He described his time machine saying it contained the following:
- Two magnetic housing units for the dual micro singularities
- An electron injection manifold to alter mass and gravity micro singularities
- A cooling and X-ray venting system
- Gravity sensors, or a variable gravity lock
- Four main caesium clocks
- Three main computer units
Titor claimed that he had been sent back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer which he said was needed to "debug" various legacy computer programs in 2036, when the UNIX operating system will reach its own equivalent of the 'millenium bug' problem.
He also claimed to be on a 'stopover' in the year 2000 for "personal reasons".
I tend to believe that 2000 was not exactly on the way from 1975 to his time in the future in any real sense. Its a fun story though, and well worth a glance at the Wikipedia article.
I wonder how he overcame the difficulty that I described in How does Dr Who do this?
Small note (in larger text than usual):
Why not listen to the excellent Episode 113 of The Pod Delusion to hear more about the story. And while you are there, if you live in London UK, why not glance at the CV for Liz, one of the stars and the Deputy-Editor of that podcast, who is seeking a job at the moment. Perhaps you can help her?
1 comment:
If you (hypotheticaly) wanted to solve the 'How dr Who does this' problem, you'd certainly wanted to take into account 3 parameters:
1. Earth's annual trajectory around the Sun.
2. The Sun-Earth system trajectory towards the Galaxy's movement.
3. The 'Ecliptic' movement of the Earth's axis.
If you want to land your 'ship' [telephone chamber] into the same point you'd have to take into account all 3 parameters with the most significant of the 3 being the 2nd one [since the galaxy is moving at a rate of 552 to 630 km per second depending on the relative frame of reference].
*If you solve this* luckily for dr Who, there are certain 'windows' of Earth's position that the moving system will (annually) will be at [almost] the same point it was last year. These 'windows' will vary depending the Lon/Lat position of the launch site and the Ecliptic movement of the Earth itself.
This sounds complicated, but it's not so difficult to calculate the combined trajectory of the planet we ride on, since there are detailed historical satelite data for quiet sometime now.
*Hint*: We already know the equation.
Making it plain English, the 'time steps' should be exactly 1 year long, projected at the relative Sun/Earth system speed (thus relative space position towards YOUR last point) into space at the right direction each year.
There are some limitations though, as you might very well now are able to notice, and one of them will be the timespace 'leaps' from one timespace point to another. Those will have to be STRICTLY annual and on certain periods (or time windows) as starting/ending points in order the next 'step' will find you and your 'ship' landed on the same point on (another) Earth (of the possible multiverse).
In other words, a 10sec 'jump' will probably land you at a stratospheric height, about 1000 miles away from your initial point, with (unfortunately for you and dr Who ofcourse) no oxygen to breath.
Except, of course, if you have the ability to calculate the relative timespace trajectory of your initial system on a cartesian basis (x0/y0/z0) every second and matching it (every second) with the moving one (x1/y1/z1).
*Hint*: This will take several hundrends of years to collect timespace data for us to be able to do so.
Oh, one last thing: You 'll have to 'navigate' your 'ship' right into the wormhole (that being not to deviate from the initial route of yours into timespace) or else your timetraveller ekfansis (version of yours) will end up into oblivion.
Regards,
Costa from Greece.
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