Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Let's look at several instances of the Twin Paradox -- or something like it -- in books, movies, TV shows. Which authors got it right, and which .... got mixed up?
This is by no means an exhaustive list, just a few that seem to me to be particularly relevant.
The science-fiction short story Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, was later turned into both a novel and a movie. The story revolves around a series of armed conflicts between humans and a race of alien creatures known as Formics. After the first contact between these species, the Formics send a gigantic fleet of spaceships to invade the Solar System and conquer the Earth. An entire fleet of human ships is wiped out, and just when all hope seems lost, a single pilot defies orders and attacks one particular alien ship. That pilot, Mazer Rackham, turns out to be a military genius, the only person who recognized that the Formic fleet was being controlled by a special flagship; by destroying that ship, he killed the alien mastermind and stopped the invasion, saving the human race.
The humans conclude this genius is humanity's only hope in any future conflict with the aliens. But the next battle might take place many decades later -- how can humans keep Rackham "ready" for the next fight? The answer: use special relativity!
The next battle takes place 80 years after the first,
yet Rackham has only aged 10 years.
How fast was his ship travelling?
The original (1968) movie Planet of the Apes begins with a small crew aboard a spaceship which has suffered an accident of some kind. The ship left the Earth in 1972 and moved at high speed. All four of the crew were placed into sleep hibernation, with the ship set to run on auto-pilot. But when the three crewmen wake up, after (roughly) one year of their own time has passed, they discover that their lone female crewmate is dead (bad sleep chamber?), and they have no information on the journey. Their only clue is that the ship's instruments indicate that the current time back on Earth is the year 3978.
If the crew aged just 1 year, but a total of
(3978 - 1972) = 2006 years have passed on Earth,
how fast was the ship travelling?
In this version of the Superman story, an evil villain decides to trigger giant earthquakes to cause most of California to slide into the Pacific. That will leave Nevada as the new coastline, and the nasty Lex Luthor has purchased huge tracts of land in Nevada at very low prices. After the earthquakes, he'll make a killing selling that now very valuable real estate!
Our hero manages to foil a portion of this plan, but one fissure opens up and swallows Lois Lane, killing her! Oh, no! Can the Man of Steel save the day?
Yes! By flying super fast around the Earth, Superman reverses the Earth's spin and forces time to run backwards by one hour, allowing him to prevent Lois from falling into the fissure!
Video clip taken from
Superman
copyright Warner Bros. (1978)
Superman spends one minute of his time flying at speed
v around the Earth,
causing time to reverse by exactly one hour.
How fast was Superman flying?
Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.