{"id":778,"date":"2011-02-03T18:58:34","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T02:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hotnerdgirl.wordpress.com\/?p=778"},"modified":"2024-02-27T07:55:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T07:55:13","slug":"lets-do-the-time-warp-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/2011\/02\/03\/lets-do-the-time-warp-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s do the time warp again"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hot Nerd Girl circa 1930<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I attended a friend\u2019s birthday party over the weekend that had a 1930\u2019s theme.\u00a0 Next thing I know, I\u2019m in a room full of gorgeously dressed gorgeous people in authentic 1930\u2019s formal attire.<\/p>\n

Naturally that got me thinking about time travel.<\/p>\n

Time travel via giant donut<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Because, really, what nerd brain wouldn\u2019t go straight to Captain Kirk in City on the Edge of Forever <\/em>or Captain Picard on the holodeck in The Big Goodbye <\/em>or Vic Fontaine crooning to the crew on any given episode of Deep Space Nine<\/em>?\u00a0 It\u2019s only natural.<\/p>\n

Time travel is a common theme in science fiction.\u00a0 It\u2019s a convenient story line that can take up an entire episode or movie and be self-contained or expanded into a multiple episode story arc.\u00a0 The possibilities are endless and the hardest part is making up some kind of space-time fluctuation to get our heroes to the time period needed.<\/p>\n

Back when Gene Roddenberry first envisioned his \u201cwagon train to the stars,\u201d he got together with some of the greatest scientific minds of the time to hash out all things science-based on his show.\u00a0 He wanted to know exactly what could be done and how it could be done that was accurate and feasible.\u00a0 In other words, he asked these scientists to look into the future and dish the dirt.<\/p>\n

The result has been the precursor to the cell phone, the hypospray, the modern computer, and so on and so forth.\u00a0 Their predictions were so accurate that NASA named one of its space shuttles Enterprise to acknowledge the fact that Roddenberry and his cohorts were far ahead of their time and deserved to be recognized for it.\u00a0 Every time I read an interview with an astronaut they claim to have been inspired by Star Trek<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Fake astronaut, meet real astronaut. Real astronaut, meet fake astronaut.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what about their ideas on time travel?\u00a0 Some of the earliest evidence of exploration on the topic comes from the 700\u2019s BCE with the Sanskrit Epic Mahabharata<\/em>.\u00a0 In it, King Revaita travels to the heavens, meets God, and returns to discover that many years have gone by on Earth since he left and everyone he knows is long dead.\u00a0 The Japanese tale Urashima Taro <\/em>and Washington Irving\u2019s Rip Van Winkle <\/em>contain the same basic storyline of a lone traveler leaving and returning to find themselves in the future.\u00a0 Even\u00a0A Christmas Carol <\/em>is a study of time travel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Time travel in science fiction is often a paradox, a confusing mess of \u201cwhat if\u2019s.\u201d\u00a0 If I step on a butterfly in the past, will I alter human life in the future? \u00a0If I altered human life in the future, how could I have stepped on the butterfly in the past?\u00a0 It\u2019s a classic chaos theory or \u201cbutterfly effect.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen wormholes, time dilations, subspace temporal distortions, a transwarp corridor and a temporal casualty loop all used in the name of story telling.\u00a0 But is time travel real?<\/p>\n

That'll do Scott Bakula, that'll do.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Time travel does exist, just not in a way that is convenient for us to go back and tell our 20-year-old selves not to get drunk and sleep with so-and-so.\u00a0 According to the theory of relativity, if I board a spaceship and start traveling away from Earth at a relativistic speed and then turn around and come back after a few years, more time would have passed on Earth than did for me on the spaceship.\u00a0 Therefore, technically, I would be traveling into the future.\u00a0 Einstein also theorized that it would be possible to travel into the past using specific types of motion in space. Folds in space time are another popular theory.\u00a0 If space folds in on itself, then why can\u2019t we skip from one fold to another?\u00a0 One of my favorite books, The Last Legends of Earth<\/em> by A.A. Attanasio goes into this in depth.\u00a0 Ancient magic has been the inspiration for many time travel stories as well.\u00a0 From Claire Randall going through ancient Druid standing stones in Diana Gabaldon\u2019s Outlande<\/em>r, to Hermione\u2019s Time Turner in Harry Potter<\/em>, the possibilities are endless.<\/p>\n

It's true.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Physicists all tend to have their own theories of what is and isn\u2019t possible.\u00a0 Stephen Hawking has been one of the biggest naysayers of most time travel theories.\u00a0 Ironic, since science fiction writers like to use black holes as a time travel source and Hawking is the world\u2019s leading expert on the phenomenon.<\/p>\n

If I could go back in time and attempt to change something, I\u2019m not sure that I would.\u00a0 I would love to have prevented some deaths I feel were unnecessary, but who am I to make that decision and change the course of history ala Quantum Leap<\/em>?\u00a0 Is it even possible to change it?\u00a0 Maybe it would simply result in fate finding a way like in Final Destination<\/em>.\u00a0 Given the choice, I would much rather travel to the future.\u00a0 I would love to see what the human race is able to accomplish 100, 200, 300 years from now.<\/p>\n

I promise I won\u2019t step on any butterflies.<\/p>\n

Credit to ewallpapers.biz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I attended a friend\u2019s birthday party over the weekend that had a 1930\u2019s theme.\u00a0 Next thing I know, I\u2019m in a room full of gorgeously dressed gorgeous people in authentic 1930\u2019s formal attire. Naturally that got me thinking about time travel. Because, really, what nerd brain wouldn\u2019t go straight to Captain Kirk in City on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[35,36,55,86,123,143,158,160,171,195,250,253,303,326,365,406,424,549,608,676,725,767,795,875,885,907,917,938,950,968,1000,1001,1018,1040,1048,1062,1095],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sci-fi","tag-a-a-attanasio","tag-a-christmas-carol","tag-albert-einstein","tag-astronauts","tag-black-holes","tag-butterfly-effect","tag-captain-kirk","tag-captain-picard","tag-chaos-theory","tag-city-on-the-edge-of-forever","tag-deep-space-nine","tag-diana-gabaldon","tag-enterprise","tag-final-destination","tag-gene-roddenberry","tag-harry-potter","tag-hermione","tag-king-revaita","tag-mahabharata","tag-nasa","tag-outlander","tag-quantum-leap","tag-rip-van-winkly","tag-space-shuttle","tag-star-trek","tag-stephen-hawking","tag-subspace-temporal-distortions","tag-temporal-casualty-loop","tag-the-big-goodbye","tag-the-last-legends-of-earth","tag-time-dilations","tag-time-travel","tag-transwarp-corridor","tag-urashima-taro","tag-vic-fontaine","tag-washington-irving","tag-wormholes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}