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Pavel
posts on 4/4/2006 10:36:14 AM
In the book, when Leo attached the Time Ocular to the telescope to look at Jupiter, he stressed the need to backtrack Jupiter's orbit to where it was in the past. He also sayed this was the difference between looking into the past at places on the Earth and on the Jupiter. This difference is mentioned but never explained. Two questions arise.
1) What is the difference? If no backtracking is needed to view past events here on the Earth, how come it's nessesary for Jupiter?
2) Any backtracking involves knowing how far into the past one wants to look, in other words, one needs to know the exact time at which the desired event occured. How is this ocumplished?
These are tough questions, I realize. As a writer you may not want to go into too much explaining and just go ahead with the story. We read books for the stories, not for scientific explaneitions. When something is very interesting and appealing, sometimes central to the theme, something the book would loose without or can't do without, you would be inclined to just put it forward and leave explanaitions out.
But if this leads to inconsistancies the book may loose from it. Here the inconsistancy is that you mentioned the difference between pastviewing on the Earth an on the Jupiter and so the need to backtrack Jupiter's location but you didn't explain it. I thing it would be best if you explained the difference. But if you can't and I realize that here you can't then for the sake of the story it would be better if you didn't mention the need to backtrack orbits. Then atleast it would be up to the Time Ocular and the so called Super Hubles to do the job. And this is much better since you don't have to explain how the alien technology works.
As for my previous question about the Time Ocular being deceived into looking at a mirror, it stands as a valid question as the Time Ocular has to assume it's looking at a place it is pointed at. It would give you the past of the mirror. It has nothing to do with technology.
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Pavel
posts on 4/4/2006 3:35:29 AM
At one time in the book the Time Ocular is attached to a telescope and is pointed at a setilite's telescope mirror to see the Earth surface.
How a Time Ocular is to know the image it receives doesn't come from a place the Ocular is pointed to but is somewhere else and the image is a mere reflection?
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