Science Can Kill

text: Tabitha Ann
art:   Mike Force



Oh Burt. Burt, Burt, Burt. What happened, man? What happened to The Bandit? To J.J. McClure? What happened to the bushy ‘stache and the beefy chest that we all knew and loved? With each passing day, you get tauter and yet somehow flabbier. Yes, time has worn on you my friend and you are not wearing time well. I’m afraid that drastic measures must be taken. I’m not talking about a chin-lift or an eyebrow redefinition, oh no. We’re taking your age defiance much further than that. We are going to put you through a procedure so unheard of, so new, that it will violate the definition of time itself. A procedure so drastic that you may not survive. You, Burt Reynolds, will be shot into outer space and travel at 99.9% the speed of light for twenty Earth years as part of a super secret government operation, Operation Time Bandit.

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The Setup: Burt Reynolds will be the first human test subject to experience significant time dilation. Time Dilation is a byproduct of Einstein’s theory of special relativity. The theory of special relativity encompasses two ideas:

(1) The Relativity Principle: It doesn’t matter if you are moving or sitting still, EVERYTHING must obey the laws of physics.

(2) Constancy of the Speed of Light: Light always, always, always travels at a constant speed. ALWAYS!

The Experiment: Scientists working on Operation Time Bandit have developed a small spacecraft capable of traveling as close to the speed of light as possible. Inside the spacecraft is only one strobe light and Burt Reynolds. Burt Reynolds sits a distance D away from the strobe light. To determine why time dilation occurs, we must first examine the behavior of light inside a stationary craft.

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The strobe light flickers once. The beam of light it produces is going to take some time to get from the strobe to Burt Reynolds’ eyes. Granted, it won’t take much time since the speed of light is crazy fast, but it will take time nonetheless. Since time equals distance divided by velocity, the time it takes one strobe light flicker to reach Burt Reynolds’ eyes is the distance “D” divided by the speed of light, which we’ll call “c” (c = 3.00 x 10^8 m/s or about 671 million miles per hour).

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Now let’s look at what happens when the spacecraft is moving. Imagine that the spacecraft is traveling along at 99.9% the speed of light (about 670 million miles per hour). Burt Reynolds still sits a distance D away from the strobe light, doing whatever it is that Burt Reynolds does to pass the time. Again, the strobe light flickers once. Because the spacecraft is moving, the beam of light has to travel a longer distance to get to Burt’s eyes. We’ll call this distance “X”. The time it takes one strobe light flicker to reach Burt’s eyes is X divided by c, where c is still the speed of light. 


The Problem: You’ll notice from the diagrams that X is greater than D. According to Einstein’s second postulate, we must conserve the speed of light. But if c is constant, how can a beam of light travel two different distances in the same amount of time? Answer: It doesn’t. Time changes. Time slows down inside the moving spacecraft in order to allow the beam of light to travel a further distance and reach Burt’s eyes. The theory of special relativity allows us to manipulate time. Time is relative, baby.

What does this all mean to Burt?

As Burt sits quietly in his spacecraft, he experiences the passing of time more slowly than we experience here on Earth. Burt will behave as though time is passing normally to him, but he will age more slowly than his Earth-bound counterparts. To find out exactly how slow he will age, we use the following equations:

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This means that if Burt survives Operation Time Bandit, he will return to Earth in 20 years, only to have aged about 1 year.

Let’s say that Burt spends 10 of his remaining years intermittently hopping in his spacecraft and traveling for 1year at 670 million miles per hour. He returns to Earth in order to grace us with Deliverance 2 or Smokey and the Bandit 77 and then repeats this procedure whenever new wrinkles sully his majestic brow. If he does this ten times he will extend his life for approximately 2,000 Earth years. Two thousand years. Burt could live to see civilizations rise and fall, alien attacks, meteorite collisions, future Ice Ages, the enslavement of humans by robots, the enslavement of robots by monkeys, and maybe even the end of humanity itself.

Viva la moustache! Viva Burt Reynolds!!!!

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