I’ve been thinking a lot about time travel lately and wondering why that’s not the next big technology we’re working on. I don’t need my computer to be any smaller or flatter than it currently is and we already have flying cars, called helicopters, and underground tubes to take us wherever we want. Hadron colliders are great for “colliding hadrons” but when is that thing going to yield some data that we can use to build a time machine?
I have a proposition, let’s put someone inside of a spacesuit and set them down on a lawn-chair in the middle of the Large Hadron Collider. Then we turn that thing up as high as it will go until that guy is getting blasted by so many rogue quarks that something awesome happens. That person would be slapped with so much dark matter and strange matter that something cool is bound to happen, right? Sure, there’s a chance we could unleash a quark star or microscopic black holes and obliterate all life on this planet, but that’s the nature of discovery. Was Christopher Columbus going to sail off the edge of the world? Would the atomic bomb ignite our atmosphere and incinerate the entire planet? Did breaking the sound barrier liquify the pilot’s organs?
No.
Taking scientific discovery to the maximum has been historically resplendent and it’s the only way we’re every going to achieve time travel. It’s my understanding that, in the sixties, astronauts listened to electric guitar solos and smoked crack for the entire two week trip to the moon. However, understanding how scientific discovery works doesn’t answer the question of what we’re going to do when we finally obtain this new technology? I would suggest going back and punching Governors Scott Walker and Rick Snyder while they are still in the crib. I would also consider sharing a high five with myself so forbidden that it destroys all time and space. Based on several movies that came out in the nineteen-eighties, there are all kinds of time travel related shenanigans we can get into.
Maybe we could advertise it as a form of vacation. Who wouldn’t want to holiday in ancient Rome? There are probably thousands of creepy pedophiles that would pay top dollar for that opportunity. There, I just found nearly all of the funding needed for time travel research. There are millions of janitors, coaches, youth group leaders and retired clowns with nothing else they would rather spend their money on. In the meantime, I have a cost effective alternative for the rest of us.
Someone told me this joke yesterday. She knows my affinity for terrible puns and hit this one so high out of the park that it killed an eagle.
You Monsters Are People. 
here again. another awesome post. I love your crazy ideas. I also don’t want my computer to be smaller than it is now. But i’d rather have a technology which solves my time problem lately. Particular one problem. I don’t think i want time to travel backward or forward. I am wishing to stop. Like what happen if you jump off a bridge in paris and when you feel before you reached the ground – wait, isn’t it the tower?
Reading this blew my mind and I’m pretty sure time did stop.
This is histericaaly funny. And smart. So cool. I used to date a nuclar engineer in the eighties, and nuclear physics was the norm for casual conversation. This article brought me back to that -oh, how I sometimes miss all of the smart talk!
Well done!
Haha funny, it would be very interesting to be able to time travel…the country I’d pick…Israel most likely…
Why Israel?
I’m snorting. I fantacize about time travel, except I have a world class lack of a sense of direction, so I would probably end up during that time period when everyone ate dirt and got the plague.
If you manage to live for a few more years, those days might be here again.
I keep thinking about the time machine they bought off e-bay in Napolean Dynamite and it’s making me laugh.
That’s what I thought of too!! Oh, poor Napolean….
I watched that today. It seemed like he must have been doing something wrong.
Can you imagine if it had worked? That would have taken things in a much different direction.
“I would also consider sharing a high five with myself so forbidden that it destroys all time and space.” What a freaking genius line. I love it.
I don’t want to blow holes in your argument, but I need to state it, since it appears you haven’t heard: Back in 1985, a man named Dr. Emmet Brown created exactly the sort of science you’re describing…an instrument called a “flux capacitor.” I think there’s a Delorean involved, but I don’t know in what capacity.
I hate to call your data into question, but time travel has been around since at least 1984. I’ll let my friend Sarah do the explaining:
“The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two Terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human resistance, John Connor, my son. The first Terminator was programmed to strike at me in the year 1984, before John was born. It failed. The second was set to strike at John himself when he was still a child. As before, the resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first. “
Someone claimed that time travel is what gave Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s disease. I’m not sure I believe that, though.
when does the nambla fund raising letter campaign begin? can we expand our focus to include the rnc? are you taking volunteers for guy in collider position? how does the creation of multiple time-space histories impact the ethical ramifications of taking pedophiles back in time?
1. I’m sure the RNC would be happy to go back in time until they realized that there was no real glory day of perfect moral values and standards.
2. It’s not up to me but I’d also like to volunteer to be the person in the lawn-chair.
3. Based on my understanding of multi-timeline time-travel concepts, it wouldn’t matter because we wouldn’t have to live in that particular timeline. Also, I don’t care.
The glory day of the RNC was in 1856 when they nominated John C Fremont for president to end slavery.
LMAo. Too good to comment.
LOL I love In Seine….
Thank you for your instructions. The butane proved particularly helpful in the design process.
Yeah, it has quite a kick. I had some other ingredients, but figured this would work for all of the non-chemists out there.
Time travel needs to happen, in order to answer the question that has been plaguing mankind for some 134 years – just how the hell did stegosaurs mate?
how did any of dinosauria mate?
My guess was side by side… or maybe like fish but that seemed supremely gross.
You know what would be better than going to ancient Rome? We could probably just create a perfect replica of it and populate it with robots that interact with the tourists! There could be a Medieval land, an old West…I foresee absolutely no problems with this.
Me either.
This is almost the brilliantest (it’s a word now, Charlie Sheen said it) stuff you’ve come up with since my subscription to your blog started. To avoid the potential hazards of chronosynclastic infundibula*, I think we should connect your time machine to the interwebs, so we could just Google to the past, but not physically go there and mess everything up even worse than we already have. Imagine the fun we could have watching YouTube videos of Nero, Gilgamesh, or even the big bang. I bet that early cave people were hilarious!
*See The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut, 1959
Watching history on the internet would be vastly better than television. You know that watching a caveman viciously beat his family and then get eaten by a dire wolf would be exceptionally funny.
*good call.
Killing me…this is all just too damn funny!
“Then we turn that thing up as high as it will go until that guy is getting blasted by so many rogue quarks that something awesome happens.” I’ll start making t-shirts, hats, and those big foam #1 hands if you give me a free ticket to attend.
I want one of those shirts.
I use to think it would be cool to travel back in time but now, not so much. I guess the thought of chilling with cave men or man-eating dinosaurs no longer interests me. Travel into the future though? Yes, please! THAT would be cool. I saw this amazing video of things being developed for the future and now I want to be teleported there asap.
We should bring some of those man-eating dinosaurs into the future and just see what happens. I bet that would be a show.
I too wouldn’t mind peeping into the future.
Love the French pun… Time travel back to Eiffel? Moulin Rouge? With Captain Kirk in tow?
Oh, you love everything French.
I’d like to see the tower being built though… maybe do some bohemian stuff or hang out with some turn of the (last) century artists too. That’d be right up my alley.
Eiffel was actually a fantastic engineer (self-trained) who loved iron..or was it steel? And conducted various experiments on “wind tunnels” atop french buildings. Those were good times, my friends…good times.
First I’d like to say thank you for stopping by my place, I saw you liked a post of mine. And then I’ll continue with: I like your writing, but I bet I’m not the only one on that.
Either way, good post and if you hear anything about someone inventing that time traveling machine, do let me know, I could use one of those, or distance-traveling personal machine would be great too! Loved the joke on the end!
kaaaapppkkksssshhhhhh
mind blown.
Love the idea of time travel, but I would want my body to go with me not just the brain. So the toluene and that stuff is just right out.
in seine. oh no. that was too good. hang onto your ridiculously fantasmo friend for dear life Posky!
I always take “You are insane” as one of the best compliments.
You my good sir are too.