CDLX

451. Let’s try the whole concept of the speed of light and time over again in a different light, so to speak. As a child in school, I was told to imagine myself on the surface of the imaginary planet Alpha, orbiting the North Star. On Alpha, I am equipped with an extremely powerful telescope—so powerful, in fact, that I can actually see events happening on the mysterious planet, Earth.

452. Today, as I look through my telescope, I see Columbus landing in America. I see this, even though in “reality” the people on earth are preparing to land a man on the moon. The reason? It has taken 450 years for the light to travel from the earth to Alpha.

453. If you have difficulty picturing reflected light, imagine that Earth is a gigantic movie projector facing Alpha. The movie started hundreds of years ago, and on Alpha, you are watching it as the projected images reach you—450 years after they have occurred.

454. As far advanced as Alpha is, you now have a space ship that will travel near the speed of light. You load your incredible telescope in the spaceship and blast off toward Earth, following the direction of the projected movie. Consistent with the theory that an object must pass through all intervening points in order to travel between two points, you will intercept all the projected images from Earth that have been sent from the one you were seeing at blast-off (Columbus) to the one being projected when you land.

455. Since the trip has taken over 450 Earth years, you see everything from Columbus to your landing time, sometime in the 25^th century. You have encountered 900 years of history!

456. But what time has passed for you on this remarkable journey? You step out of your space ship, set up your telescope to receive the projected images from your home planet Alpha and watch events occurring just after your blast-off. By your reckoning, on Alpha almost no time has elapsed at all.

457. Now the tricky part. Having proved that you could travel the 450 light years to Earth in almost no time at all, you turn around and head back to Alpha. On your return voyage, you encounter everything that has been projected from the time that you left with that same super spead that you viewed Earth with as you approached it. Your ship returns nearly a millennium later to hits home base.

458. Reversing your telescope to look again at Earth, you see the scenes of the day after you left, just reaching you. How much have you aged? By making the round trip, you are over nine hundred years lder, both by Earth standard and by Alpha standard. Does your own velocity keep you from aging? If anything, you have experienced nearly 2,000 years of history.

459. Now, let us extend the illustration one step further. Suppose that there is an absolute center of all that is—the cosmos if you will. Let us suppose as scientists have conjectured that all things originated at this center in a big bang and that they are forever expanding outward from the center. Time, in the absolute sense, necessitated by Einstein’s theory and the Lorenz transformation, originates at that center and radiates outward as a by-product of the expansion of the universe.

460. As you travel in your superoptic spacecraft, you will slow time down as you travel away from the center and speed time up as you travel toward the center.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This section and the one that follows shows Wesley in a new light. He has expounded theories and expostulated suppositions for 450 points, but in this he engages with the reader as if a student. He is a teacher, but the validity of his lessons remains to be seen. It appears that his logic could prove anything. It is his non-rational thought process at work.