Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for July 09, 2011
Transcript:
Danae: Hey, Jeffrey... I figured out a way you can win the Pentagon's "Star Trek" contest. Jeffrey: Sigh... OK... how? Danae: You've got a time machine! Just go to the future when scientists figured out how to travel to another solar system, then come back with the solution and win half a million bucks! Jeffrey: Whoa... that's not a bad idea... except for the possibility of disrupting the spacetime continuum and making the universe implode. Danae: Totally worth winning half a million bucks, I say!
Proginoskes over 13 years ago
What if they say, “You should know … You invented it, after all!”
dataweaver over 13 years ago
Umm… he has a time machine. Called “the Wormhole Express”. And nobody sees the interstellar travel implications?
Wolfdreamer250 over 13 years ago
They also both know an alien. Why don’t they ask him/her/it to tell them how?
artybee over 13 years ago
Time machines only go back and forth in time, not back and forth in space… unless you’re Dr. Who, I guess.
Varnes over 13 years ago
Did I get back in time? Awe, nuts…..
GROG Premium Member over 13 years ago
That’s one possible future reality, then there’s the more likely reality as told in The Time Machine.
Twonky over 13 years ago
As you move through time, the Earth and all objects in the universe will have moved. Your time machine better be able to navigate like a spaceship as well.
lewisbower over 13 years ago
I read enough sci-fi in the 50s and 60s to know this wouldn’t work. The half mil would be useless. Now if you read the WSJ in the future (Or the Daily Telegraph for those who like fast action) and put the cash in a growth stock (Mable’s Buggy Wheel 1.25) or a fst horse (Broken Hooves in the 2nd), you’d be rich. Just remember the Market works in strange and mysterious ways.
Olfarto over 13 years ago
Here’s the thing – the Earth is constantly on the move -on its’ axis, around the sun, and across the universe, since the sun is alo moving through space. A time machine must also, by definition, travel through space as well in order to match the exact time and space coordinates of the target. Otherwise the time pod would always end up in empty space everytime it moved, simply because the Earth is not at that spot.
jpsomebody over 13 years ago
Why not send people back in time to right after the big bang when the planets were all close together. Then you could just step back and forth between the planets you liked.
roctor over 13 years ago
The unkown factor… What if humans abandonedescapist psychology and deemed earth inhabitable? Wellmanaged as a place to live instead of exploitable land fill.Then there wouldn’t be this weeks cartoon. A message from the future?
freeholder1 over 13 years ago
If Danae has anything to do with it, it would be imp..lode.
freeholder1 over 13 years ago
to jeffery: Enjoy her now. They grow up, move away and you always wonder about the wild child and what she’s doing. Then you end up on facebook trying to find her and it just isn’t pretty.
Mythreesons over 13 years ago
I’ll be glad when this arc is over. I haven’t understood either the strip or the comments. Never watched StarTrek, read science fiction, have no idea who Lars is, think time travel is only in movies…..you get the idea of how out of this I am.
Habogee over 13 years ago
Time travel is possible. In fact it is unavoidable.
Olddog1 over 13 years ago
@anonamoose. As I recall, it was really hot then, you’d probably burn your feet stepping from one to another. Recall from reading, that is. @Tom, have you ever read Robert A. Heinlein’s story “By His Bootstraps”? It has an interesting approach.
tarrangar about 4 years ago
I know how to actually use the time machine for such travel, combine it with a spaceship, add some way of going into stasis, travel 4000 years backwards after launching, then wake up in the other solar system the day you started.