Re: starship-design: stuff

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Paul Anderson writes:
 > On Sat, 10 Jan 1998, Christoph Kulmann wrote:
 > > YES, time slows down as you approach c, and AT c it stops! 

 > Consider: You can halve 1 an inifite number of times, and NEVER reach 0.
 > I don't think time REALLY stops at c, I think it just gets slower and
 > slower, until it's proceeding at an infinitesimal rate.

This is again not a correct description of relativistic time
effects.

Relativistic time dilation is a difference in the measured rate
of time lapse between two observers in relative motion.  Each
observer considers his own clocks to lapse at the rate of one
second per second; there is no subjective effect that causes the
observers to feel that their rate of time lapse is changing.
However, when the two observers compare clock rates, one
observer, in one of his clock's seconds, will see the other's
clock tick off only sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2) seconds, where v is the
relative velocity of the two observers and c is the speed of
light.

Again, this is all explained in _Spacetime Physics_.