In the movie, they mentioned that it takes them 4 years to get there and it is also mentioned they are 4 light years away. So basically they are traveling near light speed.
Now when they go back to earth, wouldn't like hundreds of years already passed on earth?
Funny thing is, when she says 4 lightyears the letters stating the time says "3 years 8 months later" or something like that, so they move faster than light.
Well it could be that it takes 4 years from Eerths perspective, as when you travel faster the time slows down, so if you were to travel at the speed of light, time for the ship would be stopped compared to our perspective. so theyp robably traveled at something like 0.25 speed of light, which made their time run at 75% of speed in comparison, so 3 days in the ship would pass as 4 in on earth, which would explain why they traveled 4 lightyears in less than that time.
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
Or they just said 4 years but meant 3y8m, pretty common to round up. It's not likely Station 42 is *exactly* 4 years away.
share4 months in lightspeed is A LOT of distance.
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
They weren't rounding up the distance, they were rounding up the time.
Saying "See you in 2018" is a lot easier than saying "see you in 3 years and 8 months." No doubt as they made their goodbyes, wrote letters, cancelled their milk, etc they would have gotten tired of saying "3 years and 8 months".
You don't know sh!t, Jon Snow!
2018 according to who's clock?
shareWhy did they pick such a far away place if it was all such a sham? Basically these people were in the dream world which is kind of equivalent to dead. So they are transporting bodies 4 light years away just to store them in some kind of space station facility, then travel 4 years back to do it all over again. If it was really a business to make money, they probably would have picked something closer.
shareThey need a planet orbiting a star to power solar panels etc to power the simulation. The nearest star is roughly 4ly away so the nearest usable planet is at least that far away. I don't think there is a planet around the nearest star so they used artistic license.
share[deleted]
Hard to say, since we don't know exactly how fast they were going, but the dialog suggests they were going pretty much the speed of light.
Since that is impossible let us say the were going the speed of light minus 1 metre per second.
At that speed, in four years, if my math is correct, about 49,000 years passed.
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Death is the road to awe.
Hundreds of years? Not necessarily.The passengers acted as if gravity was working normally for them so it seems ok to assume the ship was accelerating at 1g.
Assuming the ship accelerates at 1g then it will reach 'only' about 95% of the speed of light at halfway, it then needs to decelerate at 1g for the remainder of the flight. People on board will experience just under 4 years passing. For those back home it will be a bit more than 5 years.
The main problems with doing this are the insane amount of fuel needed and not hitting a speck of dust when you are moving at nearly the speed of light.