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I'm dealing with time travel in my WIP, and I want my characters who are in the past to have only certain moments in time available to return to the present, rather than any ol' time they feel like coming home. Would use of the term wormholes be reasonable to describe this phenomena? I've generally heard the term used to explain jumping distances in space, but space/time are related (I, however, would rather avoid having to explain this to the reader, as it simply wouldn't be believable for my POV character to know/care too deeply about why the limitations exist, only how they work.)
Posts: 292 | Registered: Feb 2004
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You can use whatever term you want so long as you define the term, are consistent, and make it obey the rules you set up in your universe.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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Generally speaking, a wormhole that allowed temporal displacement would always make the same amount of temporal displacement available.
Which would mean that if you went through a wormhole that took you back a hundred years, then you could come back anytime, but you would come back to a hundred years after you ended your trip, not to the time from which you left.
That said, you could pretty much posit any reason restricting when and how time travel could be used. One good (and quite common) idea is that the actual time travel equipment is rather bulky and located in the future, time travelers must get to the right "extraction points" on their own (they may take some type of simple signaling device with them).
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Stephen R. Lawhead wrote a book where a wormhole acted as a method of going from one planet to another, however it had the unforseen consequence of also sending the travelers farther into the future. Instead of finding a newly colonized planet, the travelers found a planet that had already sustained hundreds of years of settlement. It was a very enjoyable book. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I don't think there's a problem at all. Plus the fact that it's been used succesfully before gives you a sort of figurative safety net.
Posts: 62 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Could it be something as simple as the battery life of your time machine? Perhaps the shear amount of power it takes to work the machine doesn't exist in a compact and/or stable form before a certain time. This may not necessarily work if they're traveling to the future (unless some catastrophy has befallen mankind in the meantime).
If you use wormholes, perhaps antimatter is the mechanism for keeping the hole open for the return trip. The antimatter is kept in the future, and in the meantime (while their in the past) they have no way of communicating with the future time, so a time for return has to be pre-established so the travelers are in the right location when the hole is re-opened. And unless anti-matter generation gets a whole lot cheaper, the hole would probably only remain open for a short amount of time, to conserve resources. Maybe, if you don't make it through, they give up on you or maybe they make another hole at the same time as when you arrive.
Oooo--that gives me a story idea. Protagonist works for years to get an approved mission to a certain time period for whatever personal/professional reason. Finally, his/her team arrives at destination only to find another wormhole waiting for them upon arrival. The rules are clear: if a second hole is there, you must return through it. It's presence means you'll miss your rendez vous; you're mission failed before it began. Protagonist has waited too long and worked too hard to give up so easily. S/he is convinced that s/he can still complete the mission. Perhaps the knowledge that the mission fails will enable him/her to salvage it. It's a basic question of determinism, and one that no one has dared challenge before. Except for Reference Character A, one of the pioneers of time travel, but nobody speaks of what came of his last adventure, and not just because it's highly classified. Determined, Protagonist leads his/her team--most of whom are equally adament about the trip--onward, away from the wormholes and to unknown adventure.
Meh, I've got my own time travel story I need to wrap up before I start another. That's my problem--too easily distracted.
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Yes, in 1137 BC it's a little harder to come by. Then again, if you know when and where lightning is going to strike... (because it's not like we have any way to control that)
And 1137?! You're taunting the physicist in me, aren't you? Tell me it wasn't random!
quote:And 1137?! You're taunting the physicist in me, aren't you? Tell me it wasn't random!
I don't think I'm following... Is that year significant?
I actually just picked a random date between 1100 and 1200 bc as I made the post because I know that's roughly when Troy fell. (Still looking for a source or two that will give exact date, if possible)
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Oh well. The year isn't significant, but the number (or rather, the number 137 or 1/137) is. It's the fine structure constant. For years nobody knew why this number popped out of their equations. Feynman said about it: "It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it. [...] It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man." Wolfgang Pauli was plagued by the mystery of 137's origin. There's a story that goes that when Pauli was on his deathbed at the hospital, his assistant went to see him. On his way out, Pauli asked the assistant to read the room number. Sure enough, Room 137. He died there not long after.
Anyway, knowing the volume of sci-fi (and correspondingly science) buffs on this forum, I figured it could be an inside joke.
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