Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Extra Days

Extra time when you need it
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What I propose is that everybody (and I mean everybody) sleeps inside a small capsule-bedroom that rotates very very fast. (For this to be comfortable you need Inertialess Acceleration so this may take a while before its practical).

Now because of the theory of Relativity, we know that time would slow down inside the capsules. (Or in other words, outside of the capsules two days - hey maybe a couple of weeks or months - would go by in the time it takes for each person to sleep a night).

So the deal is that if we could just get everybody to skip forward through time at a faster rate each night then life would go on as normal during the day, except that when you need some extra time, to do some cramming for that upcoming exam, or because of a tight deadline, or just to fit in that long holiday without taking time off work, then you can step 'out of the flow' and get a few extra days time to finish your thing.

Maybe you would need to discourage overuse of this facility by having some sort of tax on time, or perhaps just because interest and investments would accrue more rapidly for those going with the main flow this would occur naturally.

War and technology R&D and other highly competitive things would tend occur in real time, of course. Which suits me , 'cause I would rather skip those parts and go straight to the good bits anyway.

Other possible advantages include : - less stress on the environment - holidays in your own town ('cept without all the people)

Kinks that need to be worked out : - Timezones - Weeding the garden could become a major Pain in the Neck

utunga, Sep 16 2003

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       First time here.. so Hi Halfbakers! Be gentle.
utunga, Sep 16 2003
  

       Magic.
waugsqueke, Sep 16 2003
  

       How big is this thing? And how does it accelerate you in circles that fast while keeping you within a gravitational force that would let you, er, be alive? Inertialess? How does that work, physics? Are you saying we can bypass the laws of physics somehow? Sorry if this doesn't sound 'gentle', but this idea is kind of impractical.
jivetalkinrobot, Sep 17 2003
  

       As long as the accelleration was limited to 1 or 2 G's it would be okay. The only problem is that it would take a really long time to reach a large enough percentage of c (speed of light) for there to be any significant time dilation.
DeathNinja, Sep 17 2003
  

       What if your feet were travelling faster than your head? Would they age faster? Or slower? Or...   

       <obligatory disclaimer about not understanding GR>
lubbit, Sep 17 2003
  

       [marked–for–deletion] bad science. (Relativity is about near-light-speed velocity, and spinning is about acceleration. If you were spinning fast enough to experience relativistic effects, you would long since have been reduced to a thin paste on the walls of your bedchamber. The concept of fast time vs. slow time, usually achieved through some form of cold sleep, has been dealt with by a number of sci fi authors.)
DrCurry, Sep 17 2003
  

       //Weeding the garden could become a major Pain in the Neck// That's not all...
silverstormer, Sep 17 2003
  

       If the pod were launched into a very tight orbit around a black hole, it seems to me that this would achieve relativistic-type velocities. Also, if this orbit were obtained gradually, I think [Curry's] problem of being smeared against the wall would be avoided because of the gravitational pull from the black hole.   

       One could set folks into storage by using complicated math and firing them into one of these orbits. To escape, the pod would have to have a relatively much more massive section which could be propelled away from the part containing the person, ejecting that part from the hole.   

       One of those tiny Tunguska-type black holes would be useful for this sort of thing.
bungston, Sep 18 2003
  
      
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