11 ms·
Under River, Outside Time: The Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly
- Angostura 9y agoI hope the SCP guys don't see this. They'll want to contain it, and I have to walk through the thing about twice a week.
- JorgeGT 9y agoOn the plus side, they are always short of Class C personnel if you don't mind.
- Filligree 9y agoClass Cs are practically always criminals. There's never been any shortage of them that I'm aware of, either.
- Angostura 9y agoI think you're thinking of D-class.
- stephengillie 9y ago"D" for "Disposable", these are supposedly death-row inmates. However, since SCP has hundreds of thousands of D-class personnel, this claim is slightly dubious.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- teekert 9y agoHmm, so first the whizz through very fast -too fast-, then they are "down there all day but is was still morning." Still, perhaps that's what an anomaly about. Nice story for around a camp fire.. Or a Star Trek episode.
- jstanley 9y agoWhile there are some inconsistencies (why are the repairs behind schedule if they can consume more time in the tunnel than passes outside?), the point you brought up is perfectly consistent. They feel like they're walking for 15 minutes in the tunnel, but pop out the other end after only 1. They feel like they're working all day in the tunnel, but pop out after being in there for less than an hour.
- teekert 9y agoHaha, you're right indeed! How un-intuitive time anomalies are. They only seem to whizz through in the time of the others of course.
- alex_hitchins 9y agoI now intend to get desk and some CAT-5e down there.
- zentiggr 9y agoCareful with the NTP syncing...
- eesmith 9y agoOr 50Hz power, or power at all, for that matter. Or mobile signal.
- alex_hitchins 9y agoI'll get a small rack and be completely self sufficient down there. I'll just make code deployments by CD-ROM via the lift. Like a binary dumb-waiter.
- KirinDave 9y agoConsidering that thing come up before they leave, there are some fascinating opportunities for new models of computing. Wanna win every Bitcoin block?
- a2tech 9y agoThe latency seems like it'd be a big problem
- SuddsMcDuff 9y agoGood spot to build a library.
- pweissbrod 9y agoQuality spot for fixed price projects
- 3princip 9y agoSpeaking of anomalies, tunnels and London. On the Piccadilly line between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park it feels like the tube train takes forever while going at great speed. Yet the distance is barely half a mile. Mind you it has been a decade since I've taken the ride, but at the time it puzzled me.
- BuildTheRobots 9y agoThere's a handful of stations on the tube where above ground they're but a few minutes walk even though underground the train takes much longer (and I believe I much more circuitous path). IIRC you can actually jump out at the platform and run above ground to the next station before the train arrives. Edit: Here's a guy racing the Circle Line from Mansion House to Cannon Street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH_Z8Ghuq6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH_Z8Ghuq6E
- alex_hitchins 9y agoThis reminds me of changing platforms at Bank. IIRC Northen to DLR is something like a 3 mile walk. Edit: I obviously don't recall correctly! I knew it was some change that was hefty.
- alexfoo 9y agoCircle/District to Waterloo & City is the longest walk at Bank. 10 minutes say TFL. http://www.cityam.com/assets/uploads/content/2015/10/bank-561781ef1d22c.jpg http://www.cityam.com/assets/uploads/content/2015/10/bank-56... More long interchanges here: http://www.cityam.com/226215/longest-tube-interchange-10-tube-stations-where-changing-lines-takes-longest http://www.cityam.com/226215/longest-tube-interchange-10-tub...
- lmm 9y agoThere's a direct staircase between the Northern and DLR, takes 30 seconds. Don't leave the platform at the end, look for the staircase in the middle.
- kahnpro 9y ago
- arethuza 9y agoOnly a matter of time before the author gets a job-offer-you-can't-refuse from the Laundry.
- gvb 9y ago> When it finally re-opened it was 8 months behind schedule, having been closed for more than a year and a half. If time stopped in the tunnel, wouldn't the repairs have been completed remarkably ahead of schedule from the perspective outside the tunnel? After all, the workers would put in a full day of repairs in no (outside) time at all.
- piqufoh 9y agoAh, but if you work a whole 'tunnel' day every day, you still work the same number of days - you just have extra spare time each day (?!). I expect the delay in re-opening is partially due to confusing scheduling ... ahem
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoI suspect that in this peculiar case, as soon as a worker goes up and exits the tunnel to report completion of his/her workload, the repairs are in fact already behind schedule. To the foreman on the surface it's quite obvious that only a few moments have passed so how could he possibly have completed the repairs in such a timeframe. Instead the worker is merely wasting time ascending and descending into the tunnel, falling further behind schedule. So the foreman goes down to check the progress of works and of course finds them complete, because the workers have been working hard for days and days in the tunnel. And upon exiting the tunnel the foreman checks the plans and finds once again that the project is falling further behind schedule. And the workers are beyond tired from continuously ascending and descending into the tunnel all day and night, so of course the tunnel repairs fall further behind schedule. A more probable explanation might be obtained by searching for a carbon monoxide leak or other poison-induced mind altered state of working in the tunnel. Of course once you return to the surface from investigating the results taken will be invalid as you've only been gone a moment so how could that reading possibly have been accurate.
- 4ndr3vv 9y agoTwo points: 1) Much of the repairs were done to the lift shafts, which judging from the story seems outside the time anomalies zone of influence. 2) If a worker in the tunnel completed a day's work instantly, the worker would have still completed a days work and would need to go home and rest. You could, in theory, have a rolling start time, so the worker has 15 hours rest and then is required to come into work again. Unfortunately, legislation doesn't really account for time anomalies and so this would likely fall foul of Union and EU standards.
- nkrisc 9y agoBut let me guess, it stops working once it's open to the public?
- larrydag 9y agoThat is my suspicion as well. What about the repairs make it so the anomaly only occurs during that time and we haven't heard anything since it reopened.
- endorphone 9y agoJust a suspicion? We all realize this is a fiction, right? Poe's law is in effect and with some of the comments I'm unsure if people are taking it seriously, or if it's one group laugh and inside joke. I am baffled that this story is topping HN. I have to cite Captain Disillusion's most recent video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5EDORs8Jkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5EDORs8Jkk (he is awesome, as an aside) These fictions were once a fun ruse, but the power of the internet has made them much more damaging because there are an enormous number of people who actually believe the nonsense. I just discovered this weekend that my neighbour is a flat Earther, for instance.
- nkrisc 9y agoI assumed it was fiction purely based on the absurdity of the claim. However it, perhaps intentionally, sounds similar to supernatural claims made in earnest. I was commenting on the fact that these phenomena tend to only occur "when no one is looking." Somehow they seem to defy empirical measurement...
- KirinDave 9y agoI suspect there are some sheepish folks that are regretting posts. I've already caught a few being deleted. I guess it really is important to remember the internet is full of people without an intermediate physics education.
- stronglikedan 9y ago
- SamPutnam 9y agoI've experienced something like this programming in a room in the basement of a hospital at a medical imaging device for 8 hours, where notable project progress came in the course of days, not hours. With the absence of light, external stimulation, voices, or people, which would traditionally alert the mind to refocus on another stimuli and contextualize the stimulation against the time of day, the only alert is progress. To be clear, there is no mistaking the long period of time spent during the day whilst performing the mechanics of the task, but at the conclusion of the day, if there was no milestone of progress hit, and were it a day where there were literally zero interruptions, it would feel like I had only been down there 3 hours.
- noir_lord 9y agoMy office at work is on the other side of the building from everyone else and has no windows (I chose no windows over having people nearby). If I don't have a clock displayed on my taskbar the only sign I know it's time to eat or go home is the siren for the people who work in the factory on site. It's a productive programming environment (for a certain type).
- uhhhhhhh 9y agoThat sounds like heaven. The constant distraction environment of cubicles severely hampers my productivity. I work from home as often as possible, but even then I'm no longer accustomed to being able to focus on one thing for so long that I feel like I'm becoming more ADD. People complain about the social impacts of social media etc... I wonder if anyone has tried to identify/quantify the impact of cubicles/shared workspaces.
- frereubu 9y agoThere's a good long-ish read about why open-plan offices are terrible here: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-...
- 9y ago
- darrenf 9y agoArticle about/interview with the author of the blog here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/08/woolwich-foot-tunnel-portals-of-london https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/08/woolwich-foo...
- ageofwant 9y agoReminded me of this old classic: http://www.rioranchomathcamp.com/Topology/SubwayNamedMobius.pdf http://www.rioranchomathcamp.com/Topology/SubwayNamedMobius....
- ataturk 9y agoIt's a good story. What is most frustrating about time is that we humans lack the technology to harness it. We have conquered flight and made all kinds of other technological leaps, but it is going to take something far more than digging a simple tunnel to conquer time. There was a vimeo video depicting light leaving the sun and moving towards the planets in our solar system. The video is in real time. It takes about 500 seconds for the photon you are traveling with to reach Earth. But it feels like forever! Then it takes several looooong minutes for you to make it all the way out to Jupiter. It is then you realize how limiting the speed of light is. The speed of freaking light! So we either have to find a way to work around that limitation or we're going nowhere fast.
- joelhaasnoot 9y agoI guess I'll take the ferry next time ;) See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73X6pur0rEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73X6pur0rEk for more context.
- BoogieWoogie123 9y agoI've experienced something similar banging my wife. I thought it went for hours but turns out I nutted in 30 seconds.
- yipopov 9y agoBut who was phone?
- stillhere 9y agoFake and gay.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- peterwwillis 9y agoThis is a wonderful example of slipstream fiction, similar to weird fiction.
- andybak 9y agoOn a related note I was glad to see this strange artefact of the internet was still in existence. I contributed a small amendment probably nearly 10 years ago: http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/ http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/
- andybak 9y agoFound it: http://entrances2hell.co.uk/page322.html http://entrances2hell.co.uk/page322.html Sadly the comments have vanished but I pointed out the photo was actually taken in Crystal Palace (I know that spot well as it's where the old derelict High Level Railway Station used to be - a place I explored in my youth: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/07/see-inside-the-secret-victorian-station-left-abandoned-in-london/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/07/see-inside-the-se... I sent in a comment pointing out the anomaly and offered an explanation in keeping with the back story such as it is.
- tbabb 9y agoSome people in this thread seem to be taking this story at face value, astoundingly. Let's be clear: "Time working differently inside the tunnel" is, with 100% certainty, not was was going on. More plausible (not mutually exclusive) explanations: - The workers messing with each other (and possibly their bosses) to have a laugh and/or forge work hours - There was a bike hidden in the tunnel - The workers were coordinating with each other by radio or by phone - It didn't take as long to traverse the tunnel as people really thought - Without daylight cues, it became very easy to lose track of time - The workers were surprised or confused by ultimately ordinary circumstances, and a mystical explanation spread and socially validated itself, bolstered by the power of suggestion.
- LiamPa 9y agoWould explain why the clock is always wrong in those damn lifts.