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Back to the Starlinks

January 20th, 2009

Imagine if Marty McFly went back in time to the 1950s and someone asked him who was president.  Instead of saying “Ronald Reagan” and getting a big laugh he said “A black guy named Barack Obama.”  I bet he would have gotten punched or locked up as not just crazy, but dangerous crazy.

We’ve come a long way, and it’s a good thing.  Back to the Future isn’t my favorite movie scientifically, by a longshot, but that doesn’t mean you can’t apply some and have fun with the science of Back to the Future.  The issue at hand is that the Earth is moving in space and most time travel fails to take this into account (Benford’s Timescape is an excellent counterexample).  The Earth moves around the sun at 30 km/s in an orbit.  The sun orbits around the Milky Way at some 225 km/s.  The Milky Way is falling in the direction of the Virgo supercluster at about 1000 km/s.  Where was the Earth in the 1950s?!  Crap, I don’t know!  It wasn’t “here” where ever “here” actually is or means.

And speaking of moving in space as well as time, anyone ever go to the National Space Symposium?  Is it cool?  It’s in Colorado Springs at the end of March.  I have had one former student get a job in aerospace through attending the career fair they hold.

One of the less glamorous things also less appreciated (by the public anyway) that professors do is to write letters of recommendation.  I do this for students trying to go to grad school, grad students trying to get post-docs, and for post-docs trying to get faculty positions.  Here’s a look at the process from Cosmic Variance.

Memory pills under development.  Shades of the Forget-Me-Not in Star Dragon.  It’s a science fiction world.

And another article, a bit older, related to future technology in Spider Star, this one about moving the Earth in response to the evolution of the sun.

And one of those exoplanets recently found has been downgraded in size, and is probably only a little bigger than the Earth.  It’s around a red dwarf star, which are very common, so this might be the most likely place to find inhabitable planets.  Red dwarf stars and not very warm or bright, compared to the sun anyway.  For what it might look like on the surface, check out this older post of mine.

And speaking of small planets, Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy about how the media did a whole clusterfrak on the “methane on Mars” story you may have seen last week.  Don’t tell me there isn’t a lot of bad science reporting out there!  I could find an example every day if I tried, although I’d probably only be able to do so for astronomy every week or so.

Mississippi wants to join Alabama in putting disclaimers about evolution being “only a theory” on their school textbooks.  Ugh.  The dumb boggles the mind.  This is one effect that bad science reporting contributes to.  Another is that a big chunk of Americans, 44%, think that global warming is caused by long-term planetary trends, while the science case is totally absent for this belief.  Informed people would say it’s likely human caused (41%) or that they are unsure (9%), but those categories only get you half the people polled.

How drinking wine can turn you into a werewolf.  Seriously.  As a writer, I need to watch it!  And no wonder Dracula doesn’t touch it.  It’s got to bad enough being a vampire…wait, he could turn into a wolf, too, couldn’t he!  I call B.S. on the link based on this perfect analysis.

Finally, the snakebots are coming and they can now climb.  I think the simpler crawling ones are more fun to watch though:

Oh, and let’s just go video nuts and post a video story about bigfoot on Mars, which I recall hearing about but only took a look at tonight:

A Proven Photo Have Live on Mars - The best video clips are here

I’d vote for bigfoot for president. Someday, I hope in my lifetime, the world will be less bigoted and we will have the capacity to vote a cryptid into office. I won’t laugh at you, McFly.

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6 Responses to “Back to the Starlinks”

  1. Ezra Says:
    January 21st, 2009 at 8:22 am

    That thing about the earth moving out from under a time traveler’s feet could well be incorrect. Because it assumes there’s such a thing as absolute space. But space is determined by the objects that are in the space. So the space that contains a time traveler on the surface of the earth in January probably won’t be on the other side of the earth’s orbit in June, but will instead be pulled along by the earh’s gravity. The space that contains the traveler isn’t independent of its relation with the earth.

  2. Mike Brotherton Says:
    January 21st, 2009 at 9:16 am

    Ezra, two or three potential problems with your reasoning. First of all the motions of the Earth are definitely not in any inertial frame given all the accelerations from revolutions and orbits. Even without any absolute space to refer to there is not even an inertial frame to refer to — arriving and departing velocities of the Earth will be different and the time traveling should show up a very high velocity going in some odd direction. Second, assuming that somehow the Earth’s gravity is going to “pull along” a time traveler…I mean, how? Acting over what time frames? Gravity is a force that accelerates things over time intervals. If the time traveler experiences no time, and in fact “teleports” then I don’t see how this works at all. There’s zero theoretical framework for the Back to the Future time travel anyway, so it’s kind of like arguing about rules of magic. If we had time travel associated with singularities or something we could figure this out.

    I mean, getting rid of absolute space doesn’t get rid of a problem. It makes more, and acknowledges that relativity should be invoked, which does allow theoretically for time travel.

  3. Drew Says:
    January 21st, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    I could imagine someone invoking some sort of general relativity nonsense to argue that the trajectory through time curves with the space, perhaps continuing along your inertial frame. However, all the other accelerations on our planet would screw that up.

    I feel like it is just evidence of how little people think about the universe at large. How we cling to our instinct that the earth isn’t moving and that here will always be here and not there.

  4. Mike Brotherton Says:
    January 21st, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    I think you’re right, Drew. And even if it had been brought to Spielberg’s attention (assuming it wasn’t) the Hollywood response would be, “That’s too complicated to deal with. No one watching will think about it, or even care.” When I watched it in my late teens, I admit that I sure didn’t.

  5. Rogerio Says:
    January 21st, 2009 at 8:22 pm

    the time machine movie based on HG Wells story tries to be more realistic on this subject.

    the caracther inside the time machine is not “teletransported”. He can see the outside world, and time passing on a different speed. The machine actually stays there, in the same place, all the time. Its even engulfed by ice as ice ages come and go.

    obviously, it doesnt explains why nobody (or nature) ever moved it from place.

  6. Mike Brotherton Says:
    January 21st, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    I remember reading The Time Machine as a kid and being in awe at some of the obvious (but a little subtle perhaps) reasoning about the machine. To outside observers, it definitely appeared to vanish.

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