Time Travel and Tomato Juice
A clock on the top of a high mountain ticks slower than a clock at sea level. Therefore, when I am in a plane at 37,000 feet I am aging slower than I do on the ground. However, I believe that, between the security checks and the added "G" forces of takeoff (etc, etc...); in the end it probably all works itself out and air travel is not actually causing me to age more slowly.
Shucks.
So is time travel possible? That depends on what you mean by "time travel".
We are all traveling through time at a rate of one second per second. Therefore, the assumption is that "time travel" would have to be something other than being irresistably dragged through linear time. I already know how to do that.
Is the Star Trek slingshot past the sun type "time travel" possible?... maybe.
Is the Superman spinning the planet backwards type "time travel" possible?...not a chance.
Why one and not the other? Simply this - the difference is in what is being moved and the speeds. The first is playing with the idea that once a body (the Starship Enterprise in this case) reaches light speed nobody really knows for certain what will happen. Since the regular "engines" on Enterprise exceed this speed on a regular basis, the gravity of a star (Sol) was thrown in to the mix to give "plausibility" (smile) to this unusual effect.
The second scenario has Superman flying around Earth at such ferocious speeds (but not near light speed, mind you) that his velocity causes the rotation of the planet to reverse and by doing so he reverses time, undoing Lois Lane's death. If Superman were to accomplish the spinning the planet part it would - at best - cause several dozen catastrophes and - at worst - liquefy the planet. The essential flaw of the Superman scenario is it's assumption that time is "caused" by the rotation of a planet, when in fact, time operates with or without planetary bodies. But of course, gravity does have some effect on it - ergo the different clock speeds.
While flying here I realized that every time I fly I ask for tomato juice AND almost the only time that I drink tomato juice is when I am flying. How weird is that?
(i'm just visiting this planet)
2 comments:
I do that too! I always get spicy tomato juice on airplanes but I have never, ever bought spicy tomato juice at the store in my life. I wonder if other people do this? Or is it just proof that weird people hang out?
hmm... so the question is this: Does the preference for inflight tomato juice equal a connection to weirdness or just a correlation?
Good question.
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