Sonic screwdriver to solve future DIY woes

[David in Normandy]

Looks like Dr Who's sonic screwdriver is under development! :)

wonder how long before they appear in Maplins?

[Ericp]

At £55.43 +pp

or £5.60 inc from ebay

[Tim Watts]

"Whilst a fully functioning time machine may still be light years away, "

Arrggghhh!

[ARWadsworth]

Were you wanting a trip forward in time to see what the bungalow looks like when it is finished:-)

[Tim Watts]

That would be good - not sure the TARDIS could manage that one - after all, it was only able to get as far as the end of the Universe!

No - my Arrrghh! was to do with the use of "light year" as an implied measurement of time which is something you normally expect from thick Daily Mail journalists, but not from a respectable University's engineering group. I suspect it was filtered by marketing...

[mike]

Seems the Bristol folks are classic Who fans who regard the sonic screwdriver as an ultrasonic device primarily for picking locks rather than the NuWho variation which acts as a magic wand for extricating lazy writers from incompetent plots.

[Mark]

You can't expect a Journo to know the difference between distance and time.

[Dave Liquorice]

I suspect it's intentional. To indicate that they don't think time travel, in the Dr Who sense, will ever be practical.

Remember *everything* what we observe is already in the past, in the case of the sun about 9 minutes ago, in the case of the letters appearing on the screen in front of me as I type a very short time before I observe them but still before I observe them. There is no way for us to get to those actual events in space/time to observe them again.

[Jeff Gaines]

He could be right if he has inside information that it has been invented and manufactured in another galaxy and has been dispatched to us via DHL :-)

[Tim Watts]

But the context of the sentence suggests time, even if tending towards infinity. I don't see how a "really big unit of distance" makes sense there, even as a sort of "science joke". ???

[Tim Watts]

In which case, we'll get it - it'll just be in little bits rattlling around the box marked "this way up" and "fragile"!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or it may be hugely subtle in the metaphysical sense, with a hint that the 'here and now' are arbitrary anthropogenic fictions..

[Tim Watts]

That's a lot of credit to give to a press team...

Unless they did quote the Prof verbatim.

[Mark]

Nah. You'll get a small card through your letter box saying "we will try to deliver your time machine tomorrow but you will be out".

[Tim Watts]

LoL Good one!

[Dave Liquorice]

expect

But it's a really big distance measured by light and time, damn weird things happen to space and time when you start involving light.

Quite.

Agreed if it came from them it's just ignorance.

[ARWadsworth]

vbg

Nice one Mark.

[John Rumm]

Alternatively one could interpret it as there already exists a time machine - just in another galaxy. Hence it genuinely is light years away... ;-)

[John Rumm]

They are after all just two manifestations of the same thing, spacetime.

[John Rumm]

Or we left it with your neighbour... in Andromeda...