You folk have been witness to some of my ideas and they've usually been complex... I just thought of a time machine (forward only).
0 gravity sub-light centrifuge... a simple large centrifuge spinning at close to the speed of light in 0 gravity (space).
Soooo simple! It could even be a tourist attraction.
In the next 10 years space tourism will be here... we could put people in a capsule spin it up to close to the speed of light and retard time for them.
COOOoooOOOooolll!
Except the outside bit of the centrifuge would experience time dilation relative to the central bit. So what happens when the arm swings right round, catches up to itself and smacks your joy riders up the crack?? 
But, the only way you would know that time had stood still would be to compare clocks when you got out.
So - why not just get a cheap old fairground ride, tell everybody it spins at the speed of light in zero gravity, tell people they can't wear watches due to risk of electric shock or something - and then equip it with a really cheap and bad clock that runs really slowly.
Nobody would know the difference - except you, and you would turn a tidy profit on running costs compared to the real thing.
speed of light is relative to the point from which it is viewed...
the best I've heard is from www.eaglesdisobey.net (or maybe org)
roswell crash was beings from the future, human timeline future, 47,000 in the future, but they had an infiltator amognst the crew from 55,000 in the future, whose mission it was was to usurp the 47,000 year humans (who had ideals of setting humanity on a predetermined catastrophic time adjudicate) and set humanity on an altinate timelime that would extinguish the 47,000 year future humans and save us from the fate that beset the 55,000 year human....
apparently 55,000 human remained alive in present day captivity until sometime in the mid eighties, until he was able be sent back through an inter timemisional wormhole that would replicate his adjusted timeline actuality...
prove me wrong today tonighters..... prove me wrong
Only problem with this is that your tourists would end up as wet lumpy puddles on the inside surface of the centrifuge.
At close to the speed of light that's a heck of a lot of G's!
If you were to build this centrifuge, however, you'd only be able to get back to earth about once a year. I suppose you wouldn't need much food and water if you're aging slowly... but then again you need to accelerate up to near light speed, and that would take a while at 6 G's... (actually less because you're rotating as well)
So it takes 2 months to accelerate up to light speed, and 2 months to decelerate, so every time you take a trip on the machine, it involves 4 months of solitary confinement, in a G-suit, at 6 G's.
But if we somehow could get an inertia dampening field to work, then all these problems go away...
A facelift might end up being cheaper
Thanks .
I guess this would apply to any type of acceleration.
What difference does it make if an object is moving in a circular pattern vs a linear pattern? None
I know when the space shuttles fire their manoeuvring thrusters the occupants have to hold on...
So 2 months acceleration + 2 months deceleration @ 6G? I don't think I could sell that idea... Ladies and gentlemen you will weigh 6 x your current weight for 4 months!
Holly **** I would weigh 540kg! My poor heart.
Most people couldn't handle 3g's for 10 minutes.
My sailplane was designed to take 18g's max... must have been without occupants.
Inertial dampening... OK since the proposed design is just a simple centrifuge we could place the occupants in a sphere inside the centrifuge and have it fall through cascading magnetic fields; acceleration would be serious curtailed but it should provide a smother ride.
BTW: I was planing on acceleration the centrifuge with a FEEP ion drive... current max speed is around 130000 kmh, but then we could deploy a solar sail like a windmill... damn there goes my geostationary orbit.
I need to look in to this a bit more.
Speed... I also thought of a way to try and get close(r) to the speed of light.
Using the refractive properties of a crystal/diamond/ruby... again it's just an idea.
Hi powered laser goes into the crystal > bounces around @ 1/3 the speed> comes out at same speed... but the fact that it lost speed inside the crystal should translate in to energy.
hey, I'm tellin' you - old fairground ride and a broken clock, nobody will know the difference.
If anyone does complain, just tell them it wasn't you that didi it, it was old you, who is now a completely different person.
