If you could travel in time, would you? Would you go back, to be with someone who is no longer here? Or maybe go back to relive your childhood, either because it was pleasant, or because you wanted to change something? Perhaps you would like to travel into the future, so as to see what's going to happen, in order to prepare for it. Of course, we'd all like to go just far enough ahead to see the winning lottery numbers before we select ours! But haven't you heard about the danger in messing with the fabric of the space-time continuum? If you've never had a discussion about that, then you haven't hung around such geeky people as I have.

 
The Essay (via Dark Roasted Blend)

You'll enjoy at least some of these Photoshopped anachronisms.

Time travel spam.

The Time Travel Fund wants you to invest in "the future". Or a bridge in Brooklyn.

This game is called Slow Motion, but the only thing slow about it is the load time. Its was fun, and easy to figure out.

A review of a new clock turned into a mini-seminar on the nature of time.

The Time-Travel resume. I guess someone had to do it.

Californian Temporal Discontinuities
It is widely held that time passes at the same rate everywhere, except as predicted by relativity theory. Anyone who has sat in a dentist's waiting room will realise that this is false. Dentist's waiting rooms are specially equipped with a device which slows down time in order to enable the patient to savour the anticipation fully.

It is my belief that the device used in the aforementioned waiting rooms was developed as an artificial version of the natural effects seen in California. Yes, in California time passes at different rates depending on the location. The granularity of this effect varies. A particular 'temporal bubble' may range in size from a few square inches to several tens of square miles. Within each bubble time passes at a different rate from the surrounding area. The bubbles do not remain stable and predictable, however--they come and go. Some seem to last longer than others.

I have many examples to support this theory, and I present a few of them now:

1) In my garden I saw a Narcissus come into flower in November. I contend that it was not 8 months late, nor 4 months early. For the bulb it *was* springtime.

2) Continents most certainly do drift. But the earthquakes that are so common in California are due to variations in relative drift rate caused by temporal discontinuities. The 'fault zones' actually mark the boundaries of the bubbles.

3) Very often at traffic lights the person at the front of the queue remains motionless, despite that fact that the lights went green ages ago. This is not because California drivers are a bunch of comatose cretins (as is commonly believed), but because the driver in question is caught in a small area, short duration CTD . For him, the light has not changed.

4) How else can one explain why computer manufacturers (so many of them based in California) publish speed ratings for their products which never seem to be achieved in the field? The manufacturer is not lying, the measurements were made in a CTD.

5) There is some evidence that some CTD's may be so intense that time goes backwards in an affected area. This can result in events happening multiple times. For example, the same conversation with Sears three times:

"Would you like an extended warranty on your vacuum cleaner?"
"No thanks, and don't call me about it again."
"OK."

This explains (in California at least) that terrible feeling of 'deja vu'...

5) There is some evidence that some CTD's may be so intense that time travels backwards in an affected area. This can result in events happening multiple times. For example, the same conversation with Sears three times:

"Would you like an extended warranty on your vacuum cleaner?"
"No thanks, and don't call me about it again." "OK."

This explains (in California at least) that terrible feeling of 'deja vu'...

It is important to realise that, while many Californian peculiarities can be ascribed directly to this phenomenon, the phenomenon itself has an unsettling effect on the human psyche. Thus those who have been exposed to the effects for a protracted period of time may appear to the rest of us to be 'a little strange'. This is to be expected, and the victims deserve our sympathy. I, for one, do not plan to place myself at risk, so I will be returning to the UK in August--unless I am offered a massive grant to research this fascinating subject in greater depth.
*****

Titanic: The Sequel

Thought for today: When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil. -Jack

Proving that time travel is a possibility, this article first appeared on April 19, 2006.

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