Would planetary orbits affect your time travel destination?

Yes! And if you time travelled to a point in which the Earth had almost, but not quite, made a full orbit, you might find yourself inside the Earth. That wouldn’t be nice.

Yes, if we one day created this time machine type of time travel you are referring to, i’m sure, if you were going to travel in time, you would want to go to a date that is on the same day of the year as you were when you left. Otherwise the earth would be in a different place relative to the sun than you were when you started, and you would no longer be on earth. But, besides that, our solar system is moving though space, so, in theory wouldn’t the solar system be in a different place?
I do believe in time travel, but you would have to be moving though space in the first place.
So, when you arrived at the new time, you would be floating in space anyway, and would not be on earth anyway.

No. Any time machine would need to define spatial coordinates, since space and time are inseparable and there is no absolute frame of reference. This may be a problem if you set the spatial coordinates relative to the sun, but you would be a fool to do so. If you set the coordinates relative to the centre of the Earth, you may end up on another continent. The logical solution would then be to set coordinates relative to a mountain you can see in the distance, that certainly hasn’t moved in the elapsed time.

The earth spins around it’s axis, what spins around the sun what spins around the centre of or galaxy, what is acceleration away from other galaxy and so on.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7904712/Quantum-time-machine-allows-paradox-free-time-travel.html
“Scientists have for some years been able to ‘teleport’ quantum states from one place to another. Now Seth Lloyd and his MIT team say that, using the same principles and a further strange quantum effect known as ‘postselection’, it should be possible to do the same backwards in time”

On a forum this very question was brought up?
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/ctn1c/quantum_physicists_at_the_mit_believe_it_is/

Personally my views on time travel are too complex for a brief summary at the end of this reply plus shouldn’t be taken too serious, but I’ll just say yes or no.

This would be no dilemma for TARDIS.
Just sayin’.

@rangerr : Yeah, but even the Doctor got lost and confused sometimes… ;-)

It would entirely depend if you had exact change or not for the interplanetary toll boots. One of these would get you straight there with no waiting in long lines.

@Cruiser : I often use one of those to travel back to an uncomfortable childhood.

@JilltheTooth I see….and the tolls can add up quickly doing that! ;)

By definition, time travel machines, if they work, end up in the desired space as well as time. Come on people. You can’t seriously be talking about this. Time travel is one kind of magic. As long as it’s magic, you might as well encumber it with everything you want. It’s all black box technology, anyway.

The closest I’ve seen an author come to dealing with this issue is someone who worried about the height of the earth back in the time they were traveling to. It seems it was a good deal lower, so they were to expect a fall of some consequence when they arrived.

Only if you fly directly into a planet.It could ruin your whole day;)

@wundayatta : Sounds like Julian May’s Pliocene Exile series…

“Let’s say hypothetically we could time travel.”
I choose to hypothetically say NO.

Because “hypothetically” means anything is possible and/or not.

@JilltheTooth Did any of those appear in Asimov’s?

I was thinking of another story that appeared in Asimov’s about an inter-temporal jewel thief after some jewels stored in the London Tower.

@wundayatta : May’s novels never were serialized as far as I know. Nice to know a number of writers consider the details.

I don’t see why everyone assumes a teleportation-like manner of time travel. We can’t move matter instantaniously through space so I’ve always assumed time travel would have to be the same way. The only thing we might ever hope to accomplish is exerting an extra time force on matter to rewind it. This would as @Parrappa suggests leave this matter in the same relative space. How would you teleport without a reassembler anyway? This has not been well thought through at all.

@wundayatta
In the example I gave to you MIT are doing just thing but with quantum states, so it;s not just ‘magic’.

@ChazMaz, good point. I meant to say theoretically.

But it shouldn’t matter anyway, time travel breaks no laws of physics so it wasn’t some asinine assumption.

Backwards time travel breaks laws of physics

@Parrappa
“time travel breaks no laws of physics”
A far as we know. Some scientists say it would cause grandfather paradoxes but they don’t really know so don’t let them tell you otherwise.

So what you are asking in a sense is a time travel form of the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google search!??

First off, the gravitational pull of planetary orbit would certainly come into play when dodging planets faster than the speed of light but any well designed interplanetary super highway would have something like banked turns or gravitational guard rails built in to offset that pull.

That being said the only way to really make time travel work would be to convert the universe into a massive hard drive server the same way the internet works. See as you go through life a digital copy of you would always exist and everything you said, did and experienced would be saved on this universal server. That way if you want to go back to a certain time, you type in your file code and poof there you are! This would work exactly the same way I can pull up virtually any file, picture, song or video off my hard drive. You could even carry an I-Phone version of your link up. That way you can punch in your code for last week, write a reminder note to not to forget to buy that anniversary gift you forgot about or be on time for that important meeting you otherwise missed.

@Cruiser You have not considered the implications of your epiphany that the universe is made up of information. Also, anything a giant harddrive can do the universe can already do.

Depends on the details of how your time travel theory and technology work. One needs to invent those first, since they don’t exist. What you say seems logical to me, except that it assumes a fixed frame of reference around the sun, which is also zooming through space in an orbit around the center of the galaxy and other masses, so the question is what vector does the traveler’s location follow, and is it affected by gravity and/or physical objects along the time it travels over. If it is not affected by gravity, you’ll re-appear quite a ways away from the planet or solar system you started on, depending on how far you displace in time. If it is affected by gravity but not physical objects, then the position for re-appearance would fall below the planet’s surface, and you’d tend to re-emerge inside the planet (unless it started in a stable orbit, so all time travel would want to start out in an orbit or outer space). If the position is affected by physical objects, then you could leave and return on a planetary surface, but the question then would be what exists in that location while you are shifting time – is something present there, and what happens if it’s disturbed. If nothing is present there, what happens if someone places something in the space you occupied when you left, (or before you got there, if moving back through time).

Personally, I don’t think reverse time travel makes much sense… unless there are infinite variations of history that exist in an infinite continuum… which might be the case… but that’s another topic.

Time travel is possible, regardless of what I post later.

How about we assume that if when? it’s invented it can be arranged that the traveler stay within the influence of our own gravity well… After all, gravity may have something to do with the power source for this fabulous device… yes, I know I’m really reaching, here, but it would simplify things! ;-)

After thinking about this problem it seems that there are too many variable to consider using an earth based time machine. The only logical and relatively safe way to time travel would be in a space flight capable time machine. First you would move the machine into an area is space that could be calculated to be empty for the planned time displacement. The machine would need a shield to protect its integrity if a small object wondered into its time displacement objective.

You could then travel to the future of past earth without worrying about where you would materialize if you tried this while on the planet. You may also worry about being shot down by future asteroid protection systems.

@Zyx I am about to consider my epiphany right after I finish my beer or two or three.

Time travel into the future is possible. Suppose something shoots you to the moon and back at 99.99999% the speed of light. Earth’s gravity would still have an effect on you while also orbiting the sun. Check out this

http://www.1728.com/reltivty.htm

I don’t think going back in time is possible. I will give it a shot, though.

@Parrappa I was thinking the same question tonight and was just searching Google to see if anyone else has been wondering the same. Initially, it was my belief that you’d need to worry about planetary positions.

However, if we accept the multiverse POV, especially that of INFINITE universes, then there is bound to be a universe (technically an infinite number of them) where your desired destination is exactly where you arrive.

In other words, you can’t go wrong… most of the time :)