Okay but I just realised (like the physics nerd I am) that it’s quite possible Lance will never see his family again. It’s possible that when the Paladins get back to Earth that several million years will have passed. This means it’s also possible that they will come so close to saving Pidge’s family only to discover that they’ve been dead a million years.
Okay, so, Theory of Relativity, right? The faster you go, the slower time goes, however for someone who is not moving- time is the same. This is a proven fact. Every time you go on a plane, you are very slightly younger than if you hadn’t gone. To be as far into the Galaxy as the Paladins, you’ve got to be doing something up toward light speed. This means time isn’t passing for the Paladins, or of it is its passing very very very slow, but back on Earth, maybe a million years has passed for every minute for the Paladins
By the time they get back to Earth, they may well be the only humans left in the galaxy.
I don’t think it’s an angle the show would explore, but from a physics perspective- that’s what would happen in reality.
OKAY SO I KNOW THIS POST IS JUST FOR THE ANGST FEELS, WHICH I SUPER AGREE WITH, but the space nerd in me begs to differ so
While it is true that time moves differently when comparing here on Earth to someone outside in space (like, say, the astronauts living in the ISS), it’s not as exaggerated like that. See, time is affected by gravity. On Earth we sense time in a certain way because of the way gravity is. The further away we get from Earth, and thus from its gravity, the faster our clocks will tick - if we look down on Earth from space, we’ll perceive time passing down on Earth as slower. Similarly, the more massive (thus more gravity) an object in space is, the slower time will appear to be for people trapped in its gravity if we look at them from outer space. This is called gravitational time dilation and it’s a really freaky topic in astrophysics.
Basically, if you imagine that time and space are interwoven, then affecting one can affect the other too. Imagine a comfy bed, then throw some stuff on top of it. If you throw a plume, it won’t change much. Throw your dog and it’ll sink a bit into the mattress. Throw your freezer on top of it and it’ll probably sink a lot further down. This is how gravity can affect time in space:
So what this means is that, yeah, Lance and the others are far away from Earth, but time does not revolve around Earth, it revolves gravity. Considering how the crew is often under what we can consider gravity similar to Earth (see: Arus, Balmera, etc), then we can assume that their time is passing at the same speed ours (Earth’s) is as well. Time really only would change for them if they weren’t bound by gravity (like, say, Shiro in free fall in episode 11 after being spit by Black), and even then, it wouldn’t be such a drastic time change to the point where he’d outlive everyone on Earth - more like, an addition ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes to his lifespan.
The only place where time exhibits such drastic changes are inside the event horizon of a black hole but by then they’d all be dead anyway.
