Let’s hypothetically say you were a superhero and you could pause time for everyone except yourself.
Would you use this power to:
- Rob banks and helpless victims blind
- Catch up on your projects and work
- Tour interesting yet innaccessible landmarks (for example, the Oval office in the middle of the day)
- Or something else?
Leave a comment and let me know!! I also have a question: If you stop time would airplanes fall to the ground? I think they would.
33 responses to “Time never stops, except for you it does!”
Well, if you moved at hyperspeed while everyone else stayed at normal speed you’d achieve the same results, and the airplanes wouldn’t fall.
To answer your question though (and it is a mighty interesting question ;)) I would want the power to turn these super abilities it on and off as I please. I would turn it on to catch up on projects and other matters to catch up on, or to pursue some crazy ideas, and then turn it off when I want to chill and just hang with the peeps.
Also, since kids (one’s own) tend to grow up too fast, I’d use my power on them so they’d seem to me to stay young, cute and controllable forever.
I can think of a jillion situations in which it would be extremely tempting to abuse my power. I’d try my best to use it in a morally responsible way, but without the fear of getting caught it would be hard to do 😉
I agree with Mark though, it would come in handy when you have to catch up on projects or other time sensitive matters.
I’m mostly interested in whether people choose to use this power for good or evil.
The airplane question is interesting. I don’t think they’d fall to the ground, because they would have to be falling at a different time rate than they can move at (because for them, time is stopped). Think about it. Let’s say, normally, t (the rate at which time progresses) = 1. When you turn your super power on, t is now relative. For you, t = 1. But for everyone else, t=0. Airplanes couldn’t fall to the ground because
1) They’re are still moving. They do not move because time is stopped, not because they have stopped.
2) They still have motion in and of themselves;however, this motion is not displayed because time cannot progress.
Chris, who decided there is such a thing as good or evil?
[quote]Well, if you moved at hyperspeed while everyone else stayed at normal speed you’d achieve the same results, and the airplanes wouldn’t fall.[/quote]
…There was an episode of Ducktales that illustrated this very point. I have always wondered about it, in theory it makes a lot of sense.
…Time is an interesting subject, but the deeper issue Chris I think you are asking is not about time, but about choice. So, to answer your question,
No, I would not rob people/places, yes I would do work and maybe, just maybe…I’d go to the ocean and try and walk on water (this is because the physical properties would be frozen in thier existing state, and by necessity, require time in order to change).
This question reminds me of the movie, “Groundhog Day”, where the main character gets stuck in a time loop. After experimenting with evil, he eventually realizes the joy in doing good and uses the extra time given to perfect himself.
“I’m mostly interested in whether people choose to use this power for good or evil.”
Yes. Saint and Assassin, all in one.
Do comments need to be validated?
“Well, if you moved at hyperspeed while everyone else stayed at normal speed you’d achieve the same results, and the airplanes wouldn’t fall.”
The conclusion of this point is correct, but I disagree with the method because when time is stopped, moving at all, even the slightest bit, is essentially moving at an infinite rate by comparison to anything else which has stopped, which is not quite the same as simply moving faster. The two powers ‘travelling at hyperspeed’ and ‘stopping time’ have vastly different implications. If time is stopped, the airplanes simply cannot fall. The system which causes them to fall (gravity, mass, etc..) is depedent upon time to have its effect. If time stopped and all the other components remained the same, the planes cannot fall.
There was also a person who mentioned “the rate at which time progresses”. We have to be careful with statements like this one, because by the familiar equation d=rt (distance equals rate multplied by time), “rate” is defined by d/t=r…that is to say, the concept of rate is bound up with the concept of time. There is no rate without time, and to question “the rate of time” involves a tautology or redundancy.
That being said, I would use my powers for everything listed. Both “good” and “evil”. But if we really think about it, there would be absolutely no need to rob banks if you could stop time, since your new ability would provide for you an INSANELY large number of ways to make your money legitimately. Robbing banks would just be the lazy person’s way to make money.
You could do everything from start a circus sideshow to some sort of world emergency management, where, say, if an airline or a building which has determined they have an active timebomb inside calls you up, you can stop time, make your way toward the active bomb (I suppose if the plane was in the sky that would present a problem) and deactivate it. Any company or government would pay vast amounts of money for this and you could make your money legitimately.
And if you think you wouldn’t know how to deactivate bombs, remember the Groundshog Day problem. This one is only slightly different. If you can stop time, you are essentially a genius. Any question anyone asks you can be answered straight away. If you’re on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, on every question you can stop time, walk out of the studio, read a book, then return to the studio and answer the question. You’d have no excuse for losing.
The only issue there would be that if you do not return to the exact position that you were in when you stop time and restart it, people will see you “flicker”. Then they might suspect something, who knows!
-jimmy
Good stuff Jimmy. I never thought about the ideas you mentioned to make money legitimately.
Well Jimmy, the theory of making money legitimately by offering a time stopping service to governments and such sounds good. But, it couldn’t work in reality. Once the public at large found out you had perfected time stoppage, there’d be lawsuits, government inquiries and senate investigations, coutries would be demanding that you censor how much time you stop, bloggers would decry that you had monopolistic powers and you’ve now gone evil after once being innovative…especially if you go public and start offering services in addition to your original time stoppage product.
To answer your question, Chris. Being evil is only fun when there’s a risk of being caught. The pleasure derived in being good however, comes from being anonymous.
So, if I could stop time, I’d do good.
I would argue that robbing a bank blind while time was stopped would be boring however having ten million dollars and hearing about it in the papers would certainly be interesting.
Either way, I think that an airplane would fall if time were stopped. Because in all of our examples we assume that you would be able to move and manipulate objects. Hence that means atmosphere isn’t a solid object in these cases and an airplane would stop.
One thing for sure, it wouldn’t hang in the sky and it certainly would crash if it continued flying without people stearing it.
You know what. I’m not sure about the airplane falling afterall.
Let’s ask a simple question: Would a car stop? Yes. If it didn’t there would be car accidents everywhere. Stopping time is powerful because of its hidden ability.
Would a bird stop in mid flight?
Would an airplane stop? I suppose so since time has stopped and to move forward would require time.
I bet someone else used the same logic above and if so I appologize. I need to read them again.
Yeah, I think you may have confused time with movement.
It’s an easy mistake to make, because we humans tend to measure time by movement. The sun moves across the sky, the hands on a watch go around, etc…
So the only way for you to perceive that “time” had stopped, would be if all normally moving objects completely froze.
It’s a confusing issue to deal with logically, mainly because it’s impossible. Of course, people will always claim that time can be stopped and so on and so forth. My opinion is that these illusions and never/ending theories continue to exist because people confuse time with movement.
Here’s an example demonstrating how easy it is to get confused by time and movement. Let’s say you are in an airplane that circles the globe just fast enough to stay ahead of the sunset. Does this mean you are constantly traveling back in time? Sure, your watch might stay at 5:00 PM, but you are still traveling ahead in time.
Face it. Time is constant. It can not be stopped, rewound, or sped up. All we have is now. The past is nothing but a memory, and our knowledge of the future is all just logical assumptions based on observations.
I didn’t confuse time with movement, I think the trick is that I’m a superhero in a world where I can stop time and manipulate objects in that world yet an airplane doesn’t fall from the sky. I can literally move stuff but nothing moves without my interference. Truly interesting.
Speak for yourself, buddy. 😉
haha! Nice.
By the way, Chris, most of my comment wasn’t directed at you…
It was directed at all the time-travel nerds that have ever argued with me.
Hehe, I know.
But I also couldn’t pass up a perfectly good opportunity.
Just for the sake of being difficult… let’s ask the same “time” question, in a different way.
“What would you do… If you could pause *all* normal motion with the exception of yourself and objects that you physically interacted directly with?”
So you hit pause and people freeze mid-step. The sun stops moving. An airplane stops dead in the sky (and doesn’t fall).
Now. Let me ask you something else. Did you just stop time? Or did you just stop things from moving? Would you be able to discern the difference?
Good idea!
I’d say that it wouldn’t be possible to discern the difference immediately, however the fact that NOTHING was moving and that means wind and birds and cars and people you’d probably realize something was happening immediately and then you’d look for me because only Superman could do something like that.
Har har har
Could you argue that Time = Movement?
hmm… that is a very good point.
When you really start boiling things down, you see that everything relies on movement.
You can’t even see if everything is paused because light has to move to bounce off your eyes.
And even if you’re just sitting there in the dark, you still won’t perceive anything because electrons have to move to enable your brain to function and process thought.
Wow. What a head-scratcher.
Ok. I thought about it and here’s how I know Time does *not* equal Movement:
Our memories of accomplishments in the past.
They stand to show that there is more to time than just mere movement.
Which means that if everything stopped cold, time would still be moving at it’s steady pace. For eternity.
Yeah, I’m perplexed myself. That’s not unusual though.
“…“What would you do… If you could pause *all* normal motion with the exception of yourself and objects that you physically interacted directly with?…Did you just stop time? Or did you just stop things from moving?”
One indicator of the passage of time is the aging process of everything subjected to time. People, paper, photographs, machinery, batteries, nature…
If you are able to stop all movement, then time may continue to pass, but how would it be measured?
Stopping motion would cease all electrons from moving, bodily organs from functioning, blood from moving, grass from growing, seasons from changing, timepiece gears from turning. Time may continue to march on, but once motion was restored, how would that passage be measured? If it can’t be measured, can it be proved or disproved for certain?
Hmm, we could start getting a little theological here before too long.