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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Cannikin on October 18, 2002, 11:00:55 am

Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Cannikin on October 18, 2002, 11:00:55 am
Ok, suspend thoughts of disbelief here, and just for a bit imagine if time machines were real...

Say you have a time machine and decide to go into the future a couple days to check the the stock market and/or see the winning lottery numbers. You turn it on, and set it to a week in the future. You materialize one week in the future. Except, the Earth isn't there... As your body fluids boil and your body explodes into a bloody, frozen mess, you struggle to figure out what went wrong.

In reality, NOTHING went wrong. The machine did exactly what it was supposed to: It transported you one week in the future, at the exact location you were when you left. BUT, the one thing that you forget is that the Earth, and the entire solar system, is constantly on the move, traveling tens of thousands of miles per hour and are never in the same position at any two given points in time. Thus, when you materialize at the exact same point in space, the Earth has already moved a million miles away, leaving you to suffer in the cold, (relative) void of space.

So, a time machine will be completely useless, unless you can also select what point in space you travel to, and you're very good at math so you can calculate exactly where the location you want to get to will be at any given point in time (which would involve so many variables, even CP would have a hard time :p ).

Just another thing I can add to my list to punch gigantic holes in lame sci-fi concepts. :D
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Carl on October 18, 2002, 12:14:56 pm
what makes you think gravity won't affect the time machine while it's going into the future?
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: an0n on October 18, 2002, 12:26:55 pm
If you could traverse along the 4th dimension and defy/bend the laws of quantum entropy, then I should think navigating the other 3-dimensions wouldn't be too hard.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Stealth on October 18, 2002, 12:40:13 pm
Quote
Originally posted by an0n
If you could traverse along the 4th dimension and defy/bend the laws of quantum entropy, then I should think navigating the other 3-dimensions wouldn't be too hard.


but we can't... so there :)
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: CP5670 on October 18, 2002, 01:04:23 pm
Actually, how can it calculate the position to put you at in the  new space anyway? It could not put at the same position unless that position is given relative to something else, so you might as well make it relative to the Earth. :p :D
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Galemp on October 18, 2002, 01:07:08 pm
Could be why no time travellers have come back... ever time they try they pop out into the void somewhere and explode in a cloud of frozen needles of blood.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Stealth on October 18, 2002, 01:09:08 pm
Quote
Originally posted by CP5670
Actually, how can it calculate the position to put you at in the  new space anyway? It could not put at the same position unless that position is given relative to something else, so you might as well make it relative to the Earth. :p :D



he's trying to confuse us again :D


Quote
Originally posted by CP5670
Could be why no time travellers have come back... ever time they try they pop out into the void somewhere and explode in a cloud of frozen needles of blood.


or it could be that no one has ever traveled through time!!!

if someone HAD, then the whole world would knwo about it, and would be wondering why he hasn't come back
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: an0n on October 18, 2002, 01:46:11 pm
*remembers about his Nth-dimensional-chess project*
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: diamondgeezer on October 18, 2002, 02:09:08 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Carl
what makes you think gravity won't affect the time machine while it's going into the future?



Kinetics. Perhaps inverse, perhaps not.

Failing that, tachyons.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: heretic on October 18, 2002, 02:17:23 pm
Quote
Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
Could be why no time travellers have come back... ever time they try they pop out into the void somewhere and explode in a cloud of frozen needles of blood.


at least they'd have 28 seconds to kick themselves in the ass
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Stunaep on October 18, 2002, 02:21:21 pm
I've seen this theory before, and it has been disproven. I can't remember for sure, but basically it has to do with inertia, and such like. It's like when you jump up on a moving train, you land on the same spot you jumped from. The same is true with Time Travel.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: an0n on October 18, 2002, 02:23:37 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Stunaep
I've seen this theory before, and it has been disproven. I can't remember for sure, but basically it has to do with inertia, and such like. It's like when you jump up on a moving train, you land on the same spot you jumped from. The same is true with Time Travel.

Yeah, over the space of a few hours or a day maybe, but over a week, the curvature of the Earth's orbit would leave you a coupla hundred feet in the air.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Stunaep on October 18, 2002, 02:29:41 pm
well, add gravity to this, and you get no movement whatsoever.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: an0n on October 18, 2002, 02:32:41 pm
.........Gravity is a constant which is securely fixed in it's motion and interaction with/within the 4th dimension. So by travesring the 4th dimension you'd either be crushed by infinite gravity or completely immune to it. Either way you'd be screwed.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: diamondgeezer on October 18, 2002, 02:37:11 pm
Thus... proving that time travel is impossibe?

:confused:
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Tiara on October 18, 2002, 02:55:07 pm
Lets just keep it at this :

We, humanity, are just too stupid to figure this out at this time.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Carl on October 18, 2002, 03:02:41 pm
we're traveling through time as we speak.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: CP5670 on October 18, 2002, 03:05:32 pm
Well, it looks like the original subject is about time travel into the future, which is known to be quite possible if you can somehow reach the required relative speeds. For time travel in the other direction, you would need some tachyons or something like that. :p

Quote
we're traveling through time as we speak.


lol that just came to mind as well... :D
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Stealth on October 18, 2002, 03:08:30 pm
yeah, i was thinking about that too!

let's say we're talking about "traveling to the future at a faster rate than normal" :D
Title: Re: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: mikhael on October 18, 2002, 03:45:05 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Cannikin
Ok, suspend thoughts of disbelief here...

Are we suspending belief after you come up with the idea of time machines or after you decide to invoke reality anyway and say they are impossible?

Quote

So, a time machine will be completely useless, unless you can also select what point in space you travel to, and you're very good at math so you can calculate exactly where the location you want to get to will be at any given point in time (which would involve so many variables, even CP would have a hard time :p ).


Any position in space-time can be expressed by XYZ (spatial coordinates) and tau (temporal offset from zero) with relation to some arbitrary unmoving body. "Unmoving" is used here in the relative sense.

What you're saying is that Professor Smarty McBrainbox can invent a machine that lets him target a tau coordinate but not an XYZ coordinate. You put this idea forward despite the fact that people in the past, with computers with less than 64KB of RAM managed to calculate elliptical curves through space with enough accuracy to put payload after payload on Mars, the Moon and Venus and into stable orbits around many more astronomical bodies. You're saying that somehow, if he figures out how to shift his tau coordinate arbitrarily, he somehow forgets the last 40yrs of astrophysics.

Yeah, lets suspend disbelief. All we have to do is shut off our brains completely, evidently.
Title: Re: Re: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Cannikin on October 19, 2002, 01:07:39 am
Quote
Originally posted by mikhael

What you're saying is that Professor Smarty McBrainbox can invent a machine that lets him target a tau coordinate but not an XYZ coordinate. You put this idea forward despite the fact that people in the past, with computers with less than 64KB of RAM managed to calculate elliptical curves through space with enough accuracy to put payload after payload on Mars, the Moon and Venus and into stable orbits around many more astronomical bodies. You're saying that somehow, if he figures out how to shift his tau coordinate arbitrarily, he somehow forgets the last 40yrs of astrophysics.

Yeah, lets suspend disbelief. All we have to do is shut off our brains completely, evidently.


It's not as easy as you would make it out. All the space probes we have sent into space worked because for all intents and purposes, it was another section of the solar system, and thus moves WITH it. If you transcend 4 dimensional space-time to travel to the future, you will not move with the solar system and thus you must consider all variables. Also, the nature of these probes allowed for many inaccuracies (it didn't matter if it was a few miles off course, but in this situation, even a few inches off could prove to be a horrible disaster).

Here's some things you would have to consider (which is far more complicated then launching space probes on specific trajectories): Earth's rotation, miniscule movements caused by the gravity of the moon, other planets and every single object (yes all these tiny effects matter because if you're even just one measly meter off you could land underground or something), Earth's movement around the Sun, the solar system's revolution around the galactic core, the solar system being altered by gravity from nearby stars, the Milky Way's movement through the universe, the expansion of the universe itself...
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Cannikin on October 19, 2002, 01:29:49 am
Oh and just for the record, when I talk about time travel, it's not a rapid acceleration of the process of moving from past to future.

What I'm talking about is completely extracting yourself from the confines of the dimension, time, and thus select any point in time at will and appear there.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: CP5670 on October 19, 2002, 01:40:03 am
Well, like I said, you would need a relative position to give the time machine any set of coordinates, so you might as well make that Earth. :p (if no "zero point" is given, the machine cannot put you anywhere at all and would not leave you in space)

Quote
Here's some things you would have to consider (which is far more complicated then launching space probes on specific trajectories): Earth's rotation, miniscule movements caused by the gravity of the moon, other planets and every single object (yes all these tiny effects matter because if you're even just one measly meter off you could land underground or something), Earth's movement around the Sun, the solar system's revolution around the galactic core, the solar system being altered by gravity from nearby stars, the Milky Way's movement through the universe, the expansion of the universe itself...


That's what numerical differential equation solvers are for. :D
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Bobboau on October 19, 2002, 02:58:05 am
I think he is talking about a time machine that you have to plug in absolute coordanates, and then it picks you out of the ones you're in and plunks you into the one you entered, wich proves he doesn't realy know much about the subject (well at least the technical parts), but it is fun to discus this, in any case it would problt be a good idea to have you're time machine haveing a totaly inclosed environmental controle, capable of both withstanding hard vacume and bottom of the ocean conditions(just to be on the safe side), think about what a gentle brease would feal like if it was accelerated 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 times, also think about the fact that you may be visable to people not travleing in the machine and they may be able to afect you (ie if a nukeular war goes off right were you are it might not be too good)
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: NeoHunter on October 19, 2002, 07:20:52 am
Erm...this may be a stupid question but why does your blood boil in space? I thought space was cold.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Tiara on October 19, 2002, 07:26:43 am
Because of the pressure. If it is too low (wich it certainly is in space for a human body) you blood will biol and you'll die in seconds.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Sesquipedalian on October 19, 2002, 07:45:32 am
Same reason that water boils at a slightly lower temperature on a mountaintop than in the valley below.
Title: OT- something to think about for time travel
Post by: Kazashi on October 19, 2002, 08:58:20 am
The calculations required to translate a future position in 3 dimensions won't seem terribly complex compared to the calculations required for sending a machine through time. That still requires precise calculations given the complexity of interpreting temporal matters as anything more than a linear phenomenon - it's not as simple a matter as ripping a hole in space and expecting to reappear a week later.

However, the comment does stand as a reminder that there is always more to be considered than just the obvious, more things are affected than the ones you set out to manipulate. And would the absent-minded professor really have remembered that little piece of info before hurtling through time? :wink: