Friday, December 5, 2008

Bill and Ted VS. Marty McFly

While watching The Big Bang Theory last week (eat a dick, it's funny), Sheldon and Leonard end up discussing time travel, due mostly to the fat that there is a replica time machine in the apartment. They are discussing the prospect of using the time machine to visit a relatively (no pun intended) significant time in the history of physics. Sheldon points out that while it would be entirely possible to transport himself in time, the machine did not move in space. So rather than move to historical Austria (if i recall correctly, but probably not), he would go to the same time period but in Pasadena. This infuriated me as this is supposedly a show about genius physics doctors who, while nerdy, would understand the shortcomings of their own science fiction obsessions.
The key to this argument, as it primarily lies in film (as time travel is not yet possible), is Bill and Ted versus Marty McFly. There are many other cinematic examples of time travel, but none capture my point so well. In Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted come to possess a time machine which will transport them to any time and place they wish by simply dialing the phone. Time travel critics will tell you that a time machine would not be able to move you through space (as previously stated) and so the movie represents a false interpretation of time travel.
Example two is Back to the Future, in which Marty is hindered not only by the space-time continuum, but by the historic significance of personal events. Let us go beyond the fact that Marty's entire family, from his great great grandfather, Shamus, to his children (Marty Jr.) all live in the same crappy California valley town, and talk about his travel. Marty travels in what is considered, at least by Sheldon and other enthusiasts, as pure time travel. He moves from point X,Y,Z,t1 to point X,Y,Z,t2. Doc Brown would call this "fourth dimensional travel", and purest would call this correct.
Here is your problem, you microscopic, ignorant, retards: the earth does not sit still. While Hill Valley may seem like the same location by earthly coordinates (lat/long, UTM, even State Plane), it is not even close to the same place on a universal scale. You have a rotating earth, an orbiting earth, a moving solar system, and a moving galaxy. The truth is that an exact movement through time would put you out in the vacuum of space in the smallest of time scales, not to mention 30 years.
I argue, then, that all time machines portrayed can move in both space and time, so if they can put you in the same place (locally speaking), then they could put you anywhere in space at any time. This is what Bill and Ted's phone booth did, and is the most accurate portrayal of a time machine, unless they make a movie about time travellers who end up frozen in the depths of space.
This being said, a true physicist would tell you that there is not space and time, there is only space-time, because as one approaches the speed of light, relativity causes time and space to both be melded forms of one another. This is the world i want to one day live in.

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