Someone might reply that the Time Traveler and Jack Havig move through time, not through space. However, the Time Traveler spends the first part of The Time Machine explaining that material bodies do not not move but merely extend along the Fourth Dimension. Then he contradicts himself. Poul Anderson refers to world lines, which are static in space-time.
If all three-dimensional material objects did move at a uniform rate along a fourth dimension, then:
what would they move in relation to?;
their motion along the fourth dimension would take time, therefore that dimension would not be time;
any object that accelerated along the fourth dimension would leave everything else behind and would have to wait for everything else to catch up.
I made these points in early articles on the Logic of Time travel blog but the questions recur every time we discuss time or time travel or reread There Will Be Time.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
The difficulty of trying to account for what happens to the PHYSICAL stuff of time machines/travelers is a problem for all time traveling stories.
Ad astra! Sean
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