Time machine – I think we can do it!

I’ve wanted to use a time machine ever since I read Thea Beckman’s Crusade in Jeans when I was ten. In the book, a modern boy is sent back to the Middle Ages and ends up in the children’s crusade where he uses his knowledge of modern medicine, science and geography to help them.

Like Dolf in the book, I would love to travel through time and see how my ancestors lived. I think I’ve found a way to do it without tearing the space-time continuum. Unlike most plans for time travel, my idea doesn’t rely on unproven particles or worm holes, but uses plain optics.

blue spiral galaxy

Messier 101 Galaxy, photography by the Hubble telescope. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

Here’s the thing: I don’t need to be there in person, I just want to watch. Being there would disrupt all sorts of things and could lead to my own undoing, but by just watching I would not influence history.

To watch back in time, all we need is a mirror. When we look into a mirror, we don’t see ourselves at that moment, but we see ourselves the way we looked a tiny sliver of time ago: the amount of time it took the light to get from our face to the mirror and back to our eyes. Because that amount of time is infinitesimally small, we don’t notice any ‘lag,’ but technically, we are looking back in time whenever we see a reflection.

To look back 400 years, all we need is a perfectly aligned mirror that is 200 light years away and a good telescope. Finding such a mirror is a long shot, but do you have any idea how much space there is 200 light years from here? That’s one giant sphere! And I’m not picky, I will gladly settle for 399 or 401 years, or even 300 or 500. That gives us an unimaginable chunk of space to work with. Surely, somewhere in that giant band, there is a piece of reflective material just waiting to be picked up by a telescope? Go Hubble, go!

Space, the final frontier. Even for genealogists.

(and yes, I’m a geek)

About Yvette Hoitink

Yvette Hoitink, CG®, QG™ is a professional genealogist in the Netherlands. She holds the Certified Genealogist credential from the Board for Certification of Genealogists and has a post-graduate diploma in Family and Local History from the University of Dundee. She has been doing genealogy for over 30 years and helps people from across the world find their ancestors in the Netherlands. Read about Yvette's professional genealogy services.

Comments

  1. And while it’s obvious that photographs are looking backward in time, it gives me a thrill to think about how I am looking at the fossil of some photons that came from the sun a century ago and happened to hit my ancestor who was on the Earth at the time!

    /geek solidarity

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