Maybe accompany that with a close skim against a red giant star or something else that's REALLY big that could slow you down.

I found the formula for air resistance:

FAir = A/2 × Cd × D × v2
with
A being the frontal area of the car in m2,
Cd being the drag coefficient,
D being the density of air (1.29 kg/m3) and
v being the velocity in m/sec. (taken from www.e31.net)


And according to this site (http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/astr_250/Lectures/Lecture_07.htm) Jupiter's average density is 1300kg/m^3.

I haven't tried plugging things into the equation, but I think you'll find the resistance offered by a Jupiter sized planet won't be enough.

Hopefully this helps. :)

[Pollux V]

As usual, Nova, yes it does help. I'll make the appropriate adjustments.

[Canute]

I came across a comment from a physicist the other day that relativity does not forbid things from travelling above c, it just forbids anything from travelling at c. I don't know anything about it but it seemed relevant, since maybe your bubble could collapse and lead to the discovery that all the terrible things you expect to happen don't, something else entirely unexpected happens. Perhaps it collapses into the other dimensions, taking you with it! I can see it now. "We're still doing a high speed Captain, but not speed as we know it."

As a last resort you could slow down by speeding up infinitely, doing a full circuit, and ending up back where you started at an earlier moment. Then you'd have more time to solve the problem.

[Pollux V]

c isn't anywhere near infinity, nothing is. It just takes an infinite amount of energy in this universe to attain. I've always been curious about what would happen should we go faster than c. Time stops at c, it goes forward before c, so perhaps it would go backward after c? Kind of like a mirror, I guess, with c being the material of the mirror itself.