His time machine only goes back 15 minutes

    by luvs_animals

    26 Comments

    1. If you are smart enough to build a time machine… you are probably smart enough to realize the shift in cosmic coordinates. This is some BBT level humor.

    2. Earth spinning around itself + earth spinning around the sun + the entire solar system orbiting in our galaxy + trh entire galaxy moving in space…. ez calculations

    3. What was the original wording?

      Edit: Wow, apparently this *is* the original! I thought it was a bone hurting juice style, overly literal edit.

    4. I prefer the bone hurting juice version.

      “Come on, you gotta believe me. I’m not sus.”

      “Yeah but i’m in voice chat wirh blue and yellow. They daid you killed them.”
      “…….”

      “Screw you!”

      *Pico was the Impostor*

    5. The dialogue is confusing. He says Time Machine, but then describes it like a teleporter. He says he will move to the location he was 15 minutes ago. As a teleportation device, this would still be a problem when factoring coordinates if he used data relevant to 15 minutes ago and didn’t further account for ongoing movement of celestial bodies.

      Now, the comic could just have worded it awkwardly, and he calculated to go back in time 15 minutes and messed up the spacial coordinates, placing him in the path of the moving planet. But even if it worked, he would still be dead as if he placed himself in the time and place he was 15 minutes ago, he would intersect with his past self, likely killing both.

    6. This is my favorite answer to ‘is time travel possible?’ Yes, but you can’t travel in space while traveling in time.

    7. Coordinates without a reference frame is completely meaningless. Even the phrase “the exact spot I was at 15 minutes ago” requires a frame of reference.

    8. kinokomushroom on

      This type of “gotcha” never make sense because there’s no absolute reference frame. Earth’s reference frame is just as valid as the Sun’s, the Milky Way’s, or any other random one. Why wouldn’t the time machine just travel along the reference frame it was originally in?

    9. ThatLooksRight on

      There was a tv show called “7 Days” where they actually pointed out this requirement during time travel.  

    10. But he is goes back in time, that means the earth would too? It’s not even logical to be funny.

    11. Assuming an alternativ with static coordinates. He’d disappear and appear back in the yellow box.
      He’d then have to get out and hide before his younger self enters the machine.
      His older self would then emerge from, say, another room.
      Otherwise the spectator would already know that it worked. But that’s a whole different story because quantum physically, the older self would impact the younger universe even without greeting/meeting either of the younger guys.

    12. KitchenFullOfCake on

      Huh, I read a short story from a book of horror stories when I was a kid that more or less had this exact plot.

    13. So its just a teleport… if he moved to the exact spot he was 15 mins ago this happens. But if time reversed the earth would be where it was 15 mins ago also

    14. You can’t separate time from space. Time travel affects both together, so you stay anchored in the same spacetime position when either are changed. The idea that you’d be left floating in space is some r/iamverysmart bullshit.

    15. drArsMoriendi on

      But what are the universal coordinates? You can describe everything else perfectly if you assume the Earth is perfectly stationary. The math would be annoying, but not wrong.

    16. If there are no universal coordinates, he would appear inside the time machine.

      If there are universal coordinates, he would appear much, MUCH further from Earth.

    17. If time reversed for the traveler then the earth would be in the same spot that the traveler was 15 minutes prior. This cartoon indicates the traveler was taken out of time for 15 minutes as the earth moved away from him not time travel to the past.

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