So I just got done Watching tonight's episode of Lost. No spoilers if you didn't watch, but I will say it involved time travel. Lots of it. The more I watched the more I kept yelling "No. NO. That doesn't make any fucking sense, time doesn't work like that, you braindead plebs" at my tv. I know time travel is mostly theoretical, but can /sci/ explain time travel to me as best as they can? I'm sure you understand it better than Lost's writers do
Name:
Anonymous2008-03-05 16:13
You enter the time machine with steady determination. One hand hovers over the time-dial while the other clutches the polished old rifle from granddad's WWII trunk. Irony aside, you fully intend to disprove the paradox. 1942:04:06:11:43:00AM. The time is ripe, you'll ambush the old fart just as he's on his way to fill out his enlistment papers... Then the world will know for sure. Without hesitation you punch the red button that brings the machine to life. With a flash of blue light you've arrived at your temporal destination, ready to prove the universe wrong. It is with great disappointment that you realize the you've forgotten three crucial points of data: Spacial coordinates. The machine arrives at precisely the same position from whence it left... in relation to the rest of the universe. Gramps unfortunately, as well as the rest of planet Earth, are approximately 1.8 AU away in its orbit. The piercing whistle of precocious air escaping through the cracks in the time machines door quickly fades as pressures equalize... to vacuum. Before the cold of empty space can chill you to the core, your body is wrenched by spasms as nitrogen bubbles out from your blood. Your flesh swells, blood vessels burst, blood seeps from your skin in patches of hematidrosis... and you brain... deprived of live giving oxygen... slows... until...