Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

[austenandrews]

I had a setting idea one sleepless night: An STL starship is on a centuries-long voyage. The passengers are in cryofreeze, with their brains connected to android bodies. To conserve energy and sanity over the long trip, the subjective time of the androids is slowed down by a factor of 360. That is to say, an hour of real time feels like ten seconds to the passengers. A year feels like a day. An observer in real-time would see them moving excruciatingly slow. However the passengers mostly experience the world normally, as basic Newtonian physics doesn't much care about the rate of time passage. (Note that there's no gravity and their android bodies require no air to breathe.)

 

My question is, what wouldn't be normal about this experience? For example, if you opened a can of Coke in this environment, in real time the expulsion of gas means you'd tumble backwards until you gently bumped into the wall. In subjective time (sub-time) it'd be like an explosion that hurls you instantly backwards. (You wouldn't be hurt though, because the impact is actually low-speed.)

 

Probably any liquid would "explode" into blobs if released, since in real time the slightest movement could send it drifting from its container and gathering into blobs, that would eventually find a nearby surface to cling to.

 

The elasticity of surfaces would seem very different from normal.

 

What else would be different in this sub-time environment?

[Christopher]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Every natural process would would look like a fast motion video:

If you drop a ball, it impacts instantly (less than 1/360 subjective seconds) and is rolled half across the room to a resting position before you even realised that you dropped it.

Recharging your body does not needs much time - subjective.

The ship needs a strong computer. The androids are simply not able to react fast enough to any problems. Unless they have a "normal time" switch.

If they have a normal time switch, this could be used to for everything from pranks to "quikies" whiel being out of slow-time (5 seconds, very fast these yound people )

Any physical impulse that doesn't comes from another android would be very abrupt. Maybe even to short to notice, if it has no direct effect.

[Cancer]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

What else would be different in this sub-time environment?

 

Though I admit a lot of it is distorted by the liquid surroundings, there's a lot to this idea that recalls the kind of world that starfish and gastropods live in. Their movements are really slow compared to what we're used to, and a lot about their surroundings change rather faster than they can react. If you can watch the time-lapse videos from that sub-environment, you might get some ideas.

[Christopher]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

The interesting part is, that with a lack of a "natural" environment and the android concept, people might not even notice it that much:

There are no sunrises and sunsets.

No moving clouds.

No flowing water (they don't even have to use the bathroom).

Nothing acting on a "normal" scale, but the ocassional self-moving object.

 

It could be so bad, the only thing by witch you notice it is somebdoy palce a clock there that runs "normally".

 

Perhaps a nice comparsion is this site:

http://www.onehourpersecond.com/

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Another handy feature of sub-time is reducing the signal delay to communicate with their (very) distant recon/relay drones.

 

The interesting part is, that with a lack of a "natural" environment and the android concept, people might not even notice it that much:

There are no sunrises and sunsets.

No moving clouds.

No flowing water (they don't even have to use the bathroom).

Nothing acting on a "normal" scale, but the ocassional self-moving object.

 

It could be so bad, the only thing by witch you notice it is somebdoy palce a clock there that runs "normally".

Exactly, that's the concept. They're traveling at a constant speed through the interstellar void. There's effectively nothing present that they didn't bring along, which can be restricted to items that behave themselves in sub-time. (They do encounter the occasional rogue planet - intentionally, of course - but from a sufficient distance that their enormous relative velocity isn't a factor.)

 

I considered having their starship be large enough that its natural gravity would seem like normal Earth gravity in sub-time, but that would require a ship as massive as Mars's smaller moon, which sadly is way too big for what I have in mind.

 

Every natural process would would look like a fast motion video:

If you drop a ball, it impacts instantly (less than 1/360 subjective seconds) and is rolled half across the room to a resting position before you even realised that you dropped it.

Recharging your body does not needs much time - subjective.

Energy conservation is a primary motivator for this system. In fact I intend for the temperature to be extremely low, as close to absolute zero as is feasible, not that they particularly notice with their incredibly slow android bodies. I haven't run any napkin-numbers on the idea yet though, to get a ballpark low figure for a feasible temperature.

 

The ship needs a strong computer. The androids are simply not able to react fast enough to any problems. Unless they have a "normal time" switch.

I was thinking there'd be an emergency "thawing" procedure. The trick is to turn up the heat in the android bodies to allow them to move faster. But it would only be done in emergency situations and high-risk scenarios (such as when passing a rogue planet).

 

If they have a normal time switch, this could be used to for everything from pranks to "quikies" whiel being out of slow-time (5 seconds, very fast these yound people )

Naturally a story would probably involve times getting out of sync.

 

Any physical impulse that doesn't comes from another android would be very abrupt. Maybe even to short to notice, if it has no direct effect.

That's part of what I'd like to brainstorm - what interactions in ordinary life involve an impulse that wouldn't translate into intuitive sub-time behavior? I'm positive there are a ton of little things I'm overlooking.

 

Though I admit a lot of it is distorted by the liquid surroundings' date=' there's a lot to this idea that recalls the kind of world that starfish and gastropods live in. Their movements are really slow compared to what we're used to, and a lot about their surroundings change rather faster than they can react. If you can watch the time-lapse videos from that sub-environment, you might get some ideas.[/quote']

That's a cool idea. I will do that.

[Christopher]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

I considered having their starship be large enough that its natural gravity would seem like normal Earth gravity in sub-time' date=' but that would require a ship as massive as Mars's smaller moon, which sadly is way too big for what I have in mind.[/quote']

The usual trick is to give it a spin, so the centrifugal force acts as fake gravity.

 

That's part of what I'd like to brainstorm - what interactions in ordinary life involve an impulse that wouldn't translate into intuitive sub-time behavior? I'm positive there are a ton of little things I'm overlooking.

When someone in normal time just pokes you. It's a rather strong impulse, but it will be stretched over 360 times the real timespan. So it might not be noticeable at all for the one being touched. So unless it's enough to move him/throw him down (see below) he won't even notice it.

They have to be very carefully when moving everything, guiding it from a resting postion to a resting position.

They could not react to sudden shocks and would simply fall it they recive a hit to hard.

 

Also, this reminds me of this Voyger Epsiode:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(episode)

 

And apperntly, there was a similar TOS episode:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Wink_of_an_Eye_(episode)

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

The usual trick is to give it a spin' date=' so the centrifugal force acts as fake gravity.[/quote']

Would the Coriolis effect scale along with everything else? I guess it would. In any case I can't think of any particular need for gravity. It was just an amusing thought that some tiny g-force would register as Earth gravity.

 

They have to be very carefully when moving everything, guiding it from a resting postion to a resting position.

It depends on the object, but without gravity or air currents, I figure most objects will appear to move normally.

 

One difference that comes to mind is the effect of static friction. Imagine I'm trying to slide open a door. In real time, my muscles can provide a quick force that overcomes the static friction between the door and its bearings. In sub-time, I can't provide a quick force. I'm steadily exerting a small force over a long period of time. But that force may be too small to overcome static friction. Instead of jerking open the door, I find it to be immovable and I wind up flinging myself away from it instead.

 

Another example of the same effect: Imagine a paper wall, say in the old Japanese style. When moving in real-time, even in zero gravity I can readily punch my fist through it. In sub-time, though, I can't. My very slow fist can't tear the paper, so I just push myself away from it. However if I brace myself against something solid - more solid than the paper - then the paper will give first and my fist will punch eventually through.

 

Subjectively the paper wall will seem quite sturdy, but if I brace myself, it will rip easily. Does any substance behave that way in real time? Some analogous material that it could be compared to?

 

And apperntly, there was a similar TOS episode:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Wink_of_an_Eye_(episode)

I remember this one from my Trekker days. Amusingly, I found the premise rather goofy when I was a kid.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Subjectively the paper wall will seem quite sturdy, but if I brace myself, it will rip easily. Does any substance behave that way in real time? Some analogous material that it could be compared to?

 

Well, non-newtonian fluids, specifically shear thickening fluids, come to mind. One example is silly putty: on a large timescale, it'll flow and settle like a liquid; on a short timescale, you can hit it with a hammer and watch it shatter like glass.

 

However, that's not exactly the case here; in slow time, you could tear or crumple a piece of paper in your hands easily, just like normal. The only time it would seem different is if you were relying on momentum to carry your fist or foot through it. You might also have trouble with the fact that the time for an object to fall and the period of a pendulum might not change the same way in reduced gravity, giving you walking trouble, but I don't feel like doing the math right now.

[Christopher]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

The only time it would seem different is if you were relying on momentum to carry your fist or foot through it. You might also have trouble with the fact that the time for an object to fall and the period of a pendulum might not change the same way in reduced gravity' date=' giving you walking trouble, but I don't feel like doing the math right now.[/quote']

That is indeed an interesting point. Since we never excert much force when moving, we also never aquire much momentum.

 

In Zero G our ability to decelarte would be increased. However, accelerating might be akward:

Normally we can complete the repel-movement before we loose contact to the surface that we repel us form. But in slow time the first bit of pressure (the one that overcomes our interity) might already seperate us from the surface. Picture jumping from a kneeling position, where you "lift of" after barely starting the movement.

 

If there is any gravity, people will be unable to jump (they try as normaly, but their upward momentum can't overcome gravity).

 

May you should have a little gravity/coriolis force. Just about 1/360 of earth gravity could help a lot.

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

That is indeed an interesting point. Since we never excert much force when moving, we also never aquire much momentum.

 

In Zero G our ability to decelarte would be increased. However, accelerating might be akward:

Normally we can complete the repel-movement before we loose contact to the surface that we repel us form. But in slow time the first bit of pressure (the one that overcomes our interity) might already seperate us from the surface. Picture jumping from a kneeling position, where you "lift of" after barely starting the movement.

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that. I imagine that would be a function of the elasticity of the surface you're pushing off from. A very elastic surface might push you away with even a tiny initial contact. The question is, would the movement you gain from that tiny push make you travel faster than the rate of extension of your leg? If not, I don't think it would be very different from a real-time experience. The surface might seem a little squishy, as a fraction of your momentum will be absorbed by the tiny separations.

 

If the movement is enough that you float away from the surface faster than you can extend your leg, then basically any contact with a surface will send you quickly floating away in sub-time. It'd be like living inside a pinball machine, where every surface is a bumper. I'm not sure that much velocity would be imparted, though.

 

If there is any gravity, people will be unable to jump (they try as normaly, but their upward momentum can't overcome gravity).

If gravity was weak enough in proportion to the slowed time, the physics should work out the same. For sure though, anything close to normal gravity would prevent you from breaking contact with the floor. It would be similar to a normal person living on a high-g planet, but having a body strong enough to stand up.

 

May you should have a little gravity/coriolis force. Just about 1/360 of earth gravity could help a lot.

Hmm, if my ballpark numbers are correct, in a 1 km-wide ship, a 35 rpm spin would simulate 1/360 Earth gravity on the outer edge. Would the extra energy expendiature be worth it? That seems like a lot of added friction across many centuries. I'm aiming for a low-energy system.

[Christopher]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Hmm' date=' if my ballpark numbers are correct, in a 1 km-wide ship, a 35 rpm spin would simulate 1/360 Earth gravity on the outer edge. Would the extra energy expendiature be worth it? That seems like a lot of added friction across many centuries. I'm aiming for a low-energy system.[/quote']

A body in motion stays in motion, unless affected by an outside force. Rotation is jsut a different form of motion, so one little nudge could work for the entire voyage. Unless I miss anything here.

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

A body in motion stays in motion' date=' unless affected by an outside force. Rotation is jsut a different form of motion, so one little nudge could work for the entire voyage. Unless I miss anything here.[/quote']

You're correct, a rotating body in space will continue rotating essentially forever. But if you hollow it out and fill it with loose, self-motivating objects, doesn't the constant change of internal configuration affect the rotation? Would you have to regularly compensate for wobble? Maybe it'd be a measurable effect, maybe not. I've not looked into that side of things much.

 

In any case I was more thinking of minimizing energy use and wear & tear over the centuries-long travel time. If you have to exert energy just to stand up and move around, that's a constant leakage of the overall energy in the system. I'm aiming for a setup that could handle a thousand-year voyage without any external power source, even if the primary power plant fails.

 

It does mean a certain narrative overhead in setting up the zero-g environment, alas. But hopefully not too much.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

It is a very interesting idea, and seems quite reasonable on the face of it.

 

One thing occurrung to me is how this condition would affect their view of the outside universe.

 

I assume that navigation / astrogation would be handled via the ship's computer, which would automatically correct / compensate for this in the data it presents. However, if they ever need to "go manual", any readings taken of the outside universe would be skewed. For example, objects would seem to hurtle past the ship at a MUCH higher speed than they really are and, when one tosses in relativistic effects (or apparent lack thereof) as well, it can get rather weird trying to keep track of that stuff.

 

.... Hmm, yeah, it could be weird all right - considering that light-speed would SEEM to be 360 times faster than it should be. A number of corrections would be needed before any manual readings make sense. If, for some reason, the people do not realize that they have been "slowed", then it could get really REALLY weird from their points of view.

 

Man, this makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

 

Another thought is that these android bodies may not necessarily have to be humanoid-shaped. There may be very good psychological reasons for doing so, but for activities that (for example) involve scrambling around the ship's exterior and/or in zero-g, something arthropod shaped (spider, crab, insect) might be better. The 'Eclipse Phase' rpg includes a wide selection of such bodies for characters to link with or download their minds into.

 

Alternatively, the android bodies might be humanoid, but be modularized so they can be configured for specific tasks or situations. For example, if going into zero-g, being able to swap out the body's feet for graspers would make a lot of sense. Or swapping out one or more fingers for some kind of tool (Cyberpunk 2020 has a few ideas here).

[Cancer]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Internal forces don't change the momentum of the total system. So as long as the engines aren't firing, it wouldn't matter whether people moved around inside a rotating ship or not.

 

That said, people moving around inside will in general change the orientation of the ship. And that, in turn, could change the thrust vector of any engine mounted in the ship. Still, measuring the angular motion at any instant* is pretty easy, just track stars for a time. So then you could figure out the orientation and rotation of the ship, sound an alarm that engines were firing and have all aboard strap themselves down, do the burn, and go back to normal ops. The asterisk by "instant" means an interval of some time ... probably several hours, tops ... is needed to measure the rotation rates, but that interval is very short compared to the duration of the trip.

 

On the other hand, if your engine is firing and accelerating the ship continuously, then you already have a source of "gravity" from that.

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

I assume that navigation / astrogation would be handled via the ship's computer' date=' which would automatically correct / compensate for this in the data it presents. However, if they ever need to "go manual", any readings taken of the outside universe would be skewed. For example, objects would seem to hurtle past the ship at a MUCH higher speed than they really are and, when one tosses in relativistic effects (or apparent lack thereof) as well, it can get rather weird trying to keep track of that stuff.[/quote']

I'm operating on a couple of assumptions. Let me know if you see any problems:

 

- Computers already operate at a speed that makes humans look like they're standing still. They make decisions far too fast for a 360x speedup to make much difference. If the computer fails, a person's manual options would probably be extremely limited to begin with. ("If your computer fails, your best option is to pray to whatever god has the shortest name!") That said, an interstellar voyage will mostly be "ballistic." You're basically riding a bullet to your destination. So it's not as if someone needs to man the tiller day and night. Mostly it'll be a matter of monitoring the spacetime ahead of you to make sure you're not going to hurtle into something. Actually firing the engines would very much be an emergency situation, or a maneuver planned real-time decades or centuries in advance.

 

- In interstellar space there's hardly any chance of interacting with something, so the risk of an external emergency is low. If an object comes "near," the relative velocities will probably be so ridiculously high that speeding them up by a factor of 360 wouldn't necessarily matter much.

 

- Many, if not most, emergency events are already too fast for humans to handle in real-time. Explosions, short-circuits, impacts from external bodies; it's not as if slowing down by 360x will make these events seem much faster. What it will do is to turn certain events that are objectively slow into quick or instant events. If something catches fire, for instance, in real-time a crewmember might grab an extinguisher and put it out before too much damage is done. In slow time, an ordinary fire would seem more like an explosion. If it takes half an hour for the whole ship's interior to burn to a crisp, it would feel like five seconds. Whoosh, it spreads like the walls are made of flash paper. God forbid a crewmember catches fire - if it took as long as thirty seconds to burn him to death, subjectively he'd be insta-fried. Another good reason not to have an atmosphere in the ship! Pretty much everything needs to be fireproof (probably a requirement on any long-term spaceship, slowed down or not). Stray sparks become much more dangerous. Hmmm, how might static electricity build up in such an environment?

 

- If there is an emergency, the computer will "thaw time" as quickly as possible. This will be a matter of warming up the android bodies and their environment. I'm not sure how long this will take, but it surely needs to be long enough for dramatic effect. Any thoughts?

 

.... Hmm, yeah, it could be weird all right - considering that light-speed would SEEM to be 360 times faster than it should be. A number of corrections would be needed before any manual readings make sense. If, for some reason, the people do not realize that they have been "slowed", then it could get really REALLY weird from their points of view.

Conveniently it makes distances seem shorter. If you send a probe a light-year ahead of you, it only takes two days to send it a command and receive a response.

 

I guess it also makes everything seem brighter. A one-second exposure to the faint light of a distant object would actually gather six minutes worth of photons. Objects that move or change too slow for the naked eye to detect would be obvious to someone in slow time.

 

And it would make the gravity of celestial objects look 360 times stronger, and their physical properties seem much more robust. Though one presumes the crew would rely on computers for such distant observations. (I wouldn't recommend flying in slow time too deep in a large object's gravity well.)

 

Another thought is that these android bodies may not necessarily have to be humanoid-shaped. There may be very good psychological reasons for doing so, but for activities that (for example) involve scrambling around the ship's exterior and/or in zero-g, something arthropod shaped (spider, crab, insect) might be better. The 'Eclipse Phase' rpg includes a wide selection of such bodies for characters to link with or download their minds into.

 

Alternatively, the android bodies might be humanoid, but be modularized so they can be configured for specific tasks or situations. For example, if going into zero-g, being able to swap out the body's feet for graspers would make a lot of sense. Or swapping out one or more fingers for some kind of tool (Cyberpunk 2020 has a few ideas here).

I'm aiming for humanoid bodies, so the characters and environment aren't too alien to tell a story. Some technobabble about the brain in suspended animation needing to exercise the proper neural pathways for arms and legs and whatnot, lest you thaw out at your destination a millennium later and not be able to control your real body. But I would like to have some cool android features humans don't, because hey, robot bodies! Skin that sticks to surfaces at will would be handy in zero-g. Tool-fingers could be nifty.

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Internal forces don't change the momentum of the total system. So as long as the engines aren't firing, it wouldn't matter whether people moved around inside a rotating ship or not.

 

That said, people moving around inside will in general change the orientation of the ship. And that, in turn, could change the thrust vector of any engine mounted in the ship. Still, measuring the angular motion at any instant* is pretty easy, just track stars for a time. So then you could figure out the orientation and rotation of the ship, sound an alarm that engines were firing and have all aboard strap themselves down, do the burn, and go back to normal ops. The asterisk by "instant" means an interval of some time ... probably several hours, tops ... is needed to measure the rotation rates, but that interval is very short compared to the duration of the trip.

Angular momentum is calculated based on the center of gravity, right? So moving around a spinning ship would make it wobble, even though the system travels at a constant velocity and angular momentum. I guess you're right; you'd have to fire the engines to maintain constant gravity and orientation. And since that would change the actual angular momentum, eventually you'd have to counter-fire them to keep the whole system in line. Man, centrifugal gravity is a pain!

 

On the other hand, if your engine is firing and accelerating the ship continuously, then you already have a source of "gravity" from that.

Who's got the fuel for that?

 

I once ran a pulp space opera game that did the whole accelerate-flip-decelerate thing for artificial gravity. The physics made sense though the fuel numbers were complete nonsense, of course. I guess they're nonsense with almost all interstellar science fiction, when you break it down. In this slow-time setting, I'd love it if the energy numbers could be in the same ballpark, or at least the same county, as reality. (I suspect running a supercomputer for a thousand years will by itself make this impossible, but if I rubber-science that part, maybe it's not an impossible dream.)

[Christopher]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Austen, I think you have missunderstood what is happenign here. The ship isn't in a time distortion field. The ship is traveling the normal, low tech sci-fi way.

 

The people are in statis/cold sleep pods, but remote controll Anriod bodies. But the bodies are so slow at movement and thinking that 1 hour of real time looks like 1 second of percieved time from the body controllers side.

The ship is travelling the hard way, but the time percieved by the passengers is compressed.

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Heh, since I'm the OP, I think I've got the idea. What did I say that didn't match up? This stuff can be a little mind-bending and I want to be sure I don't get something wrong.

[Christopher]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Heh' date=' since I'm the OP, I think I've got the idea. What did I say that didn't match up? This stuff can be a little mind-bending and I want to be sure I don't get something wrong.[/quote']

 

Two parts:

I guess it also makes everything seem brighter. A one-second exposure to the faint light of a distant object would actually gather six minutes worth of photons. Objects that move or change too slow for the naked eye to detect would be obvious to someone in slow time.

 

And it would make the gravity of celestial objects look 360 times stronger, and their physical properties seem much more robust. Though one presumes the crew would rely on computers for such distant observations. (I wouldn't recommend flying in slow time too deep in a large object's gravity well.)

The photo- and gravitysensors still measure everything in real time. What you would see is the "averaged" picture for a longer time period. So unless the star is pulsing, it would just look normal.

When gravity is 1 G, then goes up to 12 G for a second, then goes back to 1 G one of two things happen:

- Either the system isn't desigend to show that and shows 12 G for a real second - so your slow time eye won't see the change at all.

- It's designed to show the average over the slowed perception frame: it would show 1.03 G for 1 percieved second (the average over your "perception period").*

 

A normal time blinking light would propably look like a "half dimmed" light. Half the time it's on, half the time it's off. The average between off and on is "half on". A light blinking for you in slow time would propably have the stay on a lot longer, the be off for longer (so your eye can discern both phases).

 

 

*this can be compared to the MB/Second value when downloading or copying files. Usually they show the average over a longer time. They could show the average over a timespan of 10 Miliseconds or the average over a timespan of 1 Minute. Or even the average over the entire process (only very bad programmers). It's a question between precision/reaction time and usefull/readable values.

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

The photo- and gravitysensors still measure everything in real time. What you would see is the "averaged" picture for a longer time period. So unless the star is pulsing' date=' it would just look normal.[/quote']

Right, I was mainly referring to very dim objects. Cameras and high-powered telescopes use longer exposures to gather more data, correct? Is there any reason that wouldn't apply? But yeah, ordinary illumination would be handled as normal. Your computer and your brain would compensate for the data flow rate, same as usual.

 

There is the matter of how computer-enhanced android senses would differ from normal ones. Again there are narrative considerations - the experience of the characters can't be so wildly different from normal that it takes tons of explanation for the audience to follow. Though I doubt seeing in unusual parts of the spectrum, for instance, would be any special narrative burden.

 

Hmm, though it does occur to me that low-frequency wavelengths would seem higher-frequency. Not that slow time would affect colors or whatever - as you say, it's just more snapshots averaged over a longer time - but I wonder if some lower frequencies might have more usefulness? Same wavelength, higher frequency. Weird! Probably nothing useful there, but we're brainstorming.

 

When gravity is 1 G, then goes up to 12 G for a second, then goes back to 1 G one of two things happen:

- Either the system isn't desigend to show that and shows 12 G for a real second - so your slow time eye won't see the change at all.

- It's designed to show the average over the slowed perception frame: it would show 1.03 G for 1 percieved second (the average over your "perception period").*

Right, I get you. My point was that a constant 1G would look something like a constant 360G based on the velocities involved. If you were watching the Earth, it would zoom around the sun in a day. But again, that's a fairly trivial effect. Mostly computers would do the watching and you'd play it back at whatever speed you wanted. I doubt many celestial objects visible out the window of the starship would move fast enough to notice a difference even at 360x speed. (If it was 360,000,000x speed, I guess you could see the stars shifting in relation to each other.)

 

A normal time blinking light would propably look like a "half dimmed" light. Half the time it's on, half the time it's off. The average between off and on is "half on". A light blinking for you in slow time would propably have the stay on a lot longer, the be off for longer (so your eye can discern both phases).

In fact I'm thinking, as an energy-saving measure, that "light" inside the ship comes in low-frequency flashes. One flash per real second would be 360 flashes per slow second - too fast for the eye/brain to notice a flicker (under non-computer-enhanced conditions). So if a character operates in real-time while the rest of the ship is in slow time, he only sees his surroundings in brief flashes. Which sounds nicely creepy to me.

 

In terms of engineering, that might be less energy efficient than a very low constant illumination. If the difference isn't tremendous, though, operating in ambient strobe lighting might be cool enough to handwave it.

[Christopher]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

The usual "framerate" of the human eye is given as 25/second. At this point we can't see the seperate pictures of a movie/game anymore and start seeing a "moving" picture.

 

Only providing 25 flahses per 360 seconds or 1 per 360 has a problem: All atificial eyes need to be synchronised to take the picture at exaclty the right moment. They could run 360/360 and only take the 1-10 pictures during the flash, but that would be bad for wear and tear on the optic sensor.

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Good point. At this tech level I assume synchronizing everyone would be trivial, but when two people's subjective time rates get out-of-synch, there might be a moment of adjustment.

[austenandrews]

Re: Brainstorm: Artificially Slowed Time

 

Interesting related videos of a car crash occurring at 7mm per hour:

 

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

 

This is thousands of times slower than real speed, much slower than what I have in mind, but kind of fun anyway.