I came across this today in Atomic Robo:
This reminded me of Ruby's post, when I tried to explain why time travel is impossible--with the same argument! But with less guns and dinosaurs. I think that's always been my problem. Anyway, maybe Brian Clevinger reads Pieces Of Things! Or maybe this just a common idea people come up with when they've got too much time on their hands and think about time too much...
Also in the news:
"I had been living a lie, " said a visibly emotional Armstrong, addressing reporters at his home. "It has become painfully clear to me that on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module under the control of my crew did not in fact travel 250,000 miles over eight days, touch down on the moon, and perform various experiments, ushering in a new era for humanity. Instead, the entire thing was filmed on a soundstage, most likely in New Mexico."
And:
35 comments:
I love that comic. It was something I was bitching about a few months back here.
Well, people will probably invent teleportation before time travel, right? A computer shouldn't have problems calculating the correct xyzt coordinates to teleport/time travel someone too, if Mr. P can do it on a piece of paper...
Those are Fugu's calculations. I'm all about using the Force.
It's not the xyz or t that I'm worried about so much as the p (momentum)
I'm all about the Force as well.
Just showed The Onion article to my dad. Boy did he get mad!!!
Pretty sure that's what intertial dampers are for, Fugu.
maybe i'm just a damned fool english major here, but it sounds like you're assuming that traveling through time would necessarily involve some kind of "removal" of oneself from ordinary space for the duration of the travel, with a subsequent re-entry into space when the trip is over. if that is your assumption, i find your thinking about these matters to be a little bit uptight. i understand that space and time are, like, connected and all, but are we not all traveling through time now, in a forward direction, at a rate of one second per second? couldn't time travel be viewed as a speeding up, slowing down, freezing, or reversing of that rate, and so have no effect on our position in space?
I'd like to travel at two seconds per second sometimes.
Sure, but these things are all calculable. Using simple Newtonian mechanics, even. I mean, if we can insert a probe into orbit around Saturn, we can certainly calculate how much spin to put on dudes when we drop them back into the timestream.
Lungclops, the type of time travel you suggest is the kind often suggested by english majors. Consequences: Traveling backwards in time ALWAYS creates an alternate universe, and traveling forward in time is the same as being in a coma for a while.
Wut? Haha. Sorry. That's really unfortunate timing. I was just about to not-comment all that since, well shit, who cares.
But damn, fine, here. This is what Pony is commenting on:
I see what you're saying Lungclops, but I think you're picturing your room as stationary, so you can just speed up in time without moving. This though would lead to deadly consequences. And I'm not being uptight! Seriously guys! GUYS??
Here's an analogy: imagine you're at the top of a giant ferris wheel and you travel to some point in the future where the car you're in is now at the bottom of the wheel. To finish where you started you've got to travel through both space and time to end up at the bottom, right? Thing is, This is directly true in that we are currently on The Ferris Wheel Called The Earth, moving at approximately 1,000 mph Eastward. Changing position in space is necessary because we're never stationary. It only seems we're stationary because everything around us has the same momentum.
The other problem is momentum! If you're at the top of a ferris wheel moving at 1,000 mph due East then go forward in time to some point where your car is on the bottom and moving at 1,000 mph due West, you break all your bones! That is unless you have something like Pony's inertial dampeners.
So to sum up… In order to survive time travel you have to calculate and control:
1) When you're going to end up
2) Where your position in space is going to be
3) What your change in angular momentum will be
Yes? No? I suppose it doesn't matter how you do it at least, if by folding space and time or warp gates or receptacle pods or something.
You ass. You just travelled in time. How many broken bones?
Dude, Pony? That's the part that I didn't post, but I kind of agree! That part was something like this:
Hey… wait… You know, that doesn't sound too horrible after all!
The key is the reference point… before, both Atomic Robo and I (and now Astronomy Picture of the Day!) were making it too complicated by thinking our point of reference had to be THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE! This, people, may be unnecessary! We calculate the local stuff every time we send a probe or lander or something to another planet… As long as you don't travel so far in time that the direction the Milky Way is pulling you has changed significantly (another ferris wheel), everything else is far enough away that they effect our solar system equally, at least for rocket science, so that's good enough for me!
Wait... No. Nevermind. Actually that's not good enough. I'm pretty sure NASA makes constant adjustments to keep things on course, which actually amounts to hundreds and hundreds of miles. And remember that every time a near-Earth astroid might hit us, it's plus or minus a couple million miles (unless you're watching the Discovery Channel). I don't think I'd trust my cat or monkey to such experimental error.
Asteroid, Fugu...it's called an asteroid. It's a spaceborne missle.
Thanks, Panic! You're just great!
You didn't get the funny. I'm sad.
Or maybe the funny just wasn't powerful enough to make you see the lighthearted side of time travel.
Hrm. I'm no physics major to be sure, and maybe that’s why I feel the same way as the Lungclops, but I sorta figured that travel within one dimension didn't necessarily mean you were forced to travel in another. I mean, if I travel in the second dimension, say East/West, I'm still bound by the laws of Newtonian physics and have to adhere to where the Earth is going at that particular time. If we travel in the 4th, why are we suddenly free of inertia and gravity? Why would we fall off the planet? It's *travel* in time, not Goto_Point in time. Probably, I'm not a physics major, but there's some insight into how us physics plebians look at it.
This raises interesting points. In fiction, temporal travel usually involves lifting the subject out of reality, but I never realized why until now. It's because temporal travel is akin to spatial travel at near the speed of light--both are so fast as to be impossibly dangerous--unless you're removed from the universe first, you're going to fucking hit something. Thus, teleportation stands in for FTL travel on planetary surfaces. If you stand in place while you travel forward in time, they might build a freeway over you. More likely, they will build a research station around you to study why you can't move and won't die, and someone will eventually get drunk and draw on you with markers. Traveling backward in time (again, assuming that you need to occupy every point in time between now and your destination in the past) is even more problematic. Although, I guess it would be pretty clear where you'd need to stand, because you'd see yourself occupying that space until you yourself were standing in it.
Actually, traveling forward in time, there's no reason why someone wouldn't be able to kill you. I assumed some kind of "static time shell", which is yet another product of fictional time travel. We are so polluted!
I was a physics major ages ago and I've re-rolled like twice since then, so seriously, it doesn't count for much. And I hope I don't come across as sounding like an obnoxious smart ass because I totally don't mean to. But if I DO, someone would tell me, right?? That's like going to meet your girlfriend's parents for the first time with a labrador humping your leg. You'd want to know.
Anyway: I see what you're saying, Litcube! If it's travel() through time and not Goto_point() in time then yeah, you'll stay tied to inertia and gravity. And hey, that's totally fine! Then it would be like this: you see yourself moving at 2 seconds per second relative to your room, but from the room's perspective, you're now moving at 1/2 a second per second! This is like being in stasis in receptacle pods, or being in a coma like Pony suggested, or, um, if you're a Potter fan, Hermione's time-turner-necklace-thing.
The problem here isn't so much dying, but that if there's anyone else in the room with you who's keeping normal time… well, shit. You might rather be dead when jump back out.
Doh. Just saw that Pony pretty much said that. But hey here's some examples I thought of:
Fry in Futurama, Orson Scott Card's Treason and The Worthing Saga, Verner Vinge's Marooned in Realtime, Harry Potter... I'm sure a ton more, and in none of them is they guy even T-P'd or magic markered. This I think shows the failure of science nerds in understanding human nature.
Sort of surprised about no one messing with Fry's tube in Futurama. Seems like a goldmine, but to be fair they have fucked around a lot in and around Fry's time capsule. They definitely push the boundaries in that area.
This brings up a new point in the discussion. Cryo-stasis as time travel. I know Vinge's bubbles sort of work that way as well. Am I correct in thinking that, Fuge?
Actually, in the movie Idiocracy the main protagonist's time travel device is fucked with in a certain sense. I don't feel like I'm spoiling the plot for anyone who hasn't seen the movie by saying that the end result is the main protagonist feeling even more out of place than he would have, had everything remained intact around him. It's fucked with in an interesting way to be sure. Pony go netflix this movie already.
D'oh, I see the stasis thing has been hit upon already.
I have to learn to read harder. (It's so easy to gloss over Fuge's anti-time travel ranting.)
Uhm...just a wee tangent. The "static time shell" that Mr. Pony mentioned? Wasn't that on Dr. Who's episode Journey's End? (Tosh created a "time lock" as a defense mechanism prior to her death in the Torchwood franchise.)
I think it's only fair to point out that I am using time travel to make all of your points before you all make them.
say, speaking of all this, anyone seen the low budget time travel movie "primer?" if not, please do.
Was it good, or not good?
up until the last twenty minutes or so, it's splendid. it was clearly made by people with a lot of technical knowledge; the science doesn't feel made up. it manages to be very plausible with almost no special effects. the time travelers get into these mind-scrambling recursive loops, with doubles and recreated timelines whatnot... and then the plot takes an unfortunate detour down the wellsian let's-correct-past-wrongs path. i still think it's worth seeing, and plan to re-watch it. it's on netflix's watch instantly list.
i take that part about the last twenty minutes back. just rewatched the whole thing last night and it is an unqualified delight.
At this moment in time, I don't have Netflix. However, in the future, two things will happen. One. I will have NetFlix. Two. I will have a time machine. So, at some point in the future, I will netflix both Idiocracy and Primer, then travel back in time to late this morning and place the DVDs on my kitchen table. So now I (the present me) will go upstairs and find these DVDs and watch them. Back shortly.
Guys, future me was waiting behind the door. AND HE BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF ME
that's weird, to not have netflix.
That’s what future me said
OH, OKAY. This explains a lot about what just happened. I thought that skinny, small-haired jerk looked familiar. At least he left that copy of Idiocracy in the attic for me to find, so I don't have to pay Netflix for it.
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