• ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    You’re still thinking in a context where the earth is travelling around the sun, etc etc.

    If you assume the Earth as the reference point, then that is fixed, absolutely frozen, doesn’t move at all. That’s point zero.

    You cannot calculate where the earth is. What you do is calculate where everything else, the universe itself and even other dimensions, are with regards to your fixed point.

    This can feel counterintuitive, but here’s a random visualization: https://youtube.com/shorts/UZyuZVvCE78

    Note that, in that video, only the perspective has changed. The solar system is moving as usual.

    • Kache@lemmy.zip
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      3 hours ago

      That video is super, super wrong, and nowhere even close to “just a different perspective”. To demonstrate, Mercury and Venus should periodically come between the Sun and Earth, but that’ll never happen in that model.

    • LilB0kChoy@midwest.social
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      8 hours ago

      This is also demonstrated well in the show Travelers with T.E.L.L.

      Basically, a quantum AI from the future uses historical records to determine the time, elevation, latitude and longitude to send people back. Obviously the Earth itself is the reference point being used.

    • TommySoda@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      But that’s the point that I’m trying to make. It’s probably my fault as I’m not very good at explaining things like this, and I’m not disagreeing with at all. I’m just saying that there is no way to have a machine or method of travel with a fixed point without knowing its relation to other objects. Just like you can’t know the trajectory of the Earth through space without knowing its relation to other objects. What I’m saying is that regardless of your “fixed point” you will have to do the same math, just in a different order depending on your point of reference. We are dealing with relatively here so the only variable that changes is your point of reference while the math stays the same.