this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
202 points (88.0% liked)

Showerthoughts

35946 readers
2419 users here now

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

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

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.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Bwaz@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago (1 children)

In a different position relative to what?

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] Bwaz@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

What point in space is the reference, where other things are placed relative to?

Any point you want, but likely the great attractor.

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Space is full of time travelers that forgot to include the Zed access into their calculations.

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Zed access sounds a lot cooler and more scifi than z axis.

Hahahahaha!!! Oh, man. Speech to text did not do me well earlier hahahahah

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 6 points 6 days ago

Alternatively teleportation doesn't work unless you also have time travel

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 96 points 1 week 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 26 points 1 week ago

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

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.

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week 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 26 points 1 week 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?

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I'm using the microwave background as a reference

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

I tried, but then it started blinking.

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Fetus@lemmy.world 39 points 1 week 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.

[–] Durandal@lemmy.today 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 16 points 1 week ago

-- Time And Relative Dimension In Space

or TARDIS for short?

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 29 points 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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.

[–] dwraf_of_ignorance@programming.dev 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Just want to leave it here

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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 7 points 1 week ago

🤔

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

Especially in large celestial objects.

[–] RagingSnarkasm@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week 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.

[–] troed@fedia.io 10 points 1 week 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 9 points 1 week 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 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Or stealing someone else's spaceship time machine

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Never go in against an Australian when death is on the line!

One of the best characters

Edit: autocorrect

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week 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 6 points 1 week 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 5 points 1 week 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 4 points 1 week ago

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

[–] rowinxavier@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (3 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.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›