just joined and have a question

[madmaximus]

Hi everyone, I am a new member with a simple question on time travel, and perhaps some of you can answer it for me.

If one day a time machine was invented, something simple for my example, let's say a cylinder, I won't get into the mechanics of how it works, because obviously, I didn't invent it and would have no clue as to how it was made. Perhaps a large contraption with all the innerworkings of the time machine, but the very part that let's objects pass back in time is a cylinder, like a tin can with both top and bottom removed. If such a thing were set to pass an object back in time 10 minutes, and as an experiment we dropped a single ping-pong ball into the top at 15 minutes, then at 5 minutes into our experiment we should see the ping-pong ball drop out the bottom of the cylinder onto the ground, even though of course we still have the ping-pong ball in our hand and have not dropped it in yet, waiting for the 15 minute mark to come so we can then drop it in. And I won't get into some argument on a paradox if, let's say the ball dropped out at 5 minutes and moment's later I threw the original ball out the window so that it had no chance of passing back 10 minutes in time. If the ball dropped out of the bottom of the cylinder at 5 minutes, then obviously I dropped it into the top of the cylinder at 15 minutes so it could pass back in time.

Would this constitute a working time machine?

 

[explorer]

Yes . no . maybe. who knows...

 

[madmaximus]

yes well, it's hard to decide what a working time machine would actually do... however, if i did this experiment on a desk.. lets say it was automated, a clamp holding the ping-pong ball, i just flip the switch, in 15 minutes it drops the ball automaticly, in 5 minutes i see it drop out, i know it will drop in then... and at 6 minutes, 1 minute after it dropped the ball out, i leave for some coffee.. be gone.. oh, about 20 minutes... and after i leave, someone comes in and moves the whole time machine experiment to a different desk, but does not turn it off, or remove the ball.. so it will still drop through at the 15 minute mark in...

the question i guess is, would it still have dropped onto the 1st desk, if now its been moved and is dropping the ball into the machine on the 2nd desk? shure the ball could travel back in time, but would it also cross a distance to appear one desk away? same if i started the experiment and at the 6 minute mark after the ball were to come through, i picked the machine up and took it to the park and set it down there... the ball would then drop through at the park, and re-appear 10 minutes in the past at... ? where... the desk or the park?