If Your Molecules were Reversed, Would You Die?

[jimbee]

In some ways, your story concept reminds me of this movie.
Doppelgänger (1969 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It was known as "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun" in the US. The alternate Earth was a mirror image of our planet. Internal organs are reversed, but technology is also reversed. Clocks run the opposite direction, tape decks run backwards, etc.

 

[TromboneAl]

Arthur C. Clarke wrote the story "Technical Error" (1946) about this very thing. The conceit was that, due to an industrial accident, a man was somehow transported through a 4th spatial dimension and ended up mirror imaged at the molecular level. Starvation was the prognosis so they attempted to reverse the process. Not one of his best, but his usual attention to scientific details shows.

Thanks. I just read that and it gave me some ideas.

After the guy is reversed, everything appears reversed to him. He can't read, at first, unless he holds the text up to a mirror. It's funny that Clarke didn't think to mention the heart being on the right.

The Alice in Mirror-Image Land was also interesting, and stated that there were some things that she could eat (some fats and one amino acid).

 

[MooreBonds]

The one thing I never understood about "time travel" stories is the complete ignoring of the fact that not only is the Earth revolving around the sun - but our entire solar system is speeding through space at about 45,000 miles per hour.

Have any science fiction stories ever claimed to solve this dilemma of having someone travel through time and somehow still reappear on Earth, even though Earth at that different time is millions of miles away from where they were in absolute space-time coordinates when they left? Even if you calculated where the Earth would be in some other date, you would have literally zero room for error and would have to be impossibly accurate in your positioning of what the universe's absolute coordinate system is, or else you would rematerialize inside Earth's molten core, or (more likely) find yourself in space.

 

[ERD50]

The one thing I never understood about "time travel" stories is the complete ignoring of the fact that not only is the Earth revolving around the sun - but our entire solar system is speeding through space at about 45,000 miles per hour.

Have any science fiction stories ever claimed to solve this dilemma of having someone travel through time and somehow still reappear on Earth, even though Earth at that different time is millions of miles away from where they were in absolute space-time coordinates when they left? Even if you calculated where the Earth would be in some other date, you would have literally zero room for error and would have to be impossibly accurate in your positioning of what the universe's absolute coordinate system is, or else you would rematerialize inside Earth's molten core, or (more likely) find yourself in space.

Good point! I'm with the group that will accept one 'suspension of belief' in order to tell a fictional story. But when the 'suspension of belief' just pile on top of each other, I lose interest.

Just a personal view, others may fully enjoy this kind of thing.

-ERD50

 

[MooreBonds]

The one thing I never understood about "time travel" stories is the complete ignoring of the fact that not only is the Earth revolving around the sun - but our entire solar system is speeding through space at about 45,000 miles per hour.

Thinking more about it - perhaps you could incorporate some sort of nuclear-powered beacon that has been hidden in some landmark long ago (perhaps home plate at some old, historical stadium that they figured would still be around - which could explain how the woman suddenly appears in the baseball game?), put in place decades ahead of time by a scientist? In the future, they know approximately where the earth will be, and aim the signal in that direction, and the beacon fine-tunes the actual location of the rematerialization.

Maybe a beacon was slightly damaged by something when someone is rematerialized, which causes them to be different? Either from all of the fans clapping, cheering, and stomping their feet over the years....or even a rock concert at the stadium that involved some electrical display, during which a high-powered wire was drawn towards the beacon and sent a jolt of electricity into the ground, which altered a few circuits? Or the baseball team had some publicity stunt one year with a Faraday cage on homeplate, sending massive electrical bolts towards it, which then went straight down in the ground and messed up the beacon?

 

[TromboneAl]

The one thing I never understood about "time travel" stories is the complete ignoring of the fact that not only is the Earth revolving around the sun - but our entire solar system is speeding through space at about 45,000 miles per hour.

Yes, that's always bothered me, too. I think I will either ignore it as almost all time-travel books do, or acknowledge it, like this:

"Okay, Viviana, let's say you're right, you've time-traveled here from thirty years in the past. You materialized in the same place that you left from. Do you see a problem with that?"

She frowned, "No. Is there one?"

"Damn right there is. In those thirty years the earth has been spinning and traveling around the sun, and our solar system and even our galaxy have been moving. If you did come out in the same place, it would have been into empty space, literally twelve billion miles from here."

Viv said, "Oh, that. Yeah, I don't know the details, but my uncle [who built the machine] said it takes care of that. I think it tracks the movement prior to the jump and extrapolates--"

"Yeah, but there's no way that would be accurate enough."

"Well, hello, I'm here aren't I? Whatever he did, worked."​

 

[TromboneAl]

It's also my contention that time travel into the future is not only plausible, but it happens every day.

We all know that clocks move slower when you are traveling, although the effect is slight until you are traveling at a speed that is a significant fraction of the speed of light. Spend a day traveling out and back at half the speed of light, and when you get back you will arrive 3.6 hours in the future.

Note how the spatial displacement problem is fixed there.

So I contend that even walking across the room and back is time travel, although the amount of time you travel is almost infinitesimal.

Also, going to sleep at night and waking up the next day is, as far as you are concerned, time travel.

So, maybe I'd deal with it like this:

Viv said, "Oh, that. Yeah, I don't know the details, but my uncle [who built the machine] said it takes care of that. If you were to travel near the speed of light and return to the same location, you'd arrive in your future. Somehow the machine accomplishes that with what he called 'virtual travel.' It's a mystery to me, though."

 

[M Paquette]

Gravitational field strength does the same thing. Stronger fields 'slow' clocks compared to weaker fields. A really strong field (think event horizon of a black hole) effectively stops time for objects within that field. Of course, they also get smooshed...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation

Even better, any accelerated frame experiences time dilation relative to an un-accelerated frame. Put a clock in a nice circular orbit, free-falling, and its clock slows relative to a clock at rest at the same altitude. Ah, but they are both at a greater distance from the center of mass of the Earth than the Earth's surface, so both clocks run faster than one on the surface. GPS systems have to allow for this pesky faster-into-the-future difference!

 

[TromboneAl]

This is a good book:

http://www.amazon.com/Build-Time-Ma...4&sr=8-2&keywords=how+to+build+a+time+machine