Time Machine

[jaF0]

It doesn't matter. That's how people could theoretically 'run into' Abe Lincoln for example.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It doesn't matter. That's how people could theoretically 'run into' Abe Lincoln for example.

I'm assuming everything else would also be the 19th Century, but what do I know.

By the way, Time Machine with the stationary chair is more accurate, I guess. You still have the problem of what is eventually around the chair.

Did you ever see that "Twilight Zone" episode of the airliner "lost in time?" At one point the pilots look out and see dinosaurs on Manhattan Island - without the buildings, of course. Except, there was no Manhattan back then. New York did not take its final form until the end of the last ice age, maybe 10,000 years ago. In fact, entire continents have drifted around in the last 65 million years.

 

[jaF0]

Did you ever see that "Twilight Zone" episode of the airliner "lost in time?" At one point the pilots look out and see dinosaurs on Manhattan Island - without the buildings, of course. Except, there was no Manhattan back then. New York did not take its final form until the end of the last ice age, maybe 10,000 years ago. In fact, entire continents have drifted around in the last 65 million years.

The Odyssey Of Flight 33

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odyssey_of_Flight_33



Similar premise for 'The Final Countdown' where the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz suddenly is taken to December 6, 1941.

 

[LupusDei]

Hi LupusDei:

I have to chew over some of the things you said. To start with, yes we are always moving forward to the future. The question is: is it possible to build a device that could move one a significant distance into the future? How much energy would be required to move fast enough to go a week, a month ahead? I'm not qualified to say. Usually when we think of "time travel" we imagine it to be several decades at least.

If you remember old TV shows like Time Tunnel, they would move through space as well as time, which seems even harder to do with a single device. If one moves through time only, one could wind up buried in a mountain or two-hundred feet in the air depended on how the landscape changed during that period. Not a pleasant prospect. I haven't even mentioned the aftermath of nuclear wars, plagues, and so forth that could make the future unpleasant. What if the Earth has been wrecked by an asteroid collision?

I'll get to some of your other comments later.

Traveling a "meager" speed of 0.2c with is hard but practically (maybe) doable, you would win 2 days for every 100 relative to the reference frame (only relative measurements of speed ever make sense, except lightspeed in vacuum, with is absolute constant); that goes up to 50 if you can make 0.75c.

https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/time-dilation?v=equation:0,t:100!days,relative_time:102!days

Going above lightspeed you may accidentally arrive before departing. No matter what exotic way of traveling you choice. Space itself can be bent and twisted with enough energy, perhaps it's possible to surf a local distortion wave, math for it check out (with estimated energies now as low as annihilating Jupiter mass, and there's probably ways to shrink that further). Or carve a shortcut, a wormhole (Einstein–Rosen bridge), pairing rotating black holes (although keeping the mouth open may require negative mass-energy a trick we don't know how to turn

If you're going to open a targeted wormhole anyway, there's no reason you can't move anywhere, anywhen in a single transition. Getting the right exit coordinates might become interesting though.

It's impossible to stay put. Well, you have to define your frame of reference carefully.

Earth rotates, ~460 meters per second at equator. Earth moves in freefal orbit a round Sun, ~30,000 m/s. Sun moves in orbit around center of the Milky Way galaxy, ~230,000 m/s. Milky Way galaxy moves toward collision with Andromeda galaxy, both move towards center mass of the local claster. At the same time space itself expands, accelerating (or so we currently believe, according to best data) so everything moves away from everything.

But well, no frame of reference is special, so a time machine chair is as good center of the universe as anything. Earth wobbles around it, Sun orbits, etc. Did you account for continental drift?

 

[Hypoxia]

IRL time travel into the past by humans is demonstrably impossible. Why? Because humans fuck-up stuff. If a human of any era COULD zip back to the Big Bang (which of course is a logical target) they'd have fucked it up, interfered with it, and we would not be here. Existence disproves the notion.

LIT fantasyland has no need of such reality. So zoom back, and fuck previous generations. All our ancestors were hot when young! Except those inbred Hapsburgs and Arkansans.

 

[gunhilltrain]

The Odyssey Of Flight 33

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odyssey_of_Flight_33

Similar premise for 'The Final Countdown' where the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz suddenly is taken to December 6, 1941.

At one point the pilots look down and see the New York of 1940, so they are a couple of decades early. If I was them, I'd just say, "The hell with it, this is close enough." Except, I don't think there were any airports then with runways long enough to handle a jetliner. (Could they even communicate with the LaGuardia control tower as they do? I don't know enough about electronics to say.)

Their only option is to attempt a hard landing in a field in Nassau County, say. If they survived that, they'd probably all be detained for a while as spies or something. I guess eventually it would all shake out, and they could make a huge amount of money with sports betting, stock picks, and so forth. I wonder if they would spill the beans about the coming of Pearl Harbor and so forth.

Sounds like a good story for the Non-erotic section.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

IRL time travel into the past by humans is demonstrably impossible. Why? Because humans fuck-up stuff. If a human of any era COULD zip back to the Big Bang (which of course is a logical target) they'd have fucked it up, interfered with it, and we would not be here. Existence disproves the notion.

LIT fantasyland has no need of such reality. So zoom back, and fuck previous generations. All our ancestors were hot when young! Except those inbred Hapsburgs and Arkansans.

I saw a Doctor Who episode where the Tardis took him to the big bang. At first he and his 'companions' thought they were in a void without anything. Then a ship appeared via a wormhole or some other type event. They sat there watching the ship and the Tardis went crazy with alarm and whistles and such.

The ship exploded... they were witnessing the big bang.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

...

By the way, some physicists speculate that it might be possible to travel to the future but not the past. But it's a one-way trip, so you better like what you find there because you can't come back.

But which future would you travel to? This is where the multiverse comes in. There really isn't just one future. The future is like an unraveled rope stretching out in front of you. Until you choose a branch of that rope, which now becomes your past and the rope behind you is now whole and straight and true, the question still exists, "Which Future?".

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Bring something that you can pawn or sell. A gold nugget, for instance.



I've heard that too, but I believe it's a philosophical argument rather than a scientific one. If you can travel to the past (even a past that you originally came from) it is possible to "alter the time line." But if you travel to the future, there is no danger of that. So future travel doesn't come with the same philosophical contradictions that past travel does.

And if you have watched The Avengers Endgame you will know that when you travel to the past, it now becomes your future, and the future you came from is now your past. And if you change something in your new future, it starts an entire new future for you and there is no way to get back to your old future. Oops!

 

[jaF0]

It'd be excellent if we could just step into a phone booth and dial a year.

 

[gunhilltrain]

LupusDei: I think I got about half of what you are talking about. It would be possible to travel through space and time in the same procedure?

It still would require courage to go into the future, because one has no idea of what one would find there.

 

[gunhilltrain]

And if you have watched The Avengers Endgame you will know that when you travel to the past, it now becomes your future, and the future you came from is now your past. And if you change something in your new future, it starts an entire new future for you and there is no way to get back to your old future. Oops!

I thought I responded to this, but I guess I hit the wrong button. Anyway, it sounds like it's a good thing that this is probably impossible.

 

[jaF0]

At one point the pilots look down and see the New York of 1940, so they are a couple of decades early. If I was them, I'd just say, "The hell with it, this is close enough." Except, I don't think there were any airports then with runways long enough to handle a jetliner. (Could they even communicate with the LaGuardia control tower as they do? I don't know enough about electronics to say.)

Their only option is to attempt a hard landing in a field in Nassau County, say. If they survived that, they'd probably all be detained for a while as spies or something. I guess eventually it would all shake out, and they could make a huge amount of money with sports betting, stock picks, and so forth. I wonder if they would spill the beans about the coming of Pearl Harbor and so forth.

The paradox of time travel.

In The Final Countdown, one of the last scenes is a group of F-14s locating and moving on the attack force of Japanese Zeroes heading for Pearl. They have orders to engage, but before they can, the vortex appears again and they're ordered back to the Nimitz.

What might have happened?

There were also two Zeroes shot down and both Japanese pilots ultimately died. What if one of them might have eventually gone on to be a post-war industry leader in electronics?

 

[gunhilltrain]

I never saw Final Countdown, but I just read a review of it and it seems to be a missed opportunity. Why not keep the Nimitz around and then see what happens? Could the Americans have won the Pacific War with a single Nimitz-class carrier? Maybe. It would have taken a while to find the entire Japanese Navy and destroy it - or just have some of it surrender - but it might have been possible to do it all sometime within 1942.

Then the final scene could be the triumphant entrance of the Nimitz into Tokyo Bay for the final surrender. Well, there still would have been the land war in China to worry about - that would have been less affected by carrier-based air power. But it still would have been possible to cut-off most supply ships headed for China.

 

[jaF0]

I never saw Final Countdown,

You really should.

Captain Yelland:
If the United States falls under attack our job is to defend her in the past, present and future.

Lasky:
And after that?

Captain Yelland:
After that, we take our orders from the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces.

Lasky:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt?


http://www.planetpulp.dk/billeder/film/the_final_countdown/the_final_countdown_01_stor.jpg

 

[LupusDei]

It would be possible to travel through space and time in the same procedure?

Not only possible, probably necessary.

In direction of future it might be possible to stay put, anchor to a local frame of reference by simple continuous presence, the simplest is indeed to hibernate, or be locked in same some kind of stasis capsule. Well, by doing that you're probably at mercy of strangers if failed the choice of a safe place, worse, given enough time there's possibly none. So you may still move, unintentionally and uncontrollably.

Going fast enough through space moves you ahead in time depending on the relative speed as simple byproduct of relativity. If you happen to have a spaceship capable of 75% lightspeed and go to Centaurus Alpha about two lightyears away, spend eight months to turn around and come back in 6 subjective years, you will find your girlfriend, and everyone else, aged eight years eight months in that time (2÷0,75×1,5=4). If you go even faster for longer periods it becomes worse, much worse.

Up to the point that, while no logic is necessary broken by traveling faster than light, there's "illegal" roundabout tracks that can bring you into the past. That may even be more serious limitation to faster than light travel than the seemingly impenetrable physics barrier of the lightspeed itself.

Finally, if you can go into a telephone booth and dial a year, time loses all difference to length or width altogether; you simply dial a four dimensional destination. And, you have to pay very close attention what the origin of those coordinates are, because the same spatial address at different time can drop you in the void of outer space, far behind (or ahead, going into the past) Earth, the Solar system or even galaxy -- if those coordinates happen to be anchored to an outside frame.

 

[Hypoxia]

Mad Scientist woman Wendy builds portable spacetime transit system so she can track her studly but self-absorbed hubby Hank whom she rightly suspects of cheating. Being proactive, Wendy transits to spacetime spots just before Hank's trysts and murders his lovers before they can fornicate. But the law of temporal inertia replaces her victims with fresh fuckers. Damn physics...

 

[sirhugs]

Mad Scientist woman Wendy builds portable spacetime transit system so she can track her studly but self-absorbed hubby Hank whom she rightly suspects of cheating. Being proactive, Wendy transits to spacetime spots just before Hank's trysts and murders his lovers before they can fornicate. But the law of temporal inertia replaces her victims with fresh fuckers. Damn physics...

and each timer she does it, the lover is hotter?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Actually, I remember that I have done a time travel story. And it has a different twist and would probably bypass the exception or correlate right along with the theory that Banner expounded on in The Avenger's Endgame.

Yesterday's Dreams - Instead of sending the body back, they only send the mind back to an earlier you. Kinda along the line of the TV series... crap, the one with Scott Bacula were he jumped around his life time... crap.

Anyway, the mind goes back to a younger you and you have the choice of doing things the same or different. Oh, you remember everything from your previous life or lives, if you do it more than once.

I am working on two sequels to this one. Don't know when I will get them finished though.

 

[Hypoxia]

The reluctant cuckold gets upset that his wife is cheating. Deep down he knows he can't get the job done and needs a real man to do the "heavy lifting". He's able to go back in time, put his ego in check and help his wife fulfill her tremendous sexual potential while being feminized and sissified.

Since humans fuck-up stuff, the space-time-travel machine is not calibrated quite right, so cuckold Chuck lands in a different day and place than intended, like with a performance troupe of flamboyant drag queens. He finds he likes cock, and joins the act.

His yet-to-be bride Bella is a fag hag who amuses herself trying to convert queens. She's good with a strap-on. Chuck (from the future) recognizes Bella (from the past) and hooks with her, even knowing she'll never be faithful. But he can ass-fuck her, pretending she's a guy. Others of the troupe join in. Triple penetrations ensue.

 

[LupusDei]

Instead of sending the body back, they only send the mind back to an earlier you. Kinda along the line of the TV series... crap, the one with Scott Bacula were he jumped around his life time... crap.

Anyway, the mind goes back to a younger you and you have the choice of doing things the same or different. Oh, you remember everything from your previous life or lives, if you do it more than once.

That's called do-over. While it can be interpreted as time travel, it doesn't need to be.

I would distinguish between do-over and "proper" time travel as different sub genres. And perhaps "groundhog day" scenarios as a third.



1. The basic formula of proper time travel is something like this:

-- The Hero is upset by the fact/event A so much he decides to act. He reckons, the only way to amend the current situation is to change event C at past time P.

-- H invent or otherwise obtain control of a time machine, and travel from a present time T back to past time P.

Note that if time P happens to be within his lifetime, there's now two different age copies of H at time P: native H and traveler H(t).

-- H(t) spend limited time in P to introduce changes to event C, morphing the timeline to C* and then "return" to his present -- at present time T+1, where he expects fact/event A to hsve morphed into a different, hopefully desirable fact/event A*(C*).

This scenario obviously breaks causality in several ways, but that's part of the fun. Unfortunately it doesn't naturally prefer happy ending without major "freedom" with the logic. If H(t) were successful in addressing cause of A and able to travel into the future of C* timeline, C* native H would have no reason to invent or obtain a time machine and/or travel into the past, therefore H(t) eiter wouldn't exist... or find H living happily at time T+1, yielding two copies of H, much closer in age and both continuing living into unknowable future.

Btw, for some strange reason, I can't recall notable examples of this duplicate scenario -- specifically arising from successful time travel, that is -- to have been explored. (As opposed to rather popular teleportation doubles.)

A way around that cancelation/duplication is the hero learning to either live with A as it is, or alter the events in the present time T+1 (or T+n, after several unsuccessful attempts of changing the past).

Translating that to OP scenario would yield the husband being upset with his wife's cheating, travel into the past and facilitating her cheating himself, then returning from this first person exploration of the past healed by the new knowledge. The world at present doesn't even change in any way -- his foray into the past was part of the past all along, he only didn't know that. That introduce a paradox (unless we assume the "time machine" didn't even work either; the whole alternative past experience a deliberate delusion/dream), but is probably best attempt to preserve causality.



2. The basic formula of a do-over is something like this:

-- The hero dies. Usually, but not necessarily, more or less from old age, after a life that's perceived as wasted, quite unhappy and rather uninteresting. They may have had potential, but fucked it up, one way or another.

-- The hero wakes up, as younger version of self -- but with perfect memory of the previous, usually (but not necessarily) in what appears to be their own past at a date P. Note that they may have done absolutely nothing deliberate to trigger this, it may just happen independent from their will or desire, and be left totally inexplicable.

-- The hero uses their prescient knowledge, "previously" acquired skills or just confidence to live much more involved life that's usually wastly more successful and may have profound impact on the world around them. Note that in the process their "previous" experience will gradually lose relevance, thus the ending is typically open, letting them to live happily in their "new" world.

While Do-over scenario may be seen as subtype of time travel, it's arguable that it doesn't necessitate that at all, only mild insanity. It is somewhat simpler as purportedly only information is sent "back" (or to an alternative/parallel reality in some cases) and that's, perhaps, easier to suspend disbelief on. Also, the character in question doesn't necessarily need to be hero, indeed, most typical do-overs have them rather as passive looser who's inexplicably granted a second chance without asking their input anyhow. While intricate machines may sometimes be somehow be involved (usually accidentally), there's no strict need for any.

All we have is a character with a vivid dream they believe to be prescient (and are usually proven right), and that somehow gave them skills and experience they shouldn't have -- thus they believe that they have lived an extra life and somehow have it's memories intact. Actually, there's just a bunch of information somehow written into their brains.

It doesn't need to be true, it doesn't need to correspond to the exact reality they're waking up in. Indeed, several do-overs I have seen "send" the hero to a subtly different world than they experienced "previously" (the history may have some differences, or they may be different gender, or the calendar date differ from what it "should" be of them being young "again", but their peers are around regardless) which may also be translated in a way that their vivid prescient dream isn't perfect reflection of their actual reality, but is so influential they're so confused.

Translated to the OP scenario, the husband wakes up, say, at the morning before wedding, with memory of (a dream?) whole life in with he's become so upset about his wife's cheating that he killed himself. That he did that by building intricate mechanism -- in delusional ideas about time travel -- that probably fried his brain by microwaves or whatever, is actually almost besides the point. Upon influence of his dream/memories he goes on to live happily as a wimp/hotwife couple. He may or not spice it with prescient tidbits. Actually, I think a do-over is indeed probably a good fit for what's desired here.



3. "Groundhog Day" takes the do-over and short-circuit it in a tight cycle. The titular movie (with may, but unlikely is the first expression of the idea) had the main character live a single day over and over, probably for a truly ridiculous number of times (including multiple suicides and episodes of insanity), until the cycle finally broke. That it happened after his attempt of a "perfect day" complete with wooing his colleague may or may not have been merely coincidence.

As fun it may be in right hands, this type of scenario has interesting implications for the underlying universe it can happen in. I believe, it is most consistent with the simulation hypothesis. Meaning, if the main character is living within a world that is a simulation, such events may actually make some sense. It may appear either as a glitch or error in the simulation, or be deliberate reruns for a desired result -- think of the player running the simulation as a damn savescumming cheater.

Even so the simulation must display remarkable rigidity, suggesting that it may indeed be rather a heavily scripted game than free, randomized reality. Note that "the player" and the main character are not necessarily the same, actually, unlikely so, even if the main character is displayed as basically the only entity with possess some modicum of free will (everyone else appears bound to a tight script unless reacting to changes introduced by the main character, usually by simply taking different tread of their prescribed script) they are in fact brutally used by the director of the simulation, if such "gods" are ever aware of their plight at all, that is. While it may appear that the exit condition is a highly improbable events caused by actions of the main character, we are necessary unable to make any conclusions what exactly those might have been even after the exit from the cycle is observed; it might be completely coincidental all the like.

 

[Hypoxia]

It'd be excellent if we could just step into a phone booth and dial a year.

Do you land in the same phone booth at some random time in that year? (if that's a Dr Who reference, I'll admit to not seeing the show.) Also, a year in what calendar system? 1985 in the Judaic calendar was a long, long time ago.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Do you land in the same phone booth at some random time in that year? (if that's a Dr Who reference, I'll admit to not seeing the show.) Also, a year in what calendar system? 1985 in the Judaic calendar was a long, long time ago.

What get me is the guy from the present asking the guy running for his life from Mt. Vesuvius in Pompeii what year it was. His answer 79 AD. Did the people back then even know what year it was? I don't even think the Georgian calendar was even invented back then.

Always a problem, time is. And where to land? For a good time machine you need not only the proper time coordinates, but the geographical coordinates down to the micro-second. Other wise you might find yourself materializing inside a tree, or a bolder. Oops!

 

[Hypoxia]

What get me is the guy from the present asking the guy running for his life from Mt. Vesuvius in Pompeii what year it was. His answer 79 AD. Did the people back then even know what year it was? I don't even think the Georgian calendar was even invented back then.

The Julian calendar existed, but no index point (Year Zero) had been set, so years were synced to imperial reigns e.g. 79CE = Year X of the Flavian Dynasty, Year I of Titus' unlucky reign.

Always a problem, time is. And where to land? For a good time machine you need not only the proper time coordinates, but the geographical coordinates down to the micro-second. Other wise you might find yourself materializing inside a tree, or a bolder. Oops!

We lose so many time travelers that way! Those big mysterious explosions, extinction-event meteorites, etc are now explained.

Prof. Ronk in my A Matter of Time (unfinished) series avoids such unpleasantries with his Dimensional Dilator that allows nano-level manipulations of space-time as well as where+when visual previews of landing sites. That's only prudent.