Aliens to play a mischievous space-time practical joke on Earth

Premise

Suppose an earth-like world in the near-future. Then aliens come and decide to play a mischievous trick on this world on an epic scale. The goal is to disrupt Earth's time by 18 minutes. Specifically, they wish to make the time on Earth 18 minutes slower within 24 hours. It's a one-off prank, just to show they can.

Question

Assuming the aliens have very advanced technology, but are still confined to the known laws of physics, what relativistic feat would accomplish their goal?

Further Clarifications

• Goal: slow down time on Earth by 18 minutes
• Quality Metric: the more perceptible to the Earthlings the better (if the Earthlings don't even realized they've been pranked, where's the fun in that? However, direct perception of time slowing down might not be possible and I'm willing to live with that. So the other component to the quality metric is if there were simply some glaring clues for the victims to realized they were time-pranked recently, that would also be favored by the quality metric.)
• Technology: The exact limit of the Alien's technology is uncertain, but what is known is the technology must comply with known laws of physics
• Timeframe: The 18 minutes must be slowed down in the span of 24 hours. You may assume a lengthy preparation phase prior to the implementation of the prank if necessary.
• Nature of Prank: The prank is not intended to be permanent. The idea is we are taking one Earth day and slowing it down by 18 minutes; a one-off.

Note: Changing the rotational speed, while not overtly out of scope, would not get to the heart of my problem, since we are dealing with perception of time as a quality metric.

posted about 6 years ago

Arash Howaida‭

1 reputation 36 0 0 0