Take Me Back

Take Me Back

I like science fiction movies and TV shows that are upbeat and adventurous. You can keep your alien horror ones though. (I must say that The Terminator was a great movie, but it really wasn't horror, just too violent and mean for me.) I like movies that use time travel, the classic being The Time Machine made in 1960, based on the book by H. G. Wells. And I loved all three of the Back to the Future movies. Recently though I thought of something that makes time travel nearly impossible, if not more difficult.

The time travel movies I mentioned work on the premise that a time machine doesn't actually move you anywhere. What happens is that the time changes but the place on the Earth stays the same. In The Time Machine, when George uses his machine, it is in his workshop. As he goes forward in time his workshop disintegrates around him due to the passage of time. He ends up in the future beside a Morlock temple which he watched grow in a matter of seconds. Marty McFly and Doc drive a Delorean car up to 88 miles per hour and after sparks and fires and cracking sounds emerge in the same place on Earth, but just a different time. Whether going forward or backward in time, this idea of arriving in the same spot on Earth has a major flaw.

The Earth rotates on its axis while revolving around the Sun. The Sun moves around the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy moves through space. All this mostly happens in a flat plane. Picture that flat plane in space is a giant chalkboard. Now imagine that you can press a piece of chalk on that blackboard from wherever you are right now. That piece of chalk immediately starts drawing on that chalkboard, even if you are standing still, because of the motion of the Earth. It would draw a pattern like the white stuff on the top of a Hostess chocolate cupcake and that pattern would make circles around the Sun and that pattern would make circles around the Milky Way and the whole thing would stretch through space. Each point on that curly line would represent a point in time. The point where the chalk started drawing would be back there, somewhere in space. If you want to go back in time you would have to go back on that curly line. The year and place I was born is not in or on the same place on Earth. It is out there in outer space somewhere. Sooo... If Marty drove his car back in time to 1955, he would appear in space in the place where the Earth is now while the Earth is back where it was then. He would be all alone, or maybe inside the Moon, on Mars, or in the Sun. George and his time machine would stay still in space while the Earth would spin forward around and around away from him until he stopped his machine. Surrounded by the blackness and coldness of space, he would probably die of suffocation while becoming a bug-eyed meat popsicle. How's that for horror?

This won't stop me from loving sci-fi because I know how to "suspend reality" for as long as it takes to watch a good movie or TV show. But it gives me a great idea for a story! Anyway boys and girls, keep running down your time tunnels and driving your time machine cars. And anytime you want I will sit down and watch Captain Kirk save the whales. Keep making new shows... I'll watch!

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