Re: Time machine

Christopher B Wright wrote:
> That's the big problem! If you go back exactly a hundred years, the earth
> is in a slightly different position in its orbit and the sun itself has
> moved relative to the rest of this galaxy.
That objection has always perplexed me.  Why should travel be
monodimensional?  That is, why should you be able to travel in time but
not space?  Besides which, there's no objective frame of reference,
movement is relative to other objects.  I suspect a time machine would
remain stationary relative to the dominant gravitional field, thus,
you'd remain stationary relative to the Earth (altho you'd still have
the problem of rotation, likely, so you'd end up on the right line of
latitude, but not necessarily the right longitude)

> ObLanguage: There are (almost) no new words in any language. To get a
> specialized vocabulary for time travel or space travel, what would a
> language do?
Compound words, borrowings, specialized meanings of preexisting words.
For example, "slingshot" used to mean exploiting a planet's
gravitational field to accelerate.

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