Shhhhh. Even 6 days of time travel causes the neighorhood transformer to smoke. I don’t want the locals to correlate this with the fact that their lights are dimming. If I’m going to do this regularly, I have to move to a city that has a heftier power grid.
As far as applications, being the practical joker at heart, my original thought was to try to convince men that they’d forgotten which day it was and now had missed Valentine’s Day. (Which is celebrated over here by the purchase of ritual trinkets that are exchanged for sex.)
Then I realized that the real money-maker for a time machine is to send messages into the past. If you forget one important date or another, you go to my website, pay $100, and I’ll send you a reminder back before you skipped it.
Of course that won’t effect this world-line so you’ll still be in the dog house. But at least you’ll rest confident that there exists another world-line where you’re still sleeping inside, perhaps on the couch.
I didn’t understand first what you were talking about. This is funny. But it also raises the question of how to verify claims of time travel. Is it possible to verify if someone traveled in time? The only proof appears to be the prediction the traveler to the future makes. If his prediction happens then he may have the right to claim he has seen it happen in the future. But then, his prediction will be more like oracular prophesy. If time travel is allowed physicists will be able to explain miracles of religion, such as resurrection, by time travel.
William: how do science fiction writers prove time travel? I mean how does the time traveler prove his claim? Does he bring something from the future or past?
William, in the original H.G. Wells story, the time traveller brings back a live flower utterly different to anything known. Of course, with today’s science, this would no longer be proof of time travel….
In the original H.G. Wells story, the time traveller brings back a live flower utterly different to anything known. Of course, with today’s science, this would no longer be proof of time travel….
I suppose I should make it clear that I think that travelling backwards in time is silly, and if your mathematics says otherwise, that math is unphysical.
For the case of GR, there is an alternative version that does not allow time machines called “gauge gravity”. Since it gives all the results of GR except the silly ones that have never been observed, and likely cannot be proven, (and in addition is easier to calculate with than regular GR) it should be considered the standard GR. Gauge gravity uses Dirac’s gamma matrices (a type of Clifford algebra) so it also fits in nicely with elementary particle theory.
Mass 
LOL!! Heh, when they turn on the LHC time machine, you can pop over to Europe in a jiffy! I wonder what Italy will be like in 1 million years.
Shhhhh. Even 6 days of time travel causes the neighorhood transformer to smoke. I don’t want the locals to correlate this with the fact that their lights are dimming. If I’m going to do this regularly, I have to move to a city that has a heftier power grid.
As far as applications, being the practical joker at heart, my original thought was to try to convince men that they’d forgotten which day it was and now had missed Valentine’s Day. (Which is celebrated over here by the purchase of ritual trinkets that are exchanged for sex.)
Then I realized that the real money-maker for a time machine is to send messages into the past. If you forget one important date or another, you go to my website, pay $100, and I’ll send you a reminder back before you skipped it.
Of course that won’t effect this world-line so you’ll still be in the dog house. But at least you’ll rest confident that there exists another world-line where you’re still sleeping inside, perhaps on the couch.
I didn’t understand first what you were talking about. This is funny. But it also raises the question of how to verify claims of time travel. Is it possible to verify if someone traveled in time? The only proof appears to be the prediction the traveler to the future makes. If his prediction happens then he may have the right to claim he has seen it happen in the future. But then, his prediction will be more like oracular prophesy. If time travel is allowed physicists will be able to explain miracles of religion, such as resurrection, by time travel.
Pioneer1: Science fiction authors already do.
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From the Future? Not any more. Happy Valentine’s Day! 😉
Jay R. Yablon
William: how do science fiction writers prove time travel? I mean how does the time traveler prove his claim? Does he bring something from the future or past?
William, in the original H.G. Wells story, the time traveller brings back a live flower utterly different to anything known. Of course, with today’s science, this would no longer be proof of time travel….
In the original H.G. Wells story, the time traveller brings back a live flower utterly different to anything known. Of course, with today’s science, this would no longer be proof of time travel….
I suppose I should make it clear that I think that travelling backwards in time is silly, and if your mathematics says otherwise, that math is unphysical.
For the case of GR, there is an alternative version that does not allow time machines called “gauge gravity”. Since it gives all the results of GR except the silly ones that have never been observed, and likely cannot be proven, (and in addition is easier to calculate with than regular GR) it should be considered the standard GR. Gauge gravity uses Dirac’s gamma matrices (a type of Clifford algebra) so it also fits in nicely with elementary particle theory.
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