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(I’ve been looking through my book ‘Aberrations of Relativity’ (C) 2008, where I found this sci fi story that I wrote back then. The imminence of war, as is currently up in the air, plus the scientifically debatable issue of time disparities, seemed to make it appropriate to share.)
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We are all acutely aware that strange things play out in the fullness of time, but possibly the strangest involves the remote revocability of that fateful decision of the Andromedans to attack Earth.
There being some 300 billion stars in the galaxy which we variously denominate M31, NGC 224 and Andromeda, the name itself becomes somewhat indicative of the awesome capabilities realized by this one nation, indivisible under God throughout that giant island universe. But this article will not venture tangentially off into the political science fiction never-never land of the historical aspects of the origin and past of this species that may or may not conquer (or even have set out to conquer) the Milky Way Galaxy. The decision, Ah yes! that so aggrandized nod of the head in board rooms on even this humble planet, is once again the topic of the day. Consequences, although probably never a ‘Boom!’ to our stock market like that caused by the decision to lay off 40,000 IBM workers as a boon to investors, does have some quite interesting aspects, however, but again, we will leave that to speculation. It is the timing of the decision, independent of its historical perspective or eschatological ramifications, the mere assessment of when did, or will, that decision occur. Just trying to make sense of that tiny bit of minutia, before it is lost in endless debate of liberal artists and mean-spirited conservatives to be gobbled up by more profound issues surrounding the situation, is the object of this discussion.
Sir Roger Penrose is a rather interesting little man who raises the odd question from time to time. To my mind on page 201 of The Emperor’s New Mind, one of the better formulated of these appears, not as a question actually, but as a description:
“Even with quite slow relative velocities, significant differences in time-ordering will occur for events at great distances. Imagine two people walking slowly past each other in the street. The events on the Andromeda galaxy (the closest large galaxy… [about two million light years] distant) judged by the two people to be simultaneous with the moment that they pass one another could amount to a difference of several days. For one of the people, the space fleet launched with the intent to wipe out life on the planet Earth is already on its way; while for the other, the very decision about whether or not to launch that fleet has not yet even been made!”
But that is a small part of the story of the epic decision. (I have no idea why Sir Roger chose to tell us so little). The Andromedans, having been a highly competitive nation for eons, had as a sporting gesture placed a stationary space probe at a position relative to the Earth that would result in its passing nearby our planet at about X years prior to the decision having been made on Andromeda. The probe was designed to jettison a message for Earth which would detail the date that the decision would be made to allow Earth several thousand millennia to prepare (very nearly the amount of time the Andromedans had had to prepare after having positioned the probe and initiated its time synchronization, up until launch time of the fleet, if that were to be the decision). It would serve Earth well in any case.
‘Now’ in separate frames of reference
So as Roger’s two men pass, they both are reading the report of the jettisoned message in copies of the same newspaper. Both men are scientists of a sort and so the report interests them, and although one never passes up any opportunity to show off his superior understanding of relativity (and in fact concentrates rather heavily on the precise value of X), both understand it well enough to realize that the probe although ‘stationary’ relative to Andromeda and, therefore, moving at about 200 miles per second with respect to them implies that in spite of the good faith intentions of the Andromedans and the fact that the report indicates the decision will not be made for another X years, it is in fact immanent! How immanent of course depending quite sensitively on the direction and speed of one’s strolling at the moment. This subtlety was not overlooked by Sir Roger nor one of the two men.
A small passage at the end of the report is interesting in that it indicates that the probe has evidently progressed considerably beyond the droids of human folk lore, it states that it would “bet on it!” A bit threatening to say the least! The men reach each other just as they each read this statement, the one saying to the other in passing, “I’ll bet it happened!” The other quite resignedly says, glancing over at the former with the lesser knowledge of relativity, “I’m betting it won’t!” The former stops still in his tracks, thinks for a moment, turns, and then steps out after the latter. In his universe, the space fleet may have inadvertently stopped and headed butt-first, back ass-wards back to Andromeda (that is, if the decision had been to proceed with the invasion in the first – or is it subsequent – place), but at any rate will now await the decision that had launched them several days earlier. It was a dastardly act for him as a mere mortal human being, hardly in keeping with the sporting spirit of the Andromedans, but at least it would give him time to reconsider his bet before the decision was actually made. Why had his friend been so sure? Certainly his fine knowledge of relativity would have assured him from the subtle timing of the message that Andromedans had known about relativity many millions of years ago. But what can one conclude from that? Nothing!
As he thought about it, he wondered. Now that the decision was to be made all over again, could the outcome of the decision process that was going on even as he contemplated it be any different than the one he had just revoked? Did a ruler of that great nation not even possess free will? Or does each and every decision have a preordained outcome being unveiled ceremoniously as a surprise at its appointed time in every Lorentz frame?
Stopping in perplexity, once again the Andromedan fleet took off heading toward the Milky Way, maybe even directly to planet Earth. Or did they? Maybe his momentary remote consideration had been cause enough for them to reconsider the pusillanimity of a preemptive strike — even against so disgusting a species as Homo sapiens.
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