Everything is relative. There is no "with respect to the Universe", and there is no "exact same spot" without some kind of point of reference. So this hypothetical device would need to let us configure which frame of reference you want to be frozen in, and hope that your calculations are accurate enough to take into account anything that will have happened in the past (or the future), to bring you where you want to be and with the right velocity. With the correct frame of reference, you could, indeed, materialize exactly where you are relative to Earth.. any time in the past or the future. So that could be one possible solution. Of course, such a device would make it possible to theoretically travel anywhere, though admittedly that would be rather useless as you still need to know a lot of information about where you are going.. and perhaps there are energy constraints involved as well.

As far as time machine physics go, anyway.

Well its not exactly a movie and I dont particularly liked it when they were showing it recently over here, but there was the 60s tv series Time Tunnel where they actually also moved in space while traveling through time.

Everything is relative. There is no "with respect to the Universe", and there is no "exact same spot" without some kind of point of reference.

I was going to mention that everything is “with respect to something else” but also assume there is some kind of non-moving universal coordinate system, even if there is nothing in the universe anywhere that is not moving relative to that.

Traveling through time would either work on such a system or more likely by the laws of physics that allow time to bend etc., so it would basically just be a static universal coordinate system with the addition of bending of time due to gravity etc.

If traveling through time even temporarily puts someone into that coordinate system (and why would it be based off any other coordinate system? Same “place”, different time), it must be by definition impossible to travel any useful distance through time because we have no idea what that coordinate system is and cannot possibly account for it.

If the laws of motion are in effect during a negative time period, tons of energy would be lost and you would likely be frozen to absolute 0 even if you landed in the right spot, so we know that any location-correcting technique can only happen just before or just after the jump, both of which are impossible. Even if time-travel is based purely on energy and time, meaning that there is no amount of time between the jump and the landing, that only concretes the idea that position-correction is and will always be impossible.

The best we would ever have is to make the jump from empty space to empty space and let the person try to guide the ship back to wherever Earth is in the new time.



I guess I am a little frustrated that when people were trying to debunk him back when he was “around” (I mean, active as John Titor, not the guy living in Florida) that no one posted this kind of thing. The type of travel he described is obviously never going to be possible.

What happens when you materialize on landing, let’s say in the same spot for convenience? Do the blades of grass or weeds merge into your feet? What about the air molecules? I doubt that is survivable.
How does it know which atoms to send back and which to not? The “tires” of his craft were touching the ground, were they not?


And the most obvious: Why do the cameras of tomorrow suck so much compared to those of today?


L. Spiro

(I don't think I'll watch the video. I'll trust your judgement that it's stupid enough to not be worth the time).

If you just "blip" from one point in time to another, yes you would probably end up in cold space somewhere. But I think it's reasonable to assume that the "travel" part of time travel would be subject to gravity in some way. Whether it's travel through a wormhole or a transmission of a signal to the past where atoms are reconfigured upon entry, gravity is going to be involved in some way. Though it's possible gravity might not be strong enough to keep a body on Earth, there is still the possibility that it is.

But the act of going to the past changes the past such that a return trip to where you began isn't likely. Even if all you did was land and take off again, you can't get back to where you started from.

What happens when you materialize on landing, let’s say in the same spot for convenience? Do the blades of grass or weeds merge into your feet? What about the air molecules? I doubt that is survivable.
How does it know which atoms to send back and which to not? The “tires” of his craft were touching the ground, were they not?

I guess it would work in a way like in Terminator, where the time-sphere-thing burned through everything, maybe the materials inside the sphere are exchanged between the two time-planes.

Oooo! Sci-Fi thread!

I'm not a proponent of time travel as a reality, but it's fun to use it as a narrative device.

Time is often considered to be the 4th dimension of time-space.

But I think that it is separate from the physical 3 dimensions in that it merely measurement of activity and not physically traversible. (traversable?)

(You can't hold out your hands and physically exchange an hour. You actually have to let the time pass on its own.)

But if it was traversible, it would be very linear like fast-forwarding or rewinding a tape.

But the future is not set and the past is, so only the rewind function is potentially possible.

And once rewound, the future relative to the point of arrival is back in flux (and un-traversible) due to quantum mechanics.

This also limits the time travel to the traveler's lifetime as the rewind takes place for all of reality simultaneously.

The time traveler would de-age to the point and time of the arrival (a-la The Butterfly Effect).

The only thing that would be different as a time traveler is that you have the memories of the time lost in the rewind.

(Sign me up! I've made some doozy mistakes in my lifetime! And I could cheat on sports gambling a la Doc Brown!)

That, of course, is also unlikely as the neural paths in the brain would also de-age and lose the memories they made in the process.

So that solves the problem of spacial coordinates during time travel, but alas, it makes new issues that just cannot be overcome.

This won't stop me from enjoying the popcorn-flicks though.

Just don't tell me it really happened.

I'll stare at you mightily.

I should be clear on exactly what it is I am discussing.

For those who may not know, John Titor is a troll from Florida who went to message boards in 2,000 and 2,001 (though quotes from him exist from before that from IRC and faxes) who claimed to be a soldier from the future.
Now, we all know it is bullshit, but he was able to convince enough people to gain a cult following and much more media attention than he ever deserved.
A play has been made out of it, a Japanese visual novel, novel, manga, and anime series called Steins;Gate is basically based around it, etc.

I never got involved as part of an effort to see a lame troll hopefully disappear and be forgotten, as all trolls should be.
I didn’t speak up about the obvious flaws behind his story that I posted above so as to avoid “feeding the trolls.”


It’s bad enough that people have fed him as much as they have, but now I friggin’ movie? Enough is enough.
Let the damned story die.


So ultimately, this isn’t about time-travel specifically or movies about time-travel, this is about the sad state of the world in which we live that is so full of gullible people that the simple trollings of a guy from Florida could come this far.

This won't stop me from enjoying the popcorn-flicks though.
Just don't tell me it really happened.
I'll stare at you mightily.

That is the problem with this case. I can suspend my disbelief as well as the next person, but that isn’t what is being asked by the John Titor troll, and so by association neither is this movie.
Movies about time-travel are generally fine because they don’t make any claims as to the factuality behind their premises.
John Titor claimed to be real, and by extension you may as well practice your stare for this movie.


L. Spiro