The science behind hyperspace?

Now to my knowledge from reading about Einstein's theorys, the theory behind time is that the faster you go the slower time passes. Traveling at the speed light, time stops. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, time goes in reverse. You would actually be getting younger if you could go faster than the speed of light. It's not possible for solid objects to travel at the speed of light, becauase at that speed matter becomes light. But not in the Star Wars universe. So theoretically traveling in hyperspace makes the physical distance of systems closer than the actual distance of traveling even at the speed of light because time is stopped or going in reverse? So that means that if Alderaan exploded before you got there, it actually wouldn't be blown yet up by the time you got there because you went back in time? I'd also like to mention I thought it was a really cool idea that they had the ships travel through a blue tunnel while in hyperspace. Hyperspace is another term used for the forth dimension, right? One of the ideas in the forth dimension is that you can go from one place to another instantly without physically moving there.

It's space opera, not Star Trek.

miker71 said:

It's space opera, not Star Trek.

 Not that "warp drive" has any more valid science behind it.

Yeah, neither Star Wars nor Star Trek really fit in the realm of "hard" science fiction.  Hyperdrive and warp speed are both storytelling devices that allow the characters to travel impossible distances over a short period of time.

But to get "technical" about it, I've always understood hyperdrive to be a way to punch through our universe into another one where the laws of physics as we know them don't apply ("hyperspace"), allowing them to travel much faster than the speed of light would be in our universe with none of the negative effects.

u know, if we even discovered hyperspace and used it, according to einstein, when u reached the nearest star, u could age maybe five minutes depending on how fast ur going. however, everyone on earth would age hundreds of years when u only age five minutes. i don't get the logic behind that, but its interesting to think about.

That's what Janskeet was talking about - the faster you travel, the closer you get to the speed of light, the shorter an amount of time it feels to you.  This is the concept the original Planet of the Apes is based upon.

rcb said:

u know, if we even discovered hyperspace and used it, according to einstein, when u reached the nearest star, u could age maybe five minutes depending on how fast ur going. however, everyone on earth would age hundreds of years when u only age five minutes. i don't get the logic behind that, but its interesting to think about.

 Yeah, but that's using physics as we understand them, which needs to be completely tossed out the windee if things like Hyperspace, Warp, Jump points, or Stargates get into the mix.

The only space-opera I know that really dealt with the time compression of near-light speed travel was Scott Westerfeld's, "The Risen Empire." All and all, that was the most 'hard science fiction' space opera style story I've ever read.