🚲Oct 23
Imagine time travel is invented but uses a lot of energy to open just a dime-sized portal into the past that quickly evaporates—just enough for a camera to see through for one exposure. You can petition for a single photograph of anywhere, any time in the past, so long as you can provide an exact time and place. One photo. What do you want photographed?
Show threadNelson

@dx Dang, do we really know where anything happened? It feels like in every Wikipedia article about a great battle from history, there's a long debate about where exactly it took place.

I have similar concerns about exact timing. Unless it coincided with an astronomical event like an eclipse, timing anything also seems challenging.

For something I cared about enough, maybe it would be worth the risk of trying the most likely time+place, even if there's a significant chance of getting nothing.

Oct 23 at 6:29pmWeb
Show threadNelsonOct 23

@dx One idea would be a photo of the Zanclean flood, as the sea rushed in through the Strait of Gibraltar. It's an event that took a while, Wikipedia suggests it took a decade, but I don't know if we could guess the timing well enough to nail the photo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood

Zanclean flood - Wikipedia

Show thread🚲Oct 23

@skyfaller I am thinking of it like requesting time on a telescope. Depending what you’re looking for, you might not observe what you’re hoping to see.

One way to attack it would be shoot for something that went on for a long time rather than a brief event. If you choose your site and time carefully, I bet you could get a pretty informative photo of the time of the dinosaurs, even if you don’t know anything about events. Similarly, ancient settlements that we know when they were occupied.