How do you test a time machine?

[chandrahasa]

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I was watching the latest episode of Futurama and sipping a hot cup of tea when this question randomly popped into my head:
If I do succeed in making that time machine how the hell am I going to test it?

Ok that question has a lot to do with the latest episode of Futurama… In the episode the Professor invents a “One Way Time Machine”. For details watch the episode (it was pretty good too)
Back to the subject of this post… “How do you test a time machine?”
If it was a normal machine I would try and get it into the state required for it start properly and then check the outputs/results and iterate. But that wont work with a time machine!
Lets say I convince a poor bugger to test my machine(Of course I wont test it myself what if it blows up or something
), there are three possible results:

1. It works perfectly well - ‘Thats coz I am pretty good at building this stuff‘
2. It fails miserably (basically nothing happens) - ‘Ohh cant these assistants do one thing right, guess I have to do everything myself‘
3. It works partially - This is the case we need to talk about…

Lets say it worked fine for going back in time but not forward… I would expect the bugger to track me down and tell me I was successful. What if he went too far back? He cant pass on the message thru my great grand parents! - ‘Oh damn! thats what my granny meant when she said “Works fine, look at going forward” ‘
Basically it wont help my results now, how will I know what to fix…
Lets say it goes only forward… The future me would be thrilled to know but the present me just cant sit around waiting to know

Again if he goes too ahead in time, well thats pointless aint it…
My basic point about all this is that if I can invent a machine that can make people(and itself) disappear I should technically be able to pass it off as a partially working time machine… Right?



Originally published at New Sense
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