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 machinea device available at Wal-Mart, as opposed to a natural wormhole somewhere in the cosmosis 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 particlespion or muonson 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 ...
More or less. Only without the cameras.
I suspect it's nonsense. But some people are passionate about it.
I meant VALID time travelers, people who have actually traveled through time. Mr. Titor seems to be a fraud.
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.
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...
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?
If it were possible, someone would have already come back to some time present or previous; and someone would know about 'em.
His story sounds like some interesting guessing with a good bit of 'Alas, Babylon' thrown in. Does make for a good yarn, though.
He wants to kill the guy who invented the mullet...
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.
Now hyperdrives are as common as buttholes, right?
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.
Actually, we're not that far off.
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 ...
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...
ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.