"Space and duration are one."
- Edger Allen Poe (1848)
"There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it… Scientific people… know very well that time is only a kind of space."
- HG Wells (from The Time Machine)
The theory of time travel is more correctly described as “spacetime travel”. Because just traveling to a set time and not specifying a physical coordinate and ignoring the rotation of the earth around the sun, could have disastrous results.
For example, if one were to leave the timeline on a set date, planning to return to the same physical place three weeks earlier, the earth would be in a different place in it’s rotation they would be reentering the timeline in the middle of space and not on the earth itself.
But if one left the timeline and I had a specific spacetime (time and physical coordinates) to “land” in, then the rotation of the earth would not be an issue.
2 comments:
It's not just the orbit of the Earth, but the orbit of the galaxy itself. You'd have to choose a physical location relative to a constant fixed position, presumably the centre of the Universe.
I remember a science fiction show where they had a weapon that would send you one second into the future, and since the Earth travels at over 100,000 km/h, that would send you about 30km away (and not along its surface).
I wonder if the end/opening of the wormhole wouldn't be affected by the earth's gravity the same way the moon is.
So it would always be pulled back to earth's surface.
At least I like to hope that's the way it is.
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