The Nature of Time
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| http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/new-book-explains-why-you-shouldnt-fear-physics |
Feeling weightless, Carlton carefully did his "job" as a one-man space crew. He would be the first man to see with his own eyes - as well as many other recording devices - the star of another world up close (only as close as it was safe of course).
All right now, careful, it's got a big inertia. There, he opened a bottle of Coke then slowly lowered his head to the mouth of the bottle and sucked.
Ahhh ... the only thing inconvenient about travelling at near light speed was that the mass of everything doubles. Since the inertia of everything kept them at their natural state, everything was twice as hard to move or to stop moving. If Carlton was to raise the Coke up to his mouth, it would enter his nose painfully and then made him sneeze it out.
He had to do almost everything slowly to avoid injury. It didn't matter anyway since he was a doctor and the experts back on earth said that he got years to get used to it. Ya, time enough to get to Alpha Centauri doing nothing on the way (since since everything was fully automated).
Putting the empty plastic bottle into the fuel bin (fusion fuel that is), Carlton remembered his twins, Curtis telling him to enjoy himself on the way there. He suddenly felt that he missed his twin and everything dear to him on earth already even though it's just been a few days since his voyage began.
Now he was feeling one of those moments where the seconds just wouldn't go fast. He shut his eyes and let this this moment passed. When he opened them again, he was still in the main quarters. He looked around and floated the music room. Inside there he strapped himself down to a chair and spoke to the ship "QAI (Quantum Artificial Intelligence), play the song "I feel lonely".
It seemed like yesterday when Angeline had smiled on him, thinking he was cute or Floria had come to his house to finish the assignment or when Hermoine had laughed at one of his jokes. But all of them had one thing common, they admired his intelligence. He still could remember those words, "Can you donate just 10% of your brain to me ?" "Carlton, can you teach me how to do this question ?"
Smiling, he reflected on how fast the years can fly by.
The song ended and the background noise came back to hearing range again. The experts said that this was for his sanity; somehow complete silence may cause insanity. Anyway, he was 24 now and still single, he wondered if he could date one of his female ex-classmates when he gets back. No, they would be 5 years older than him by that time.
This was another trick travelling at the this high speed; the theory of relativity implies that his personal time was twice as short as those on earth. Since the distance of his destination is 4.365 light years away, according to those back on earth, he would take 10 years to return to them; but he would only spend half that time in the ship. When he gets back to earth, he and his twin would be living proof that time is not absolute.
"Great, now I reminded myself that I got to spend 5 years in solitude," he frowned.
"Not exactly," a female human hologram appeared, "You got me to talk to."
"Ya, right QAI." Carlton bend down to unstrap himself.
"Call me Bruce please," came the reply, now in a male voice.
Carlton looked back and found a male figure now. "I feel like having a massage right now." Carlton stretched his back. "Please follow the blue line to the cylinder." A blue line appeared right below Carlton's feet. Following the line, he flew there.
Besides Bruce, the ship also offered a large collection, no, many collections of movies, books, games and information from the internet. There was also a complete laboratory for physics, chemistry and biology each. Not to mention a rotating cylinder that gave the impression of gravity for the activities that needed it.
Carlton wasn't boasting about his intelligence, how many people can be a doctor, an astronaut, a theoretical physicist, a writer and a teacher of Tai Chi and meditation all together nowadays ?
So it wasn't too unreasonable that he got all those "services". Besides he wasn't planning to just enjoy himself throughout the whole journey. All play and no work makes Carlton a dull boy.
As he reached the centre of the cylinder, he slowly floated downwards towards one of the walls and the familiar feeling of gravity came back again. He settled down into the massage chamber, fully relaxed himself like never before, thinking on what he was now. He was in the most luxurious spaceship ever built, travelling at the fastest speed any man had ever travelled before, making history at the same time by seeing for his own eyes the light of another sun up close and becoming 5 years younger than his twin. What else could he be now ? Happy. He smiled and just as he was about to doze off, a small voice at the back of his mind asked, "How is it that seconds can feel like eternity just now and yet years can fly pass before I realised it ?
A few months had passed before something interesting had happened again. During this time, Carlton improved on his Tai Chi, kept himself at full health, advanced a lot on his meditation, caught up with the movies he missed, played many games that he didn't have the chance to play before (particularly Pokemon games), read only a few books (because he had to flip the pages slowly or else it would tear), typed a novel (writing it would be too hard) and learned a lot on his unconnected internet or the ships's database as he liked to call it.
It was this time that the unexpected happened, it was for this very reason required this ship to be manned, even Bruce had to admit he can't made it without Carlton.
It happened like this, one virtual afternoon, while Carlton was working on his second book, Bruce appeared in front of him with the head just on top of the table. It sent Carlton knocking to the back of his seat and yelled out sharply. Before he could protest, the seat was sending him straight to the bridge and Bruce was at his side explaining the situation.
"I am sorry to startle you but we have an emergency now."
"Wha-"
"Please do not interrupt me, our current information suggests that a black hole maybe in our path-"
"What ?" Carlton asked again, "Impossible, how could we not detect it ?"
"It was hidden by a large mass of dark matter and I had just detected it behind the dark matter veil through the Hawking radiation it gives out."
Hawking radiation ! Wow ! They had just proved one of the important predictions of theoretical physics. "How far are we from it ?"
"30 minutes from the dark matter and 1 hour from the black hole."
"What is the black hole's size ?"
"Event horizon of 0.003 metres from the singularity at the centre. I suspect it is a primordial black hole."
Carlton almost laughed, a primordial black hole was created right at the beginning of the universe, the big bang now there is definite proof of that ! However, a black hole that small would hardly be a threat to them unless they are travelling too close to it or straight into it.
"Are we heading straight to it ?"
"No, of course (if they were he wouldn't have bothered to startle Carlton because they were doomed then since the ship couldn't change its velocity). I am worrying about the ergo sphere, the region of space that rotates with the black hole; it's 2 light minutes around the black hole."
Carlton then reached the bridge and Bruce showed him the trajectory of the ship. It would move through some dark matter-which Carlton knew would move on to the ergo sphere of the black hole. There it would change its direction and there was no hope of producing a large enough force to bring it back on track.
Carlton sighed and ordered Bruce to collect as many of the dark matter as he can to use as fuel later on. Bruce's hologram disappeared.
This was going to be a long trip. There it was again, his mind cried, why did the seconds crawl on so slowly ?
The dark matter was successfully collected and when he looked at them, the colour wasn't really dark but the dull glow reminded him of graveyards. His feeling sunk.
"We had collected about 4000 tonnes of dark matter."
Carlton could barely make out what he heard. Ohh... when was the time he was happy about his journey ? Why did it pass so fast ?
He shook his head to shake out his feelings at the time then told Bruce to calculate a stable orbital around the ergo sphere, he was going to sling-shot himself out of it later and the only trick was the critical point to let his shot go. If he slung too late or too early, the direction of the ship would differ from the original path. If he didn't sling, he would get pulled into the black hole, eventually.
The minutes passed on, Bruce was only able to come up within a range of 1 second that Carlton should press that button and since it depends upon accuracy up to one nanosecond-and that it is capable only by humans' estimation-Bruce let Carlton did it.
"In 3,2,1..." Bruce reminded Carlton of the time limit but Carlton just sat there. He was paralysed. The ship did another rotation and gained velocity at the same time losing its mass. Bruce didn't had time to redo all his calculations and it's all up to Carlton now.
Carlton could only think of Earth, home sweet home and wished he was back there again. "Wait, that's it ! I felt that time passes slowly because I wanted to be in the future and not face the present." A sudden insight hit him, "I felt that years can fly pass me because I was not aware of every moment in my life, only the ones that I remember clearly was I aware of them." And he knew this is true when he listened to the songs, he was only aware of the beginning and the end of the songs and not throughout the whole song. He wasn't even aware of the things that he did in these few months.
So what was next ? Carlton breathed a deep breadth and stopped craving about the future. Immediately the seconds seemed to run smoothly again and he felt much better. Next, he relaxed and let go and just be aware of his surroundings. He was aware of Bruce anticipating their doom, he was aware that the ship was losing mass but burning the dark matter out fast. He was even aware that the speed of the ship was increasing. Detaching himself away from time, he didn't feel that time could slip off under his nose ever again, unnoticed.
He was himself again, at full alert and ready to blast off. And when the critical orbital point came, he was aware of it, every nanosecond of it.
He pressed at exactly the right time and the ship having just used up its supply of dark matter, preceded with exactly the same velocity as before.
Carlton heaved a sigh of relief and accepted Bruce's congratulations. Now he had understood one more thing about the nature of time. He thought he better typed it down before he forgot and he did it, immediately.
Ng XZ L6SA
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