how accurate is The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan
Anon sorry for taking so long to answer your ask.
Time and Space - How Are They Related?
The book takes place in an alternate universe, where the laws of physics are slightly different. In our universe, velocity and time are inversely related - going very fast causes you to experience less time than a stationary observer. In the book’s universe, velocity and time are directly related - going very fast causes you to experience more time than a stationary observer. This effect is called time dilation and is predicted by Einstein’s special theory of relativity.
This universe also doesn’t have a universal speed of light. Instead of using our laws of relativity to determine how much time will pass for a stationary observer (which involves a complicated equation with a fraction under a square root) you can just use the Pythagorean theorem. One of the sides represents the distance traveled, one represents the amount of time experienced by an observer, and the hypotenuse represents the amount of time experienced by the traveler.
We aren’t sure at the moment if other universes exist or if they even could exist. If they do exist, they could have different laws of physics than the ones in our universe. Article about this
If we follow along with this ruleset, time and space have drastic changes. You now experience much more time compared to an observer if you were going very fast (rather than less as it is in our universe). You would also see weird other changes, like a colorful trail of rainbow light from the stars in the sky and a noticeable absence of black holes. This follows the ruleset of the story, but since it is still so foreign to what we know I can’t really justify a rating of scientifically true or scientifically plausible.
Rating: Scientifically possible
The author’s website is a great tool if you want to get deeper into the topic and learn more as well! He can explain it much better than me :)