While admittedly having essentially no experience in the field of physics, I came to an interesting problem in the idea of time travel. How often in popular media involving time travel (ie - Back to the Future, Star Trek, etc.) do we see the time traveler go backward or forward in time and appear in the same PLACE at a different TIME? Here's the problem with that.
If I am sitting in Syracuse, NY and activate my time traveling device to go back in time a week, I should not end up in the same location in space. A week ago, the Earth was in a different orbit around the sun, and the sun was in a different orbit around our galaxy. And (again, knowing nothing about physics), the galaxy itself was probably on the move through space. Therefore, odds are, I'll end up in the void of space somewhere, and certainly not Syracuse, NY!
As such, any effective travel through time will need to incorporate a commensurate move through space that parallels the movement of our planetary body, or else risk ending up in the void. If presented with this conundrum, I am sure Doc from Back to the Future would talk the physics up and down, and detail how he designed the Delorean to do just this. Just seems like it would have to go faster than 88 MPH to do so......
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1 comments:
The creators of the TARDIS thought of this. ;-)
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