Time travel thing - a small preview

[ffutures]

Forthcoming Cruises: Triassic-Cretaceous TS Corinthic, Captain Richard Thorne RNVR, White Star Line: Departs for a four-week cruise to the Triassic-Cretaceous oceans, calling in at London (1588 AD), Vinland (1000 AD), Herculaneum (75 AD; day trip to Pompeii available), Africa (500,000 BC; hunting trips available), Triassic-Cretaceous (circa 150 Million BC). Launched in 1902, the Corinthic is a luxurious new liner of 12,251 tons capable of 14 knots and equipped with the latest Ferguson Chronatron® time displacer and a Babbage-Williamson navigational engine. Excluding stops en-route and any delays to manoeuvre the journey to the Triassic-Cretaceous seas will take approximately a week, with a week spent sight-seeing and hunting in this period before the return journey. Currently all first-class accommodation is reserved, but second and third-class cabins are still available and may be booked via Thomas Cook & Sons and other reputable agents. Corinthic will depart from pier 7, Southampton, at 2.00 PM on Tuesday 11th May.

Okay - showing my crappy maths here. What I need here is a SIMPLE mathematical formula that'll relate the distance travelled in time to the distance at sea, possibly an exponential curve or close to it. The way I want it to work is that you start off slowly but accelerate. A few months in the first few miles, a few years in the next few, and so forth, say 200 million years in a week, and the beginning of the universe in a month or two (assuming you could keep sailing). I can simply give figures that suit me, but it'd be better if I could give a formula that can be used without too much messing around. Any suggestions?

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

When did the Earth first have a breathable atmosphere? Anyone know?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

This graph suggests that atmospheric oxygen reached about half its current abundance 500-600 MYA, i.e. about the time of the Cambrian Explosion (this is probably not a coincidence). It looks like it reached its current levels about 300 MYA.

MC

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - that's very useful. Sorry to have rejected your formula, but the cube one does seem rather easier to work with (apart from needing cube roots to get distances for a given time, which is a PITA).

[drplokta]

But if certain theories are correct, you're going to need to have one hell of an icebreaker at around 600MYA.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

The atmospher was probably not very stable before the Triassic as there was a huge extinction in the Permian during which the majority of life on Earth died.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

Not all that long ago, relatively speaking.

Cyanobacteria first started producing oxygen about 2.7 billion years ago, but it took about 2 billion years to get the atmosphere up to its current oxygen levels. Multicellular life first appeared about 1.2 billion years ago. Animal life, and green plants appeared on land about 500 million years ago.