this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

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Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Teleportation or building your time machine into a spaceship so you can land.

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 7 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Space and time are the same thing. Spacetime. Time travel would necessarily also by teleportation if you are traveling instantaneously through spacetime. Unless of course your travel is continuous like it is currently for all of us, just sped up, slowed down or reversed.

Also there is no objective point of reference for location in the universe, only relative points of reference. In other words, you are always some distance in some direction from some thing. But you never have objective stable coordinates relative to the universe itself. There is no "center" or other fixed point of the universe. So the earth is moving, yes, but only relative to other independent celestial bodies. And those bodies are moving, too, relative to other bodies. Their movement is always relative to a non-absolute frame of reference. No movement is objective to the universe, it's all relative.

So it would be illogical to expect the earth to have moved X miles away in Y direction if you teleported one second into the past/future because that would presuppose that your location was objective and absolute in the universe at the point of time traveling and the earth moved relative to your absolute location. It would break known physics if that were the case, as much as time travel itself would.

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

🤔

If only there was some kind of theory that could explain relativity.

Especially in large celestial objects.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

That's correct. But if you've figured out how to travel through time, traveling through space should be easy.

Also, be sure to wear a hazard suit so you don't die from any ancient/future diseases your body has no protection from.

[–] RagingSnarkasm@lemmy.world 10 points 6 hours ago

Tell me you didn’t pay attention in Spatial Distortion as Applied to Time Dilation class without telling me you didn’t pay attention in Spatial Distortion as Applied to Time Dilation class.

[–] realitista@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Maybe if you timed it juuuuuust right you could land somewhere on the planet as it orbits the sun and comes back to the same position once a decade or century or whatever? I mean I guess it depends on how you determine absolute location in the universe. Is that even possible with the universe constantly expanding?

[–] massacre@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Nope, not possible. The solar system itself is moving as is the galaxy... it's useful to think of Earth's orbit as spiraling around the sun in the direction our star is traveling. So 1 orbit later we have not come to the same location.

[–] realitista@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

But moving relative to what?

[–] towerful@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Everything else.

Galactocentrism was established in 1925, which realised that our solar system is not near the center of the Milky Way. So, we are moving relative to the center of our galaxy.

In 1929, evidence was found that everything else is moving away from us. So we are moving relative to everything else.

In 1931, the Big Bang theory started superceding Galactocentrism, which was an acentrist model of the universe (where there is no center).

[–] Fetus@lemmy.world 36 points 12 hours ago

I get that people just refer to them as time machines, but they're actually space-time vehicles.

Before your first journey, you calibrate it to a reference point (mine already had Earth mapped out, with a gravity well depth monitor as a fail-safe) so that you lock your target coordinates in space and time.

But no, it's not teleportation. You're still just travelling to your destination, you just get there as quick as you want and without the need to be disintegrated.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 83 points 14 hours ago (5 children)

What sort of universal reference frame do you seem to be assuming? All location is relative to other things, and keeping your location relative to, say, the Earth would be a lot more convenient that making it relative to some arbitrary star or something.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 19 points 9 hours ago

Op thinks the universe is built with some inherently absolute positioning method. Thanks for writing this

[–] half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

Use the time and space machine on a ruler and send it back in time a pico second, then a millisecond, then a thousand, then a second, then a minute. You just have to calibrate with measurements first.

[–] fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

I'm using the microwave background as a reference

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

The microwave background is like a rainbow. When you move, it appears to move. You're always at the "center" of it.

[–] fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago

You can measure the Doppler shift relative to the cosmic microwave background though

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 hours ago

I tried, but then it started blinking.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 hours ago

Lol, that's omnipresent

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

But if you're in a moving car and "pop" back a few seconds while the car doesn't you won't be in the car anymore. If it worked more like rewinding a video you wouldn't need to do much, but I'm assuming OP means literally going "poof" and now you're back in time. If that's the case, you would still need to know how Earth is moving through spacetime. If you don't know your relativistic relationship to the Earth and every other object in the universe then how would you know where you are or your own relativity compared to the Earth?

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 23 points 12 hours ago (6 children)

Their point is that (as per relatively), all movement is relative to something. So if the earth moved away then you must be measuring in relation to some other reference point. There is no absolute positioning system. So when you say the earth is moving, what is it moving in relation to? And why did you pick that reference point instead of having a time machine that uses earth itself as a reference point?

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[–] MTK@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

Being sci-fi it can be explained with ^Q^ ~u~ ^a^ ~n~ ^t^ ~u~ ^m^ ^E^ ~n~ ^t^ ~a~ ^n^ ~g~ ^l^ ~e~ ^m^ ~e~ ^n^ ~t~

[–] Durandal@lemmy.today 34 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

You just need to maintain a relationship between Time And Relative Dimension In Space. 🟦

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 14 points 12 hours ago

-- Time And Relative Dimension In Space

or TARDIS for short?

[–] dwraf_of_ignorance@programming.dev 26 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Just want to leave it here

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

I...I need the template for that meme :o

[–] Ofiuco@piefed.ca 1 points 5 hours ago

Did you get it?
I kind of want it too for... Reasons... Stupid stupid reasons.

[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

For science?

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 28 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I think it might depend on how the time travel is achieved. We all assume you're just instantly pooped out in your destination time but if you have to actually travel through time, it might be like just putting everything in reverse, and so you'd move alog with the earth as you move backwards through some kind of time tunnel.

Think Donnie Darko and not Looper.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 7 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

This was the thing in the HG Wells version that always got me. The machine always exists for the intervening time. I feel like that would be very disruptive to the civilizations that encounter it.

[–] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

I think the distortion field sort of addresses that.

The machine would be hidden within the field and invisible and intangible. That of course presents the problem of ending up in a wall and also would likely mean that you would end up in the air if the ground erodes or in the ground if sediment is deposited.

The alternative is either there is a mysterious bubble that becomes a scientific curiosity or there is the machine with someone frozen inside it that is destroyed by people being people. Both have their own fun little narratives to explore.

That is all based on the assumption that the machine travels forward in time through localized dilation instead of folding spacetime, which would mean it has two methods to travel depending on it going forwards or backwards in time.

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

That’s why I always liked approaches that use a physical machine that has to stay in one place for an extended period of time. Quantum Break’s hard sci-fi approach to this was fascinating and kept making me reconsider how the time loop worked. Highly recommended for time loop nerds like me.

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 1 points 21 minutes ago

I'm convinced that if there's a way to build a time machine, it'll probably work like Primer.

[–] troed@fedia.io 9 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

You're obviously the main character in this simulation so it's much more likely that all other coordinates are derived from your position in the simulation engine.

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[–] TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 9 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

What if it works by reversing/fastforwarding time outside while preserving things within the time machine? Then as long as the time machine is grounded to the earth it would move with it

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 6 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

So, Primer, then? Where you can't return to a point in time before the time machine was constructed?

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago

Forget the orbit... remember the song...

https://genius.com/Monty-python-the-galaxy-song-lyrics

"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving
at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second,
so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me,
and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm,
at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way."

[–] VicksVaporBBQrub@sh.itjust.works 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

A wormhole type time machine would leave the travel points A and B physically independent of each other. This opens up the option to change destinations... step in at New York, exit in San Francisco.

[–] 7uWqKj@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Due to the energies involved, creating a wormhole between two cities would probably leave you with a wormhole and no cities.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 3 points 7 hours ago

Those are just small issues that will be solved after few tries.

[–] takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

That's why they used Delorean.

[–] r00ty@kbin.life 5 points 13 hours ago

No, he used a Delorean because of the style, and something about the stainless steel construction that we'll never know the rest of. :P

[–] rowinxavier@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Yep, and not to mention the position of our solar system in the Milky Way or our galaxy in the local cluster. In fact, without a specific reference frame you would have to make corrections very rapidly for even a tiny jump in time.

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

There was a not very good TV show Seven Days that used this well. They had a time machine that could go back in time seven days. The pilot had to fly the machine chasing the earth as he traveled back in time.

He would usually end up crashing it somewhere and have to find a phone to call for pickup.

[–] toast@retrolemmy.com 2 points 11 hours ago

Depends on how time travel works. I mean, within the next 24 hours I plan to travel to tomorrow. I'm not going to be taking any of that into account.

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