I do like that they finally explain how a ship in a Star Trek like universe is able to travel through warp without traveling through time. Having the ability to enable and disable that part of the ships engine is a really cool concept.
With skilled enough engineers, you can turn on or off any part of a ship. Well, assuming the "quantum field" isn't an integral side-effect of the "quantum drive" that'd require PhD levels of work to separate. It's a neat trick, but it's usually not very valuable to send things to the future like that. When you invest in a spaceship, you want it doing spaceship things, not pretending it doesn't exist for centuries.
In Star Trek they use warp drive to move faster than light, so relativity doesn't apply. Time dilation only applies when an object with mass approaches light speed. In Star Trek, and our reality, a "warp bubble" is actually warping space around the ship, creating a low pressure zone in front and high pressure zone behind, so space itself literally pushes you faster than light, avoiding the relativity problem altogether.
Eh not really, Trek warp bubbles dont have time dilation. The ship isn't moving inside the bubble, space around the bubble is. However warp is only needed for superluminal speeds, not sublight.
@@LibertyMonk Depends. If you built that spaceship for you and your crew, specifically, traveling into the future would be what you'd want to do, if you built it for that. There's NO WAY they'd be able to control people from doing that. Even if it totally fudged the timeline. What is the "true" timeline anyways? It's an interesting concept though. I guess you're not messing with the future by jumping into the future really though. That's more about going back into the past and messing with the present and future.
It's nice to see people in this thread understand how a warp drive works. Which was established back in the 80's. Also since the warp field is the means of propulsion it can't be shut down to travel into the future.
Well, I think it’s more than duty. It’s the fate of earth and more by risking the timeline so it’s really a case of either you or everything and everyone else so you know what you have to do but it still hurts to pull that bandage
@@jaanfo3874, technically true, per Hawking's many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics. The trouble w/that is if Hawking's right and everything that can happen does happen in one of infinitely many timelines, then there's nothing separating our timeline from theirs & causality itself becomes meaningless. Think. If everything is possible, including life & death outcomes, then everything is meaningless. There's no point in trying to do anything, because all you have to do is go to another timeline if you get it wrong.
@@r.c.auclair2042 The big question there is whether or not it’s possible to change timelines. If it’s possible to change timelines then yes, chaos will ensue once we figure out how to do so. Otherwise if every other timeline is its own closed loop and they can never interact again from the time they diverge, then causality is unaffected. For each individual timeline it’s just that timeline with an infinite number of theoretical ones.
@@r.c.auclair2042 if everything is meaningless then everything is meaningful. you have to choose what has meaning yourself rather than have others tell you what is meaningful
It's a good thing their calculations weren't off. Imagine what would have happened if the Orville showed up and it turns out they arrived just as Ed and Gordon was boarding the Orville in the first episode. As best stated in the RoboCop vs. The Terminator comic series from Dark Horse Comics: "Time travel is tricky business."
If Spock can calculate a "slingshot manoeuvre" to get them from the 20th Century to the 23rd, I'm sure relativistic travel would be easy peasy for Isaac.
So many people posting in this thread seem to forget time dilation, and say "why didn't the trip take them 400 years?" It DID take them 400 years, from the perspective of the outside universe...that was kind of the point, since they wanted to go forward 400 years. If someone on Earth had a really powerful telescope, they would see the Orville going near the speed of light to a distant star, taking 400 years to get there and back. It's only because of the speed they were going that time was compressed on board the ship, so from their perspective it would only take a few minutes. Someone else did point out that they got the math wrong though...at 99.9999% c, it would've taken over 100 days from the perspective of the crew. To get it to 4.5 minutes, it needs to be 99.9999999999999% c, otherwise everything in the episode was scientifically spot on.
@@Sierraone1There will be two Orvilles in the future only if the time dilated Orville arrives “too soon” before their time point of departure. That’s where Isaac needed to make the computations for precise arrival.
I did love this bit. Travelling to the past is hard, but going to the future is easy. Only thing is that you'd think that the various space faring civilizations would be aware of this weird random ship that was flying to a star and back for 400 years and could potentially interfere, but perhaps everyone thought better of it lol.
I'm not sure how future-tech works, but assuming normal-ish physics, it's almost impossible to detect anything moving that fast, because anything that senses it will get redshifted into background noise. And if someone did detect it, intervening would be just as nearly-impossible (outside of adding debris to their path if someone detects and races past them) and kinda pointless because there's usually more pressing concerns.
In addition. That means during all previous episodes there were 2 spaceships Orville. One interacting with its surroundings and on its long way to earth.
Any ship travelling faster than 0.5C is effectively not detectable by electromagnetic means (because it would outrun its reflection). In reality anything above 0.01C would probably not be detectable either because not enough photons would reflect off it to trigger a trace.
@@LibertyMonk They did this (intercepting a ship moving near light speed) in Stargate Atlantis. They detected an Ancient ship with a broken FTL travelling between galaxies - so they got ahead of it with FTL, stopped, and then accelerated to match speed for a fraction of a second (Earth tech wasn't designed for relativistic speeds) - just long enough to send a "hello, please stop" burst transmission.
If they stayed at that speed for one hour, they would be hundreds of thousands of years in the future, technically the human race would never be extinct if they keep on travelling to the future in space arks
Technically If the population goes to below 5000 (or in the ballpark) we can be regarded as soon to be extinct as that’s the number of people needed to avoid inbreeding in the future
Not really. The Time dilation makes sense. But the Nearest star is 4 light years away, if they are travelling at .99999 c it would still take years to get to that star and back.
To an outside observer, it took them years. To the ship's crew, it took minutes. To a photon of light, it is instantaneous. To the observer of the photon, it takes a year to go a light-year.
Can't. Note how carefully all the plotting & dialogue is worded to prevent any trace of copyright infringement. Captain Mercer can't even say "fire" during a battle; it's "initiate."
@@kimmy123763 PrEpArE sHip... Prepare ship, for Ludicrous Speed! Fasten all seatbelts! Seal all entrances and exits! Close all shops in the mall! Cancel the Three-Ring circus. Secure all animals in the zoo...
To be fair, at that speed, everything both ahead and behind them would've been shifted out of the visible range entirely, and they would be seeing only the CMBR as a constant glow. So instead, they started out with the visual shorthand "blue in front, red behind", which while technically incorrect does give the right idea. But then they made it a colored light show, which was odd yes. If you want to headcanon it you could say it was some weird effect of the quantum drive.
1) bravo---> using appropriate red/blue shift visual effects. 2) big geek lol---> relativistic travel had been so outdated by this point, it was an after thought. 3) physics teaching props---> excellent practical, simplistic examination of temporal dilation. 4) sad / not really sad---> Gordon's 2015+ timeline exists independently from Orville Gordon if you believe in multiverse theory. 5) big picture temporal directive---> ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY
One thing about showing the color shift here is, the front of the ship will witness a very intense bright white spectrum while the rear will have the red shift. So technically the occupants should not view direct sight to such extreme flash of brightness.
I give them artistic license for this. Showing the doppler effect at that speed accurately would've made for pretty boring visuals. If you want to handwave it, you could say it was the quantum drive causing those colors.
If they were going the SOL....you would not be able to see any light reflected off the hull of the ship unless you were very very far way and only from the sides. Front or back would see nothing until they slowed or stopped.
@@allangibson8494.....space is filled with more than just gammas, free moving photons that got dispersed off from very far away stars is still travelling through space. A ship moving through so much space would eventually get bombarded by all that ancient photons. Though i still don't have credible sources to back up the theory...it's just my intuitive thought.
Didn't Ed tell Gordon that he had broken multiple temporal laws earlier in the episode? Plus it is clear that there is a contingency plan for being trapped in the past .
@@jon61 Right - the problem arose because when the Orville first went back to retrieve Gordon... they arrived a decade or so after he did. A decade where Gordon /tried/ to follow protocol and avoid getting involved - But solitary isolation for extended periods is literally torture. After they couldn't convince Family-man Gordon to leave, they were able to repair the device for one more jump to the past, this time just a few days/weeks after Gordon arrived. And *this* Gordon hadn't yet broken protocol. Overall; less to explain than the time Sisko became a historical civil rights activist. 😄
Yeah no sane person could go that long living outside of civilization on the very slim chance you might someday be rescued. Best to just live your life and try not to make too many changes to the timeline. Hell, how do they know his family isn't part of the timeline?
And yet, more rooted in actual current levels of science that we understand than most of the technobabble from any Star Trek series (though that's not a dig at Star Trek... just that we haven't progressed to such levels of technology to understand their babble lol)
except its not technobabblle. it's legitimate science. Everything he said about traveling to the future checks out, except the number, they would need to go much faster than 99.999% light speed.
No, that timeline never happened as they went back and picked him up before he got together with Laura. It really depends on how they want to do multiverse theory within the show's lore. There could indeed be an alternate timeline, and they intersect with the main timeline (the one we've been watching) that'll allow for such a meeting... but otherwise those kids never exist.
@@BYERE "No, that timeline never happened as they went back and picked him up before he got together with Laura." Which, in turn, creates a temporal paradox that results in an entirely new universe branching off from this one, which LaMarr and Isaac explained at the beginning of the episode. I have to imagine that wasn't accidental.
@@malcolmmorin I also go on to say exactly that... Like I said, it depends on how they want to do multiverse theory. While that timeline, where Gordon and Laura have a family existed, by going back to an earlier point and stopping that from happening, you're effectively erasing that timeline. It's like a reverse of a Grandfather Paradox. Instead of creating a new future by changing something in the past, you're removing a possible future BECAUSE you changed something further back before that possible future happened. If they choose to do time travel in the same idea as Dragon Ball Z did it... ie, you're not travelling to the past, but hopping to an alternate timeline... then creating a new timeline would make sense. However, I don't feel like that's the case, firstly because if they HAD hopped to an alternate timeline, by travelling back to the future the old fashion way (ie, FTL and time dilation), then they'd still be in that alternate timeline. Secondly, because things changed while they were in the present (Gordon appearing in historical records), pointing more to "Cause & Effect", which denotes a single timeline, and any changes made change what the future is like (like when the Borg when back in time and assimilated Earth in the past, changing the future, during the events of ST First Contact) There are other theories on how time travel works, but those are the main two that are usually cited. It is entirely possible that they'll ignore their own time travel rules and have it be a multiverse branch or an alternate dimension, and have that Gordon meet up with the current timeline... Frankly, I'll enjoy such an episode and how they explain it.
@@BYERE I think in the episode with the sandwich joke they established new timelines are a thing. Lamar sends it a minute into the past, stating that if he hadn't it would have created a paradox and potentially a branching timeline.
@@TheRogueCommand "Potentially" being the key word. The difference is that Gordon not being on Earth for more than a few months, as opposed to 10 years, means that the entire timeline and any branches that could occur off of it from beyond that 'few months' marker would be completely erased from existence. With the sandwich example, we're seeing things linearly. The sandwich appears because Jon declared he was going to send the sandwich into the past, AND THEN he sent it into the past. That just means it's a Cause to Effect happening. His sending it happens because it's already happened. However with Gordon, the process is reversed. His lifetime happens, and then because he was taken from an earlier point, the paradox is that nothing that happened involving him after that point can possibly exist as he's no longer there to make it happen, so it's just erased. It's like stacking a bunch of cups in a pyramid shape, then pulling away one or two consecutive cups from the bottom of the stack. The whole thing collapses and the structure ceases to be.
I just calculated the time dilation using the formula explained in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aZ0bVPdrp_c.html The result: at the proposed 99,9999% speed of light, the trip would stil take (from the viewpoint of the crew of the Orville) just over 103 days. In order to get that down to 4,5 minutes, another nine 9's have to be added (99,9999999999999% speed of light).
My headcanon: LaMarr didn't do the math to get the exact speed they would need - he let Isaac do that. When he said 99.9999%, he was estimating for the crew, to give them a rough idea of what to expect. The exact speed and calculations were handled by Isaac. LaMarr could've just said "really really fast, very close to the speed of light", and it might've worked better.
it’s so strange to me that they fly a ship with FTL but they need time dilation explained to them lol. also i am in LOVE with the doppler effect visualization. it looks awesome.
It's one of those things where the technology is so common place that people use it every day without actually knowing how it works. Most people wouldn't be able to explain to you how a microwave actually works even though there is one in pretty much every home.
Nice to see General Relativity in the plot. Minor quibble....the stars when they're flying are all red-shifted. That would happen if they were flying away from them. They should all be blue shifted due to the Doppler effect.
I just realized what this means, the whole series up to this point there is another Orville out there traveling back from this star. The entire time up until the point they traveled back in time there were two Orvilles.
Wait.... how do you go 99.9999% the speed of light and get to a star that's 200 light years away and back in "a few minutes"? That trip will take 400 years aboard ship.
An outside observer (ie; people on Earth) sees the Orville taking a 400 year trip and would see the crew barely moving. To the crew, the trip only takes a few minutes and if they could see Earth, would watch the people moving to fast for the eye to follow.
Time Dilation, an object traveling at the speed of light doesn't actually experience any time passing. The faster something moves, the slower it experiences time, this is why its important they aren't actually exactly at the speed of light, otherwise they would have been unable to actually calculate when to stop or be able to control anything.
delta-t'=delta-t/(sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)), where delta-t is reference frame time and delta-t' is ship time we then rearrange the algebra to solve for delta-t'/delta-t=1/(sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)), then substitute the ratio 0.999999 = 1/(sqrt(1-0.999999^2) this gives us a lorenz factor of 707, so the show wouldn't be correct, they would take 208 days, would need to add many more 9s (9 I think) to get the lorenz factor high enough to have the journey take minutes
You know I didn't think about it when this season dropped, but MAN I'm bet they're glad they didn't run into any ships on that trip! lol A ship traveling along an unplanned route would've ended their time travel trip real quick!
The fact that they still remember the events of it I think means that this show doesn't understand anything about time travel in the first place. If anything they should be getting back here and either ceasing to exist because all of them have memories from a timeline that never happened or it would mean that timeline still kept happening anyway and that what they did didn't matter.
I thought it would be more effecrive if after being told of his orriginal decision to start a family in the past and how they "rescued" him at the cost of his family, he expressed his understanding of what they did, but forcefully told them to get out. Showing that even in saving the timeline, there would be consequences, even personal ones like Gordon's friendship, if even just temporarily.
the 2 minutes wasn't the important bit. The star being 200 light years away is the important bit. They went there and back meaning 200 light years twice. Meaning they travelled 400 lightyears total at basically the speed of light. So in simple terms, this sent them roughly 400 years to the future.
As they travel near light speed, the stars ahead should be blue (or possibly even shifted to the X-ray end of the spectrum) and the ones behind should be red (or extremely long radio wave) in color.
this was something star trek actually got wrong im star trek 1 when their warp field collapsed. Star Trek made it seem like their perception of time would slow when for them, nothing would change, it was the outside observer who would see them as standing still
That means then they have a time machine they could go a infinite amount of time into the future if they wanted too. they could of created a second episode where they over shot way way into the future.
It's 200 light years from earth, if we travel at 99.999% the speed of light we'll be back in a few minutes...no that will take you nearly 200 years since you're going nearly the speed of light 🤣🤣
It's entirely morally questionable. The thing about this though, is how can the Union even be sure their timeline is the "correct" one. How do we know there havent been other timelines and alternate futures where the Union doesn't even exist that were wiped out because someone got stuck in the past and lived their life instead of living in solitude for their duty.
What does it matter if a timeline is "correct" or not? We, and everyone we love, live in the timeline that we're from. If you hold loyalty to people or organizations in your timeline, you try to get back to them. If you don't, maybe you just do whatever.
@@LibertyMonk it matters a lot. the orville commited temporal abortion, against the parents wishes and risked paradox destruction of the universe unravelling the concept of reality itself trying to resolve the conflict knot of said paradox. they moment they saw Gordon on the screen as having lived and died, it became an established timeline for the crew. they fucked with that. risking temporal paradox, with potential risk to destroy their reality, entirely. so yeah it matters
I get the techno bable here and it makes sense. but I can't help but see this red shift and green shift journeys as an out for them to create two different timelines. They used the mcguffin device to travel back to 10 years too late, create conflict, and leave behind a Gordon who was betrayed by his crew and was expecting to blink out of existence with his now family. But since they did that travel back to undo it with that device but traveled to the future using relativity I can't help but believe that means an alternate timeline was created and that means an alternate future exists. Potentially one that will either re emerge to challenge this universe or create consequences. Always felt the absolute disregard for which the union had for this alternate timeline and Gordons Actions didn't represent responsible use of power but fanatic dogma that led to cruelty. In Fact I have to wonder based on how they traveled in time, is there 3 time lines. The one in which Gordon originally came from that they used the device to travel back and create the branch timeline, The Branch timeline with Gordon's Family, and an inadvertent timeline where by branching off the branch a 3rd similar timeline where they currently exist. They never truly discussed why creating new branch timelines was bad, just that it was something they should avoid. And Frankly I'm not sure that the writers had a reason other than standard sci fi tropes, but this could totally be a new season arc and create lots of stories to tell. Did the Kaylon and moclan conflicts result in the same outcomes as this new timeline that we observe. Does Charly exist in these other timelines. IS that timeline following the same rules and do they think they have to eliminate the new branch the Orville exists in now. A Reversal of fate. Did Alara make different choices, and what the heck happened to isaac. I'm just saying this story tread is rife with possibilities.
I agree with what they propose, just not how long things took. The star is 200 LY away, so it would have taken them 200 years to get there, not a few minutes. However, they can set course for that star, do what they did and accomplish the same task. The fact they even reached the star in the first place is what I find wrong. But not the logic behind it.
Uh time dilation to the observer watching the ship it took 200 years but to the person on the ship it was a matter of minutes school doesn't go into the specifics of light speed like they should
Late reply and I hope you understand by now why it took the crew minutes and not 200 years. By a technicality, the show got it wrong. It wouldn't take minutes for the crew, it was be instant, or only a couple seconds due to accelerating and decelerating.
So, what the show misses out is that it's not just *time* that's distorted by the perspective of the observer, it's also distance and mass. That star only looks 200LY away from Earth's inertial frame. From the perspective of the Orville during transit, it appears mere light-minutes away. Which actually presents a more interesting challenge, as at the apex of their velocity, the Orville would have been possibly less then a light-minute away from the star, which would be getting pretty toasty, all things considered.
Theory Gordon was trapped in the past, he’s already killed animals which makes him a murderer by his time’s morals. He knows Laura and her boyfriend Greg are about to have a big fight, and he’s got a charged phaser. I reckon Gordon jumped Greg and disintegrated him, then stole his life.
The degree of how absolutely fucked up what they did to Gordon is beyond anything conceivable in our world today. To erase his entire family this way, I can't even begin to describe how abhorrent what they did was, this is beyond just kidnapping someone or killing people or even altering memory. This is literally altering time itself to erase the existence of his entire family, life, and experiences. All of this, and by the end of the episode it isn't even framed as a dubious decision for viewers to discuss, it's framed as good and justified.
Because if you think about it a bit deeper, it's actually fucked what Gordon did. Luara got back together with her ex-boyfriend, as we saw in the simulated episode where Gordon falls in love with her, and presumably have kids, living a full life together. Gordon choosing to find Luara and starting a family with her erased her original children from the timeline. Gordon actually erased the existence of Laura's children she had with the boyfriend/husband that Gordon replaced and the actions of The Orville's crew restored those children back into existence, however at the cost of Gordon's children. Time travel is fecky.
I disagree. It's very clear that Ed and Kelly HATE what they did. In any other scenario they'd be happy Gordon moved on. If it was just an alien planet he got marooned on only to find a new family there they'd be content with letting him live in peace, even if it skirts Union Law. But those Union laws are very strict with good reason and temporal paradoxes are a frightening unknown danger. The episode shows the characters in a complex situation and it's clear we're not supposed to see Alt-Gordon in a negative light. It's not Good vs Bad, it's two goods trying to do what they think is best for the people that matter to them. Ed and Kelly want the present they know safe and sound just like Gordon to his family. To me the episode wants Original-Gordon dismissing his alternate self's actons to be viewed as a clear tragedy since he can't truly comprehend what he lost.
Nah they still exist in an alt. timeline. By their own admission they are still trying to figure out the temporal mechanics of it all. Thats why the experiments on temporal displacement in the first place.
I love the SR-speak. But, at 99.9999% * c the effective mass of the ship would increase 100 times. Its not the speed that kills FTL travel, its the acceleration (or the need for it).
You are both technically correct but talking about slightly different things. The effective mass increase of an object under relativistic effects only impact the ability of the object to be accelerated. It does not represent a literal increase in the gravitational mass. However, if a ship where to fly in a small enough circle at a high enough speed it could create a black hole out of its kinetic energy since E=mc^2 is not just a conversion factor, but a straight-up statement of fact. Energy *is* mass.
My one question is. Why did they have to do it in such big jumps if it’s such a risky maneuver. They could have easily stretched the process over a day. Or even a few days to ensure a more accurate destination time. Along with decreasing the stress on the ship.
Except all the random events would have just happened to have happened in EXACTLY the same way. Remember, the roullette wheel has no memory, as they say. A lot of what the future is, is predicated on inumerable random events that occured in the past. In effect, they would be re-rolling the dice and it would be impossible to come back to the EXACT same future. In order to come back to the exact same future, there would have to be no random events - which we know isn't true. If the lotto is 1 in 250k to win, and you lost, but you know the numbers, and you went back in time and played those numbers, when the lottery happened again, it would STILL be 1 in 250K - no guaruntee those same numbers would come up. Probability has no memory.
A big scientific error here. The stars flying toward and past them appearing as red streaks. Light sources coming toward them at high speed would be blue shifted. Watching in 'rear view mirror; they would appear red going away from them.
So they could have gone back to 20 years before they left and fixed all the mistakes they made in that time. Or better yet, stay in the past and accelerate massively the development of humankind and dominate the galaxy.
I hate to spoil the story with physics. At the speed of light,it would take years to travel light years to the nearest star. Not a few minutes. We really get into sci fi if the speed EXCEEDS light speed. I was really happy with the stars blue and red shifting in the Doppler effect, but then they turned green. 🙄
From perspective of crew? Correct. From everyone else? Not so much. As you approach the speed of light, time slows down for you. But your still traveling just as fast. Imagine for instance if 100 mph was the speed of light. Your car travels at 20 mph and takes 5 hours to cross 100 miles. At 99 mph... From outside perspective it takes you an hour to cross that distance... but to the people inside the car it's like a minute. Because time has slowed down.
@VhenRaTheRaptor I don't think you understand. 1 light year is the distance you travel in a year at the speed of light so traveling 200 light years at the speed of light takes 200 years so for someone to say they traveled 200 light years at 99.999% the speed of light in just a few minutes is mathematically impossible. This has nothing to do with outside observations and is based on first person perspective. Would you believe someone who said they traveled 100 miles going 100 miles per hour in only 45 minutes, well I'd hope not lol.
@@Powerstroke431 That is how time dilation works. We know this because we have to account for [extremely small scale] versions of this with GPS satellites. From their perspective its only been a few minutes, from everyone else's perspective its hundreds of years. Same way if you are too close to a black hole.
@@VhenRaTheRaptor YOU CLEARLY STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND! Time dilation is NOT a factor here as we are going off of the travellers perspective and NOT an outsiders perspective! A beam of light can NOT travel 200 light years in less than 200 years THUS a person travelling at 99.99% the speed of light CAN NOT travel 200 light year in only a few minutes!!!!!!
The blue and red shift of light was poorly done, Blue light for anything coming towards you until it's about to pass you, normal light for that moment, then red light for anything that you are flying away from.
1:31 and 3:20 Only inaccurate statements in this clip (other than Lamaar's quoted speed, but they didn't want the actor to stand there for 10 seconds saying "...99999999...") Time is running slow outside the ship while they're moving, not fast. It's the turning around at their midway point that causes 400 years to pass on earth. Weirdly to anyone outside the ship time is running slow *inside* as well. It's a two-way thing.
No it isn’t, time is running slow ON the ship not outside it, as Einstein said. The closer they get to the speed of light, the slower time passes for them…..but it carries on normally for everyone else. So a trip that took them a few seconds was 400 years back on earth.
@@Ben-no4lz But speed is relative, so both observers see the other's clock as moving slower than their own (as Einstein said). This is the twin paradox - both twins must see the other as aging less (if we only consider inertial reference frames). It is the acceleration when the ship turns around that solves the paradox, as acceleration is not relative and has its own effects on the flow of time.
No people have travelled that fast, sure, but plenty of objects have and we have measured the effect of relativity and all of the maths lines up with experiment. We literally have to take this stuff into account to calibrate GPS satellites. It's not "all theory."
While quoting physics facts, bringing Einstein, Relativity, and time dilation into the plan, the show conveniently ignores the consequence of moving at the speed of light without the protection of the fictitious quantum field's bubble. At light speed, the mass of the ship would be increased to infinite mass. That's why particles with mass cannot travel at the speed of light in the Universe. Photon, the particle of light itself is massless.
As entertaining as this was it was purely awful from a time travel perspective. To add more insult Captain Mercer not only says he broke laws but in fact he himself broke a few. By my calculation (I’m no scientist) The Orville show that we are watching (Not counting any other episodes) is actually the third 3 Alternative timeline. Let me explain. The Aaronov Device sent Malloy into the past to the year 2015. He then sends a signal that will travel through space and into the present future where Orville receives it. This in theory would never work. Timeline 0 - The Past has already been cemented that Malloy never time traveled. What this means is Malloy is gone forever and the signal is never discovered by the Orville to know his location. END OF STORY. Alternate Timeline 1 - (2015) Malloy lives out his life, marries, has kids and dies of old age. Having sent the signal in this alternate timeline the Orville receives it centuries later. (This is the timeline we are watching as the show progresses) The Orville of alternate timeline 1 decides to time travel back into the past to retrieve him. Alternate Timeline 2 (Technically from this Orville Alt Timeline 1) - Orville arrives into the past thereby creating alternate timeline 2. Malloy declines to leave his family. This timeline as some people think will be erased isn’t erased. In reality Malloy will live a long happy life with his family and this timeline will continue. End of story!!! The Orville decide to go back into the past to get Malloy before he meets Laura thereby preventing the contamination of the timeline. Alternated timeline - 3 (Technically Alt Timeline 2) The Orville go back further into the past to get Malloy. Then because the device is destroyed they decide to play the time dilation game by slowing time down by traveling close to the speed of light. They arrive into the future (where the Orville of this timeline is already gone into the past) thereby having an uncontaminated timeline where everything is unchanged in the Planetary Union. Problem: The show we are watching from this point on is actually Alternate Timeline 3. Timeline 0 - Malloy is forever gone. (MIA) Alt Timeline 1 - The Orville is declared missing in the line of duty. Never to be seen again. Alt Timeline 2 - Malloy and his family live the rest of their lives happy. (As best as happy can be that is). Alt Timeline 3 - This is where the show continues forward. The Crew of the Orville are technically from another timeline. This probably would be a Union Violation. As long as they keep it hush hush though lol.
No to mention they are not even going to the speed of light and they are traversing (just from that star to Earth) 200 light years, which would take 200 years at the speed of light >_>
That would be a bit crazy. To get the same sort of relativistic time dilatation.. you going to need to get really close to the schwarzschild radius of a black hole.. roughly nearly the photon sphere (last stable orbit of light around a blackhole.) .. this would be super dangerous for hole tone of reasons.. one your straight up dealing with so pretty crazy gravitational tidal forces for medium size black holes. you might be able to minimize this with super massive black holes... but that would require the Orville to travel to the center of our galaxy. Next is all EM radiation is going to blueshift as you approach the event horizon.. so your going to be bathed in hard gamma.. which is going to be really bad since typical black holes we know about.. are due to eating a staller mass or have a sizable accretion disk and are already emitting hard xray from our reference frame.. not at relativistic acceleration.
Yeah, but you'd have to use a supermassive black hole to avoid being torn apart by tidal forces, and even then you'd have to skim by within a few meters of the event horizon to experience significant time dialation. Course, if you have a ship that can achieve a significant fraction of the speed of light, you could control it better and wouldn't have to travel all the way to Sagitarius A 30,000 light years away.
@@Valaryant. It does take 200 years. From the perspective of the outside universe. From the persepctive of someone on board the ship, MUCH less time would pass. This is what relativity is. The show is completely accurate on this point, the only thing they didn't get quite right is the speed. 99.9999% would take 104 days for them each direction. To get it to 2.25 minutes each way, they would have to be going 99.9999999999999% c. If they could indeed travel that speed, what happened would be *exactly* as portrayed on the episode. 4.5 minutes would pass on board the ship, 400 years would pass outside.
I always find it hilarious when these science shows try to explain 'space time'. They never get it right, and the viewer is given the 'time dialation' excuse and told that time slows the faster you get to the speed of light. First, time is not linear, nor is it tangible.... so time cannot slow or speed up. Einstein's Relativity describes how time is viewed from two different points in space/location. Einstein NEVER said that time slows or speeds up. 'Time dialation' is a term (albeit a mislabeled one) that refers to the object being subjected to the effects of speed which, in theory, will slow the animation of that object. It is theorized that if a person were to accelerate to near SOL, they would feel like their animation (time) is normal... but to an outside observer- their movements would be exponentially slowed due to the relative speed they are traveling. As I said, it is unproven. Also, you have to factor in how time is measured. Time is completely relative, and humans measure time....with time. If nothing ever decayed, died, or changed due to some catalyst....we would have no concept of time. 'Space Time' is also a mislabeling...as it actually refers to the gravitation warpage that is theorized to increase/decrease light speeds.
The big problem is you don't see much in the way of reletavistic time dialation at 3/4c. You have to be going at nearly light speed for the effects to be significant. The Orville did it right by going 0.999999c.
Due to length contraction, assuming they move fast enough, it could absolutely take 2 minutes. Or no time at all if they somehow managed to move *at* the speed of light (which they can't, but still).
