"Past Tense": accidental discovery of temporal beaming?

[Enterprise1701]

You may or may not have seen the third season Deep Space Nine episodes "Past Tense, Part I" and "Past Tense, Part II". In summary, Benjamin Sisko, Julian Bashir, and Jadzia Dax are accidentally transported back in time from 2371 to 2024 (in typical sci-fi fashion) at a pivotal moment in Earth's history. This happens because the Romulan cloaking device aboard the U.S.S. Defiant malfunctions and chronitons from it interfere with the transporter beam carrying Sisko, Bashir, and Dax. The three are eventually rescued by O'Brien and Kira, who use duplicate the accident in order to time-travel to 2024.

I remembered that in the fifth season Voyager episode "Relativity", the characters get around through time via the 29th century Starfleet timeship U.S.S. Relativity's temporal transporter. The technology is not made very specific, only that overuse of it can cause temporal psychosis and that it leaves a chroniton flux of 0.003.

Anyone else besides me think that 2371 Starfleet accidentally discovered temporal beaming?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

That's an interesting idea, that they could cause it to happen on purpose. But then again it's also like slingshotting around the sun, something that they conveniently ignore in non time travel episodes. Cause it would kinda break the universe if the Romulans could go back in time and destroy Earth in 1900.

If I ever had an idea for how to invent time travel, I would resolve that when I was done I would beam back in time and tell myself "It worked". That would save me from wasting a lot of time.

 

[Maurice]

Convenient that these chroniton particles compensate for movement of the solar system in space and the Earth around the Sun, despite the fact that Earth would have moved something on the order of 0.14 light years (13,334,073,665,220 Kilometers) in intervening time (as the Earth moves through the universe at roughly 4,383,610 KPH).

 

[Richard Baker]

Convenient that these chroniton particles compensate for movement of the solar system in space and the Earth around the Sun, despite the fact that Earth would have moved something on the order of 0.14 light years (13,334,073,665,220 Kilometers) in intervening time (as the Earth moves through the universe at roughly 4,383,610 KPH).

Having your characters end up as frozen exploded bodies before the first commercial makes a short episode...

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Convenient that these chroniton particles compensate for movement of the solar system in space and the Earth around the Sun, despite the fact that Earth would have moved something on the order of 0.14 light years (13,334,073,665,220 Kilometers) in intervening time (as the Earth moves through the universe at roughly 4,383,610 KPH).

That measurement assumes the existence of absolute velocity. All movement is relative, so it's reasonable to assume the beaming treats the current velocity of the ship as relative zero.

Of course that wouldn't account for revolution and rotation of the planet.

 

[Timo]

The "technique" used in "Past Tense" was based on random natural phenomena and probably hellishly difficult to reproduce. A main ingredient was a passing and exploding black hole!

Slingshotting around the Sun is a more reproducible technique. But it might only work on the Sun, not on a random star... Helping explain why few people in history would stumble on the technique.

Why would a hop in time "lock" itself to a specific point A in space rather than a specific point B? As far as we can tell, there's nothing "attractive" about the point in space that will replace Earth in a few centuries, and nothing "repulsive" about Earth. We have no reason to believe in a "static" reference frame against which the Earth moves! For all practical purposes, we can assume that Earth stays put and the rest of the universe moves; why not for the purposes of time travel via the good old exploding-microsingularity-interacts-with-cloaking-device technique?

Of course that wouldn't account for revolution and rotation of the planet.

Why not? If we can choose our reference frames to ignore translation, we can choose them to ignore rotation, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Maurice]

Convenient that these chroniton particles compensate for movement of the solar system in space and the Earth around the Sun, despite the fact that Earth would have moved something on the order of 0.14 light years (13,334,073,665,220 Kilometers) in intervening time (as the Earth moves through the universe at roughly 4,383,610 KPH).

That measurement assumes the existence of absolute velocity. All movement is relative, so it's reasonable to assume the beaming treats the current velocity of the ship as relative zero.

Of course that wouldn't account for revolution and rotation of the planet.

Or for the planet's orbit around the Sun, or the Sun's movement through the Galaxy, or etc. etc. etc.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

Convenient that these chroniton particles compensate for movement of the solar system in space and the Earth around the Sun, despite the fact that Earth would have moved something on the order of 0.14 light years (13,334,073,665,220 Kilometers) in intervening time (as the Earth moves through the universe at roughly 4,383,610 KPH).

Having your characters end up as frozen exploded bodies before the first commercial makes a short episode...

I'm surprised DS9 never did that for their once a season O'Brien torture episode.

 

[Timo]

Or for the planet's orbit around the Sun, or the Sun's movement through the Galaxy, or etc. etc. etc.

But that's all relative, too. From the point of view of Earth, and of the Defiant, the universe moves and rotates, and the San Francisco subway stairwell stays absolutely put. So I don't see a problem there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Or for the planet's orbit around the Sun, or the Sun's movement through the Galaxy, or etc. etc. etc.

But that's all relative, too. From the point of view of Earth, and of the Defiant, the universe moves and rotates, and the San Francisco subway stairwell stays absolutely put. So I don't see a problem there.

Timo Saloniemi

Because although velocity is relative, acceleration is not. Orbiting is applied acceleration.

 

[Enterprise1701]

The "technique" used in "Past Tense" was based on random natural phenomena and probably hellishly difficult to reproduce. A main ingredient was a passing and exploding black hole!

Oops. I forgot to specify that in my original post.

Slingshotting around the Sun is a more reproducible technique. But it might only work on the Sun, not on a random star... Helping explain why few people in history would stumble on the technique.

The novel Forgotten History gives an explanation for that.

Spoiler: Forgotten History ending

The Enterprise's "cold start" in "The Naked Time" charged its engines with chronitons, allowing it to generate a time field when slingshotting around a star. Thus no other engines in Starfleet could do Tipler slingshots the way the Enterprise could as it did in "Tomorrow is Yesterday", "Assignment: Earth", and The Rings of Time. Then at the climax of Forgotten History, the 24th century DTI agent Lucsly gives Kirk the equation to generate a time field in order to resolve a crisis threatening the timeline. That is how The Voyage Home happened.

 

[Maurice]

Or for the planet's orbit around the Sun, or the Sun's movement through the Galaxy, or etc. etc. etc.

But that's all relative, too. From the point of view of Earth, and of the Defiant, the universe moves and rotates, and the San Francisco subway stairwell stays absolutely put. So I don't see a problem there.

Rubbish.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Or for the planet's orbit around the Sun, or the Sun's movement through the Galaxy, or etc. etc. etc.

But that's all relative, too. From the point of view of Earth, and of the Defiant, the universe moves and rotates, and the San Francisco subway stairwell stays absolutely put. So I don't see a problem there.

Rubbish.

Yeah, the problem as I see it is that they don't materialize together.

If the idea in-universe is that things are in the same position, except due to tectonics, construction, or other changes in surface features, or if the idea in-universe is that the transporter got a lock on a beam down point in the past, then they all should have beamed down together.

---

Edit: Disregard. I misremembered.

 

[Timo]

Umm, what? They did all beam down together, and arrived in a tight cluster, just as usual.

It's a bit confusing that Dax later gets separated from the bunch, but the establishing shot reveals clearly enough what happened:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x11/pastense1_060.jpg
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x11/pastense1_076.jpg

In the 21st century, there's a subway entranceway there at the beamdown point. Two of the heroes (Bashir, Sisko) materialize outside, while one (Dax) materializes inside and falls down several meters.

As for movement being relative, it's the concept of absolute frames of reference, absolute zero meridians and the like that is medieval nonsense. You don't need Einstein to tell how idiotic that sort of thinking is - it's purely Galilean mechanics.

Yes, the difference between lateral translation and rotation is acceleration. But that's only relevant in discussing energy and momentum balances (and we know transporters shrug off those, as orbiting spacecraft easily move objects down to the surface of a planet and back); it doesn't directly affect how a single point in universe would move relative to itself (that is, not at all, by definition).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Oh, OK. I misremembered. Oops!

 

[Timo]

...It is a bit funny that when Kira and O'Brien start their search, they do not end up in the same street corner on San Francisco every time. If the only variable is temporal rather than spatial, they shouldn't move as much as a meter in their chase for their crewmates.

Of course, it may be that the transporter system signals that there's a hill down there "now", or a deep pit, and therefore moves them sideways for safety. Or then this neighborhood was leveled by an earthquake and rebuilt completely differently:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x12/pastense2_103.jpg

Possible, I guess.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Enterprise1701]

Have we had incidents before in Star Trek where beaming rendered someone unconscious? I can't think of a rational explanation for that part.

 

[Maurice]

If the idea in-universe is that things are in the same position, except due to tectonics, construction, or other changes in surface features...

San Francisco moves westward about an inch a year. In 300 years that's an offset of 25 feet.

 

[Maurice]

If the idea in-universe is that things are in the same position, except due to tectonics, construction, or other changes in surface features...

San Francisco moves westward about an inch a year. In 300 years that's an offset of 25 feet.

 

[F. King Daniel]

In Star Trek's world, time is constant throughout the galaxy, nothing ever moves and there's sound in space. It's a comic book universe.