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Tranquillity Calendar Converter Tool
#16
Okay...

A wormhole gets created. Then a linelayer takes one end of it and accelerates to some relativistic velocity where it traverses substantially less time (and more space) than the end that got left behind. Let's say it arrives 50 light years distant having traversed ten years less time than the end that stayed home. Now Alice can enter the end that was left behind, and emerge 10 years "earlier" but 50 light years away. Causality is not broken because neither space-time location is within the other's light cone (ie, there's no way for Alice to send a signal from 50 light years away to arrive before she leaves, even if it's sent after her arrival which is ten years "before" she leaves.).

But there's absolutely no way for Alice to get back to the first wormhole mouth without giving up that ten years. She can either give it up by traversing the wormhole in the opposite direction (and arrive ten years after leaving) or travel via flat space (more than ten light years) or traverse some other wormhole. But if she traverses some other wormhole, that wormhole has to respect that ten-year constraint. Maybe there's a wormhole back to the origin that won't cost ten years, but the entry to that wormhole is guaranteed to be more than 1 light year distant from the one where she emerged, for every year less than ten.

So, if Alice and Bob both start from A, and Alice traverses a wormhole that advances time (arriving "before" she left) and Bob traverses a wormhole that retards time (arriving "after" he left) Bob and Alice are guaranteed to have arrived a number of light years apart equal to at least the sum of the difference in time. If both of them climb into ships and proceed to a third location, the earliest they could possibly meet would be after closing that distance, which will take them all the time gained and then some.
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RE: Tranquillity Calendar Converter Tool - by Bear - 02-12-2017, 05:55 PM

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