2.3 KiB
[HSF] Build a Time Machine
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Author: u/MugaSofer *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3zla17/hsf_build_a_time_machine/
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Score: 6
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Created: 2016-01-05T17:55:48
Post:
[removed]
Comments:
u/Nighzmarquls [+3] (7 minutes later)
can we drag the wormholes? that is the important bit.
Because to build a time machine you need to have the wormholes in a particular arrangement.
The simplest of which is you tow it along with a relativistic starship so that you have a pair of worm holes that allow a round trip of going x lightyears in the past.
If the mouths of the wormholes cannot be towed and the arrangement of wormholes is not setup to allow timeloops then you can't build a time machine to my knowledge.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (57 minutes later)
The wormholes cannot be moved. Sorry, I meant to make that explicit, it's a pretty major constraint.
u/time_munchkin [+5] (2 hours later)
In what reference frame are the wormholes stationary? Can the two mouths of a wormhole be fixed in different reference frames? How about the mouths of two separate wormholes?
If we assume that all the wormhole mouths must be stationary with respect to each other, we'll have to use gravitational time dilation to set up our time machine. I think this setup should work:
Wormhole A has mouth A1 in a convenient location with no nearby large masses and mouth A2 near a massive object (ideally, just outside the event horizon of a black hole). Wormhole B has mouth B1 near A2 but at some distance from the black hole, and mouth B2 near A1.
The difference in gravitational potential builds up a time difference across A that will eventually allow A1->A2->B1->B2 to arrive before you left
u/Sparkwitch [+2] (58 minutes later)
Congrats. You're done.
Indestructible solid-state hibernation is a time machine. It lets people travel to the future. That's the dream of cryonics, right? Go to sleep today in your crumbling, fallible body and wake up as part of The Culture?
Relativistic spacecraft are significantly more expensive time machines, probably better used for more mundane purposes.
u/scooterboo2 [+2] Tinker 3: Embeded Systems (5 hours later)