Kolanaki@pawb.social 4 weeks ago
I think it might depend on how the time travel is achieved. We all assume you’re just instantly pooped out in your destination time but if you have to actually travel through time, it might be like just putting everything in reverse, and so you’d move alog with the earth as you move backwards through some kind of time tunnel.
Think Donnie Darko and not Looper.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This was the thing in the HG Wells version that always got me. The machine always exists for the intervening time. I feel like that would be very disruptive to the civilizations that encounter it.
Death_Equity@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I think the distortion field sort of addresses that.
The machine would be hidden within the field and invisible and intangible. That of course presents the problem of ending up in a wall and also would likely mean that you would end up in the air if the ground erodes or in the ground if sediment is deposited.
The alternative is either there is a mysterious bubble that becomes a scientific curiosity or there is the machine with someone frozen inside it that is destroyed by people being people. Both have their own fun little narratives to explore.
That is all based on the assumption that the machine travels forward in time through localized dilation instead of folding spacetime, which would mean it has two methods to travel depending on it going forwards or backwards in time.