The movie Primer has a very limited time machine that works at -2X. You turn the machine on at, for instance, 2PM, and walk away, coming back in, say, eight hours. You then go into the machine, and you stay in there for eight hours. When you come out of the machine, it is now 2PM, the time when you first turned the machine on. It is a one-way machine; you can only ever use it to go backwards, and you have to go forwards in time the old-fashioned way.
It was made on a budget of $7000 and it's one of the best sci-fi movies ever made.
After learning of new technology and a warning, they developed a space program.
The present is no longer a primate civilizations fighting each other and destroying the planet, instead a saurian civilisation has spread through the galaxy.
the point of the butterfly effect is that even if they are there for a moment, they already messed up the timeline, but that is how it works in pop culture
Yes, it is - and what I said was "clearly" a joke, as the idea that 120V would be half as difficult as 240V should have given away. Lighten up, my friend - life's more fun when you do.
What’s there to lighten up about? I was just trying to be informative with the correction, since it does not need what you said it needs. Have a good one ☺️
there was an episode where they created a dynamo generator and batteries.
that took them something like six months with many people helping.
unfortunately dynamos(like above) and batteries work on DC current. that time machine works on AC.
so you would need to do two things.
create a mechanical DC>AC inverter that preferably is powered from the physical input of the dynamo
create batteries in both series and parallel to ensure a 120v voltage is maintained at the required amperage.
also consider that north American standards require electricity to run at 60hz. this means the AC signal flips the DC signal 60 times per second. creating a mechanical inverter would need to take into account the size of the circle for a complete rotation in 1 second as well as the speed at which the dynamo must spin in order to get 60 alterations per second. the rough formula would look something like: frequency = speed/(diameter*3.14). speed can be variable depending on the size of the copper wheel used as well.
to sum everything up, for just the two people there, it's probably going to take them too long and they'll die from exposure or predators.
they probably needed to add more magnets, but that would have made it more difficult to spin. not only, the faster you spin it the more charged the plate becomes and more resistance you'll feel.
unfortunately dynamos(like above) and batteries work on DC current. that time machine works on AC.
That might not be true, a lot of AC powered electronics just convert the input to DC, so if you're lucky you might be able to use DC. One issue is it probably also has a transformer to reduce the voltage, so you'd need to figure out what voltage it wants after the transformer and bypass it.
Assuming Dr. Stone is some kind of MacGyver regen:
Two obvious approaches to me that I'll run through in high level: build a wind/watermill generators or potato/lemon batteries
First thing you'll need to figure out for both is how to make some wire. That's going to require finding some metal ore and a hot furnace, and creating a few tools out of stone to work with it.
The biggest difficulty with the former two is going to be finding some ferrous metal to turn into magnets. You can make a magnet without electricity by smashing the shit out of some iron as it's aligned with the earth's magnetic field, and it'll become a weak magnet. From there with enough wire, you can build a generator. With the sails of the mill, you can build that out of wood and foliage.
For potato or lemon batteries, you're going to need a shitload, as they give you about a volt and a pretty tiny current, but theoretically you could figure something out that way with enough. I imagine some things may want to eat your batteries though
Dr. Stone is an anime about humanity being thrust back into the neolithic and a genius kid developing a nation of science to save the world by speedrunning the technology tree.
::: spoiler spoilers
They do exactly what what you mention!
:::
Your lemon batteries will be DC tho. I think step one would be to start carefully dismantling the Time Machine to see what it really needs and what parts might be unneeded and reusable in a generator.
how to make some wire. [...] finding some ferrous metal to turn into magnets.
These two ingredients put our 120v dynamo really far up the tech tree from "make fire." Our intrepid time travelers are going to spend years trying to not be velocaraptor food and foraging for a meal themselves, all while making stupendous amounts of charcoal and prospecting for ore.
Oh don't get me wrong, our intrepid adventurers are going to have to spend a good chunk of time on this with no guarantee they live long enough.
However assuming knowledge isn't a gap (given they already built a time machine), iron ore is fairly abundant in many areas of the world, and it's relatively straightforward to build a kiln that would reach the appropriate temperatures to smelt the iron into bloom (that can be hammered into workable iron)
It'll take many, many years, but assuming they can avoid ending up as food, it doesn't seem impossible
No problem. The same people arrive from even later in the future with enough built-in power for both machines and rescue themselves. Everyone returns to their own times. When they arrive back in the earlier time, now they know they have to build another machine with spare power to go rescue themselves.
What I love about that scene is that Bill and Ted are too dumb to know what a paradox is, and how dangerous that can be for a stable timeline. Instead, they just intuit the most useful way to abuse time travel and everything just happens to work out.
Well... In Back to the Future 2, Marty witnesses the scene from the first movie with the Libyans. He watches himself, in the Delorean, go back in time to escape them.
At that moment in 1985, two Delorean time machines existed: the one that Marty used to return 1985, and the one that he's watching in the mall parking lot.
Technically, it's the same time machine I think?
Been years since I've watched so this is just from memory.
Reminds me of my ole lady friend Marsha Worthsby used to live up top the hills back in days when we had to share the road with stegosaurus when we walked to school uphill both ways in waist-high snow. One day we was cold and decided to go into town to see if we could warm up at Bickett's hardware store because they was one of the first places to get power where I grew up. Marsha had the bright idea to buy a heater for a nickle and take it home. One problem, they had not run power up to the top of the hill in those days. She could not use it. Bickett's let her return the thing but only gave her 4 pennies back on account it was open.
If only I could meet a man handsome as Biden. Hard to find them still alive when you get to be my age, honey. Said I wouldn't have no other man after my dear Raymond pass away back in '97, but sometimes in life you have to make exceptions.
Damn, now they have to make an alternator to spec without any tools or even raw materials with the knowledge they have in their heads. Time to dig for copper I guess.. whoops no shovels either..
This was literally a plot point and major puzzle for one of the characters in Day of The Tentacle, one of the most iconic adventure games of the 90s.
Spoilers but not spoilers. One character, Hoagie, gets taken back in time with his chrono-John (a time machine built using a port-a-potty...) To the revolutionary era USA. Hijinks ensue with the goal of charging up a battery to provide the power needed to return.
Exploring time travel reveals that backward travel to any point before a machine is constructed is theoretically prohibited, whether framed by the universe's need to avoid paradoxes (such as Stephen Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture) or by simple physical geometry (like the Earth's movement through the galaxy)
Exploring time travel reveals that backward travel to any point before a machine is constructed is theoretically prohibited, whether framed by the universe's need to avoid paradoxes (such as Stephen Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture) or by simple physical geometry (like the Earth's movement through the galaxy)
Exploring time travel reveals that backward travel to any point before a machine is constructed is theoretically prohibited, whether framed by the universe's need to avoid paradoxes (such as Stephen Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture) or by simple physical geometry (like the Earth's movement through the galaxy)
Exploring time travel reveals that backward travel to any point before a machine is constructed is theoretically prohibited, whether framed by the universe's need to avoid paradoxes (such as Stephen Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture) or by simple physical geometry (like the Earth's movement through the galaxy)
112 replies
That time machine still works, to be fair, just at 1X.
Every machine is a time machine.
Am I a time machine?
Yes.
No wait....
Ummmmm. Yes.
The movie Primer has a very limited time machine that works at -2X. You turn the machine on at, for instance, 2PM, and walk away, coming back in, say, eight hours. You then go into the machine, and you stay in there for eight hours. When you come out of the machine, it is now 2PM, the time when you first turned the machine on. It is a one-way machine; you can only ever use it to go backwards, and you have to go forwards in time the old-fashioned way.
It was made on a budget of $7000 and it's one of the best sci-fi movies ever made.
Wow, thanks for the great explanation of how the movie works without spoiling it! Will check out!
I honestly do not think it's even possible to spoil that film lol.
There are charts that try, at least.
Going forward is the easy part.
How hard would it be to Dr stone a 120v live outlet?
the dinos would get you first so very.
not if I tell them that eating us will mess with history and cause unpredictable outcomes.
“Will it change the path of an asteroid?”
“Well, probably not.”
Chomp
maybe?
After learning of new technology and a warning, they developed a space program.
The present is no longer a primate civilizations fighting each other and destroying the planet, instead a saurian civilisation has spread through the galaxy.
That's not how the butterfly effect works. Also no shot these 2 dunderhead could make that work.
the point of the butterfly effect is that even if they are there for a moment, they already messed up the timeline, but that is how it works in pop culture
About half as difficult as it would be for the 220/240V one it needs.
Yay, finally an advantage of the US electric grid.
That outlet is clearly a NEMA 5-15, so 110-120V
There's no ground. They're in Japan. It's 100V.
There's clearly a ground on the wall receptacle?
You know what, Mr. Guy with your logic and your facts, who do you think you are? You know that? Smh my head.
Yes, it is - and what I said was "clearly" a joke, as the idea that 120V would be half as difficult as 240V should have given away. Lighten up, my friend - life's more fun when you do.
What’s there to lighten up about? I was just trying to be informative with the correction, since it does not need what you said it needs. Have a good one ☺️
Likewise, TY.
there was an episode where they created a dynamo generator and batteries.
that took them something like six months with many people helping.
unfortunately dynamos(like above) and batteries work on DC current. that time machine works on AC.
so you would need to do two things.
also consider that north American standards require electricity to run at 60hz. this means the AC signal flips the DC signal 60 times per second. creating a mechanical inverter would need to take into account the size of the circle for a complete rotation in 1 second as well as the speed at which the dynamo must spin in order to get 60 alterations per second. the rough formula would look something like:
frequency = speed/(diameter*3.14). speed can be variable depending on the size of the copper wheel used as well.to sum everything up, for just the two people there, it's probably going to take them too long and they'll die from exposure or predators.
get excited
someone tried making one of those, barely got any voltage. not enough for a US socket. :(
they probably needed to add more magnets, but that would have made it more difficult to spin. not only, the faster you spin it the more charged the plate becomes and more resistance you'll feel.
they could use dinos rather than manpower
Dino-mo
I think you underestimate the effort it would take to domesticate something that never had any interaction with intelligent beings.
haven't you watched any Flintstones?
looks easy
I love that documentary!
That might not be true, a lot of AC powered electronics just convert the input to DC, so if you're lucky you might be able to use DC. One issue is it probably also has a transformer to reduce the voltage, so you'd need to figure out what voltage it wants after the transformer and bypass it.
Assuming Dr. Stone is some kind of MacGyver regen:
Two obvious approaches to me that I'll run through in high level: build a wind/watermill generators or potato/lemon batteries
First thing you'll need to figure out for both is how to make some wire. That's going to require finding some metal ore and a hot furnace, and creating a few tools out of stone to work with it.
The biggest difficulty with the former two is going to be finding some ferrous metal to turn into magnets. You can make a magnet without electricity by smashing the shit out of some iron as it's aligned with the earth's magnetic field, and it'll become a weak magnet. From there with enough wire, you can build a generator. With the sails of the mill, you can build that out of wood and foliage.
For potato or lemon batteries, you're going to need a shitload, as they give you about a volt and a pretty tiny current, but theoretically you could figure something out that way with enough. I imagine some things may want to eat your batteries though
Dr. Stone is an anime about humanity being thrust back into the neolithic and a genius kid developing a nation of science to save the world by speedrunning the technology tree.
::: spoiler spoilers They do exactly what what you mention! :::
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9679542/
But where in the backstory did every girl on the planet get gene-spliced with a hammerhead shark?
don't forget there are dinosaurs. use them for work, probably easier than a water wheel.
Your lemon batteries will be DC tho. I think step one would be to start carefully dismantling the Time Machine to see what it really needs and what parts might be unneeded and reusable in a generator.
Step 1 then: make tools
These two ingredients put our 120v dynamo really far up the tech tree from "make fire." Our intrepid time travelers are going to spend years trying to not be velocaraptor food and foraging for a meal themselves, all while making stupendous amounts of charcoal and prospecting for ore.
Oh don't get me wrong, our intrepid adventurers are going to have to spend a good chunk of time on this with no guarantee they live long enough.
However assuming knowledge isn't a gap (given they already built a time machine), iron ore is fairly abundant in many areas of the world, and it's relatively straightforward to build a kiln that would reach the appropriate temperatures to smelt the iron into bloom (that can be hammered into workable iron)
It'll take many, many years, but assuming they can avoid ending up as food, it doesn't seem impossible
What about making a capacitor and charging it with a lightning rod?
Fire
Like being hungry and being presented with a plow. Now what?
That’s going to depend entirely on how good you are at finding and smelting copper with only Stone Age technologies.
watch Ruri Rocks before time traveling.
my favourite trope in media, The season long enemy becomes a close ally at the end. And the hero just accumulates friends as if they were Pokémon.
MLP, Dr Stone, Dragon Ball.
need more of that.
No problem. The same people arrive from even later in the future with enough built-in power for both machines and rescue themselves. Everyone returns to their own times. When they arrive back in the earlier time, now they know they have to build another machine with spare power to go rescue themselves.
trash can. remember a trash can.
What I love about that scene is that Bill and Ted are too dumb to know what a paradox is, and how dangerous that can be for a stable timeline. Instead, they just intuit the most useful way to abuse time travel and everything just happens to work out.
It's the perfect culmination of how they solve all their problems: by being Bill and Ted!
I think my favorite example of this in the first film is when they unintentionally repeat So-crates' philosophy back to him by quoting Kansas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XJKUITfiv4
"Dust. Wind. Duuuude."
Darn. Makes sense...
That's exactly why the movie was called "Back the the Future": they had to find a way to get ... "back the the future".
I don't know this movie called "Back the the Future"
Great Scott Scott
I think they meant "Back the the the Future"
There's a second time machine in BttF, if I recall correctly. It might be the same time machine, but in the past, I forget tbh
There are 2 time machines. The DeLorean, which gets modified to run on fusion instead of plutonium, and the time train at the very end of BttF 3.
Well... In Back to the Future 2, Marty witnesses the scene from the first movie with the Libyans. He watches himself, in the Delorean, go back in time to escape them.
At that moment in 1985, two Delorean time machines existed: the one that Marty used to return 1985, and the one that he's watching in the mall parking lot.
Technically, it's the same time machine I think?
Been years since I've watched so this is just from memory.
1.21 GW‽
That's heavy doc
There's that word again, "heavy", do people in the future measure electricity by weight?
I was thinking chron-o-john
"Mr. Fusion."
One pellet, one trip! I must be out of my mind!
Travel million of years into the past, you show up in the opposite side of the galaxy were the solar system used to be
Pshaw, merely requires a minor positional adjustment, and of course the entire historical location of every planetary body in the galaxy.
Psssht. That just follows simple mechanics. Two orbiting bodies can be accurately modelled by a high schooler, how hard can a couple more be?
Maybe it's back in the same spot. I'm feeling lucky.
At least the first colonisation efforts are going to include the users on the front anecdotes.
The fact that it seems to be using a standard two prong plug outlet means it's incredibly power efficient just bring a jackery with you
More than 90 percent of the power was used to finish dailies in Raid: Shadow Legends 4 and Clash of Clans 10
They can be glad they're still on earth not somewhere in empty space. What a lucky coincidence.
Reminds me of my ole lady friend Marsha Worthsby used to live up top the hills back in days when we had to share the road with stegosaurus when we walked to school uphill both ways in waist-high snow. One day we was cold and decided to go into town to see if we could warm up at Bickett's hardware store because they was one of the first places to get power where I grew up. Marsha had the bright idea to buy a heater for a nickle and take it home. One problem, they had not run power up to the top of the hill in those days. She could not use it. Bickett's let her return the thing but only gave her 4 pennies back on account it was open.
Very well president Biden, now let’s go back shall we?
If only I could meet a man handsome as Biden. Hard to find them still alive when you get to be my age, honey. Said I wouldn't have no other man after my dear Raymond pass away back in '97, but sometimes in life you have to make exceptions.
Damn, now they have to make an alternator to spec without any tools or even raw materials with the knowledge they have in their heads. Time to dig for copper I guess.. whoops no shovels either..
Everyone knows you can chop a DC signal into AC by smushing a bear with a rock
Its glitchless, not any%
Now it's time to search for some potatoes.
Just checked on wikipedia... Origin of the solanaceae family is thought to be around 80 million years ago.
Stegosaurus went extinct around 145 million years ago.
They'll be waiting for their potatoes a long time .
You'd probably need the entire planet covered in them to have enough power for that thing.
Anyone have an Orbitz drink?
This was literally a plot point and major puzzle for one of the characters in Day of The Tentacle, one of the most iconic adventure games of the 90s.
Spoilers but not spoilers. One character, Hoagie, gets taken back in time with his chrono-John (a time machine built using a port-a-potty...) To the revolutionary era USA. Hijinks ensue with the goal of charging up a battery to provide the power needed to return.
Just need to find Benjamin Franklin to charge your patented Super Battery, and wash your carriage to ensure precipitation!
I think they overshot that time period by quite a bit.
Maybe carry some future battery's next time
That happened to my great-great-grandson. I'm not sure if he ever found his way back.
Every 'science bro' american futurist.
What a fucking paradox. How the fuck did they get out if it wasn't even powered on?
...the door?
Maybe it’s a Tesla Time Machine.
The door opens without electricity?
You are way over thinking this. It's a webcomic with no details about how the time machine operates. The door has a handle. It open manually.
Well excuse my autism
Exploring time travel reveals that backward travel to any point before a machine is constructed is theoretically prohibited, whether framed by the universe's need to avoid paradoxes (such as Stephen Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture) or by simple physical geometry (like the Earth's movement through the galaxy)
You.. you know how doors work.. right?
"I... uh... Oh, yeah - of course I do!"
Yanks handle, gets smacked in face, nose bleeds profusely...
Exploring time travel reveals that backward travel to any point before a machine is constructed is theoretically prohibited, whether framed by the universe's need to avoid paradoxes (such as Stephen Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture) or by simple physical geometry (like the Earth's movement through the galaxy)
So the machine can still go through time with no electricity needed for the exit? Would the doors not be powered by electricity?
You wouldn't happen to drive a Tesla would you?
Ew. Disgusting
Exploring time travel reveals that backward travel to any point before a machine is constructed is theoretically prohibited, whether framed by the universe's need to avoid paradoxes (such as Stephen Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture) or by simple physical geometry (like the Earth's movement through the galaxy)
It was powered at the source time, but since the building the machine was in didn't exist in the destination time the plug simply fell to the ground.
ETA: The door has a handle, so it's obviously not automatic like some Star Trek door.
Exploring time travel reveals that backward travel to any point before a machine is constructed is theoretically prohibited, whether framed by the universe's need to avoid paradoxes (such as Stephen Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture) or by simple physical geometry (like the Earth's movement through the galaxy)
Probably had a battery or something
But with an internal battery, they could get home
We don't know how much energy time travel uses so it might have proven insufficient
If it had to connect to the power grid it's a lot of energy.