Inertia as the Key Insight to Hypertime

[Don Kuenz]

There's time enough at last for me to read my first Perry Rhoden
story, named "Prisoner of Time." In it Rhodan's people use a device
that speeds up their proximal clock by 72,000 times. After Rhodan's
people speed up their proximal clock, the distal world moves so slow
that it appears to stand still while distal objects become virtually
immovable due to inertia. To understand why, let's take a look at a
couple of formulas.
We can define inertia as the resistance of an inertial mass to a
change of velocity. Formula 1 shows the relationship:
F = m*a [1]
where F is force, m is inertial mass, and a is acceleration.
Acceleration is defined as:
a = d / t^2 [2]
where d is distance and t is time. The numerator in formula 2 becomes
larger as time t shrinks and causes the denominator to become smaller.
"Prisoner of Time" illustrates the concept in this passage:

Rous looked at the crystal and smiled in relief. "Mr.
Steiner, I already said, that there would be an explanation
for everything. That includes this crystal, which is nothing
other than a very slowly falling raindrop. Consider that
this raindrop falls 72,000 times more slowly than on Earth,
assuming this world has the same gravitation, which seems to
be the case. What does that mean? The raindrop falls about
10 centimetres an hour, based on the usual speed of falling
back on Terra."
They stared at the wonder of the floating crystal, which
seemed to defy all understanding. Steiner was evidently not
completely convinced. He reached out to the raindrop with his
hand and tried to grasp it. But he did not succeed. The
crystal hung in the air as though nailed there and could not
be moved a millimetre. The inertia of its mass had increased
parallel to the retardation of time. One required 72,000
times more energy to catch a raindrop here than on the Earth.
Not even Steiner had that much strength.

*spoiler space*

Wells' "The New Accelerator" [3], written in 1901, may be the
seminal story of the hypertime genre. But it fails to honor inertial
mass increase because it allows Professor Gibberne to move a lapdog.
Bradbury's "Frost and Frost" [4], written in 1946, also fails to
honor inertia. In the story, exposure to radiation causes the survivors
of a rocket crash to live out their lives in eight short days. Yet the
survivors easily open the door of their rocket.
In television it again is "hit or miss" in regards to inertia. The
_Outer Limits_ episode called "The Premonition" [5] honors inertia.
But the movie "Clockstoppers" [6] fails to honor inertia. In it
people in hypertime move distal objects with ease. The _Smallville_
episode "Accelerate" [7] shows raindrops suspended in mid-air and slowly
falling. It fails to honor inertia when it allows people in hypertime to
move raindrops.

So there you have it. Inertia as the key insight to hypertime. :)

Notes.

3. http://www.classicreader.com/book/172/1/
4. http://tinyurl.com/nroj9qh
5. http://tinyurl.com/ouvlqyc
6. https://www.google.com/search?q=Clockstoppers+site%3Ayoutube.com
7. http://tinyurl.com/qzktyns

--
,-. There was a young lady named Bright
\_/ Whose speed was far faster than light;
{|||)< Don Kuenz KB7RPU She set out one day
/ \ In a relative way
`-' And returned on the previous night.

What you do speaks so loud that I can not hear what you say. - Emerson.

[William December Starr]

In article <2015...@crcomp.net>,

Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> said:

> Bradbury's "Frost and Frost" [4], written in 1946,

slight error on the title:

* Frost and Fire (1946) also appeared as:
+ Variant Title: The Creatures That Time Forgot (1946)

> also fails to honor inertia. In the story, exposure to radiation
> causes the survivors of a rocket crash to live out their lives in
> eight short days. Yet the survivors easily open the door of their
> rocket.

Although their development and aging took place at a hyperfast rate,
I'm not sure that they were accelerated. I think that they
subjectively as well as objectively experienced only about 190 hours
of existence from birth to death by old age. Or at last that's how
I interpreted it when I read the story way back when.

(No, even with some sort of near-instant education process you still
can't make the setup make any sense. This _is_ Bradbury after all.)

> In television it again is "hit or miss" in regards to inertia. The
> _Outer Limits_ episode called "The Premonition" [5] honors
> inertia.

Sort of. It did with regard to macro objects, but not, say, air
molecules. (I.e., the accelerated characters could breathe.) There
was also some inconsistency even at the macro level; the characters
were able to move a piece of nylon strapping around so as to rig a
connection between a (frozen) runaway truck's front wheel and its
brake pedal such that in the real-time frame of reference the
turning wheel mechanically applied the brake.

(As with the Bradbury story, this is as best as I recall. I could
be misremembering.)

-- wds

[Don Kuenz]

Thank you for catching the Bradbury typo. :)

Air molecules are a show stopper. If inertia prevents a hypertimer from
moving rain drops, how can they inhale air molecules? This perhaps begs
the question, where is the hypertime boundary?

Psuedohypertime radiation bathes Bradbury's rocket. Perhaps the skin of
that rocket is a psuedohypertime boundary. And people's skin is another
psuedohypertime boundary.

In "The Premonition" the seat belts come from a car that has moved into
hypertime along with its driver. So, at the macro level, it still works.

[Richard Todd]

Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> writes:

> There's time enough at last for me to read my first Perry Rhoden
> story, named "Prisoner of Time." In it Rhodan's people use a device
> that speeds up their proximal clock by 72,000 times.

(This is Perry Rhodan #56 in the old Ace US edition, PR #64 in the
German original for those who can read the German summary at
http://www.perrypedia.proc.org/wiki/Quelle:PR64 .)

More precisely, they use the "ring-field-generator", I think it was
called, to enter another universe, the so-called "Druuf Universe",
where the native time rate is 72000 times slower, while still retaining
their original time rate.

If this is the only PR book you have access to, have fun, IIRC it's a
pretty good one. If you can find/have access to others, you might want
to know that PR#50 "Attack From the Unseen" and PR#51 "Return from the
Void" had the beginning parts of the Druuf storyline, and some further
mention of it in PR #52 "Fortress Atlantis". PR #53-55 are unrelated
stories taking place aroud the same time. The Druuf story line
continues off and on within the overall "Atlan and Arkon" cycle (PR #42
thru #91 in the US editions, covering the years in-story from 2040AD to
2045AD), reaching a high point around PR #80 "The
Columbus Affair".

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2015 12:49:17 -0500, Richard Todd
<rmt...@servalan.servalan.com> wrote
in<news:x737zb6...@ichotolot.servalan.com> in
rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.sf.tv,rec.arts.sf.written:

> Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> writes:

>> There's time enough at last for me to read my first
>> Perry Rhoden story, named "Prisoner of Time." In it
>> Rhodan's people use a device that speeds up their
>> proximal clock by 72,000 times.

> (This is Perry Rhodan #56 in the old Ace US edition, PR
> #64 in the German original for those who can read the
> German summary at http://www.perrypedia.proc.org/wiki/Quelle:PR64 .)

There seems to be an English translation at

<http://www.vb-tech.co.za/ebooks/Perry%20Rhodan%20-%20Future%20Cycle%20064%20-%20Prisoner%20of%20Time%20-%20SF.txt>,

though I shouldn’t care to bet that it’s legal.

> More precisely, they use the "ring-field-generator", I
> think it was called,

Linsenfeldgenerator: lens field generator.

> to enter another universe, the so-called "Druuf
> Universe", where the native time rate is 72000 times
> slower, while still retaining their original time rate.

[...]

Brian
--
It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their
holes to root for sandtatties. The waves whispered
rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,
haggisss.

[Don Kuenz]

A website, that in retrospect seems shady, sold me a few dozen PR
ebooks in English. Since then perrypedia and a PR ebook retailer [1]
caught my attention.

The retailer seems to offer unabridged ebook editions of PR, in German.
My only remaining task now is to navigate myself through their German
order page. :)

Note.

1. http://www.science-fiction-ebooks.de

[David DeLaney]

On 2015-08-22, Richard Todd <rmt...@servalan.servalan.com> wrote:
> Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> writes:
>> There's time enough at last for me to read my first Perry Rhoden
>> story, named "Prisoner of Time." In it Rhodan's people use a device
>> that speeds up their proximal clock by 72,000 times.

> More precisely, they use the "ring-field-generator", I think it was
> called, to enter another universe, the so-called "Druuf Universe",
> where the native time rate is 72000 times slower, while still retaining
> their original time rate.

Which reminds me; also check out Daniel Keys Moran's _The Armageddon Blues_.
In one segment of it a character sets a doorway/worldgate to an entry speed
of eighteen million to one, timewise ... because it's going into a minus
world, with time flowing backwards & made of antimatter, and at that speed
the protagonist will skip along the surface of the interface rather than
blowing up real good as a one-to-one entry would have done. (Hey, I didn't
say it quite made SENSE when looked at closely...)

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://gatekeeper.vic.com/~dbd/ -net.legends/Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[Richard Todd]

Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> writes:

> A website, that in retrospect seems shady, sold me a few dozen PR
> ebooks in English. Since then perrypedia and a PR ebook retailer [1]
> caught my attention.
>
> The retailer seems to offer unabridged ebook editions of PR, in German.
> My only remaining task now is to navigate myself through their German
> order page. :)

> 1. http://www.science-fiction-ebooks.de

Yeah, that's the SF division of Beam E-Books (www.beam-ebooks.de), and
that's where I get my German copies of PR. EPUB-format downloads with
no DRM. Recommended.

[Joseph Nebus]

In <2015...@crcomp.net> Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> writes:

>So there you have it. Inertia as the key insight to hypertime. :)

I'm surprised no one's mentioned James Blish's short story
'Common Time' yet. It opens with the protagonist becoming aware that
he is experiencing life something like 6,000 times faster than normal.
This is a particular inconvenience because while his mind is running
really quite fast, his body is moving at normal rates. He works out
that even if he wanted to write something down, he couldn't move his
pencil fast enough to hold his thought through the whole process of
writing.

--
Joseph Nebus
Math: Reading the Comics: Name-Dropping Edition http://wp.me/p1RYhY-Qh
Humor: The Origin Of The Specious http://wp.me/p37lb5-Wm
--------------------------------------------------------+---------------------

[Don Kuenz]

In rec.arts.sf.written Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:
> In <2015...@crcomp.net> Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> writes:
>
>>So there you have it. Inertia as the key insight to hypertime. :)
>
> I'm surprised no one's mentioned James Blish's short story
> 'Common Time' yet. It opens with the protagonist becoming aware that
> he is experiencing life something like 6,000 times faster than normal.
> This is a particular inconvenience because while his mind is running
> really quite fast, his body is moving at normal rates. He works out
> that even if he wanted to write something down, he couldn't move his
> pencil fast enough to hold his thought through the whole process of
> writing.

The story reminds me of a sleepless night in bed with thoughts racing
through my mind until the wee hours of the morning. Followed by the
sound of a riveting gun in my head as the alarm goes off.

[Don]

Brian M. Scott wrote:
> Richard Todd wrote:

>> Don wrote:
>>>
>>> There's time enough at last for me to read my first
>>> Perry Rhoden story, named "Prisoner of Time." In it
>>> Rhodan's people use a device that speeds up their
>>> proximal clock by 72,000 times.
>>
>> (This is Perry Rhodan #56 in the old Ace US edition, PR
>> #64 in the German original for those who can read the
>> German summary at http://www.perrypedia.proc.org/wiki/Quelle:PR64 .)
>
> There seems to be an English translation at
>
> <http://www.vb-tech.co.za/ebooks/Perry%20Rhodan%20-%20Future%20Cycle%20064%20-%20Prisoner%20of%20Time%20-%20SF.txt>,
>
> though I shouldn't care to bet that it's legal.
>
>> More precisely, they use the "ring-field-generator", I
>> think it was called,
>
> Linsenfeldgenerator: lens field generator.
>
>> to enter another universe, the so-called "Druuf
>> Universe", where the native time rate is 72000 times
>> slower, while still retaining their original time rate.

It's time to turn back to this thread once more. The PR stories cited
within were recently reached and re-read by me as part of a long term
marathon to read PR from its very first story.

Although Clark Darlton indeed uses Linsenfeldgenerator as his
nomenclature in „Nr. 64 Im Zeit-Gefängnis“, he changes it to
Krümmungsfeld-Generator (curvature field generator) in his next
installment, „Nr. 65 Ein Hauch Ewigkeit“. And Ackerman alters it to
"warp-field generator" in Ace "#57 A Touch of Eternity"

Original:

„Eigentlich“, warf Erb sachlich ein, „handelt es sich mehr
um einen Krümmungsfeld-Generator, denn das erzeugte Lichtfeld
wird stark gekrümmt.“

Translated:

"Actually," Erb interjected matter-of-factly, "it is more of a
curvature field generator, because the generated light field is
strongly curved.

Ackermanized:

"Practically speaking," interjected Erb, "what you have now is
more of a warp-field generator because the light and energy
spectra are curved quite sharply.

Neologist Ackerman coins the word /spatima/ for his back cover blurb.
Where he curiously reverts to /lens-field generator/ in place of the
/warp-field/ found in the story proper:

One very special "window" - the point of egress from an alien
dimension - ceased to be and with its disappearance there
vanished the means of return to our own spatima continuum, our
own universe of space & time & matter.
Perry Rhodan learns whether a man can drown in an "ocean of
time."
And the crew of the spaceship /Sherbourne/ - does coincidence,
chance, a lucky accident or fate determine the outcome of their
adventure in the Other Dimension?
The lens-field generator and the dread Druufs are all part
of the package of those, who, like you when you read this
breath-taking episode, sense - A Touch of Eternity.

This sort of sempiternity spiel stirs up the ghost of Ernst Ellert in
the mind of this Rhofan. ... Now what were the circumstances when Ernst
entered eternity? Fortunately the details are available at perrypedia:

https://www.perrypedia.de/wiki/Ernst_Ellert

and it points to „Nr. 7 Invasion aus dem All“ translated as Ace
"#4 Invasion From Space."

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'