Updated: 09/03/06

THE TROUBLE WITH THE TIME MACHINE

The brain trust was composed of Professor Thomas Groff, professor of physics at Cal Tech, retired navy Captain, Doctor Richard Blue, still of Naval Intelligence, Doctor Harry Hoople, fired as professor of micro physics at the University of Chicago for dating one of his students and Doctor Wu Mee, expelled from the Physics Institute of Beijing China, for thinking out loud.

The few who knew of the team's existence hidden away in the remote and ultra secure Nevada Mountains, referred to them most often as "The Dreamers." They were sometimes spoken to simply as, "You All."

Forty-seven years ago navy Captain Dick Blue, was assigned to study an alien power plant to determine how it worked, why it worked and if it could be duplicated by the military.

The whole device with all of its weird controls, lights, invisible connections, feeds and what they considered to be instruments (including the fourteen inch diameter pole that ran up through the center of the craft which weighted just over one thousand pounds). After discovery of the tools and how they worked, the center pole was removed from one of the five flyable space ships that had been salvaged by the military after crashes or the arranged abandonment by the occupants.

It was already known that the alien craft didn't fly - it jumped. As a matter of fact, under high-speed photography, it was noted that it really didn't jump either. It simply disappeared from point "A" and reappeared at point "B" within the same micro or nanosecond.

A very small navy pilot scientist, specially trained for the job, was selected years ago with instructions to learn how to control and fly the craft. He had done exceptionally well and had logged hundreds of hours going up and coming down, moving sideways, going forward, both fast and slow. He had spent many hours just hovering a few feet off the ground. He said he never felt the craft jump, accelerate, stop or tilt. The gravity inside the craft was constant and never varied. The naval satellite instruments installed on top of the craft noted the change in position when the craft jumped, but the gyroscope inside was utterly useless. Inside the craft, the gyroscope installed by the navy, couldn't tell the difference in up and down much less north and south.

After four years of learning to fly a couple of the crafts around the Nevada Mountains and under the security of the CIA and Naval Intelligence, they decided to remove the whole drive device from one of the crafts. They wanted to take it apart, see how it worked, and try to discover the scientific principles of its operation. Thus, they would duplicate its principles, revolutionize the world's power supply and naturally, end all wars (in their favor, of course).

However, the physicists who were working on the material properties of the spacecraft in those early days were making little progress in understanding the molecular structure of the ship. How do you disassemble something, which has no seams, no joints and will not burn or cut with a powerful laser? It was almost as though the craft had been grown on some exotic plant rather than having been built by some intelligence at a factory in some far away place.

One scientist figured the key was in understanding the doors and windows. The doors didn't open or close. They simply dissolved at the push of a hand on a glowing green spot by the door. The door reappeared at the second push on the same area. Actually, it wasn't even a push that was needed. It only took a slight touch over the green glowing spot to open the door. With the door opened, the spot glowed yellow. When closed it glowed green.

The scientist, Dr. Lipsky, on loan from NASA, knew that a storage compartment behind one of the little control seats contained a number of objects, which he concluded must be tools of some sort. So, Dr. Lipsky spent many twelve-hour days pushing and pulling, rubbing, pressing, turning, twisting, thrusting, pounding and positioning those tools on or near spots known to possess controls of some sort, but with no success. One day as he sat playing tinker toys with these tools, two of the tools suddenly locked together and one end began to glow pale green.

He carried this new tool over to the green glowing door panel control and he aimed it up close. The insides of the control area instantly became visible. That is, the control panel "door" (for lack of a better description) simply disappeared in the same manner, as the main door itself was known to do.

First, he pushed a ballpoint pen into the opening to see if it too disappeared. When it remained visible and didn't get hot, melt or show any signs of being acted on by the craft, he carefully reached his hand in. Nothing happened. Then he carefully and slowly removed a little round plug from its socket. At once, the ship let loose with several buzzes and clicks. He quickly returned the snuff can sized plug and the ship gave out two quick little chirps which professor Lipsky took to mean, "Thank you."

Having made this discovery, Dr. Lipsky was placed in charge of using the tools on the rest of the ship. The theoretical work of the power source was turned over to the Naval Intelligence scientists and Captain Dick Blue took over. Within a couple months’ time, the tools had been mastered and the ship lay in hundreds of pieces across the underground hanger floor.

They discovered some of the tools worked on the power plant or drive device, which Dick soon shortened to "DD." It is also called the "Devil's Drive." Naval Intelligence then decided to get to work finding just the right people with the right skills, imagination, background and talents to study the drive device. Thus, was formed the brain trust.

Richard, Tom, Mee and Harry asked for and got a large room with an even one hundred feet of black board space, twenty-five feet each. It took them over six months to come up with a concept, which they concluded was the guiding principle of the drive device.

They decided it wasn't a drive at all. It was rather, a space-dilating machine that could be focused on some point in space. This brought the future point and present point together. The craft itself was a type of Faraday cage which when the power was on, insulated it from all external influences including heat, cold, radiation and best of all, gravity.

The focus point was not formed with an external beam of light. Rather, the focus was all in the machine that seemed to utilize another dimension of space. This caused the jump to be independent of the speed of light.

Thus, they concluded, the craft could travel at well over two or three times the speed of light. The best part was that the craft was not actually traveling at all. What it was doing on a space flight was standing still in a different spot several dozens of times a second. In earth's atmosphere, it was triggered only a few times a second using a very short focal length as opposed to a very long and fast focal length in space.

Here is the way professor Dr. Thomas Groff explained it. He said the door was also operated on the same principle. The difference was two fold. First, the focus of the door was permanently set on zero. Second, the space jump had three parts, which he called the focus, the jump and the landing.

The focus determined the distance between the jump and landing spot. Then the craft disappeared from the jump spot. For a nanosecond, the craft was in neither the jump spot nor the landing spot. Then it appeared in the landing spot. This nanosecond, when the craft was in neither the jump spot nor the landing spot, could be extended by a delaying function, which interrupted the focus. Thus, the door of the craft could become invisible and immaterial for any length of time.

Dr. Groff said the state between the jump and landing could be called another dimension. In fact, Dr. Groff concluded that a person with the jump device attached to him and enclosed in a metallic like suit, could enter this dimension and actually become invisible and even walk through walls and doors. He would not speculate on what this would do to the mind and nervous system.

Speaking of doors, they worked the same way. Since the focus was zero, the door would simply disappear and then reappear in the exact spot. By interrupting the focus, the door disappeared and did not reappear until the focal interruption stopped. Thus, did the door open and close. To hold the door (windows and panels) in place, a magnetic phaser was built in, so if the craft moved, it didn't run off and leave the door. In fact, the door actually remained attached. One simply walked through the now invisible and immaterial door.

Having concluded they had found the principle of the thing, they set about dismantling the device, using the ships tools of course.

One of the many anomalies, which worried the team the most, was the weight of the craft. Assembled, sitting on the ground and with the power off, the craft weighed 26,527.6 pounds. With the power on it weighted twenty-nine pounds (which was a bit more than the actual weight of the instruments added to the outside and inside of the craft). But, the total weight of the parts when disassembled was just a fraction over 24,328.33 pounds.

The weight of the craft with the power on should have been zero and they believed the extra weight of the navy pilot and naval equipment was more than the weight of the two alien pilots. They had not yet learned how to adjust the weight of the craft, as the aliens must have had to do often as they took on supplies or voided any waste. Anyway, it flew or jumped OK.

So, how did they explain the plus 2,000 pounds difference between all the parts and the assembled craft? Harry figured it was a power problem. They were sure it ran on some type of electricity. Where did it come from? After hundreds of hours jumping around by the Navy pilot, there seemed to be no lacking of power and the Navy certainly hadn't added anything to it. What would they add? What was the fuel source?

The Navy pilot had bounced the thing on the ground several times and earlier, when they were just learning to control the craft, it had jumped into the roof of the temporary hanger. The roof of the hanger was badly damaged but no scratches or dents could be detected in the tough skin of the craft.

Professor Dr. Mee figured the missing 2,000 pounds had to do with the power problem. He said the power was coming from outside the craft and was being stored somewhere inside the craft, thus, producing the extra weight when assembled.

Dr. Hoople said when they "thought" the power was off, it wasn't really off and the craft was simply idling. When the power was on, the gravity control became a gravity and radiation sinkhole, which reduced the outside weight of the craft to near zero. It actually became a gravity producer at idle when the control power was off, thus, adding weight to the craft.

Dick said he was working on a theory that the craft when it was "off," it wasn't really off but was making and storing heavy anti-matter, which was the power it used to produce the electricity to control and power the craft.

After over fifty years, the problems have yet to be solved. Neither could anything useful be determined from the drive device. All seemingly vital parts were totally encased. They used X-rays, sound imaging, magnetic imaging, stress imaging and you name it they tried it.

They could see the insides all right. There were little gold coils, rocks and crystals, liquids of several types, hollow tubes, shields, filaments, cones and one element that must have been a type of atomic clock. It was a vibrating crystal, vibrating at roughly ten million times a second. Then they found others vibrating at even higher frequencies. Several of the parts seemed to be hard at work even though they were removed from their connection in the craft and had no apparent power source. After two years of this, Naval Intelligence said, "Let's put the craft back together."

Finally, the physicists and chemists made several break throughs in their areas as they studied the craft. For instance, they learned about a whole new science that utilizes super sized molecules. Presently a couple of labs are making a super string which is about the size of spider's silk and one strand will hold well over a hundred pounds without breaking. This string, when woven into a fabric, can be used as armor plating if properly anchored, and will stop rockets though it is only a few millimeters thick and weighs almost nothing compared to regular clothe to say nothing about steel plates. It will stop heat better than asbestos. In fact, it turns out to be a heat sink and will even protect against microwave and other radiation.

Once the right tools were applied to the structure of the alien craft, the material came loose as though it were held together by Velcro. The craft went back together just as easily with its parts interlocking like a Chinese puzzle.

Within a year, the craft was again flying or jumping and the brain trust were still covering the blackboards. Finally, they told Naval Intelligence, they thought they could build a drive device with some bad exceptions. The major difference was that the device would weight several thousands pounds and would require as much power as Hoover Dam produces in about five minutes. Also, because of the high voltage required, the machine would require servicing after every jump.

The team said, their science and construction materials were too crude to even think about flying, but they did have another idea. They thought they could use it to focus on time instead of space and build a time machine. Also, as a stationary machine they could use much less power and get several jumps before servicing of the machine was required. They thought they could build it for around five billion dollars if they could find suitable contractors to build the electronics.

Naval Intelligence liked the possibilities and started trying to round up starter money. They dug down into the black budget and started the new project, which they named the "Well's Works."

Five years latter, the four men (now getting old) were ready. Dr. Mee sat in the control room while Doctors Blue, Hoople and Groff finished the preparations. A hardback copy of H.G. Wells book "The Time Machine" sat on the silver jump pad as they called it. The high-speed cameras were ready. A phosphorous cloud enclosed the jump pad and the call went to the power company that switched them to a special grid. Wu punched the time to two seconds forward in time. They retreated to their enclosed, explosion proof control room and at exactly one minute until 1600 hours, they all started the count down.

At 1600 hours, Wu pushed the button.

Now, here is what they thought would happen. For two seconds the book would disappear and then reappear on the jump pad.

Now, here is what actually happened. The book disappeared. The cloud chamber disappeared. The two high-speed cameras disappeared. The power cables inside the cloud chamber disappeared looking as though they had been cut with a powerful laser. Two seconds - nothing. Ten seconds - nothing. The team sat stunned. No breathing was heard. Someone did say, "Five billion dollars."

Four minutes - nothing. They sat in disbelief. Then the phone rang. Wu wet his pants. Tom jumped straight up. Harry was comatose. Finally, Dick answered the phone. "Dr. Blue."

"Dr. Blue?"

"Yes."

"Security here. What the hell is some of your equipment doing miles away? Its way out on the other side of the canyon by hanger 6."

They rushed out surrounded by security, got the first truck they could stop and got to hanger 6 as fast as they could. There it sat, not a scratch on it. A very shaky warrant officer sat on the ground a few feet away from it and security stood guard. "It just appeared," he said. "I was going to hanger 6 when I heard a pop and there it was. It dropped about a foot to the ground and this book flew out from the jolt, H.G. Wells, 'Time Machine'. What the hell is going on?"

The team made lots of corrections and design changes in the machine. The machine will now send anything small enough to sit on the jump pad, through time (forward or backward). The problem is the machine sends it to the exact spot IN SPACE where it would be (or would have been) at the allotted time dialed. It also imparts the momentum it had before the jump. So, wherever an object is sent in time, it emerges, and it is still carrying the motion of the earth and universe with it. At least this keeps it from falling into the sun.

Doctors Groff, Blue, Hoople and Mee issued this appraisal:

When an object goes forward in time, it goes there NOW, but the rest of the universe does NOT go forward with it. The same happens with the past. The object goes to where it would have been in the dialed past time IN SPACE, but the rest of the universe does not go back.

This proved to the brain trust that time and space are separate. By going back, you can go back in Space, but you cannot go back in time without accounting for the movement of the universe. The same holds true for going forward. You cannot combine time and space. Time and space are just two separate entities. Time is a one-way street surrounded by space, which runs in all directions.

AND THAT IS THE TROUBLE WITH THE TIME MACHINE.

So, six months backward or forward in time will place a small maneuverable satellite not only on the other side of the sun but will also allow for the calculations of the movement of the sun around the galaxy, the galaxy around the other galaxies and the motion of the expanding universe. There are many useful ways to use the time machine and several of those ways are now being explored. But, it will only take you to a place in space while the universe is still back where you left it. It will not take you to the future, which has not happened nor will it take you to the past, which is gone. You can not kill your wife's great grandmother or change the outcome of the (Un)Civil War. The paradox is solved.

The astronomers are elated because they can now learn much about the universe by studying the results of the real motions of the universe. But, the Navy is pissed and is still trying to figure how they can use it as a weapon.

Isn't this an exciting TIME!

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Copyright: 04/29/02