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Is there any sci-fi story where time travel is possible, but the government has mandated that the only legal purpose for it is to offset the effects of time dil
by xwdv 5y ago
Is there any sci-fi story where time travel is possible, but the government has mandated that the only legal purpose for it is to offset the effects of time dilation from near-lightspeed voyages?
Basically as you travel to your destination, you are also traveling backward in time so you can arrive at the same time you started relative to when you left, essentially making a sort of “warp drive”. To an observer on Earth, a ship leaving to Alpha Centauri would seem to jump and arrive instantly. To the crew on board the ship, the universe would seem to “pause” while they move through a timeless space. And when they arrive at the destination and turn off the engine, everything outside starts moving again.
To me this seems like it’d be the only safe use for time travel, but I wonder if it could still be exploited somehow through some edge cases.
- LegionMammal978 5y agoThis is a theme in Isaac Asimov's "Thiotimoline to the Stars"; in the story, starship pilots are required to travel through both space and time so as to cancel out the effects of time dilation.
- remram 5y agoUniversal War One (comic) has such a device. Spoiler warning, someone invents a way to travel faster than light and hides the fact that it is perfectly capable of traveling through time too. Most of his time developing the device is actually spent putting safeguards around this feature and concealing it.
- remram 5y agoActually it's in Universal War One: Revelations #2. The comic has way more time travel and time dilatation than I remembered.