Questa discussione ha avuto 5 risposte

[Tolgron]

A question for those of you with a scientific bent.

 

What do you suppose the effects of constantly travelling at FTL speeds around the galaxy might have on denizens within the Mass Effect setting? Do spacers frequently find that they have consistently longer lifespans than world-bound folk because times passes more slowly for them on their ships than it does for colonists on planetary bodies? 

 

Or am I overthinking this a little?

 

I ask simply because Mass Effect in general seems to have put a least a nominal amount of thought into some the background elements of the setting, and I'm curious as to whether this was an issue ever addressed by the game or the writers. Especially as having ships operating on an entirely different time stream must cause havoc with interstellar transportation and communication.

[Kantr]

They're going faster than light so if anything they should be going back in time. Element Zero affects the higgs field (which gives particles their mass) so the less mass-energy there is the less space-time is distorted and time runs faster relative to those planet bound. Perhaps if ships spent a lot of time travelling at relativistic velocities they may age slower.

[iM3GTR]

The codex says this:

With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise without bending space-time and causing time dilation.

That was basically Bioware saying "There is no time dilation in the Mass Effect universe. Deal with it."

[Tolgron]

Well, no time dilation with mass-effect technology, in any event. Either way, question answered!

[ChronosTachyon]

I headcanon it as Special/General Relativity going out the window because the mass effect field (somehow) provides a preferred inertial reference frame, and all FTL travel takes place against that reference frame -- which gets rid of the SR "FTL means time travel" problem -- and occurs instantly without acceleration (i.e. momentum is not conserved in a mass effect field) -- which gets rid of the GR time dilation.

 

I mean, really, for as much as ME1 counts as hard-scifi-by-videogame-standards, mass effect fields allowing FTL is a big ol' helping of space magic.  Ah well, at least they tried.

[MrFob]

Here is the old thread, discussing this in detail.