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DeLorean Tremens. Hold onto your flux capacitors, time machines have nearly arrived
Smithsonian Magazine.com ^ | March 10, 2007 | by Eric Jaffe

Posted on 03/10/2007 8:03:48 AM PST by aculeus

One of the most replayed commercials on television right now is the DirecTV ad with Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Doc, we learn, has forgotten to tell Marty McFly to buy DirecTV in the future. Never mind that the 1955 version of Doc never traveled through time, and therefore wouldn't know about DirecTV. More importantly, how's that whole time machine thing coming? When can we rev up the DeLorean and, like Marty, go to our parent's high school dance with our mother?

Never. But not never, never. Just never for us. First, back to the basics.

A physical time machine—a device available at Wal-Mart, as opposed to a natural wormhole somewhere in the cosmos—is possible. You begin with something square. Next, install mirrors at the corners and send a beam of light, perhaps from a laser, at one of the mirrors. The light will bounce to the second mirror, the third, the fourth and back through this cycle forever.

The force of this constantly circulating light will begin twisting the empty space in the middle. Einstein's theory of relativity dictates that everything happening to space must happen to time, so time begins twisting, too.

To fit a human inside this time machine we need to stack a bunch of these mirrors on top of each other, and add more light beams. Eventually, we'll have a cylinder of circulating light. Once we step inside, we're ready to fly through time.

Rubbish, you say? Well, unlike Doc Brown's second-generation DeLorean, which ran on garbage, the model for our time machine is actually testable. Place subatomic particles—pion or muons—on one side of the light cylinder, and a particle detector on the other side. Then send the particles across.

(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmagazine.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News
KEYWORDS: timetravel
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To: aculeus; Millee; carlr; PaulaB; Maximus of Texas; EX52D
Re: ...Marty can alter this new universe if he'd like—perhaps even take credit for "Johnny B. Goode" and become a famous musician. He can even travel in time within this parallel world. But once the new universe changes, he's unable to return to the original one. (In which case, I call dibs on his girl Jennifer.)...

Yes, but which Jennifer?

The really hot lookin' Claudia Wells?

Or the skanky, too old looking Elisabeth Shue?

I personally subscribe to the to theory that Fox got the clap from Wells and banned her from the sequels...

However, it was Shue who gave him a dose of Shaky Sif... That he passes off as Parkinson's Disease to this very day...
41 posted on 03/10/2007 10:35:33 AM PST by Bender2 (Not even John Titor touched on the Two Jennifers Paradox, eh?)
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To: calex59
No but I was just responding to the comment that there doesn't seem to be any time travelers around. BTW he is back and posting several excuses for his missed predictions around the net. All tongue in cheek on my part.
42 posted on 03/10/2007 10:35:59 AM PST by mad_as_he$$ (So many geeks, so few circuses.)
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To: patton
remote viewing? you mean "tele vision?"

More or less. Only without the cameras.

I suspect it's nonsense. But some people are passionate about it.

43 posted on 03/10/2007 10:39:04 AM PST by x
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To: mad_as_he$$
No but I was just responding to the comment that there doesn't seem to be any time travelers around. BTW he is back and posting several excuses for his missed predictions around the net. All tongue in cheek on my part.

I meant VALID time travelers, people who have actually traveled through time. Mr. Titor seems to be a fraud.

44 posted on 03/10/2007 10:41:07 AM PST by calex59
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To: calex59

Absolutely right.
We are the "past" that future time travelers would be going "back to" to try and change things.
Also they would not be able to come back and change anything because changes might alter the invention of the time machine and prevent future time travel.


45 posted on 03/10/2007 11:03:52 AM PST by smoketree (the insanity, the lunacy these days.)
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To: aculeus

Hmmm... I saw a movie once - can't remember the name - where the hero receives a pocket watch from an old lady. He then travels back in time, meets the lady as a young woman and gives her the watch, which she then returns to him many years later.

So, my question was (and I was told I was "nit picking"): Who made the watch?

The most famous one though is, of course, The Terminator, in which if the Terminator is successful, there would be no reason to send him back in time...


46 posted on 03/10/2007 12:55:02 PM PST by Da Bilge Troll (Defeatism is not a winning strategy!)
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To: LibKill
"A Sound of Thunder" a dinosaur hunter steps on a butterfly in the Jurasic period. When he gets home his formerly free country is now a communist dictatorship.

I had high hopes for the movie released last year but....man did it ever suck.

Can't these screenwriters read anything except a title or a synopsis?

47 posted on 03/10/2007 1:00:08 PM PST by Bloody Sam Roberts (Don't question faith. Don't answer lies.)
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To: aculeus
GREAT!....just in time, for tonight Powerball Lottery.
48 posted on 03/10/2007 3:16:14 PM PST by skinkinthegrass ( just b/c, you suffer from paranoia, doesn't mean they're not out to get you. :^)
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To: aculeus

If it were possible, someone would have already come back to some time present or previous; and someone would know about 'em.


49 posted on 03/10/2007 3:17:59 PM PST by bannie
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To: RightWhale
Time travel will be possible but only in time after the machine is built....Ahaa, Yhea. :D
50 posted on 03/10/2007 3:19:06 PM PST by skinkinthegrass ( just b/c, you suffer from paranoia, doesn't mean they're not out to get you. :^)
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To: martin_fierro
LOL!....I'll take ten Tickets, Please.
51 posted on 03/10/2007 3:21:30 PM PST by skinkinthegrass ( just b/c, you suffer from paranoia, doesn't mean they're not out to get you. :^)
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To: Lx

His story sounds like some interesting guessing with a good bit of 'Alas, Babylon' thrown in. Does make for a good yarn, though.


52 posted on 03/10/2007 3:22:37 PM PST by Tench_Coxe
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To: Sir Gawain

He wants to kill the guy who invented the mullet...


53 posted on 03/10/2007 3:26:12 PM PST by WestVirginiaRebel ("...Mindless pack of trained Maoist circus seals.")
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To: aculeus

This guy don't paint pictures for beans, first he gives me a square then he makes me mount imaginary mirrors on the corners which have no mountable surface, being corners, then he has me stack up a whole bunch of them until I get a cylinder which I always thought had no corners and then takes me on a ride where no one has ever gone with no way back to where I began to follow his instructions in the first place; I'm lost.


54 posted on 03/10/2007 3:29:24 PM PST by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu

Now hyperdrives are as common as buttholes, right?


55 posted on 03/10/2007 3:31:01 PM PST by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Da Bilge Troll
Hmmm... I saw a movie once - can't remember the name - where the hero receives a pocket watch from an old lady. He then travels back in time, meets the lady as a young woman and gives her the watch, which she then returns to him many years later.

56 posted on 03/10/2007 3:34:29 PM PST by Bratch
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To: x
If we can't teleport ourselves across space

Actually, we're not that far off.

57 posted on 03/10/2007 3:39:21 PM PST by WestVirginiaRebel ("...Mindless pack of trained Maoist circus seals.")
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To: x
"If we can't teleport ourselves across space, then physical movement across time is bound to be impossible as well."

Let's say we could teleport across time to the same exact spot in space, then even if we only went back in time a minute or so, when we popped out into the past the earth and the entire solar system and the entire galaxy would have moved a considerable distance.

It would take us considerably longer than a minute to get back to earth to see what it was like.

If we go back centuries or millenia ...

58 posted on 03/10/2007 3:40:29 PM PST by who_would_fardels_bear
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To: Da Bilge Troll
I think that was Somewhere In Time, with Christopher Reeve. The guy basically hypnotizes himself to go back in time by wearing period clothing and telling himself it's year whatever over and over again...the Twilight Zone-like twist at the end is when he finds a present-day quarter in his pocket and gets sent back to his own time.

I think the terminator films are the best representation of a "Closed loop," where you can only do what you're allowed to do, along with the Planet of the Apes movies, where Taylor inadverdantly creates the future by giving Zira and Cornelius a way to go back in time...thus giving birth to Caesar, who leads the ape rebellion that results in the world Taylor finds 2,000 years later...

59 posted on 03/10/2007 3:46:07 PM PST by WestVirginiaRebel ("...Mindless pack of trained Maoist circus seals.")
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To: nnn0jeh

ping


60 posted on 03/10/2007 3:49:22 PM PST by kalee (The offenses we give, we write in the dust; Those we take, we write in marble. JHuett)
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