I was surprised when I read the OG time machine story by Jules Verne and this was a main plot point, and only later stories hand-waived it. You'd think it was something from later analysis of the idea. Almost like that Verne dude was clever.
Clark Ashton Smith wrote a similar short story where the inventor failed to take it into account. Upon realizing his mistake he decided to just wait for another planet to reach him, turning his time machine into a spaceship.
That's actually a fascinating idea. All interstellar travel is based on the movements of the planets through space time. I bet it alternates between being technically faster and slower than FTL travel since you may have to wait for a time when your destination to pass into the planets past location.
Wow that's a fun thought hole. Constraint certainly breeds creativity!
Classic sci-fi slaps hard
One way to resolve this is to have some kind of multiverse theory where you don't travel back in time to your universe, but to a narrow slection of parallel universes that are also shifted slightly so that it spits you out in an analogous location to your initial departure.
that's why you build it like a spaceship 🤷 ez
I hear police boxes and phones booths are popular as well.
Position isn't absolute so if this happens this means you knowingly made the time machine memorize position relative to e.g. the sun rather than the earth.
Tine machine probably moved in its own inertial reference frame. That will actually get you lost in space because the inertial frame does not orbit around, which involves rotation(rotation is intrinsically non-inertial, i.e accelerating). Time machine's frame will be moving in a straight line if its inertial
Or relative to the galactic center. That would put you even further off.
incorrect, that is not what this means. They could have forgotten about the position setting all together. Also why the suns position? it is also moving and non absolute, just like earths. Makes no difference in this meme
They could have forgotten about the position setting all together.
You're assuming that the time machine would just change the time and keep the position but there is no absolute reference frame, so the time machine should use some reference frame in which it keeps the position constant. It would then be common sense to have the time machine keep the position relative to the earth. Anything else would be pretty dumb, unless you want to use your time machine also for space travel to other planets.
why the suns position
That was just an example. It's either the sun or the center of our galaxy, or some other reference point so if it wasn't the earth then the sun is the next most logical option.
You've got to entangle the same machine first over a massive macro quantum space-time superposition.
See, you get it.
I remember reading about this concept as a kid in a short story Neal Shusterman wrote called Same Time, Next Year. Blew my mind
If space is always expanding, I’d really like to know if a time traveler would experience issues existing in a universe where the space between atoms is different from the one they left.
They are not, that would require changes in the strong force.
They wouldn't; the expansion of space isn't strong enough to change the distance between atoms; the force holding them together overcomes it.
I was under the impression that gravity was a constant force keeping the atoms closer together
Should have watched Tom Scott
I know we're in a meme community but this did get me thinking... Not only is the Earth spinning but it's also in an orbit around the Sun which is also orbiting around the center of the Milky Way which is moving through space relative to other galaxies and so on.
Do we have enough information to calculate a position in space in the future for Earth without a fixed reference other than current point?
That's what einstein said. There is no fixed reference frame, but only relative ones. Every "inertial"(meaning, motion without any external force) frame of reference is equally valid as any other inertial frame movibg with respect to it.
But for sure we can tell earth's orbit is not inertial since circular motion occur, which is due to external force of gravity.
Edit:typo
There is not central point in the universe, and no way to calculate a position. Everything is relatove
Here, that might be interesting to you.
This is why Doctor Who has a time and space machine. Also because the BBC didn’t have the effects budget to show him flying around.
We also get a few glances of the coordinate system that the time machines use in doctor who. It appears to have enough digits for a date/time as well as an X/Y/Z grid coordinate.
I think you'll run into the three body problem.
This blew my mind. All those movies!
So, Back to the Future's a bunch of bullshit?!
It's possible to assume that the professor did the math.
But yeah any time machine would also basically have to have space travel built in to compensate.
They knew that when they wrote Dr Who (IE the time travel machine is called a TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space).
There's a ton of issues with time travel. That could be one, but most fictional time-travel devices can be said to accommodate for the difference in distance. It would just be boring to explain on-screen.
floating astronaut with pistol always has been
That's why doctor who works, its very clear about the fact that TARDIS travels in spacetime, it can do only time, only space or both space and time and they can get away with time traveling and still staying on earth
It should be illegal to remind people (me, particularly) about Steins;Gate while they're at work
I can't be fucking crying on the clock, dawg
It's just another problem with the mechanics of the snap at the end of Avengers: Endgame
Magic exists in that universe though and they're using some of the most powerful objects in the universe. So like if it's granting a wish, you just wish that everyone comes back to earth or whatever. It's not even really a suspension of disbelief. It feels more silly to think that genius scientists using wish granting artifacts wouldn't remember to account for the movement of the earth through space.
Oooohh. Thanks for the tip, just added that into my time travelling port o pottie's destination algorithms. Gotta respect the earth be moving and shit.
Wow, I never thought about that.
It's even cooler if you remember we send something to the moon even with all this variables and no calculators humans were able to know where the moon would be
Of course the moon is relatively close but still
Math is hard.
Also ghosts likely wouldn't be affected by a gravitational pull, so the concept doesn't make sense and there'd just be a trail of ghosts in space.
NGL, I don't really feel confident assuming anything about the physics of ghost dynamics
Can't they just float and follow the Earth? Or would it be too fast? What's the terminal velocity of a ghost?
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Glad I’m not the only one confused. Who’s talmbout ghosts
I also think about this a lot.
Heyy this property features in the accidental time machine by Joe Haldeman
I always wondered about this
