The Physics of Star Trek Read Online Free PDF Page A

contract if they are moving.
    (d)All massive objects get heavier the faster they travel. As they approach the speed of
     light, they become infinitely heavy.
    
    
     Thus, only massless objects, like light, can actually travel at the speed of light.
    This is not the place to review all of the wonderful apparent paradoxes that relativity
     introduces into the world. Suffice it to say that, like it or not, consequences (a)
     through (d) are truethat is, they have been tested. Atomic clocks have been carried aloft
     in high-speed aircraft and have been observed to be behind their terrestrial counterparts
     upon their return. In high-energy physics laboratories around the world, the consequences
     of the special theory of relativity are the daily bread and butter of experiment. Unstable
     elementary particles are made to
    move near the speed of light, and their lifetimes are measured to increase by huge
     factors. When electrons, which at rest are 2000 times less massive than protons, are
     accelerated to near light speed, they are measured to carry a momentum equivalent to that
     of their heavier cousins. Indeed, an electron accelerated to
     .999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999 times the speed of light
     would hit you with the same impact as a Mack truck traveling at normal speed.
    Of course, the reason all these implications of the relativity of space and time are so
     hard for us to accept at face value is that we happen to live and move at speeds far
     smaller than the speed of light. Each of the above effects becomes noticeable only when
     one is moving at “rel-ativistic” speeds. For example, even at half the speed of light,
     clocks would slow and yardsticks would shrink by only about 15 percent. On NASA's space
     shuttle, which moves at about 5 miles per second around the Earth, clocks tick less than
     one ten-millionth of a percent slower than their counterparts on Earth.
    However, in the high-speed world of the
    
    
     Enterprise
    
    
     or any other starship, relativity would have to be confronted on a daily basis. Indeed, in
     managing a Federation, one can imagine the difficulties of synchronizing clocks across a
     large segment of the galaxy when a great many of these clocks are moving at close to light
     speed. As a result, Starfleet apparently has a rule that normal impulse operations for
     starships are to be limited to a velocity of 0.25
    
    
     c
    
    
     that is, 1/4 light speed, or a mere 75,000 km/sec.
    
    
     2
    Even with such a rule, clocks on ships traveling at this speed will slow by slightly over
     3 percent compared with clocks at Starfleet Command. This means that in a month of travel,
     clocks will have slowed by almost one day. If the
    
    
     Enterprise
    
    
     were to return to Starfleet Command after such a trip, it would be Friday on the ship but
     Saturday back home. I suppose the inconvenience would not be any worse than resetting your
     clocks after crossing the international date line when traveling to the Orient, except in
     this case the crew would
    
    
     actually be
    
    
     one. day younger after the round-trip, whereas on a round-trip to the Orient you gain one
     day going in one direction and lose one going in the other.
    You can now see how important warp drive is to the
    
    
     Enterprise.
    
    
     Not only is it designed to avoid the ultimate speed limitthe speed of lightand so allow
     practical travel across the galaxy, but it is also designed to avoid the problems of time
     dilation, which result when the ship is traveling close to light speed.
    I cannot overemphasize how significant these facts are. The fact that clocks slow down as
     one approaches the speed of light has been taken by science fiction writers (and indeed by
     all those who have dreamed of traveling to the stars) as opening the possibility that one
     might cross the vast distances between the stars in a human lifetimeat least a human
     lifetime