Time travel in movies and books - Looong Question:

hoyaguru

Senior member
Jun 9, 2003
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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, it’s 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 they’re 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 he’s floating through space, at 88 MPH. Forever.

The only place I’ve 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, he’d reappear in a different part of Earth. As the show’s name signified, he went back in time 7 days, so in reality he wouldn’t 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 don’t 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, it’s going to cause problems. And don’t 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.
 

rivan

Diamond Member
Jul 8, 2003
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Suspension of disbelief for the sake of the plot.

One assumes they've either worked out the required calculations, or just don't need to.
 

Juddog

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Dec 11, 2006
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The true solution has more to do with the nature of time than of physical position in the universe. Whereas some people view time as a line, others view it as a plane. Others still view it as any number of diverging passageways along a 3 dimensional matrix.

One main way of looking at it is that true time travel is impossible. When someone time travels in a movie, they are essentially traveling instead to a parallel reality where the time period they travel to hasn't happened yet. Think of it as jumping from one branch of reality to another, from one universe to another overlapping universe.
 

gophins72

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Jul 22, 2005
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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.


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.

check out "Cashback", it's on netflix, not a bad movie, sort of a fun watch:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460740/
After a painful breakup, Ben develops insomnia. To kill time, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket, where his artistic imagination runs wild.
hmm lost the part in the quote about where he can stop time.


also, a really old movie called "Zapped!" with scott baio in it:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084945/
Peyton and Barney are fun loving high school students working on a science project with white mice. When one of the mice begins to move food toward itself with out touching it, Barney finds he has accidently discovered a formula for telekinetic powers. Now, how much trouble can a high school boy who can move things with just his mind get into?
 
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Delita

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Jan 12, 2006
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I've always liked these little thought experiements, but for some reason this one has never occured to me but makes perfect sense. I would be interested in hearing what other thoughts you have.
 

gorcorps

aka Brandon
Jul 18, 2004
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This was addressed in one of the newer episodes of Futurama. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Philip_J._Fry

"This universe is 10 feet lower than our old one!"
*crush*
"Pow! We avoided the time travel paradox."

tumblr_lhnjec9ub81qzuxnmo1_500.png
 

hoyaguru

Senior member
Jun 9, 2003
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The true solution has more to do with the nature of time than of physical position in the universe. Whereas some people view time as a line, others view it as a plane. Others still view it as any number of diverging passageways along a 3 dimensional matrix.

One main way of looking at it is that true time travel is impossible. When someone time travels in a movie, they are essentially traveling instead to a parallel reality where the time period they travel to hasn't happened yet. Think of it as jumping from one branch of reality to another, from one universe to another overlapping universe.

OK, but even then, how would you hit the exact spot you are trying to get to? Even if it was Earth in another reality, why would it be in the exact same spot as our Earth was 100 years ago (or in the future)? My point is, you'd need something that could move in three dimensions, as well as the fourth.
 

ShadowOfMyself

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Jun 22, 2006
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Very cool point

Id venture guessing that at the speed the solar system moves, even time travelling just one second into the future, youd end up in space lol

Or actually, thats the best case scenario... you could end up inside a star, and be instantly burned to death

Fun stuff
 

IcePickFreak

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Jul 12, 2007
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OK, but even then, how would you hit the exact spot you are trying to get to? Even if it was Earth in another reality, why would it be in the exact same spot as our Earth was 100 years ago (or in the future)? My point is, you'd need something that could move in three dimensions, as well as the fourth.

Bill & Ted had that all figured out. :awe:
 

hoyaguru

Senior member
Jun 9, 2003
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I guess my main problem is not necessarily the problem itself, it's that I've been thinking about this for 20 years and have never heard it addressed. All the time travel shows on the Science channel and articles I've read, I would think someone would have pointed this out, I'm no scientist. It's like when you see a show about sci/fi movies, there's always some smarmy sceintist pointing out that there is no sound in space, so all the explosion noises when a spaceship or planet blows up are wrong.
 

vjeltz

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Nov 15, 2004
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I seem to recall John Titor solved the problem of the planet moving out from under you when traveling through time. Although I can't recall what he said GE's exact solution was. Good sci-fi story though. :)
 
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Paul98

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Unless they go into detail onto how time travel is done it isn't something you should even bother thinking about.
 

nageov3t

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if the movement speed/path is predictable, wouldn't the machine just take it into account?
 

hoyaguru

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if the movement speed/path is predictable, wouldn't the machine just take it into account?

How? The time travel machine would have to be able to move physically to where that predition told it the Earth would be at the moment it arrived, which could be millions of miles away. Hell, even 10 feet off would put you inside the planet, or you'd suddenly be falling 10 feet and hit the ground. It would have to be a space ship that could move incredibly fast, but if you had something like that, then you run into another problem. The speed would have to be so great that there would be a time difference between the person on the ship and the people on Earth, so that would all have to be accounted for. This brings up another bunch of questions that I'll have to go into on another thread sometime.
 

dighn

Lifer
Aug 12, 2001
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if the movement speed/path is predictable, wouldn't the machine just take it into account?

yeah usually time travel is portrayed as some form of tunneling through space time so teleportation would be an integral part. but honestly time travel in fiction is usually so full of holes that it's not worth mulling over. in most cases the use of it probably instantly puts the fiction in the realm of soft sci-fi i.e. don't think too hard about it sci-fi.
 

SamQuint

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Dec 6, 2010
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The funniest time travel in a movie has to be the original Christopher Reeve Superman movie.

He just flies fast enough in the opposite direction of Earth's rotation to stop its rotatation and have it spin in reverse, thus making everything go back in time.

If the Earth stopped rotating I think we would have a huge mess on our hands.
 

ThePresence

Elite Member
Nov 19, 2001
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Time is not a location.
Time does not really exist.
It is the way we measure how we get older, that's all.
 

lord_emperor

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How? The time travel machine would have to be able to move physically to where that predition told it the Earth would be at the moment it arrived, which could be millions of miles away. Hell, even 10 feet off would put you inside the planet, or you'd suddenly be falling 10 feet and hit the ground. It would have to be a space ship that could move incredibly fast, but if you had something like that, then you run into another problem. The speed would have to be so great that there would be a time difference between the person on the ship and the people on Earth, so that would all have to be accounted for. This brings up another bunch of questions that I'll have to go into on another thread sometime.

Seeing how it can already travel through time, moving through space should be trivial.
 

Jeeebus

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Aug 29, 2006
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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.

Only movie I've really seen deal with this question was The Time Machine, starring Guy Pearce.

The paradox explained by Jeremy Irons
 

hoyaguru

Senior member
Jun 9, 2003
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Seeing how it can already travel through time, moving through space should be trivial.

Please explain. Seems like a pretty important thing to me, unless you're going into fantasy and not science, which a lot of science fiction does. I know that sci/fi has to do these things to make the story worth watching, which is why we have the explosion noises in space, but there are exceptions, like Arthur C. Clarke's 2001. That movie had the most believable science ever seen, no noise in space, and it was a great movie.

Don't know why I get worked up about this stuff, except I feel like I have to be wrong and it's REAL obvious to everyone else why I'm wrong, to the point that no one even bothers to talk about it. I've never even tried to write a sci/fi story, but I'm guessing that the authors have to just leave stuff like this out or the story wouldn't work, but I would think someone would address it sooner or later.
 

Kadarin

Lifer
Nov 23, 2001
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Doctor Who solves this by stating the nature of time as "Its a big ball of wibbly, wobbly, timey, wimey stuff." And, of course, by having this thing called a TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space)..
 

hoyaguru

Senior member
Jun 9, 2003
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Only movie I've really seen deal with this question was The Time Machine, starring Guy Pearce.

The paradox explained by Jeremy Irons

lol, I was thinking about this as one of the worst cases (the original, not the Guy Pearce one). It's been forever since I saw the original, but iirc, at the end, the time traveller physically moves his time machine a short distance away from where it is in the future, so when he comes back to the past it is no longer inside the building (or maybe I'm backwards in that, did he physically move it in the present so he didn't end up inside the cave in the future?). So he moves through time a hundred thousand years, and lands in exactly the same place on the planet, but just a little bit East because he physically moved the machine. In reality the solar system would be god knows how many trillions of miles away from where he ends up, physically moving the machine wouldn't have done him any good. He'd join Marty McFly floating through space forever.