Unless you’re white it wouldn’t be great going too far back in time.

And we have no idea how dystopian the future might be so you don’t want to get locked up and have to work in some Amazon prison warehouse.

So, going back or forward in time like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol would probably be ideal.

  • fastandcurious@lemmy.world
    4·
    11 months ago

    Is time a physical space that you can ‘travel’ through, I have heard all about those fancy space-time continuums or something like that but I want someone to explain this to my smol brain.

    • ඞmir@lemmy.ml
      5·
      11 months ago

      Sort of. You’re already doing it at this moment.

      Einstein showed that time is not a separate space, but is actually the same as any other dimension. However, we have not found any way to reverse our direction so far. We can only choose a direction to move forward in. In fact, you’re doing so when you get in a car; you’re experiencing a minor change in how you’re moving through time relative to those around you.

    • Worx@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      I’m traveling through time right now!

      Time is like space in that it can be distorted by gravity. If you get close enough to a black hole, then your perception of time will change compared to people on the outside. I don’t know why this is, it’s just a thing I know.

      Also, as you move faster then your perception of time slows down. For example, if you went in a rocket at a good chunk of the speed of light then returned, you’d only experience one year passing but people left behind on earth would experience two years passing. You would both be objectively correct because the time actually moves at different rates (it’s not just a perception change in your brain). This is proven to work with GPS satellites. They move fast enough in orbit that their clocks slow down ever so slightly, and this needs to be accounted for so that we can have accurate positioning.

      An analogy to understand this is to imagine a race across the desert. The finish line is 100m north of the start line. Two racers who move at the exact same speed are competing and set off at the same time. One person heads directly north, while the other one heads north-east. Who would get to the finish faster? Obviously the one who went directly north. Why? The other person wasted some of their travel on going slightly east. Now think of that same analogy with movement in time being north and movement in space being east. The faster you travel in space, the more of your movement through time is being “wasted”, so time slows down for you