A Time Patrol timecycle disappears at one set of spatiotemporal coordinates and appears at another. So does a spaceship following a path around a T machine. However, I think that the two disappearing acts are fundamentally different. The timecycle does not exist between its departure and its arrival. The spaceship does exist. Its world line continues to extend through space-time but in a direction that has taken it out of the field of vision of any observers who have remained at its departure point. I was surprised when a spaceship was described as disappearing in Poul Anderson's
The Avatar but I think that this is the explanation. In any case, I am now bound not for a T machine but for the realm of Morpheus.
4 comments:
BTW, Poul's TAU ZERO may have experimental validation. New discoveries have indicated that the "dark energy" field driving cosmic expansion has been weakening for the last 4-5 billion years.
They're still in the early stages of investigating this, but it's possible that it might weaken enough for a "big crunch" -- a contraction of the matter and energy in the universe into a renewed monobloc, leading to another "big bang".
Andrea told me of a recent theoretical development according to which our expanding universe might come into contact with other universes which would push it back towards a big crunch!
We are in an era when new observations and discoveries run ahead of any attempted theoretical synthesis.
Paul: yup. Always good to have science in turmoil! That's when big discoveries get made. This reminds me of the early 20th century, when the neo-Newtonian synthesis fell apart because of things like the Michelson-Morley experiments.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
These comments were esp. interesting when I recalled how Anderson was not entirely satisfied with TAU ZERO.
I hope one of those big discoveries might someday be a real world FTL drive.
Ad astra! Sean
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