How to get more done

Image: Rawich / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There aren't enough hours in the day, the "bonus" hour when the clocks go forward is great, wouldn't it be wonderful if there were other ways to get some extra time to do life's essentials like playing Portal 2, looking at funny pictures of cats on the web or making more to-do lists?

Special Relativity states that the faster you travel the slower time moves for you, relative to people who aren't moving, so how fast do you have to go to get an extra hour in a day?

The maths surrounding the time-dilation effects of Special Relativity are described by the following equation:

Luckily there is a website called Resources for Science Fiction Writers which will work it out for me:

If you travel at about 0.28 % of the speed of light you will get 25 hours out of a day compared to other people on earth. Unfortunately that works out to 37,524,307 Miles per hour. This presents us with a few problems namely:

• Earth's circumference is 24901 miles, you will be doing over 1500 orbits per hour, the task of crossing international borders, going through passport control or dealing with the various air traffic control authorities would take a good chunk out of our speed.
  
• The G-forces involved in accelerating to that speed in a reasonable amount of time would turn you into a fine paste stuck to the back of your chair. The record for G-Force tolerance is 25 G for 1.1 seconds, with a peak at 46 G. This acceleration left the test subject with permanent vision damage though. Something like 17 G might be more comfortable.
  
• The fastest machine made by man is the Helios probe launched to study the Sun during the 1970s. It achieved a top speed of 250,000 kilometers per hour. Assuming we can survive accelerating at 17 G ( 166.71 m/s²), V=U+AT gives us a value of T  of 89974960 seconds. At that acceleration you would be doing 250,000 kilometers per hour after 28 years.
  
• Getting a reliable Wi-Fi or mobile phone signal at this speed would be tricky at best. Although the signals themselves travel at the speed of light, there would be a Doppler effect caused by you traveling at almost a 3rd of the speed of the signals which would most likely mess up your downloads. Mobile phones can switch between cell towers at motorway speeds but at 37 million miles per hour they wouldn't stand a chance. So that rules out using this method for extra time spent looking at funny pictures of cats. This fact alone makes this method unsuitable for our needs.