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From: scs@wucs.UUCP (Steve Swope)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: Re: Why shouldn't time travel leave you in the same spot?
Message-ID: <1169@wucs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Sep-85 20:32:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: wucs.1169
Posted: Wed Sep 18 20:32:23 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 03:49:52 EDT
References: <9793@ucbvax.ARPA> <323@looking.UUCP> <2243@sdcrdcf.UUCP> <2997@sdcc3.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Washington U. in St. Louis, CS Dept.
Lines: 27
Summary: Time travelers aren't necessarily that stupid

In article <2997@sdcc3.UUCP>, ewa@sdcc3.UUCP (Eric Anderson) writes:
> In article <1016@rayssd.UUCP> m1b@rayssd.UUCP (M. Joseph Barone) writes:
> > ....  A stationary time machine
> >should glue the traveler to the exact location on Earth no matter how
> >far back or forward in time he goes.
> 
> Consider: The earth rotates around it's axis at 1000 mph at the equator,
> around the sun at around 50,000 mph, and the sun rotates around the center
> of the milky way at ?? mph (anyone care to compute that?)
> 
> If a time machine put you back even one hour at the exact same spot, you
> would be more than 51,000 miles from the earth (which would go whizzing
> past/through you one hour later)
> 

Anyone clever enough to build a time machine in the first place is clever
enough to account for the displacement. Likely, there would be a subsystem
which would allow the pilot/operator to lock the machine's position relative
to some object (e.g.; the local planet). Alternatively, the travel might
occur in n-space (n>4), so that you would disappear at one place/time
and reappear at another. By analogy, consider lifting the tip of a pencil
from one place on a sheet of paper and moving it to another.

				Steve Swope (aka scs@wucs.UUCP)

"Brigadier, A straight line may be the shortest path between
 two points, but it is by no means the most interesting!"