Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Whosday: How the TARDIS works

For today's Whiosday, we'll discuss how the TARDIS works!

Perhaps the biggest question is how it can travel in time, forwards or backwards:  Answering how it can travel forwards is a fairly easy part, and it can even correct some continuity problems as we explore these questions.

One such continuity problem is Susan claimed that she coined the name "TARDIS", short for Time And Relative Dimension In Space, but in fact all similar devices used by the Time Lords are also callsed TARDIS-es.

It is entirely possible that these are two different acronyms, and they just make the same name as a coincidence in our human languages, which the Doctor and Susan do not actually speak.  Their Gallifreyan words are translated for our benefit.

What the Time Lords have created is probably properly called a Traversible Achronal Retrograde Domain in Spacetime, a TARDIS, but Susan gave it her own name, Time And Relative Dimension in Space.

It's fueled by an Eye of Harmony, a Gallifreyan term for a black hole, which would provide unlimited energy due to the constant motion of black holes, best exemplified here:



The TARDIS is dimensionally transcendent, which might explain why it flat-out disappears when it moves; a higher dimensional object would most likely be hard to see unless it stood perfectly still.

Why does it look like a police box, even though it isn't?

The TARDIS is likely made out of tons of nanobots that are all connected to the TARDIS data core, which commands them to assume particular exterior structures.

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