From Newsgroup: rec.arts.drwho.moderated
From Address: jameskuyper@verizon.net
Subject: Re: "The Angles take Manhattan" - ground transport?

On 10/05/2012 10:51 AM, eleven@fish.net wrote:
> In article , doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca 
> says...
>>
>> You have to angle those angels accordingly.
>>
>> There are skewing the time space of New York 1938 so badly that
>> the Doctor cannot land.
> 
> Doctor who involves time travel which makes it science fantasy not 
> science fiction which in turn means any magical conjuring the writers do 
> is acceptable.

Physicists are still debating whether a properly quantized version of
Einstein's theory of relativity would permit closed time-like loops
(which must exist in order for time travel to occur). It's been
theorized, but never proven, that such loops are impossible; that the
quantum fields become unstable in any space time which comes close to
containing such loops, and that the resulting instability disrupts the
loops - but this has never been proven in the general case, only for
simplified special cases where the math is a lot easier than in the
general case.

Tantalizing results have been produced of solutions to Einstein's
equations that almost, but not quite, allow such loops. While attending
Caltech, I went to a lecture given by Kip Thorne explaining how it might
be possible. He dismissed the difference between what he could prove and
what could actually be done as as a "mere engineering detail" - which
was a joke, since that "detail" involved a discrepancy of 30 orders of
magnitude. However, the simple fact that there was only a quantitative
distinction between the known and the possible was pretty exciting. We
may never have time-travel using the mechanism he described, but the
fact that he could describe it at all opens the possibility that some
much more clever scheme might eventually be found where the "engineering
details" would actually be solvable.

Time travel might actually be impossible, but so long as top physicists
are seriously debating the issue, stories postulating that it can
actually be done are entirely legitimate science fiction.

I would never promote Dr. Who as a model of hard science fiction; it's
nowhere near as well thought-out as that. But the simple fact that it
depends upon time travel is not the problem.

> Consistency is nice but as for the vase being of the wrong dynasty - 
> perhaps the creators of this TV "play" didnt want to invest in a rather 
> expensive prop just to amuse the 3 people on the planet that may think
> such a thing even worth noticing?

A real vase from that era would be quite expensive; but only because of
it's antiquity, not because of the quality of the workmanship. The
supposed date was 221 BC, at the start of the Qin dynasty. Vases from
that period would have been relatively crude, and it would have been
relatively easy for the prop department to put together a decent fake.
See  for
some examples. Take a close look at the items with dates closest to
221BC. How expensive would it have been to fake something like that? The
really nice items don't appear until more than 400 years later.
-- 
James Kuyper

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