Context: He's in the files
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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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?
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.
That's not really true. First, if you can invent time travel you can probably do the math to calculate positions of objects. Second, even if you do need a beacon, you could use something that already exists. For example, radio waves. Earth has been shooting off radio waves for a fair amount of time now. That could be used as a beacon. Also, you could do something like having your time machine do small jumps, check it's relative position, then adjust. This would solve just about every issue.
You can easily cross calculate between various, inertial frames of reference. The problem is that earth isn't sitting still in an inertial frame. We spin around the sun, and we orbit the center of our galaxy. We also get nudged about by the pull of other stars.
Tracking a time jump (or technically a time-space jump) would be easy, if you just wanted to be within the solar system. With measurements the earth-moon gap would not be too hard. Hitting a surface exactly would be another story. Miss by a meter and your cut in half by a wall or floor.
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
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 leaving 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 :).
Bless you for furthering this meme
Arbeit macht Frei... but also, Arbeit is the energy transfer that occurs when a force is applied to move an object over a distance
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?
Perchance.
So a more intelligent place than here
On average, yep.
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.