Okay, so my mind was wandering yet again on the drive to work this morning.

Here's the setup:

Let's assume I have designed a time machine. This time machine, essentially, changes the "fourth dimension," time, by slowing it down or speeding it up. (From this point on, any justification for how and why the time machine works will be mostly based off of science fiction and conjecture.) Let's also assume that the time machine only modified time outside of, say, a 1.5 meter bubble around me.

Now, if I was standing still, away from a bunch of people, I could turn on the time machine and then walk around those people without much problem. If I bumped into them, let's assume that they'd respond the same way most people do in "time travel" fiction - I, the time traveller, can move or affect or bump into them, but they're "frozen in time" and therefore cannot change me.

However, if I was driving, and decided to turn on the time machine, everything outside of the 1.5 meter bubble would slow to a stop except for me. This would mean that I'd, essentially, slam into the steering wheel of my truck with the same force of impact that I'd experience in a car crash. Because I'd have faster inertia - the time 1.5 meters around me is progressing faster than the time outside of that bubble, which would encompass some of my truck - I'd experience a car accident within my own vehicle. I'd have to drive to the side of the road, slow to a stop, then activate the time machine.

...I guess, from at point, I couldn't even use the truck, since the particles of gasoline inside it would be firing and exploding at a slower rate of time than those 1.5 meters around me.

Agree? Disagree? Ideas?

 

...

 

1.21 giggawatts!?!?!

 

great scott!

 

If said time travel only affected living tissue, you'd rip yourself out of your clothes and then hit the steering wheel.

 

X= 7.3 Rods

You would need a larger time machine to encompass your vehicle.

I think if you're going to this much trouble, you should just build a triplechanger TF and drive it.

 

Here's something that's always bothered me about time travel...a time machine would also have to be able to transport you through space. Let's say you go back into the past a month, if the machine takes you back to that exact spot, you'd be floating in outer space, not the same spot on the Earth you left from.

 

I think the truck would run just fine. Remember that the truck is operating in its own frame of reference, which is a frame of reference where time and physical events appear to pass much more slowly than in your 1.5 meter bubble frame of reference. The truck would operate just fine, from the perspective of people in the same frame of reference as your truck.

As for the wreck inside of your truck, I think inertia would be conserved even after you switched on the time machine, meaning that you would still be moving forward at the same rate as you were before you switched on the machine, until you begin to move around in your newly generated frame of reference. I don't think you would slam into the dash even if you hit the brakes or smashed into a wall, in which case it would probably take a VVVEEEERRRRRYYY LLLLLOOOOONNNNGGGG TTTTIIIIMMMMMEEE for the truck to slow down, at least from your accelerated perspective, and you may not even be able to percieve the deceleration of the vehicle.

 

Would universal forces still effect you? Would gravity still hold you down?

Or is time simply an abstract concept created by man?

 

So do you have the ability to slow/increase time, or do you use a time machine.

(Steel car parhaps)

 

I simply can't wrap my mind around that. Well, I can try. I'd figure that part of the reason gravity works is because time is progressing at a constant pace, causing the force of gravity to occur successively. I.e., if gravity, as a force, was considered like a wave, then slowing down time would widen the space between the peaks & troughs of that wave, causing the force of gravity to "push" on objects on the surface of the planet with less intensity. Does that mean that the people would kinda float away from the earth and then come back down with each slower-arriving waveforce of gravity? Hell if I know.

Gravity's a result of our planet spinning, the sun spinning, our galaxy spinning...to change a force that monstrous would require one hell of a time machine. Far beyond me just trying to get to work on time, I'd be slowing down the entire universe for the sole purpose of arriving before 9:00. That's a whole lot of stuff that I'm prolonging for my own sake.

Fuck that. I'll just be late.

EDIT: PS: I love fshuler.

 

^ yes but essentially you have not slowed down the world. You have just increased your own speed. So as it is you would not have affected the world, just your place in it.

 

This just reminds me a an old Judge Dredd story where the perp has a time belt that makes time for him pass at an accelerated rate.

When Dredd catches up with him, the perp activates the belt to try to escape, just as Dredd shoots him. Inside his time bubble the perp slowly bleeds to death in the time it takes for Dredd to run across the room.

The moral to this is don't mess with time kids. You'll end up in the future and underground people will eat you.

 

Aight, aight, word. Let's say we do it the other way; I speed up, relative to the world. I guess the question then becomes does gravity, forces of inertia, etc. affect me at the same time-accelerated rate?

 

Since we're talking about silly science, here's another quandary...

If you had your molecules shrunk and were 6" tall, wouldn't you suffocate since the air molecules would all still be normal sized? Same goes for food and water, but that wouldn't matter if you couldn't breath.

 

I would assume that the mass of your molecules would stay the same thus gravity would still work.

 

I'm a bit confused....

What about the car crash again?

 

Could you use this time accelerating device to look at women's boobs without them knowing about it? Like, your moving so fast that they wouldn't be able to perceive you, right? So why not sneak a peek? Then it would be a moral question, I suppose.

 

Dude, once I've got the time machine, all bets are off. Morals be damned - if they can't catch me, I ain't worried.

 

true to that.

I don't even what to think of the stupid shit I would do.