Time Travel

Emp_Fab · January 2019

So... I worked out this afternoon that if you were on a plane near the international date line today, it was entirely possible for you to move from 2018 into 2019 and then backwards into 2018 again shortly after.

WiresDreamDisasters · January 2019

Cool.

terada · January 2019

;happy old year!

Fretwired · January 2019

Cool, but its not technically time travel though ....

Emp_Fab · January 2019

I’ll add that this would be on a normal flight, not changing course either.

Emp_Fab · January 2019

No... I know it’s not time travel! But... superficial time travel perhaps!

terada · January 2019

Half an hour into 2019 and we're all on the board. Where's that plane emp?

Emp_Fab · January 2019

In reality, any plane that is near to a time-zone border today can experience this. e.g. A flight heading West over Ireland at 23:59 will be in 2018 until midnight arrives, when it will be in 2019. However, once it crosses the West coast of Ireland, it will move into the UTC -1 zone, which will be 23:XX back in 2018.

Depending on the ground speed of the plane and the latitude it’s flying at, it will either end up back in 2019 if it fails to reach the next time zone within an hour, or - if it’s northerly (and fast) enough - stay in 2018 until it lands.

octatonic · January 2019

Emp_Fab said:

No... I know it’s not time travel! But... superficial time travel perhaps!

No, it is not.
It is regular travelling.

Emp_Fab · January 2019

Shut up. You’ve already pissed on one of my threads today!

Emp_Fab · January 2019

...or last year, depending on how you look at it.

axisus · January 2019

Emp_Fab said:

Shut up. You’ve already pissed on one of my threads today!

I think that was a year ago actually

octatonic · January 2019

Emp_Fab said:

...or last year, depending on how you look at it.

Well I apologised for that.
Well, I didn't, but I meant to.
I will... at some stage.
Maybe.

mart · January 2019

terada said:

Half an hour into 2019 and we're all on the board. Where's that plane emp?

It’s on a conveyor belt.

Emp_Fab · January 2019

I’ve just had another revelation! Lines of longitude, and thus time zones too, converge at the poles. Therefore time zones get smaller as you approach the poles - as does the tangential velocity of the Earth’s surface. So, in order to keep up with the sunset at the equator, you would need to be travelling West at 1040mph. At the (geographic) poles, this value is zero. (Don’t go off on one about the sun never setting etc - it’s an illustration of relative tangential velocity).

Therefore.... assuming an aircraft velocity of 500mph, there will be a latitude where the Earth’s tangential velocity matches this - thus enabling the plane to remain stationary in time!

In reality of course, the clocks would be going back in an hourly jump as each hour elapsed.

Emp_Fab · January 2019

Taken to the extreme, if you were to run around an object placed at either geographical pole, you would be traversing all time zones in a few seconds - forwards or backwards!

Fretwired · January 2019

Emp_Fab said:

No... I know it’s not time travel! But... superficial time travel perhaps!

It's called Time Zone travel ... my next door neighbours have just rolled up from Heathrow having flown from India. How many time zones did they fly through?

octatonic · January 2019

Emp_Fab said:

Taken to the extreme, if you were to run around an object placed at either geographical pole, you would be traversing all time zones in a few seconds - forwards or backwards!

Sort of, but not quite.
This is the time zone map at the South Pole.
When you get very close to the pole it is folded down to a single time zone (for obvious reasons).