Relativistic Meanderings On The Way To Work

Originally featured in The Salty Fish Bowl - February 2010

It’s one of those mornings when I wake up for work and my first thought is that nothing has gone according to plan. Pondering this for a moment, while trying to absorb all the warmth from my bed before flinging the blankets aside, I realize again that there never really was a plan at all. It’s been more like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, where decisions are made on the spot, at the turn of a page;

You barely graduated high school. You can; Go to College (flip to page 153), or Join the Workforce (flip to page 375).
You have chosen Join the Workforce. With no formal education or significant work experience you can be; a Gas Jockey (pg. 210), a Labourer (pg. 124), Homeless (burn book for warmth).

I crawl out of bed and mechanically prepare for the day. Mindlessly brushing my teeth I stare into the lifeless eyes staring back into mine. Not much going on up there. I need a coffee. And a lottery ticket. One of those things will cheer me up.
Halfway to work, now with half a coffee in me, my mind cogs begin to whir again. I decide it’s about time for that plan. It seems like forever ago that I flipped to page 375. Maybe it’s time to… maybe it’s time... that’s it! The problem isn’t me, or trans fat. The real culprit is Time itself. There just isn’t enough. Doesn’t it seem like all we do is race around trying to complete the things we “have” to do, rarely ever leaving enough time to accomplish the things we “want” to do? Clearly that’s why there was no plan. There just wasn’t enough time to formulate any.

I slow down, because I don’t want to get to work before I finish this thought, and besides, I’m not paying much attention to the road ahead.

So if Time is the issue, what I need is more Time. But how does one make time?

Make Time;
1. to move quickly, esp. in an attempt to recover lost time
2. to travel at a particular speed.
dictionary.com

Ignoring wormholes and time machines, I don’t think there is any way to actually recover lost time, or at least those are thoughts for another time (no pun intended). It seems though, if we’re to believe this online dictionary, to make enough time we just need to move quickly at a particular speed. But how do we know what speed in particular?

The Theory of Relativity has shown (to those who can fully grasp it) that the faster an object moves, the slower time moves for said object, in relation to other objects moving at different speeds. So, if you were to travel to Betelgeuse (Orion’s right shoulder), 520 light years away, and back, at 99.99% the Speed of Light, it would take 1040.1 Earth years, but you would only age 14.71 years (the reason I didn’t use 100% the Speed of Light is because, according to Einstein’s Special Relativity, the closer to the Speed of Light you get, the more mass you acquire. Reaching the Speed of Light would make you infinitely massive, requiring an infinite amount of energy to move you. Because we are not currently aware of such a source of energy, nor able to harness it were we to find it, and because the human ego is far too fragile to willingly accept infinite mass, it is currently a theoretical impossibility). To figure out how much time you can make at home, just follow this simple equation:

Of course one needn’t move at such speeds to make the kind of Time we need for our petty Earthly pursuits. That’s crazy talk. 40 or 50% percent the Speed of Light would give us plenty of Time to go back to school, write that novel, or take a deep breath, and by my reckoning the energy required for such a minute amount of acceleration can be attained easily. We need only to…

Shit. I’m in the driveway.