I am looking for resources on a seemingly simple issue. I believe the seeming simplicity of this issue is quite deceptive: What is a "surface?" What allows anything to "touch?" Where does philosophy stand on this issue? Thank you for your time.

You should consult: Stroll, A., 1979, ‘Two Concepts of Surfaces’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4: 277-291. Stroll, A., 1988, Surfaces, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. The two concepts of a surface are the physical one, in which a surface can be pockmarked or scored, and the geometrical one, in which it is an ideal or geometrical object.

Doesn't time travel involve space travel too? If I travel back in time one year, say, in order to be in the same 'place' as I started, I'd need to travel across countless millions of miles of space, since the planet has moved during the last year. Since such instant space travel contradicts Einstein, how come so many philosophers seem to think it's possible? Martin, Wales, UK

You make a very interesting point. If time travel takes a second, then since a later Earth - say Earth in a year - might be zillions of miles away (i.e. more than 186,000), I must travel faster than light, which is impossible. But how long does my time travel take? How do we know that it takes a second? After all, if on the new or later Earth it is a year later, presumably it took me a year to get "there", the same amount of time as it took the Earth itself, even if it felt instantaneous. So there is a difficulty about the meaning of "How long does my time travel take?" If we move in time, or times moves past us, there is a difficulty about the concept of the speed of the movement. Movement in space is distance divided by time, so movement in time, or the movement of time, it seems, is time divided by time; and it is hard (as D.C. Williams pointed out ages ago in "The Myth of Passage") to attach any sense to this idea. This is the interest of your point for me; how do we attach sense to the speed of...