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Would a time machine also need to be a space machine?

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Would a time machine also need to be a space machine?

Yahadreas
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Posted 05/26/09 - 09:23 AM: Subject: Would a time machine also need to be a space machine?	#1
It's a rather simple question; would a time machine also need to be a space machine? Let us say that I were to have built a time machine. I use it to get back 6 months in time. However, I would assume that in travelling back in time I would remain at the same spacial co-ordinates. But 6 months ago the Earth was on the other side of the sun. I'd end up in empty space. Which isn't at all good. So, would a time machine also need to take into account the spacial location of your target as well as the time period?
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Kwalish Kid
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Posted 05/26/09 - 09:48 AM:	#2
What are spatial coordinates? Six months ago, the Earth was on the side of the sun that the Earth was on, so I don't think it's moved.
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Yahadreas
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Posted 05/26/09 - 10:06 AM:	#3
The fact that the Earth rotates around the Sun shows that the Earth can be on one side and then the other. 6 months ago, the Earth was on the side opposite to that which it is on now.
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xzJoel
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Posted 05/26/09 - 11:12 AM:	#4
Yahadreas wrote: The fact that the Earth rotates around the Sun shows that the Earth can be on one side and then the other. 6 months ago, the Earth was on the side opposite to that which it is on now. Have you ever heard that the earth is the center of the universe, but that assuming otherwise makse the math a lot easier? It would seem to me that a time machine requires you to leave the realm of cause and effect so long as you are engaged in time travel, so your point is well taken that the time machine is in a confused location once it goes into time travel. Why not suppose that for the length of time travel, your machine becomes the center of the universe and the math gets really complicated? You are in a time machine after all, so you've already violated some pretty basic ideas in the first place. I suppose the only way to know if a time machine must also be a space machine is to try it out. But if you wind up in the center of a star, I don't know that you or your machine would survive long enough to provide meaningful data.
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Posted 05/26/09 - 03:38 PM:	#5
If you started in let's say London and traveled back through time, then the machine would automatically travel back along the route earth and you would end up still in London.
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Kwalish Kid
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Posted 05/26/09 - 05:20 PM:	#6
Yahadreas wrote: The fact that the Earth rotates around the Sun shows that the Earth can be on one side and then the other. 6 months ago, the Earth was on the side opposite to that which it is on now. Could it be that the Earth's rotation around the sun is exactly counteracted by some other motion or concatenation of motions? And relative to what? If we are travelling back in time, what is my reference point?
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upstatemind
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Posted 05/26/09 - 05:36 PM:	#7
Yahadreas wrote: It's a rather simple question; would a time machine also need to be a space machine? Let us say that I were to have built a time machine. I use it to get back 6 months in time. However, I would assume that in travelling back in time I would remain at the same spacial co-ordinates. But 6 months ago the Earth was on the other side of the sun. I'd end up in empty space. Which isn't at all good. So, would a time machine also need to take into account the spacial location of your target as well as the time period? Is it safe to say that it's already been distinguished that we MUST use a spacecraft to time travel. and that we must be in space to physically travel through time?
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Posted 05/26/09 - 07:25 PM:	#8
It depends on how you traveling through time. What's with today's schools. The earth doesn't "rotate around the sun", the term is "revolve". But technically, the earth doesn't revolve around the sun, they are locked in a mutual gravitational orbit where the sun, due to its significantly greater mass dominates. Their combined mass, (along with all the other solar bodies), create a virtual center of mass. However, relativity shows that there is no absolute spatial reference. We only use very slow moving systems for local reference, (comparing against stars in constellations which move very slowly compared to us). You have to ask if your time machine moved relative to ... what? So, you have to work out how you are traveling through time, then you should see the pretty obvious answer of how your position is space is maintained. Movies usually place the hero in a time that is interesting and anachronistic. How come people in movies who travel back to the time of the Roman Empire always end up in central Rome, (and half the time, everyone speaks American English)? It is a plot device, used to move the story forward. It isn't going to be as interesting to have the hero be stuck in Antarctica or the moon.
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123savethewhales
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Posted 05/26/09 - 10:04 PM:	#9
I am curious, does the current model of space time requires the other 3 dimensions to change just because you move in the time dimension? I always have the assumption that, if your enter the time machine on May 27, 2009, and set it to half an year, you will come out of the machine May 27, 2009 since nothing in the 3 spacial dimensions has changed, so everything is exactly as you left even though you have actually moved back in the time dimension. Or it can take you to a multiverse that is in the physical state of this universe 6 months ago. But this wouldn't be a true time travel. However if you make a machine that breaks causality law, then your destination would be unpredictable. You would have to ask rather where you end up would have earth at all, let alone the actual past that you have known.
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swstephe
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Posted 05/28/09 - 01:54 AM:	#10
123savethewhales wrote: I am curious, does the current model of space time requires the other 3 dimensions to change just because you move in the time dimension? I always have the assumption that, if your enter the time machine on May 27, 2009, and set it to half an year, you will come out of the machine May 27, 2009 since nothing in the 3 spacial dimensions has changed, so everything is exactly as you left even though you have actually moved back in the time dimension. No, there is no requirement for the others to change, but you are treating a "dimension" as an absolute coordinate system. But what is that system related to? Remember the "Universe Song" from Monty Python's meaning of life, (do you know how long I've been waiting to make a philosophical reference to that movie)? The Universe Song wrote: Just remember that your standing on a planet that's evolving, and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour... That's orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned, the sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see, are moving at a million miles a day in an outer spiral-arm at forty thousand miles an hour of the galaxy we call the Milky Way. So where you were one minute ago is a long way from where you are now, but that is assuming your absolute coordinate system is relative to the apparent center of galaxies by red shift. If you stuck a pin in the earth surface, used GPS coordinates, you wouldn't have to move at all. The problem with relativity is that both coordinate systems are equally valid. I would lean toward "yes", you have to change spatial coordinates because the effect of you sticking to the surface of the earth depends on where you were previously, (pressed up against the surface by earth's gravity well). Without that "history", you can't really say where you were before that point.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

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