Under River, Outside Time: The Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly | Hacker News Reader

Under River, Outside Time: The Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly

portalsoflondon.com

164 pointszhte41579 comments

> 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.

I 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.

Two 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.

Hire different/more workers?

Setting aside the implausibility of such a secret remaining a secret (none of the workers had a boffin brother or cousin to show?), and never mind the implications for physics, with the right incentives, foreman could hire additional workers, finish the job faster, get paid for that job, and move onto the next job while looking like they're exceptionally good at things rather than ending up over-budget and behind schedule, as is expected for publics works projects. And all without coming up against per-worker Union/EU standards.

I suppose we have two hurdles.

One is getting the outside-tunnel work done - redoing the lifts, trucking in more tiles, and so on. That's happening at real-world time, so it's going to be a bottleneck.

The other is getting approval for what looks like a blatantly dishonest hiring scheme. Sure, the foreman knows he can get 80 hours of work done in that tunnel every day, but a request to hire that much staff looks like pure make-work from the outside.

The story does point out that they were doing a "full day of work", then going home even if it was still morning.

So there doesn't seem to have been any personal benefit from the time dilation - the crew still put in 8 hours of work per person per day. Sending a guy across the tunnel to deliver some tool still costs the same amount of his workday, but it'd be instant for the people on the outside, which would save a bit of time. On the other hand dealing with the weirdness and scheduling around it might well eat up any time gained.

Now if they'd convinced the head office about the weirdness, I suppose they could have dispatched another dozen crews and gotten 80 hours of work done each day - at least in the tunnel.

> Mention the 18 month time frame to someone who worked on the Woolwich Tunnel job and you may be met with a mysterious smile.

> Biggest problem was making sure that if anyone from head office came down it wouldn’t look like he was sending people home ten minutes after they logged on

It's a fun story, but my overly cynical mind would suspect that there was probably some timesheet gaming going on somewhere here with agency workers. It would explain why the project went on a lot longer than it should have as well.

Fictional stories don't have to make sense, though.

Yes, they have to. Otherwise they strain the suspension of disbelief too much, and the reader can't enjoy the work.

Well, think about it this way: The anomaly made work progress much faster than normal, and it still finished a year too late. What does that say about public works in general?

Seems like you're projecting your preferences onto others.

Personally I find things like 'Star Trek' and 'Dr Who' to be enjoyable, but they almost never makes sense... the science seems to be always bent to suit the plot in absurd or self-contradictory ways.

Perhaps you're either much more informed than average, or have a weaker ability to suspent disbelief for some reason, or both?

Nah, Absurdist writing can still be enjoyable.

Well Dr. Who and Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy are absurd but fun. Lost and Heroes both past season 2 are painful.

Lost was good for much longer than that. I'd maintain that it still contained good elements right up until fairly near the end. On a small scale the writing and acting was still good.

What got worse was the larger scale structures that were meant to keep your interest over a long period of time. A story made up from fragments that never form a greater whole is usually unsatisfying no matter how good the fragments are. (Exceptions to this rule can be found - an exercise I leave up to the reader)

Season 1 of Heroes was pretty dang solid for a TV drama with time travel though.

I guess some people have no problem with obvious plot holes and other are extremely bothered by them.

Don't ask me about the last three Star Wars movies.

Ah, 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

I'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.

My 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).

That 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.

I've worked in several "open" office layouts for several large corporations and they're horrible. At one, it was so loud and distracting, I barely could get anything done due to all the interruptions. When one person would get sick, it was a chain reaction. Within days, half our team would be out sick. It was a miserable place to work. Both places abandoned the open office concept and went back to cubicles with additional "collaboration" spaces instead. Needless to say, it was much better.

The funny thing is the company I currently work for went back to this "open office" concept and call it "hoteling" now. They have desks with monitors and a dock everywhere and you just plug in your laptop and go. There are no more assigned seats. It's the same thing with predictable results though. People are constantly sick, they complain about the interruptions (I had a guy doing his kettle bell workout at his desk across from me) and the struggle to maintain concentration. The problem is, they've gone all in on the concept. The company dropped millions of dollars in renovating the building so I don't see a change any time soon. I just work from home now as often as possible.

I wonder if I'm using the wrong terms.

I call open offices anything from "just tables" without any real dividers to cubicles like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Gu...

I've seen some cubicles that are higher and appear to provide more privacy, but I've never actually worked in one/for a company that uses them.

The company I work for now has the short cubicles. Noise isn't contained, and a large number of people work with remote teams/employees and are constantly on calls. Its a complete PITA.

I WFH as often as I can get away with, but my previous habits/skills of focus and concentration have significantly deteriorated in all aspects of my life. I'm actively working on ways to combat this, but I fear without a more comprehensive lifestyle change my success will be limited. (thankfully the one thing I can still do is disappear into a book for hours)

>> I wonder if I'm using the wrong terms.

Nah, you're using the correct terms.

One company I worked at had a bunch of octagon tables, pushed together and your monitors would face each other. Another one, I had cubicles like the ones you referenced and we were told it was an open office concept as well.

Another company I worked at had super high (like 8' high) cubicle walls for their customer service people and other people (sales team, account managers) who were on the phone constantly, which would be awesome for privacy and noise. Ironically, all the developers sat at long picnic like tables, shoulder to shoulder working, it was the worst. I only last a month before leaving since it felt so much like a sweatshop.

I definitely feel that too. Since I have been working in a cubicle I feel constantly rushed. My ability to focus has gone down a lot.

I've been working on ways to combat this. Taking on longer tasks/projects at home, and requiring myself to pace myself/go slowly and focus on details. Also got back into reading more which can take my attention for hours without too much effort.

I'm getting to the point where I want to shut all personal notifications, social media access etc.. off for 12 hours a day (mid-late evening to morning) to remove distractions and interruptions, and try to do things that require focus and concentration during those periods (also sleeping, and staying in bed/not grabbing my phone if I can't sleep)

There's a good long-ish read about why open-plan offices are terrible here: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-...

I did read that several years ago, but forgot that linked to some actual studies done on the subject, I'll go back and dig deeper.

Thanks!

>It's a productive programming environment (for a certain type).

I'd go insane there. I need social interaction.

Me too. Measured in lines of code output, my optimal distribution of interaction probably looks like a Laffer curve. Too little and I distract myself often, too much and I spend all my time interacting and not much on code.

Put me on a job where interaction is also beneficial (pair programming, XP, working with a newbie, supporting QA at the next desk over) and I'm fairly sure I'm much more productive overall in a moderate-to-highly collaborative environment. Silent solitude sounds miserable. Completely miserable.

Agreed but I love it however I usually have IRC open on a different workspace in one of the channels I've hung out in for years so if I want to shoot the breeze with someone I can talk to them - I work for a manufacturing firm and I'm the only programmer so I can't really talk about my job in any depth with non-programmers anyway.

When doing my PhD, I was working in a research center which was open 24/7. I would go to work at 14, starting with a lunch at the cafeteria. Then hopped to buy some groceries. By 17 a lot of people were gone and I could start to really work through the evening and the night, until about 5 am when the sun was raising - which was the signal to go to bed.

I felt like a vampire, had zero social life but did fantastic work.

The main thing was that I knew it would be temporary and not sustainable, which also made me very happy (it was a fun experience, au from family and friends, and I knew I would be back to normal life soon).

Article about/interview with the author of the blog here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/08/woolwich-foo...

I 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.

On the plus side, they are always short of Class C personnel if you don't mind.

Class Cs are practically always criminals. There's never been any shortage of them that I'm aware of, either.

I think you're thinking of D-class.

"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.

Speaking 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.

The train slows down between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park as it passes through the now closed Down Street station.

The platforms of Down Street have been bricked up but otherwise the station is still there. You can tell you're passing through it when the train slows, and the wall changes to brick for several seconds. You can also see some kind of junction before the platforms. If you walk along Down St on the surface you can even see the old station facade still there.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5046265,-0.1477147,3a,75y,...

This guy has a very detailed map of the underground system including closed/defunct stations: http://carto.metro.free.fr/cartes/metro-tram-london/

And there are even a couple of photos within the closed bit of the Station : https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5046516,-0.1479124,3a,90y,...

Apparently the track between stations is lower than the track at stations so the trains get a little acceleration and deceleration for free. Thus the trains still slow for abandoned stations.

There'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

Here's a map showing where it's quicker to walk: http://rodcorp.typepad.com/rodcorp/2003/10/london_tube_map.h...

I know than a lot of the lines had to follow weird quirky routes as they are built under the roads, not the houses. This was something to do with the cost of getting permission to build under other people's properties IIRC

Also a lot of the older lines - like the circle line - are much more shallow and were built by digging up the roads, putting in the tunnel and covering it back up (cut and cover) rather than by boring the tunnels.

In addition, quite a few of the curves on the Central Line are there to avoid digging through plague pits - apparently

No eminent domain law in the UK?

Eminent domain comes from English common law. The crown ultimately owns everything (i.e. holds eminent domain). Your "fee simple" property allows you to hold rights in the property in perpetuity in exchange for a simple fee (as opposed to a lease). The crown still holds eminent domain, however, and can take it away. The "constitutional" part of "constitutional monarchy" does create a process and establish compensation and such so that your rights can't be taken away arbitrarily.

This 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.

There'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.

Circle/District to Waterloo & City is the longest walk at Bank. 10 minutes say TFL.

http://www.cityam.com/assets/uploads/content/2015/10/bank-56...

More long interchanges here: http://www.cityam.com/226215/longest-tube-interchange-10-tub...

Northern and DLR are like right next to each other underground... the longest will be going from Waterloo & City or the Central line, across to the District line.

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/...

I think I can shed some light on that. The borers then would deviate from a direct line if they encountered soft earth, like chalk. There’s a section on the Piccadilly line where it avoids a section, straightens up and then avoids another section soon after before finally straightening up. At the relatively slow speed, partly because of the turns, it can take a while, relatively.

Hmm, 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.

While 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.

Haha, you're right indeed! How un-intuitive time anomalies are. They only seem to whizz through in the time of the others of course.

But let me guess, it stops working once it's open to the public?

Last line:

> The tunnel was re-opened in early 2012. No time-discrepancies have been reported since that date.

Hypothesis:

> There is some anecdotal evidence that temporary spaces, or spaces temporarily under a different use, lend themselves to time anomalies, and the Woolwich event would appear to support this.

That 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.

Just 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

(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.

I 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...

I 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.

Some 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.

Reminded me of this old classic: http://www.rioranchomathcamp.com/Topology/SubwayNamedMobius....

Only a matter of time before the author gets a job-offer-you-can't-refuse from the Laundry.

I guess I'll take the ferry next time ;) See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73X6pur0rEk for more context.

On 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/

Found it: 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-se...

I sent in a comment pointing out the anomaly and offered an explanation in keeping with the back story such as it is.

I now intend to get desk and some CAT-5e down there.

Careful with the NTP syncing...

Or 50Hz power, or power at all, for that matter.

Or mobile signal.

I'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.

Considering that thing come up before they leave, there are some fascinating opportunities for new models of computing.

Wanna win every Bitcoin block?

Good spot to build a library.

The latency seems like it'd be a big problem

Quality spot for fixed price projects

This is a wonderful example of slipstream fiction, similar to weird fiction.

Would explain why the clock is always wrong in those damn lifts.

But who was phone?

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