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Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by iamasuperuser on Monday September 09, 2019 @10:41AM (#20918616)
This map will become very useful when Time Travel tourism takes place!
Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by Tepix on Monday September 09, 2019 @11:26AM (#20919025)
When calculating your target coordinates for your time travels don't forget to account for the motion of the Sun around the center of the Milky Way.

This will have killed many time travellers in the future's past.

Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by _cerv on Monday September 09, 2019 @08:21PM (#20923976)
This was one of those things that always ruined time travel movies for me. If I went back in time a few hours, would I be floating in the upper atmosphere? Go back few years, am I just floating in space? Does this mean that I can only really travel back to the previous galactic rotation and hope to Sagan that the galaxy both doesn't drift and the both the Sun and our arm of the galaxy are both in the same place?
Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by Tepix on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @05:24AM (#20938008)
Of course the Milky Way is also moving. In quite interesting ways: https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia/-/61117-future-motions-of-the-m...
Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by pdonis on Monday September 09, 2019 @12:18PM (#20919532)
Motion is relative. Without the blueprints for the time travel device we have no way of knowing what state of motion will count as "rest" for the device.
Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by ars on Monday September 09, 2019 @01:54PM (#20920545)
> Motion is relative.

Circular motion is not, it is absolute. (Although the center of the circle may also be moving at the same time, and that motion would be relative.)

Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by pdonis on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:02PM (#20921857)
> Circular motion is not, it is absolute.

What is absolute is not circular motion, but proper acceleration and vorticity of a particular congruence of worldlines. But you can describe those phenomena perfectly well in a reference frame in which, for example, a person riding along on a rotating platform is at rest. The reference frame will not be inertial, but that does not mean it is any less valid. For that matter, we routinely describe phenomena on Earth using a reference frame in which the entire Earth is at rest, not just its center; that is perfectly valid as well.

Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by ars on Monday September 09, 2019 @08:14PM (#20923932)
> but proper acceleration and vorticity of a particular congruence of worldlines.

This is a side note, but you really think that's a good way to describe something? You sound like you found some buzzwords and wanted to make a sentence out of them.

> But you can describe .... will not be inertial, but that does not mean it is any less valid. ... that is perfectly valid

Sure it's valid, but that was never the question in the first place.

It still has an absolute component. And in the context of this discussion (time travel) that absolute component means you will have to take the motion into account, as opposed to relative motion.

Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by pdonis on Monday September 09, 2019 @09:43PM (#20924411)
> you really think that's a good way to describe something? You sound like you found some buzzwords and wanted to make a sentence out of them.

No, I just used standard terminology in physics.

> It still has an absolute component.

Yes, but "motion" is not part of what is absolute.

> in the context of this discussion (time travel) that absolute component means you will have to take the motion into account, as opposed to relative motion.

No, it doesn't, because there is no such thing as "motion" apart from relative motion. So the time travel device can't be using "motion" to determine what it does. It could use the other things I described, but not "motion".

Re:Map Shows How a Location Has Changed over the Past 750M Y... by brixon on Monday September 09, 2019 @12:05PM (#20919413)
I would assume the Milky Way is moving too.