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Letter: Letters : Arachnophobia

Published 4 October 1997

From Peter Bleackley

Leicester

“Why are all these scientists making such a big fuss about this
faster-than-light travel business?” asks Charles Norman
(Letters, 20 September, p 62).
He forgets that, according to relativity theory, a length contraction
must always be associated with a time dilation. In scaling down the Universe to
the size of his bedroom, he has scaled up the time taken to cross it by the same
factor, which I estimate to be approximately 3.4 x 1018 years, or around 200
million times the age of the Universe.

As for his discovery of a spider the size of five galaxies, I can only
suggest that he publish his results on the World Wide Web.

Issue no. 2102 published 4 October 1997

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