Friday, July 11, 2008

My time machine

A time machine would make life so much easier. So why, if they exist in the future, hasn't my future self brought one back for me?


1. The Laws of Physics. Time machines aren't actually possible. Dull, dull, dull.

2. Crossing the State Line. The The creation of a functional time machine causes a state change in the Universe. The first part of the Universe is temporally fixed, but the second part is temporally mutable. You cannot cross the temporal schism boundary without causing a rift in the space-time continuum, so you can only time travel within the period where time travel is possible.

3. The Teenage Asshole Paradox. It is inevitable that at some point after the invention of the time machine, some kids will think it's funny to nick their dad's kit, take it for a spin, and kill the inventor, which has the same effect as killing their grand-dad. So every time it gets invented, it gets uninvented.



And I want mine to look like this.

7 comments:

Phil South said...

You want yours to look like this even if it's about the size and shape as a DVD player...

Simon Bisson said...

The only problem is that your only practical time machines are very long rotating cylinders of neutronium. I'd be a bit worried if my future self brought one around one night...

Matt Kelland said...

Why not cheddite? I'm sure the possibilities of cheddite have only just begun to be explored.

(Haven't read that for years!)

Kate Fosk said...

I think you should rotate the brolly thing so it works more as a sunshade, otherwise you are SET, Kate

Anonymous said...

See http://killinghitler.notlong.com for another take on this (as seen in New Scientist's Feedback column not long ago)...

Satscape said...

There's a theory that time travel IS possible, but you could only travel back into the past to the point where time travel was made possible. Eg. I build a time machine in 2015, but I can't travel back to 2010 because time travel had not been invented then. I'm not making this up. It was featured on "It's only a theory" on BBC3 :-)

Damien Valentine said...

Everytime someone invents a time machine, some guy with a blue box shows up and takes it.

On a more serious note, there's a theory that every time someone changes history through time travel, an alternate universe is created where those events play out but the original continues onward.

So for example, your future self travels back in time to 2009 in order to give you a time machine, thus changing history and spawning the alternate reality.

Unfortunately, you're stuck in the reality where history hasn't been changed but maybe sometime in the future you'll build yourself a time machine and go back to 2009... ;)