[Cannikin]

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...

[Cannikin]

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.

[CP5670]

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. (if no "zero point" is given, the machine cannot put you anywhere at all and would not leave you in space)

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.

[Bobboau]

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)

[NeoHunter]

Erm...this may be a stupid question but why does your blood boil in space? I thought space was cold.

[Tiara]

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.

[Sesquipedalian]

Same reason that water boils at a slightly lower temperature on a mountaintop than in the valley below.

[Kazashi]

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: