The impact knocks down the ship’s decelerating engines. And then it passes through an unanticipated nebula. Taking time dilation into consideration, the entire mission will take around twelve years while forty-three or more years will pass back on earth.Īccordingly, in its initial years, the ship glides through space smoothly, almost touching the speed of light. Followed by deceleration for another couple of years.Īim of the undertaking was to locate a habitable planet.

So, the mission’s idea is to accelerate for a couple of years, touching the speed of light and maintain that speed for almost one year. Hence, Leonora Christine is not one of its kind, at least, not in Tau Zero.Īccording to the real physics principle of relativity, as an object approaches speed of light, it experiences the slowing of time. Nearest star systems have been investigated with fast-moving ‘probes’ travelling near the speed of light. The novel suggests that humanity has already undertaken many voyages of space exploration. And from the controlling webwork sprang a field of magnetohydrodynamic forces - invisible but reaching across thousands of kilometers.įifty scientists – 25 women and 25 men – aboard the star ship Leonora Christine, to reach a nearby star, Beta Virginis – which is, about 30 lightyears away – in hopes of colonizing a new planet. Humanity has made tremendous progress in space exploration using “Bussard ramjet engines”, assisted by “scoopfield webs”. The story is set in the future, where intergalactic travel is pretty normal. Tau Zero written by Poul Anderson in 1970, takes the approach of time dilation in a similar direction. And from there, another Big Bang takes place. Everything collapses within itself to primordial superheated mass. Gravity, with the help of matter, could slow down the expansion, then stop, and ultimately reverse it. Therefore, universe cannot stay stable for ever, it could either expand or contract. What if an individual travel at the speed of light and reaches the end of universe?Īccording to Russian Physicist Alexander Friedmann, end of the universe depends on its density. Now let’s extrapolate it to Big Crunch scenario.

My favourite thought experiment is the notion that as an individual approaches the speed of light, time slows down.

Tau zero