LogFAQs > #943749733

WhiskeyDisk posted...

The problem I've always had with time travel as a plot device is that your galaxy has rotated x amount, your solar system has moved y amount, and your planet has rotated z amount in reference to the moment you left.

The general handwavey assumption is that most time machines are complex enough to take that sort of motion into account, so you're not hard-anchoring to a single point in space as much as you're moving through both space AND time, so while from your perspective you haven't moved, you very much have.

(I've read at least two stories where this is a plot point, and someone deliberately disables the focal referent of the time machine to travel a fraction of a second through time, which jumps them miles away from the point of origin, which they use as a means of escaping a dangerous situation.)

Or there's an assumption that the universe has a degree of ontological inertia, and that a certain degree of symbolism is involved, so you sort of HAVE to anchor to that point in conceptual space to make time travel possible at all (this is more common in stories with magical or psychic time travel).



Zeus posted...

And it would definitely be moot under certain forms of time travel, like leaping...

Ironically, the form of time travel we tend to think is the only one that could actually work in the real world wouldn't be affected either, as it would require anchored wormholes that could be spun to high levels of acceleration, which would always begin at the exact same point in space-time.

Which was part of what inspired the half-dozen or so episodes of Stargate where a gate winds up accidentally sending them through time (or parallel realities) instead of merely traversing space.

But this sort of crap is why I mostly hate really hard sci-fi anyway (and the people who read it), and mostly hew towards much softer sci-fi or space fantasy, where the answer to every science question is "A Space Wizard did it. Now fuck off, nerd."

I've ranted about MASS FROM THE MASS DIMENSION! and EYE PUNCHES FROM THE PUNCH DIMENSION! before, so I won't go into it again, but that ties into the same problem - when people who know too much for their own good and have way too much free time, they start asking stupid questions that result in stupid answers, and then we get stupid stories. I don't care if the giant monster violates Square-Cube Law or that dragons shouldn't be able to fly because their wings shouldn't be able to support their weight. I'd rather have entertaining stories than strictly accurate science.
---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family