The door through time was introduced to viewers in the 1978 episode of 'Super-Friends' titled 'The Time Trap'. In the episode, viewers were shown Grodd's "inter-spatial time conveyor" which when activated would open a glowing door to allow them to travel way back into the past. The Legion of Doom devised a plan to loot the earth of its richest historical treasures then "deposit them into our 20th century bank account." Grodd guffawed, "Our Legion will soon rule the wealth of the world and we'll have all the time we need."
In one scene, Apache Chief and Aquaman found themselves trapped in time in the year 70 million BC (also known as the Cretaceous Period) when they tried to stop Black Manta and Giganta from looting "the diamond mine of South Africa before they were even discovered." On October 13, 1867, the Eureka diamond was discovered in South Africa.
The South African History Online (SAHO) website noted, "By 1871, more diamonds were found in the vicinity of the present-day Kimberley, leading to the establishment of De Beers Consolidated Mines under the leadership of Cecil John Rhodes. This was soon followed by the discovery of gold, which changed South Africa's agrarian economy to an industrialized one. South Africa is to date, one of the substantial providers of minerals world-wide."
In another scene on 'Super-Friends', Green Lantern and Samurai found themselves trapped in the year 500AD when they tried to stop Sinestro and Captain Cold from looting the treasure of King Arthur and his knights. It was the time of Camelot in England. In 2016, the 'Independent' reported Professor Peter Field, who was an expert in literature on the mythical Arthur, had discovered the location of King Arthur's Camelot.
The professor who used to teach at Bangor University stated, "It was quite by chance. I was looking at some maps, and suddenly all the ducks lined up. I believe I may have solved a 1,400-year-old mystery." But the 'Independent' pointed out, "There appears to be little hope of finding King Arthur's mythical Camelot soon, however: the location Professor Field has pinpointed currently lies under a golf course and the M62 motorway - on the outskirts of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire."
Readers of the 'Independent' were also informed, "The Romans called the fort at Slack 'Camulodunum', which means 'the fort of the god Camul' and could be where the name Camelot comes from.
Professor Field said Slack would have been an ideal location from which to command Celtic-speaking British troops battling the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons from the north and west in the time of King Arthur.
The fort's location on the Roman road between Chester and York, both Celtic strategic strongholds, would also make it a prime location for defending the east coast."
In another scene on 'Super-Friends', Batman and Robin found themselves trapped in ancient Rome when they tried to stop Grodd and Solomon Grundy from looting the treasure of Caesar, the Emperor of Rome. Emperor Caesar ordered Batman and Robin to the Colosseum to participate in the gladiatorial games. In 2009, the people of Rome celebrated Emperor Vespasian's (full name: Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus) 2,000th birthday by staging a 10-month exhibition of the crowning monument of a civilization, the Colosseum.
The 'Independent' reported, "By far the largest amphitheatre the ancient Romans built, it is capable of holding at least 50,000 and perhaps as many as 70,000 screaming plebs. When it was inaugurated, in the reign of Vespasian's son and heir Titus, 5,000 wild animals were put to the sword over 100 days for the amusement of the punters, and despite the halt called by Constantine, the emperor who converted to Christianity, bloody gladiatorial combat remained standard fare until it was banned early in the fifth century."
Curator Filippo Coarelli told the 'Independent', "The element of chance in Vespasian's success cannot hide the profound manner in which that success resonates with the whole history of Rome: the mobility which was intrinsic to that society, which allowed it to access the energy of emerging classes." The 'Independent' elaborated, "Despite these achievements, and despite the Colosseum, which was still under construction when Vespasian died in 79, it was his determination to tax Romans to the hilt for which they most remembered him, the image of the stingy, money-grubbing son of a tax-collector that stuck."
On 'Super-Friends', Superman decided to use his super speed to travel beyond the barrier of light, passing through a warp in time, continuing back into the distant past in order to rescue the other Super-Friends and to get them back into the future. Once returned to the present, the Super-Friends traveled back in time once again after learning the Legion of Doom planned on mining the gold at Sutter’s Mill in Sacramento Valley on January 23, 1848, one day before the 49ers discovered gold which sparked the California Gold Rush.
As understood, a total of $2 billion worth of precious metal was extracted from the area during the Gold Rush, which peaked in 1852. On 'Super-Friends', after the Super-Friends successfully stopped the Legion of Doom from looting the gold, Grodd activated his inter-spatial time conveyor emergency escape and said, "We'll see you in the future."
The 'History' website reported, "Throughout 1849, people around the United States (mostly men) borrowed money, mortgaged their property or spent their life savings to make the arduous journey to California. In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, they left their families and hometowns; in turn, women left behind took on new responsibilities such as running farms or businesses and caring for their children alone.
"Thousands of would-be gold miners, known as ’49ers, traveled overland across the mountains or by sea, sailing to Panama or even around Cape Horn, the southernmost point of South America.
By the end of the year, the non-native population of California was estimated at 100,000 (as compared with 20,000 at the end of 1848 and around 800 in March 1848).
"To accommodate the needs of the ’49ers, gold mining towns had sprung up all over the region, complete with shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses seeking to make their own Gold Rush fortune. The overcrowded chaos of the mining camps and towns grew ever more lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, prostitution and violence. San Francisco, for its part, developed a bustling economy and became the central metropolis of the new frontier."
Lawrence M. Krauss wrote the book, 'The Greatest Story Ever Told - So Far: Why Are We Here?' told 'NBC News' in May 2017, "The theoretical underpinnings of time travel date back to 1905, when Albert Einstein wrote down his special theory of relativity that showed space and time are intimately linked, and to 1916, when Einstein’s general theory of relativity showed that space and time are malleable — that is, they respond to the presence of matter or energy by warping, bending, expanding, and contracting.
"The first person to write down a mathematical solution of the general relativity equations that described an exotic type of space-time that might permit time travel was mathematician Kurt Gödel, a close colleague of Einstein’s at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He presented his result in a scientific paper that he gave Einstein as a birthday present on his 70th birthday in 1949.
"Most physicists now working would bet against the possibility of time travel, not merely because of the practical difficulties of generating the necessary conditions to allow it but also because of the implications of time travel if it becomes possible. For example, if we were to go back in time and change the past, we would also change the future. This situation is a common plot twist of modern science fiction (including 'Star Trek' and the film 'Back To The Future').
"And it leads to a host of possible paradoxes, including what would happen if you went back in time and killed your grandmother before she gave birth to your mother. If your mother was never born, of course, then you would never have been born. But in that case, how did you go back in time and kill your grandmother in the first place?
One possible resolution of this paradox would be that the only kind of time travel allowed by the laws of physics is travel in which you are doomed to repeat the same sequence of events again and again, no matter how much you'd like to alter things.
"Time would travel in a circle instead of a straight line. As in the movie 'Groundhog Day', you would be doomed to repeat events for all eternity.
Traveling forward in time and returning also produces problems of the sort seen in 'Back To The Future'. As I have pointed out previously, the fact that Bill Gates remains the richest person in the world argues against the existence of a forward-and-back time machine.
"For if you could jump forward even a single day and then return to the present time, within a year you could make investments in the stock market that would turn even a small sum into an astronomically large one. Gates’s mere $80 billion fortune would seem minuscule. My colleague Stephen Hawking once presented another interesting argument against the possibility of time travel. He said that if it were possible, then we would forever be inundated with tourists from the future. (I countered by saying maybe they all went back to the 1960s and no one noticed!)
"As much as the idea of time travel runs counter to our common sense understanding of reality, the universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. Even if time travel appears to present difficulties for such notions as causality, the history of physics has taught us that new discoveries force us to periodically modify our understanding of cherished notions.
"The bottom line? While the possibility of time travel continues to tantalize physicists and laypeople alike, the odds are against it. And if time travel were shown to possible in principle, the amount of energy required to create the conditions for time travel would likely be greater than the total energy available on Earth. At least for the foreseeable future, time travel will remain the stuff of science fiction."
