Time Travel

Off Topic
61

[quote]spaceking wrote:
I’m thinking that this is an impossibility…yes I know that supposedly NOTHING is impossible, but look at the improbability of the time travel argument. IF it were at all possible, first off, that would mean that our time continuum does not exist as we know it. Past, Present and Future are all being played out in some sort of simotainious parallel venue, meaning that what is happening for us today, is occurring in a thread of existence just as yesterday and tomorrow are also being enacted.[/quote]

Do you realize how vast the Universe is? It is mind blowing!

[quote]Secondly, IF we do harness this power, wouldn’t the parallel world of tomorrow ALREADY have visited the present and thus made time travel known? Why if such things will be discovered are we living in the world as we know it? It doesn’t make sense that after time travel has been discovered that it would not have already been used.

In theory, each war could have already been avoided. 9-11 could have been avoided, and each and every calamity that we now know could have been changed. Time travel not only gives us the power to shift the paradigm of logical reasoning, but it defies the existence of pain, death, and destruction.

It has not happened, and will never happened. We all live on one existent plain, and you cannot travel parallel in reverse upon it.

I hope this makes sense, or maybe I’m just rambling…either way, I say it can’t be done.
[/quote]

I had a problem with this too. But then I realized two things:

  1. We might be the future. In other words we are at the point of an ever increasing future.

Or

  1. As I stated earlier we might be able to visit the past but only view it. They might be some sort of a hologram, (or we are when we are there). Hence, the same thing applies to those visiting from the future.
62

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
TShaw wrote:

That article led off with a phrase like “Give scientists enough time and enough money, and they can build anything.”

Truer words are rarely spoken.

[/quote]

Disagree. It was clearly a scientist that wrote such a quote. It’s the engineers that can build anything with enough time and money. The scientists come up with the theories and use the scientific metho to prove or disprove them. Engineers create the tools that apply these newly discovered paradigms into practical use in the real world.

63

[quote]hedo wrote:
I think it can happen and it will at some point. Artificial Intelligence will be required to develop and impliment it. I don’t know if our feeble biological brains could make it happen.[/quote]

Feeble? We’re the product of millions of years of ongoing R&D by mother nature and whatever higher power your religious persuasion leads you to believe in. I’d hardly call our brains “feeble”. More like untapped and grossly underutilized.

64

[quote]Panther1015 wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
TShaw wrote:

That article led off with a phrase like “Give scientists enough time and enough money, and they can build anything.”

Truer words are rarely spoken.

Disagree. It was clearly a scientist that wrote such a quote. It’s the engineers that can build anything with enough time and money. The scientists come up with the theories and use the scientific metho to prove or disprove them. Engineers create the tools that apply these newly discovered paradigms into practical use in the real world.

[/quote]

Exactly! All hail the mighty engineer!

65

Good thread.

From what I understand from M-Theory, traveling back in time would be impossible. You would have to be off the brane. (Read: Not bound or attached to this dimension.) This is because you would have to violate the physical constant of the speed of light in order to travel backwards in time.

Now something like gravity (gravitons) could possibly travel back in time because closed strings are not attached to the brane. But it would only be the gravitons that were lost at their origin on the brane. (Gravitons must still obey the physical constants when traveling along the brane.)

Somehow these “off brane” gravitons would have to be brought or “attracted” back. (Another assumed impossibility.) And that assumes that the speed of light is only a physical constant of this brane and not an attribute of “whatever-the-hell-is-outside-the-brane.”

An interesting afterthought – Some have theorized that consciousness or “conscious quanta” (units of conscious experience) are closed strings. Hmmm…

66

[quote]ZEB wrote:
We had no known concept of how a “heavier than air” craft could violate the laws of gravity![/quote]

What? There weren’t any birds, bats or insects in 1850?

If birds can fly, then it logically follows that once you understand the principles of flight, and can replicate them mechanically, you’ve got yourself a flying device.

The Wright Brothers weren’t simply taping crap together and throwing it off a cliff to see what would happen.

And finally, flying does not “violate” gravity. Gravity still operates, you just generate enough lift to counteract it’s pull. It is the weakest force after all…

67

[quote]ZEB wrote:
I guess the real point is this: We are so far from understanding how this could be done that none of us can say that it can’t or it can be accomplished with any degree of confidence.[/quote]

Actually, we have theories about the workings of the universe that have repeatedly been tested and so far held up to every test (relativity in this case) which, if correct, precludes faster than light travel for anything that has mass and in so doing also prevents time travel.

Of course, better theories might eventually (probably will even) replace those we have now. But currently, to the best of our (limited) knowledge, time travel appears to be against nature.

68

[quote]wufwugy wrote:
simotainious? that’s awesome.

i think that intelligent life has existed, exists, and will exist in the future in most if not all galaxies, yet none of them have ever or will ever achieve the level of genetic development, technology, energy requirements because the length of their life source (planet, sun, etc.) isn’t long enough.

pookie, how long is it before the earth will be engulfed by the sun?[/quote]

Something like 5 billion years, IIRC.

You’ll find this interesting: Kardashev scale - Wikipedia

Sadly, we haven’t made it to level 1 yet.

69

[quote]Panther1015 wrote:
Disagree. It was clearly a scientist that wrote such a quote. It’s the engineers that can build anything with enough time and money. The scientists come up with the theories and use the scientific metho to prove or disprove them. Engineers create the tools that apply these newly discovered paradigms into practical use in the real world.
[/quote]

And neither scientist nor engineer can violate the basic physical laws that govern the universe.

Let’s say you figure out a way to travel thru time, BUT it requires an infite amount of energy. Guess what: no time travel for you!

70

[quote]Panther1015 wrote:
Feeble? We’re the product of millions of years of ongoing R&D by mother nature and whatever higher power your religious persuasion leads you to believe in. I’d hardly call our brains “feeble”. More like untapped and grossly underutilized.
[/quote]

…not to mention easily distracted by irrelevent trivia. Or wasting time on internet forums.

71

[quote]DiogenestheCynic wrote:
Good thread.

From what I understand from M-Theory, traveling back in time would be impossible. You would have to be off the brane. (Read: Not bound or attached to this dimension.) This is because you would have to violate the physical constant of the speed of light in order to travel backwards in time.[/quote]

The problem with M-Theory and other Superstring theory is that we aren’t even sure if they describe reality in any way. None of those theories are complete and consequently no one has shown that a solution (or the only solution) for one of those theories woul be our universe.

On the contrary, recent developments seem to indicate that the final theory would have approximately 1x10E500 valid solutions (AKA “the landscape”), from which it would be impossible to pick out our particular universe (AKA “a vacua”). Hence, the theory would be unable to predict anything and would not shed any light on the workings of the universe.

Hopefully, new breakthroughs will come to either validate the thousand of man-years already lost to String Theory, or someone will come up with something better.

Then again, a complete understanding of the universe might be 10,000 years away.

[quote]Now something like gravity (gravitons) could possibly travel back in time because closed strings are not attached to the brane. But it would only be the gravitons that were lost at their origin on the brane. (Gravitons must still obey the physical constants when traveling along the brane.)

Somehow these “off brane” gravitons would have to be brought or “attracted” back. (Another assumed impossibility.) And that assumes that the speed of light is only a physical constant of this brane and not an attribute of “whatever-the-hell-is-outside-the-brane.”

An interesting afterthought – Some have theorized that consciousness or “conscious quanta” (units of conscious experience) are closed strings. Hmmm…[/quote]

I think we are leaving science for woo-woo land here…

72

[quote]pookie wrote:

Let’s say you figure out a way to travel thru time, BUT it requires an infite amount of energy. Guess what: no time travel for you!

[/quote]

But we can still have soup? Right? We can can’t we?

73

If you read “The Time Machine”, you’ll learn that it’s impossible to purposely change past events. This is because if you went into the past and changed the event, you’d have no impetus - in present time - to have gone into the past and changed the event. Because it never would have happened.

In the story, the main character builds a time machine to go back and save his girlfriend. But each time, she ends up dying in a different way. This is because he never would have gone into the past if she hadn’t died in the first place. So each time, she has to die again, or the previous salvation of her life could not have happened.

The universe is one tricky conservationist bitch!

74

[quote]Kailash wrote:
If you read “The Time Machine”, you’ll learn that it’s impossible to change past events. This is because if you went into the past and changed the event, you’d have no impetus - in present time - to have gone into the past and changed the event. Because it never would have happened.

In the story, the main character builds a time machine to go back and save his girlfriend. But each time, she ends up dying in a different way. This is because he never would have gone into the past if she hadn’t died in the first place. So each time, she has to die again, or the previous salvation of her life could not have happened.

The universe is one tricky conservationist bitch![/quote]

THANKS FOR RUINING THE MOVIE FOR ME!

LOL

75

Time travel has been proven possible in that traveling through RELATIVE time. The way it would work is, the said person would go into space or into some “machine”, if you will, and be sent into an orbit at speeds nearing the speed of light. The closer to speed of light you get, the slower time travels relative to the people on Earth. This would mean that if you came but a few days later, you would be well into the future and have not aged the relative amount of time that YOU were in space. As far as breaking through into Quantum time travel, it’s only theory and almost impossible to prove. However, one scientist sent a sound wave through his machine and found that it “traveled through time”.

But in actuality everything in the world is changing dimensions and leaping through time constantly at the molecular level (see What the Bleep Do We Know?). If you were to be able to seperate atomic particles you find that there a 3 things, Quarks, Leptons, and Force Carrears. Scientific evidence shows that thes “basic particles” are constantly dissapearing and reappearing.

76

[quote]JimmyBoom wrote:
MiketheBear: The article seems to say that you can travel to the past. I think it’s impossible because of the simple fact that going back in time would mean that a person would have to exist twice. Suppose you went back to a time before you were born. Before you were born, you did not exist. And yet you do exist - there you are in your time machine, existing, even though you don’t exist.

[/quote]

One qualifier that I think sceintists have missed here is that the theoretical time machine would also have to place you so far away from your other self in space (because of the speeds required) that you would not be able to reach your “old” self until after the time which you entered the time machine.

77

[quote]pookie wrote:
Only if you both met later and had a talk about it would you notice something fishy. He’d say “Damn, you weren’t losing by much, that light could barely escape you.”; you on the other hand would say “Are you nuts? That beam of light went and left me standing there like I wasn’t moving at all.”
[/quote]

And also to the guy w/o the flashlight the wavelength of the flashlight would be greatly shortened. Also, in total darkness, the light would not be seen, as it would not be diffracted by matter.

78

Hey pookie what about this?

I demand to know where these particles are going!

79

[quote]JimmyBoom wrote:
MiketheBear: The article seems to say that you can travel to the past. I think it’s impossible because of the simple fact that going back in time would mean that a person would have to exist twice. Suppose you went back to a time before you were born. Before you were born, you did not exist. And yet you do exist - there you are in your time machine, existing, even though you don’t exist.

From what I understand (not much), scientists have theories to explain what youre tlaking about, Mike. The first is the Grandfather theory, or something like that. It basically states that if one were to go back in time and find their grandfather, and murder him, that logically your mother or father wouldnt exist, and therefore you could not exist. That is impossible, however, because your grandfather could not be murdered by someone who never even existed–so it completely contradicts itself.

This is explained by the Many Worlds Theory that basically says that each time a person makes any kind of decision, time branches off, like a tree. So with every decision a new branch and a new world are created, with those branches continuing to different ends then other branches. There are infinite branches because there are infinite decisions, so, theoretically, nothing is impossible because there are infinite possibilities.

To wrap up the Grandfather thing, the Many World’s Theory solves the issue of the Grandfather theory by stating that the person you killed was not YOUR grandfather. He looked exactly like him, smelled like him, etc etc, but could not possibly be your actual grandfather, because someone cannot be murdered by someone who does not exist.

This post may make no sense whatsoever, haha.

my 2c,

Jimmy Boom
[/quote]

I think you’re refering to the “Grandfather Paradox” in which it is stated that you cannot change what has already happened due to the fact that the existance you everything would depend upon your decision to travel into the PAST, causing a paradox. This is saying basically that history is already written but this would mean that there is no such thing as choice and would mean there is 1 Dimension of the Universe.

I disagree and agree with this. I agree that it may be possible to go back into the future and kill you grandfather before your birth but that would cause you to cease from existance in THAT relative dimnesion (the one you were in before you traveled into the past).

I doubt we will ever be able to get into the past and know that we have because, based on theory, it could have already happened and we wouldn’t know because it would change our initial ways of life and would therefore make time adapt to circumstances.

This in turn, would also show that there is multiple universes in which time overlaps and causes phenomena and changes everyones lives.

However, time travel into the FUTURE is more plausible because it is unexplored for those who have been left in the present, which would then be the past.

So, by time traveling, one would create a paradox and end up in another universe where you decided to make a different way of life and possible a different PERSON.

But what would I know I’m only 14 :slight_smile:

80

[quote]ZEB wrote:
Anyone on this thread have any ideas about the possibility of time travel?
[/quote]

Here’s my working model right now, but I suspect it’ll change.

  1. light can’t have a wavelength shorter that the planck length because its energy equivalent would make it a self trapping black hole with a photon sphere at the planck length. As a result, this length (about 10e-35 meters) is the limit of smallness in the universe).

  2. These black holes must exist at with some frequency in any reference frame because of relative motion-at least some stars would have a relative motion to us that would blue shift at least some of its light to this limit.

  3. These black holes cannot be the fundamental particles we know because they would be too massive (about 10e-8 kg versus around 10e-27 to 10e-25 for atomic matter.

  4. They could however bend space into pockets and wormholes which I think will turn out to be the fundamental particles. If this were true, every quark would be the mouth of a wormhole, and statistically, the other mouth would not only lead to a different place, but also a different time. In other words, some of the fundamental subatomic particle the mouths of wormhole time machines leading to a different place and time with a statistical distribution away from this. Reverse time travel is essential for modelling sub-atomic particles, but the mouths would be too small to send anything through without a heck of a lot of energy. To hold open a time/space machine like that would require a mass eq of about 100 times the earth.

Also, I think that relativity will show that the other mouth may be in the past, but also separated from us in space by such a great distance that by the time you got to the same “place” in space that you went in, even at c, you would also be back at the time you left-remember, the Earth is moving all the time, so if you wanted to go back and see the predictions of modern paleantology, it might not work, because the wormhole’s mouths might not be able to be within each others “light spheres”.