this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 83 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

A time machine would necessarily need to have some way of defining what reference frame one is stationary in space relative towards, because there is no universal frame that everything moves relative to. This suggests that a time machine ought to let you move through space as well as time

[–] essteeyou@lemmy.world 24 points 7 months ago (4 children)

So to travel into the future and be in the "same place" relative to your planet you'd need to solve the n-body problem for at least your local system to a suitable length of time. A slight error might mean you appear inside the planet or in outer space.

Or maybe I don't understand this stuff. :-)

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago

Mass bends spacetime so one could assert that a time machine could anchor itself to a sufficiently large mass, just like how things in orbit are still bound to the earth's mass.

[–] Zorque@kbin.social 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You'd also need to solve time travel.

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago

Eh, let's cross that bridge when we get to it

[–] SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

You'd just send a drone back, to say 100 years ago, first and have it send you exact coordinates into the future.

Time paradox aside you'd probably have this data already, with all alternatives and can correctly time jump right away.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 points 7 months ago

But by the time you have collected and evaluated all the drone data you and all the masses around you would already be in a totally different configuration, making the data useless.

But maybe a little jump to the time when you sent the drone out would be easier and then you could use the drone's data.

[–] akilou@sh.itjust.works 5 points 7 months ago

And this is why you need the spice melange