time_machine andrea the phone rang & my first thought was "no, please god. not again." and all at once, I felt like that little eight year old again, hoping & praying that it wasn’t her dad calling again to say the day’s visit was canceled. copyright 2000 000531 ... JBauer Ever had the feeling that you woke up so early that you somehow went back in time. You somehow woke up, before you even went to sleep. School starts so early it's like that everyday for me...... 001207 ... Dis There was that uncanny moment when he walked across the floor, and I knew something was horribly wrong. Wrong time, wrong place, the usual bad timing, but in a whole new way. He has these eyes; wide and deep and dark as coffee, irises so brown they bleed into his pupils and turn his gaze into cavernous comfort. The entire introduction took maybe 20 seconds. Our hands met in an innocuous shake, and everything around us blinked out of existence for a fraction of a second, too brief for anyone to notice. But in that empty white nothing where just the two of us stood, he grinned and spoke quietly 4 short words: "This won't be easy." I saw what he meant, and let's face it, I'm in trouble, man. 010625 ... Casey I walked up to the counter of the store with a load of things in my cart. The guy asked me what I was doing. I told him I was making a time machine. So he asked if I wanted to pay for these items. I told him no. When he asked why not I told him...obvisouly I didn't succeed in making one or I would have come back and given myself the secret. So I walked off 010625 ... The Truth I tried to invent a time machine while I was in the fourth grade. I think I still remember how I was going to build it. Here's how: in the center is a horizontal chamber, this is where I would lay down, and also it would double as a coffin if things went terribly wrong. The chamber is connected to an axle of sorts, and is rigged so it will not rotate even thought the exterior components all rotate at high velocities. The exterior cage is connected to an A-frame...My design called for an old swingset. The frame would keep the contraption stationary. The power source is a series of long rip-cords (I borrowed this Idea from one of my toys) that are laid upon the bottom of the rotating cage. when you pull them, the grooves in the rip-cord interlock with the grooves in the cage and it begins to rotate. Pull the next one and the next one to make the cage spin faster. The point of all of this spinning is to spin fast enough to break the "time_barrier", thus creating a worm_hole through time and space and coming out safely on the other side. :) Now...a few things I would change...first of all, I would use materials like titanium or diamond instead of wood for the inner chamber. I would also use a better power source, such as free_energy...(free_energy_device patent pending.) I would also try to form some way to control this time machine. I would need to know how to automatically navigate worm holes, but there must be some form of proverbial steering wheel to attach. 010801 ... ferret hmmm, the truth, i think that there's something you should know about your little time machine, it will create a black hole, therefore warping time, but you will be inside/outside the black hole at once, you will be able to travel into any time-period that the black hole affects, (e.g. all of them) soooo, yeah. 030429 ... cube I suspect that the ability to travel through time is all one needs to become a god. First, you would travel far forward to find the source of eternal youth - probably genetic modification through man-made viruses. Come to think of it, you probably wouldn't have to travel that far forward. Soon enough, we will all become gods. ... 030430 ... trixie The only time machine you need is your imagination and the power of your mind. 030430 ... p2 i learned in elementary school that the telescope is a time machine Light travels over 186,000 miles per second (six trillion miles per year). The light that reaches us from the sun left its source eight minutes earlier to make the 93-million-mile trip to the earth. On a clear dark night, an observer can see, even with the naked eye, a sky full of twinkling stars. In most cases the light one sees left the star many eons ago. Even within our solar system, the light reflected from Pluto takes five hours to reach Earth. At 24 trillion miles our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is a little farther than four light-years away. The astronomer's telescope is, in effect, a modern time machine, for it reveals remote areas of the universe as they appeared up to billions of years ago. If there are planetary systems around Antares in Scorpio and Betelgeuse in Orion, their inhabitants can see Columbus discovering America in about 15 years. In 1975 a very distant galaxy was discovered, over eight billion light-years from Earth and still receding. The light seen by the astronomer left this galaxy eight billion years ago to make the 48-nonillion (30 zeros) mile trip to the earth. Since Earth is only about 4.6 billion years old, the astronomer observing this galaxy sees it as it appeared nearly 3.5 billion years before Earth was born. Unfortunately the viewer from the distant galaxy training a telescope toward our solar system will have to wait 3.5 billion years to see an event of great importance on our planet--its birth. 030430 ... p2 correction: change: discovering to: "discovering" 030430 what's it to you? who go blather from