Via Iran’s FARS news agency, this just in:
[Inventor, Ali] Razeghi also claimed to have beaten competitors working on similar devices: “The Americans are trying to make this invention by spending millions of dollars on it where I have already achieved it at a fraction of the cost.” He added that he is concerned about industrial espionage, as other nations will be eager to learn his secrets. “The reason that we are not launching our prototype at this stage is that the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight,” he said.
I know, I know. But wait. History is already being rewritten.
[Waves hand] "This isn't the time machine you're looking for."
Posted by: Rafi | April 13, 2013 at 11:02
The Iranian government does have a history of erm, implausible breakthroughs. Don’t forget the infamous ‘monkey astronaut’ saga, in which one unfortunate animal was apparently fired into space and a quite different animal seems to have returned. Also promised is an Islamic alternative to that Zionist-imperialist tool of evil, Google Earth.
Posted by: David | April 13, 2013 at 11:26
"Naturally a government that can see five years into the future would be able to prepare itself for challenges that might destabilize it," he explained. "As such we expect to market this invention among states as well as individuals once we reach a mass-production stage."
But if these things were mass produced so everyone had one, wouldn't that mean everyone who had one (armed with foreknowledge) would be changing the variables all the time… so none of them would work?
Posted by: rjmadden | April 13, 2013 at 13:32
I fear you’ve given this more thought than the Iranian press.
Posted by: David | April 13, 2013 at 13:36
I read this and the 'inventor' talks of complex algorithms that the 'system' works from, that it uses historical data to predict the future. Seems to remind me of the industrialised hedge funds that failed so spectacularly during the banking debacle. There was a proposal from some academics that criminal behaviour could be predicted using statistics and this could be used in developing appropriate sentencing, again see my comment re the banking crisis, it doesn't work! As one person has pointed out, that statistical modelling as a science is at the stage where the physical sciences were in the 17th Century, so that would make the banking crisis the equivalent of a boiler explosion and this break through the modern day equivalent of the char de Latan.
Posted by: Simon Sutcliffe | April 13, 2013 at 13:57
Has he joined the IPCC? They also claim to have a time machine that can see into the future via " complex algorithms that the 'system' works from, that it uses historical data to predict the future".
Posted by: AC1 | April 13, 2013 at 15:34
I hope he didn't get the plutonium from the Libyans.
Posted by: Steve 2 | April 13, 2013 at 18:13
Was he silenced by the Guild of Evil...?
Posted by: sk60 | April 13, 2013 at 18:19
Doesn't he already know if the Chinese will steal the idea?
Posted by: lovegoats | April 13, 2013 at 21:18
I'm friendly with quite a number of Iranian immigrants and I have great fun mocking their claims that the Persians invented everything.
Posted by: Jonathan | April 13, 2013 at 22:36
The story may be a hoax. That is, the original story in Iran was a mocking article.
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/04/11/fake_fake_news_the_iranian_time_machine
Posted by: Dom | April 14, 2013 at 03:14
Dom,
Thanks. We’ll all sleep more soundly tonight.
Posted by: David | April 14, 2013 at 09:17
These are confused memories from an aborted timeline in which an advanced Zoroastrian civilisation developed time travel in the early 21st century. The Time Lords retroactively 'corrected' this dangerous (for them) development by altering history, so that Persia was overrun by the cult of the epileptic Arab sex offender and became the backwater it is in our timeline.
By tomorrow this comment will never have been posted...
Posted by: Zoroaster | April 14, 2013 at 12:53
If someone did manage to invent a time machine history would be changed over and over again. The alterations wouldn't stop until somebody created a timeline in which time travel was never invented at all. The universe would have to end up in that state because it's the only stable configuration. Any version of history in which time travel becomes possible will get altered out of existence. Time travel technology automatically destroys itself.
Posted by: Andrew Zalotocky | April 14, 2013 at 23:32
I have a time machine. I call it a "clock."
Posted by: BackwardsBoy | April 16, 2013 at 15:35