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Interstellar travel is always a problem in science fiction: you can't have the hero hibernate for millions of years whenever he or she wants to travel to another star, but it's annoying when spaceships just magically move faster than light.
However, wouldn't length contraction from special relativity partially solve this? Imagine that a ship is traveling at 0.999999c. Maybe we will never reach this speed, but, still, it's not a physical impossibility. Now, at this speed, [tex]\gamma = 707[/tex]. The distance from Earth to, say, Alpha Centauri is [tex]4.153 * 10^{16} m[/tex] (4.39 light years), but the passengers in the ship would observe this length to be contracted to [tex]5.87*10^{13} m[/tex]. At 0.999999c, this distance can be covered in 195 934 s, which converts to roughly 2.26 days.
Sure, when returning to Earth, they would realize that years have passed due to time dilation.
Still, from the passenger's perspective, they can reach other stars in a somewhat small amount of time.
Now, the fact that I can't remember a science fiction novel or film that used this idea instead of faster-than-light travel must mean that I've got something wrong, but I'm not sure.
However, wouldn't length contraction from special relativity partially solve this? Imagine that a ship is traveling at 0.999999c. Maybe we will never reach this speed, but, still, it's not a physical impossibility. Now, at this speed, [tex]\gamma = 707[/tex]. The distance from Earth to, say, Alpha Centauri is [tex]4.153 * 10^{16} m[/tex] (4.39 light years), but the passengers in the ship would observe this length to be contracted to [tex]5.87*10^{13} m[/tex]. At 0.999999c, this distance can be covered in 195 934 s, which converts to roughly 2.26 days.
Sure, when returning to Earth, they would realize that years have passed due to time dilation.
Still, from the passenger's perspective, they can reach other stars in a somewhat small amount of time.
Now, the fact that I can't remember a science fiction novel or film that used this idea instead of faster-than-light travel must mean that I've got something wrong, but I'm not sure.