#like we might be approaching a paradigm shift in physics that's on par with einstein's theory of relativity

[youling-the-ghost]

Ok here's my theory as to what the three types of time fuckery meant in Murders in Space:

Time dilation

This one's pretty straightforward. It's the good ol' "travelling close to the speed of light causes the traveller to experience time at a slower rate" thing that some of us might've learned in high school. Not much to say about that.

Time dilution

The way Tom described it made it sound like time dilution is more extreme than time dilation, so I have two theories, either:

time dilution is just an extreme case of time dilation (i.e. what happens when you travel at a speed extremely close to the speed of light, such as 0.99c for example), or;

time dilution is what happens when you travel at the speed of light. Now, this is physically impossible in our world since travelling at light speed would require infinite energy, but let's just say that some crazy scifi shit allows this to happen.

Option 2 would mean that time dilution would cause the scientists to basically stop perceiving time. From their perspective, time intervals would be infinitely large and distances would be infinitely small,

But honestly, I'm the most unsure about this one. Time dilution seems similar enough to time dilation for AJ's scientist character to confuse them, but also option 1 seems kind of redundant? Since time dilation works in the same way when you're travelling at say 0.7c compared to 0.99c, so I'm more inclined to believe option 2.

Time penetration

Judging from how Mary seemingly teleported to the spacecraft, my guess is that time penetration is what happens when you travel at a speed faster than the speed of light. Again, this is physically impossible in our current world, but let's just say that Mary is a genius scientist who's able to break the laws of physics. This one actually makes a lot of sense considering these points:

Mary was able to teleport, which is what scientists have hypothesised would happen if one were to travel faster than light speed.

It would make sense why Mary spent so long trying to get to her husband. Literally breaking the laws of physics isn't a project that can be finished in a couple of months.

Also the whole "time penetration is impossible" thing because yeah...travelling faster than the speed of light is considered to be impossible.

So yeah, I'm actually pretty confident with this one.

BUT HEY, THAT'S JUST A THEORY! A SHOOT FROM THE HIP THEORY! Thanks for reading this incredibly self-indulgent post :]