In all of the time travel movies I've seen, and books I've read, I've always heard the same complaints from the science community, generally about paradox. IE Terminator, if the machines hadn't sent back the Terminator, John Conner wouldn't have sent back his father, which would mean he wouldn't have been born and wouldn't have existed, so there would have been no need to send back the Terminator in the first place.
But for half my life, I've thought about a flaw with time travel that I've never seen addressed (with possibly one exception). And that is the fact that everything in the Universe is moving.
The Moon rotates around the Earth, the Earth rotates around the sun, and the Sun rotates around the center of the Milky Way. In short, the planet Earth is not in the same place as it was during Jurassic time, its not even (relatively) close to where it was yesterday. Yet when someone powers up their time machine, they just walk through a door, or get enveloped by a bubble, and next thing you know theyre singing at their parent's Prom or killing their own Grandfather. None of these modes of time travel go anywhere but forward or backward in time, and when they reappeared, the Earth would be long gone. Picture Marty McFly getting up to 88 MPH, the sparks shoot around the front of his car, his tires tracks on fire .and then hes floating through space, at 88 MPH. Forever.
The only place Ive ever seen anything CLOSE to taking this into consideration was a hokey TV series called 7 Days that ran for a few years. In it, Frank the time traveler was shown getting into his time carton, someone would hit a button, and he would disappear. Next thing, hed reappear in a different part of Earth. As the shows name signified, he went back in time 7 days, so in reality he wouldnt have landed on a different part of the planet, he'd be out in space, but I do remember in the pilot episode, they showed the body of the first pilot that had tried using the time machine floating through space, though I dont remember them explaining why this had happened.
Another thing that ties into this is "freezing time". There are many books and movies where the time traveler has a device (which usually for some reason is in the shape of a clock or wristwatch) that, once a button is pushed, everything around them is frozen in place. They can go about their business without being seen, yet never seem to do the first thing all of us would do in this situation, which is to undress every good looking woman in view.
The problem with this is that there has to be a sphere of influence wherein the time traveler is in normal time, and for everyone else time has stopped, and the question now is, how big is that sphere of influence. See point number one: Everything is moving. If the sphere of influence was, say, a mile wide, that section of the Earth would tear apart from the rest of the planet. If the sphere was as big as the Earth, then the moon would float off without us, not to mention all of our satellites. After that, how big do you want to go? No matter how big, its going to cause problems. And dont go saying that it would affect the entire Universe. As Douglas Adams said: Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space. The point is, the sphere of influence could never be big enough unless it affected the entire Universe, and how are you going to get that much power into a wristwatch?
This is getting kind of long, and I have a few more points, if anyone is interested in this thread I'll post them. Just wondering if anyone has seen a movie or read a book that addresses some of these questions.
But for half my life, I've thought about a flaw with time travel that I've never seen addressed (with possibly one exception). And that is the fact that everything in the Universe is moving.
The Moon rotates around the Earth, the Earth rotates around the sun, and the Sun rotates around the center of the Milky Way. In short, the planet Earth is not in the same place as it was during Jurassic time, its not even (relatively) close to where it was yesterday. Yet when someone powers up their time machine, they just walk through a door, or get enveloped by a bubble, and next thing you know theyre singing at their parent's Prom or killing their own Grandfather. None of these modes of time travel go anywhere but forward or backward in time, and when they reappeared, the Earth would be long gone. Picture Marty McFly getting up to 88 MPH, the sparks shoot around the front of his car, his tires tracks on fire .and then hes floating through space, at 88 MPH. Forever.
The only place Ive ever seen anything CLOSE to taking this into consideration was a hokey TV series called 7 Days that ran for a few years. In it, Frank the time traveler was shown getting into his time carton, someone would hit a button, and he would disappear. Next thing, hed reappear in a different part of Earth. As the shows name signified, he went back in time 7 days, so in reality he wouldnt have landed on a different part of the planet, he'd be out in space, but I do remember in the pilot episode, they showed the body of the first pilot that had tried using the time machine floating through space, though I dont remember them explaining why this had happened.
Another thing that ties into this is "freezing time". There are many books and movies where the time traveler has a device (which usually for some reason is in the shape of a clock or wristwatch) that, once a button is pushed, everything around them is frozen in place. They can go about their business without being seen, yet never seem to do the first thing all of us would do in this situation, which is to undress every good looking woman in view.
The problem with this is that there has to be a sphere of influence wherein the time traveler is in normal time, and for everyone else time has stopped, and the question now is, how big is that sphere of influence. See point number one: Everything is moving. If the sphere of influence was, say, a mile wide, that section of the Earth would tear apart from the rest of the planet. If the sphere was as big as the Earth, then the moon would float off without us, not to mention all of our satellites. After that, how big do you want to go? No matter how big, its going to cause problems. And dont go saying that it would affect the entire Universe. As Douglas Adams said: Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space. The point is, the sphere of influence could never be big enough unless it affected the entire Universe, and how are you going to get that much power into a wristwatch?
This is getting kind of long, and I have a few more points, if anyone is interested in this thread I'll post them. Just wondering if anyone has seen a movie or read a book that addresses some of these questions.
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