Context: He’s in the files
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I have thoughts.
It was ridiculous that Hawking thought a time traveler would make it to his party for several reasons. There are a few models of time travel, and only one of them has an internal logic that allows for traveling without paradoxical consequences; multiversal divergence.
Our version of the time traveler party was one of an infinite amount of time traveler parties that hawking hosted throughout the multiverse. A time traveler would be traveling to that time like picking a grain of sand on a beach, where each grain of sand is a near identical party to the last.
As our version of the party diverges from the realities with time travelers who chose to travel to the hawking party, there would be a diminishing set of infinities containing time travelers that were attempting the journey.
Thus while the chances of a time traveler going to the party are 100%, the party being our version of the party approach 0 infinitely fast.
You can spend your entire life thinking about it and you Will never reach a definitive answer. Or, you can spend a day to set up an experiment and throw a party.
Spoiler Alert: the time travelers are the ones who took the picture of Hawking.
Now, I’m speaking hypothetically, legally, and for educational purposes only… you fast-forward a few decades and suddenly certain names appear in court documents and flight logs, not convictions, not proof of wrongdoing, just… associations. Enough to make a careful chrononaut say, ‘You know what? I’m not popping back in time to shake hands and eat shrimp.’
The absence at that party wasn’t evidence that time travel failed. It was evidence that it worked, and everyone who could come already knew how the story looked later.
History doesn’t just judge actions. It judges proximity. And no self-respecting time traveler shows up early to something that turns awkward in hindsight.
The issue for me is that, let’s say that one day a magical device does allow time travel, it would also have to do teleportation relative to some point since everything is in motion. What would all of time and space use for a relative location? Can’t be the earth or sun since those are moving. Even our galactic cluster is moving. So if you went back in time a year, the earth wouldn’t be at the same point in space even though it’s done a full revolution. I’m no space scientist but I don’t imagine we have a solution.
More pragmatically, time travel for a casual party would be risky because you’re carrying germs many generations apart. Time travelers would wear full-body suits or risk dramatically altering history. They could not drink or eat anything.
Okay yes but there’s also a bit of dissonance, if I learned that Vlad the impaler had a time travel party to prove it and I had the capability to do so, I wouldn’t give a shit, would go see him and also take a gun just to keep myself safe. Safe. But it’s somebody from hundreds of years ago, why do I care about any of that?
Sure. This statement seems harsh but I’m playing devil’s advocate here, the further you get away from the situation, the less it really matters
Congratulations you took back covid19 and wiped out humanity.
I’d argue it’s the other way around: The further you travel in the past the bigger becomes your impact on current times.
There is also the idea that time machines work like telephones. You need to have a receiving end made first before you can call it.
Half this comment thread legitimately knows how they work
The other half is speculation
The truth is in the middle, Lemmy people are pretty well versed in science fiction and science :>
Using “Knows how they work” while talking about goddamn time machines cracks me up every time.
It’s like you’re confidently arguing that the inside of a black hole is another universe where time runs backwards and dogs meow ;)
(For tonal clarity I’m not taking the piss, it’s just funny when folk get really into a scifi topic and get all fanfiction about it)
So what? Everyone who understands how things work knowns that dogs meow when placed inside black holes.
Is it because our solar system is hurdling through space at over 1.5 million miles per hour, so anyone who time travels will find themselves alone in an empty void?
So a more intelligent place than here
On average, yep.
There’s no universal frame of reference. Any theoretical time travel would likely need a beacon of some sort to calibrate their arrival point, meaning you couldn’t travel back beyond the point time travel was established.
You know what they say: the best time to build a time machine is 50 years ago.
I think that’s basically the movie Primer too, they’d turn the machine on, go hide in an apartment for X amount of time, then go back to the machine and emerge 5 minutes after they turned it on and just walked away.
But gravity effects time, sticking close to a planet isn’t going to be hard.
Ironically enough the first (if we ever get them) time machines are going to be a hell of a lot like modern “UFOs” are described. You couldn’t risk landing on the planet, elevation changes are what’s really a nightmare to account for. Show up and hour early and everything is a foot higher because of how fast we’re spinning.
So you’d want a space craft, because space is big and empty. And realistically it’s going to take something bigger than a telephone booth or even the 1980s embodiment of Florida on four wheels with a hood designed to do cocaine off of to house a time machine.
If time travel existed, it would be invented at all time periods simultaneously
Show up and hour early and everything is a foot higher because of how fast we’re spinning.
Any actual process for doing it would probably be continuous in some way. Even if it’s just the machine making that part of the trip. Just living existence at some time and arriving at a different one doesn’t make a lot of sense.
So, just more reason to do it in space.
Imagine your time machine has spiders at the time of your arrival, because it had a small defect that grew into an opening after several years.
“Ha ha, I can’t see anything, but it seems like time travel tickles”
Damn physic laws removing the fun from physics
Don’t get me started on the second law of thermogoddamics (I’ll never stop :).
So if I was going to correct you by referencing the thermodynamic law that forbids “never stopping” but upon further inspection determined that was the joke in the first place, does that mean I have created an example of the zeroth law?
Basically half the plot of quantum break
I’ve seen this take a lot it feels like and it boggles the mind why. If someone figures out time travel they ipso facto will have figured out the space travel as well.
If you can travel through time you can travel through space.
Not enough people bust out ipso facto anymore.
Also agree, but mostly chuffed on the phraseology.
Does it count if you bust it out ex post facto?
That logic assumes that there is some universal way if measuring the position of the Earth, but there is no absolute system for measuring position in space. Location, distance, velocity, and even simultaneity depend entirely on the choice of a frame of reference. And the frame in which the earth is stationary is no less valid than any other.
Also the type of time machine has a bearing here. The traditional H.G. Wells vehicle-type doesn’t jump, but moves smoothlythrough all the intervening moments in time, so there’s no reason it wouldn’t stay firmly on the surface. And a time portal that forms a connection to the same apparatus at a different time would have no problem either, since the machine itself doesn’t move except in the ordinary way.
If i had a vaccume and a carbon nanotube rotating such that the ends are moving at the speed of light, and another going the opposite direction (no net rotational inertia outside the device), I would have a dimensional anchor as moving it would cause spacetime to exceed the speed limit.
Voila, I just created a sci-fi plot device
Read The Billiard Ball by Asimov to understand why a gravitationally “locked” device would not work.
You lose the frame of reference to the astral bodies around it, therefore it stays in place as the Earth and everything else simply move past it. Essentially useless as an anchor.
My theory is that time travel still follows the curve of the space time continuum.
Listen, dude: I’ve got a lot more concerts in my list before I get to your lame-ass party.
Would you have missed Metallica in Moscow for some party you assumed nobody would attend? Fuck no.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go sell all your grandmothers some really strong modern weed to get into Hendrix, New Year’s Eve, 1969.
Can’t wait to hear Machine Gun live.
lame-ass party
Since the time traveler would be from the future, he’d have already known that nobody went to the party.
XKCD rule: lame ass-party.
Right? We only show up in some timelines as a fucking joke.
Or… isn’t there the theory that time travel just creates an alternate world. but all timelines exist… so there’s a second line where there’s 50 people that brought their year 3000 band, and their instant ALS cure pod, partied with Hawking then arrested trump for his crimes before he could run for president.
Would you have missed Metallica in Moscow for some party you assumed nobody would attend? Fuck no.
Let’s see… the egotistical pricks that sued anyone that wanted to like them… in an authoritarian shithole… or hanging out with Stephen Hawking…
Tough choice. Can I convince Lars to sleep in the disaster bed? Or help them with arrangements so that songs that have about 1 minute of interesting music don’t have 8 minutes worth of filler?
This was a million and a half people vibing so hard they broke their government. I’m not massing it no matter how much of an asshole Lars Ulrich is.
No need to assume. You already know nobody attended. And you can also be part of the joke if it’s one.
My God… Is the fact that boomers think '60s weed was mind altering proof of time incursions from the dank future???
The strong weed and its effects hide me from temporal law enforcement.
Boomers are weak
I’d definitely go see Freddie at Live-aid at least a dozen times.
Been there. Got like a dozen t shirts. Nobody on eBay thinks they’re real tho
Wasn’t it already a known fact? I swear I’ve read about it already like 5 years ago, and I’m not a time traveler.
Jan 2024… so yes, 5 years is about how long ago that feels.
Really? My mind seems to be playing tricks on me already…
Goddamn so everyone’s a bastard, eh?
He wasn’t known for being a great guy, just a really smart guy.
The name of the late Cambridge physicist was included in a 2015 email in which Epstein told Maxwell to offer a reward to any of Giuffre’s “friends acquaitonts [sic] family” who could prove false an allegation that Hawking had participated in an “underage orgy” in the Virgin Islands. Hawking, who died in 2018, has not been accused of a crime related to Epstein.
Like 2/3 of us plebs are not. But if any of us becomes rich or famous…
That kinda makes it sound like most people are bastards, they just don’t usually get the opportunity to show it.
This is a very funny joke.
