Time Travel

Why Time Travel has appeared to fail...

I was thinking about Time Travel (TT) yesterday and this morning. And it struck me that something that is never compensated for is the movement through 3-dimensional space that is also required with TT. I mean, the Earth is rotating at close to 40,000 miles per hour, plus revolving around the sun which is moving around the Milky Way galaxy which is still moving away from some cosmic origin point, plus a lot of other factors that I haven't listed and a whole hell of a bunch which I'm not even aware exist.
So, you want to travel back in time to see dinosaurs 120 million years ago. You need to also calculate the millions of trillions of miles. Let's say your super-duper computer can do this, what about any anomolies that would only be known at that time? Let's say that 100 millioin years ago the Earth suddenly decreased rotation speed by 1 mile per hour. Multiplying that rather insignificant change of one mile per hour out of 40,000 miles per hour, by all the hours in a year, mulitplying that by 20 million years and you could be off by billions or trillions of miles in your calculations.

I'm going to leave TT in literature alone for now...there's so much of it I don't know where to start to be honest. I'm going to talk about movies and/or television and their portrayal of TT. I like calling it TT. It makes me feel like I'm eather a genius or a loon. My money's on loon.

When I think about TT, the first thing that comes to mind is Back to the Future, the second is Quantum Leap and the third is Harry Potter and the Prisoner's of Azkaban, so let's talk about those, shall we?

Aside from using a DeLorean (which is a good idea), the Doc had it all wrong. Sending Marty back 40 years (or whatever it was - I can't believe I can't remember) would require sending him billions upon billions of miles as well. Now, I am as willing as the next guy to admit that there is a lot of power in a lightning bolt, multiplied through a clock tower and channeled down a wire to a car, but enough to send someone through space-time all those decades and all those billions of miles? No. Unless Thor himself is involved, but for those types of things, see below.

Quantum Leap is a different story. I can't promise that I saw all the episodes, but my mom was a huge fan of the show, so I watched a lot with her, and continued to watch when I had moved out on my own. I don't recall having ever seen the method of TT explained very clearly, but the rule was that Sam could only move back as far in time as the beginning of his life. That, and he is not physically moving his body through the space-time continuum, just his consciousness, which is swapping places with someone else's. His buddy appears to him through some type of unexplained technology that is keyed into his ??? Thought patterns? I don't know, it's kind of metaphysical, so I'll allow it.
I have no problem with moving through space if it's just his "mind". The mind can do many things, which may include interdimensional travel when unencumbered by a burdensome body. How does it get to the right spot? Well, that's part of the mystery of the mind. It seeks out other minds, and E.T. and Yoda not living any place near our home, even when we are talking billions or trillions of miles, it wouldn't be hard to find the mind's home. Or, like you know, whatever.
Seriously, this kind of TT doesn't violate my rule, so I'm good with it.

Harry Potter may TT on more than one occassion, but the main time is in Harry Potter and the Prisoner's of Azkaban. As an aside, this was my least favorite of the books, but not my least favorite of the movies - and being my "least favorite" of the Harry Potter books is still pretty darn favorite.
Harry (and Ron and Hermione) TT by use of magic. As we all know, Magic doesn't have to follow any of the rules of science unless it wants to. Magic is as Magic does. So, whatever they do in the movie works because I'm not a wizard and I can't tell you if they've broken any of the rules of Magic (which seem to be mostly about not getting seen by your other self, because you'll somehow break either yourself or the universe).
Considering the way the wizard's travel, I find it likely that TT and subsequent movement through space could just as easily happen as the travel through time.
Remember when I mentioned Thor earlier? Well, I will allow the powers of gods to allow TT and space travel to conincide with the godly efforts. If it's otherwise, I'll need some proff from Asgard to convince me that I'm wrong.

So, why didn't I mention Doctor Who? I mean, I am as likely as not to bring that show up  in any given conversation anyways. The reason I didn't, was that he doesn't break the rules. He uses alien science, which may be like Magic and they just call it technology, or it's so far advanced that it seems like Magic. But he's got the tardis which is a fully funcitonal space craft as well as time craft. Not to mention that noone knows exactly how large it is on the inside - the tardis might be everywhere and everywhen and it only shows it's callbox facade at the points where the Doctor wants to be.

So, what have we learned today? Magic and gods are good! Science is bad! Well, bad science is bad. If the science compensates for space travel during their TT, then I'll seriously consider it. Anybody have any good suggestions for movies or t.v. shows on this?