LIGHT

SPEED
FOR
DUMMIES
Written by D.T.Yarbrough

A SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY

Copyright 2009
all rights reserved
 LIGHT SPEED FOR DUMMIES
Written by D.T.Yarbrough

I am the grandson of one of the men who worked at AREA 51 shortly

after the saucer from Roswell arrived. It was his job to try to translate the
books found within the saucer. What no one, outside the family, knows to
this day is that he permanently borrowed one of the books. He then passed
it down to his oldest son, my father, who passed it on to me.

For years we have tried to translate the language. Finally, with the help
of high speed computers and advanced algorithms in language translation,
I have succeeded. A translated manuscript has been sent to the National
Security Agency. As soon as it can be read and any information deemed a
threat to national security is removed, it will be released to the public. I
know what you must be thinking, especially after the Roswell coverup, but
this is too big to cover up. Besides, I still have a copy of the manuscript as
well as the original alien book.

I was concerned that none of the other books had been released to the
public since they surely had translated them by now. But I was assured
that the books were just novels and other light reading for the long trip.
Not important enough to release and risk divulging the secrets of AREA 51.

My book is however a technical manual. It is called LIGHT SPEED FOR

DUMMIES. The original book is your typical hardcover of about 250 pages,
but the translated manuscript contains tens of thousands of pages of
information. You see, each character or symbol is representative of a full
page of information. This is why it was so hard to translate.

I will try to present here a condensed version of the book. At least what
I have had time to read. The text was fully translatable word for word, or
symbol for page in this case, but sometimes the meanings were lost in the
translation. So I will give you my interpretation of the facts. You will have
future opportunities to do your own interpretation when the full manuscript
is released.

The book starts out by giving a short history of mistakes and false
assumptions that had held back progress for countless years. One
example dealt with the fact that even though they had been aware for years
of two realms, one consisting of the subatomic and the other consisting of
everything else, they had not considered the possibility that a third realm
existed on a larger scale. They had seen how the laws of physics in one
realm did not apply to the other. This had also held true for the third realm
once it was discovered.
 As the name of this book implies, it pertains to the subject of light
speed and there was no further mention of what new laws applied within
the third realm, unless of course they pertained to light or light speed.

Another misassumption was that light speed was universal. It is true

that nothing can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum. But assuming that
they know what is absolute vacuum was the big mistake.

Once outside the solar system we enter the third realm. Vacuum in this
realm makes vacuum within the solar system look like a thick soup. The
photon's exerted force on other photons takes over and pushes the
photons to incredible speed. The gap or wave length expands until the
exerted force matches the gravitational pull which is now nearing zero, like
a compressed spring being released. If the light then enters another solar
system, it slows down almost instantly to the speed limit within that
system. It is estimated that the maximum galactic speed is thousands of
times that of solar system speed.

You may be wondering why we never detected this. Well, we have many
ways of detecting the distance to another star or object in the galaxy. When
our measurement based on light speed and time coincided with other
means of measurement, we had no reason to suspect that something was
wrong. You may ask "If we used the wrong light speed in our equation,
how did we come up with the right answer?" Well, let me try to explain.
Take for example a star that is one light year away; an enormously large
distance that would take light as we know it a year to travel. The light
actually only takes a little over 30 minutes but because of relativity, a year
passes on Earth. Since as far as we were concerned it took a year to get
here, when we used solar light speed in the equation, we got the right
answer. Who says two wrongs don't make a right?

At any rate, this implies that interstellar travel is quite possible. Once
inside the third realm, outside the solar system, inertia does not exist. The
aliens recommend using a large mirror array to propel the spacecraft.
While not practical within the boundaries of the solar system because of
inertia, it works very well in the absence of inertia. Exceleration is almost
instantaneous. Without inertia we will not feel the g-forces normally
associated with exceleration. To decelerate, simple turn the mirrors
around.

The aliens also talk about another strange phenomenon involving these
extreme speeds. The possibility of traveling backwards in time. They don't
seem to have any proof but are concerned to the point where they never go
faster than one tenth of the speed of light. To accomplish this they use a
baffled mirror system. By controlling how much light passes freely through
the array, they can control their speed. If you should decide to take your
chances, and ignore this warning, they recommend an extended stay at
your destination or at least taking a different route home. You don't want to
have a head on collision with yourself.

Once you enter another solar system, the ship will immediately
decelerate to the speed of light within that solar system if it was exceeding
that speed when it entered. It is recommended that you enter at a reduced
speed, less than ten percent of the speed limit. Otherwise you had better
have your seats and tray tables in their locked and upright positions and
your seat belt securely fastened if you don't want to be splattered all over
the windshield. Welcome back to the realm of inertia.

Once inside the solar system, retract the mirror array if not already
done, and deploy your normal propulsion system. Well that's as far as I've
gotten in reading the manuscript.

It is my hope that with all my newfound knowledge, someone will offer

me a job. I can just see it now. "Hello. This is the Roswell diner calling. We
have an opening in our soda fountain department and heard you were
looking for a job."

But seriously, don't try to contact me with job offers until after the
manuscript is released. I plan to be hard to find. Just in case they decide to
bury the story, literally, along with any copies and the people who have
them. But don't worry about me, I'll have plenty to read to keep me
occupied. I might even find something in there about invisibility. That could
be useful. I bet it has something to do with light.