Life imitates SF

[peteryoung]

About ten years ago I wrote to The Guardian's 'Notes & Queries', asking the question "Has anyone seriously investigated time travel?" I got two replies, one explaining how it is, in all probability, technically possible but definitely not recommended, and another wag who replied with something like "Is time travel possible? Of course it is. Margaret Thatcher took Britain back to the Victorian Age and Curtis LeMay bombed North Vietnam back to the Stone Age." There is now an autobiography, The Time Traveller by Ronald Mallett, who has spent his life trying to build a time machine so he could go back and see his late father again. Story here.

Comments

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, there has been a possible breakthrough in time travel research. According to this article it should be possible to create a time loop in the form of a doughnut-shaped vacuum, inside which time would curve back on itself, and theoretically it should possible to do so without resorting to the use of exotic matter. Obviously the biggest problem is that your doughnut-shaped vacuum is likely to be eaten by a time-travelling Homer Simpson (who if I recall correctly used a toaster as a time machine.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

One of my problems with the minutiae of time travel is that we live on a planet that spins and moves at thousands of mph in multiple ways through space, even though we feel static. The time machine sitting on the desk in front of me is not inhabiting the same space-time coordinates as it was five seconds ago when I invented it, so if I want to send something at a different tangent through time outside the flow of normal space-time that we experience, how do I ensure it ends up at precisely the right coordinates I want it to be and at the appointed time, and not in cold hard vacuum thousands of miles adrift of its intended destination?

Enquiring minds need to know.