Faster than Light?

Star Trek, Star Wars, Star Gate, E.E. Smith's Lensmen, Ensign Flandry... All require faster than light travel for the stories to work. (Sometimes it's moving FTL, sometimes a worm hole or other extra-dimensional path, but it all amounts to FTL).

But, modern physics seems to really be confirming that moving faster than light is not only impossible, but the idea actually doesn't even mean anything. And the extra-dimensional stuff doesn't work, because the universe is really really flat and the path in the universe is the shortest one. Yikes! What's gonna happen to all that great science fiction?

A few years ago, I read about a real life time machine... not one that has been built yet, but one that could be allowed by modern physics... It would require a black hole-sized mass. Once arrange properly, one could use the space time distortion around it to go back in time.

But only as far back as the moment at which the time machine was built... well that's pretty useless - the folks who wreck their economy constructing the thing don't get any benefit from it.

But how about this? You travel somewhere at the speed of light (lots of big technical problems with this, but all solvable under modern physics). No matter how far you go, this takes no time at all for those on board. But maybe takes a century (let's say the destination is 100 light years away). If you just come back at light speed, you'll arrive home 200 years after you left - not very useful.

Instead, let's say you travel back to the time machine (which we've built near our home planet). Go back in time 200 years, and then travel home - you arrive back home just after you left.

So you can build your star empire spanning the galaxy... it's just at your coloney 100 light years away will actually be happening 100 years after the galactic capital. And the coloney 200 lights away will be happening 100 year after that. Totally screws with your sense of what time means, doesn't it.

For this to work, every trip from A to B would require a stop at the time machine, so it would be a hoppin' place. You'd need some law enforcement folks to make sure the time machine wasn't abused - which would really make thing freaky. Would they be Time Cops?... Time Lords?

Well, I hope some aspiring science fiction writer will run with this an make a great story with it. (You can thank me in the Acknowledgement section, lol)

My stories come out in the form of songs, so I adapted a folk song to a little SF story based on the idea: Click Here for the Podcast