Time Travel

[InGunsWeTrust]

What are your ideas on time travel? Do you think it is possible? If so ,how do you imagine it would work? If not, why not?

[smartboyathome]

In my eyes, time travel isn't possible because 1) if you travel into the past, you risk the grandfather paradox, destroying everything; 2) if you travel into the future, you risk being stranded because the future is fluid and can easily be changed. In the dimension where people CAN travel through time, I theorize there is a boundry (or another factor) that can limit the damage to nil when someone travels through time. It is hard to think of what that would be, because like in Flatland, we are connected to the universe, and we cannot be swayed from what we think of it unless we see the next one.

[InGunsWeTrust]

I think time travel is possible, however it would be completly impossible to change anything in the past or future. Imagine this: You decide to back in time in order to prevent the holocaust. You kill Hitler when he is a baby and it never happens. Mission accomplised right? Well you have just created a world where the holocaust never happened. In the future when you are alive you would have never heard of such a thing. Therefore, you would not have any motivation to stop it. So you wouldn't and it would still happen. Creating a paradox because if it does happen you will stop it. If you do stop it, it never happened and you don't stop it.

[smartboyathome]

Exactly why you would not be able to go into the past: the Grandfather Paradox (if you go back to the past and kill your grandfather, then you will no longer exist, thus eliminating it, thus making you able to kill him again, etc. The theory goes this will speed up until both times are destroyed)

[RussianVodka]

I think time travel is possible, however it would be completly impossible to change anything in the past or future. Imagine this: You decide to back in time in order to prevent the holocaust. You kill Hitler when he is a baby and it never happens. Mission accomplised right? Well you have just created a world where the holocaust never happened. In the future when you are alive you would have never heard of such a thing. Therefore, you would not have any motivation to stop it. So you wouldn't and it would still happen. Creating a paradox because if it does happen you will stop it. If you do stop it, it never happened and you don't stop it.

Now if Hitler was also your grandfather, you would end in in quite a pickle.

[Tux Aubrey]

You decide to back in time in order to prevent the holocaust. You kill Hitler because he is a baby and it never happens.

Didn't Stephen Fry write a book about this scenario? A guy goes back and spikes the water supply in an Austrian village with a powerful chemical contraceptive. Hitler is never born. But when the guy gets back to his own time, the Holocaust did happen (using synthetic contraceptives synthesized from strange chemicals in a well in Austria) and the Nazis won the war under another, smarter, leader (with Joe Kennedy becoming a puppet President of the US). Cool book - except for the inevitable obligatory gay bits as in every other Stephen Fry novel.

Anyway, I believe that Time Travel is possible because it would be way cool and because I grew up with Mr Peabody, Sherman and the Waybac machine as an important part of my education. That and Fractured Fairy Tales and F-Troop (which I also believe to be true).

[Motoxrdude]

Now if Hitler was also your grandfather, you would end in in quite a pickle.

LMAO.

[InGunsWeTrust]

Even if you didn't kill your grandfather what about chaos theory?


The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does.

Let's say you just go for a drive in the past. You don't talk to anyone you don't do anything but drive your care for ten miles then go back. You added traffic to the road and delayed every motorist behind you. Let's say one of those motorists was Bill Gates' Great Great Great Grandfather and at the end of that road he would have met Bill Gates' Great Great Great Grandmother stranded on the side of the road needing help changing a tire. Because of the delay some other strapping young man got there first and instead they fell in love. All of the sudden Bill Gates doesn't exist and Windows is never invented totally changing the face of computing. Only because you took a ten mile drive.

[Dark Star]

No it is not possible..
M=Mo/under root (1-v2/c2) See by this einstein Mass eq.. we ca say that if v = c [speed of light] then M[Mass] will be ~ i.e more than the normal mass so.. Travelling in time is imposssible since for more mass more speed is needed to reach @ particular time. and At present it is impossible to gain velocity more than the speed of light i.e 3x108 m/sec :)

[InGunsWeTrust]

No it is not possible..
M=Mo/under root (1-v2/c2) See by this einstein Mass eq.. we ca say that if v = c [speed of light] then M[Mass] will be ~ i.e more than the normal mass so.. Travelling in time is imposssible since for more mass more speed is needed to reach @ particular time. and At present it is impossible to gain velocity more than the speed of light i.e 3x108 m/sec :)

Theoretically though if one were to travel faster than the speed of light would they not travel in time? Light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach earth. Imagine there is a magic button you have to press to make the sun not explode (cuz for some reason it's gonna and for some reason it takes 7 minutes to press it and somehow we made a push button for stopping the sun from exploding) Somebody was sitting one inch from the sun watching it (cuz that is somehow possible too) when the sun started to explode if he could move in an instant to earth would that be the same as traveling 8 minutes in time?

[Tux Aubrey]

All of the sudden Bill Gates doesn't exist and Windows is never invented totally changing the face of computing.

Now I'm totally convinced. Let's do it, people!

[Chilli Bob]

No it is not possible..
M=Mo/under root (1-v2/c2) See by this einstein Mass eq.. we ca say that if v = c [speed of light] then M[Mass] will be ~ i.e more than the normal mass so.. Travelling in time is imposssible since for more mass more speed is needed to reach @ particular time. and At present it is impossible to gain velocity more than the speed of light i.e 3x108 m/sec :)


Why do you assume that time travel involves the need to travel anywhere near the speed of light? (Unless you are doing the Twins Experiment, which isn't really time travel, just two people in different frames of reference)


There is nothing in Relativity that precludes time travel, but that still doesn't mean that practically it could be rather difficult.

[Dark Star]

You are considering Mo as the masss of 1 person and m is the mass of other :lol: its same mass :p Mo is rest mass :p Not second person mass :lolflag:

[goumples]

I always wondered if you went back in time, and killed your parents before you were conceived.. would you blink out of existence or would your parents dying mean that you never were born thus couldn't have made the fateful trip backwards and thus the whole timeline resets itself.. or maybe it would unravel space and time.. or maybe
"head explodes*

More seriously, I voted yes. I believe that we will continue to evolve as a species and continue to refine our technology and one day be capable of many things that are now considered science fiction.. just as many notions Star Trek introduced in the 60's now exist today.

edit: it's interesting that the poll is 50/50 at the moment, as well.

[Chilli Bob]

Why are so many people interested in killing their parents??? What's wrong with Linux users???

Seriously, I like to think that either Time Travel or Super-Light-Speed travel is possible, but not both. Either is cool with me.

[goumples]

Why are so many people interested in killing their parents??? What's wrong with Linux users???

Seriously, I like to think that either Time Travel or Super-Light-Speed travel is possible, but not both. Either is cool with me.

It's not about patricide or matricide, it's about the paradox it would create, and how the universe would respond. Oh and why would it have to be one or the other? Why not both?

[LookTJ]

Why are so many people interested in killing their parents??? What's wrong with Linux users???I have no idea, maybe they are serial killers..maybe they think their parents hate them..goes on....but I love my parents.

[Chilli Bob]

It's not about patricide or matricide, it's about the paradox it would create

Yes, I'm aware of the "Grandfather Paradox", I was joking. (sigh)



Oh and why would it have to be one or the other? Why not both?

There are apparently good mathematical reasons why not both, but don't ask me to explain them, it's way beyond my math skills. Of course this is all theoretical for now. Hopefully the LHC will start giving us some answers in the next couple of years.

[Redlance]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1186066367757&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

However this is based on some barely thought out quantum theory 'guesses' on the nature of space time. It has even more psychotic pitfalls. For instance; the future is entropic. So is the past. if you travel back in space/time the past you visit would be VERY different from your last place in space time. And to to travel back to your time would be pitting yourself against an infinite possible outcomes from your first jump back to infinite possible outcomes to your old space/time.
The wierdest part to digest in this theory is the very fact that our history isn't truly real. just an echo of our current state and is in a constant state of entropy. go back 40yrs and you may find the earth doesnt even exist or is desolate or has entirely different history than you remember.
:confused:

[goumples]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1186066367757&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

However this is based on some barely thought out quantum theory 'guesses' on the nature of space time. It has even more psychotic pitfalls. For instance; the future is entropic. So is the past. if you travel back in space/time the past you visit would be VERY different from your last place in space time. And to to travel back to your time would be pitting yourself against an infinite possible outcomes from your first jump back to infinite possible outcomes to your old space/time.
The wierdest part to digest in this theory is the very fact that our history isn't truly real. just an echo of our current state and is in a constant state of entropy. go back 40yrs and you may find the earth doesnt even exist or is desolate or has entirely different history than you remember.
:confused:

I'd feel quite stupid if I went back in time to witness and specific event and the earth either didn't exist or was a wasteland of sorts. I always liked time travel stories but I always maintain the "Back to the Future" model when i think of time travel. It never occured to be that the past could be anything aside from the timeline that led to the now.

[jrusso2]

This is about the most accurate depiction of time travel I have ever seen in a movie.

I think if its possible it would work somewhat like this movie.

Primer 2004

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

[mcduck]

It's possible. I'm traveling towards future all the time :D

Now going back in time, that's completely another thing..

[orange2k]

Well, I think its not only possible, its reality!
At least in the US: take a look at them, they travelled right back to Nixons era...:lolflag:

[sw1995]

We're a young species; there is so much we have yet to learn about the Universe. Did you hear about the "Huge Hole Found in the Universe" recently?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/hugeholefoundintheuniverse;_ylt=AqYC63AOdBKYvY09.E bqS1Nhr7sF

Strange things are amiss at the Circle K, dude.

-S

[karellen]

modern physics says we really don't know wheter it's possible or not

[aussiedini]

Do you mean Dr Who isnt real....I thought it was a documentary

[snyling]

isn't there these really fast planes in production where they fly you to a different timezone really quickly. So you leave at two o' clock and arrive at one or something? That's the closest I can think of.

[mips]

What about parallel universes, would this not circumvent the grnadfather paradox. What you do in the one universe does not affect the other ?

If you could warp space/time then in theory you should be able to exceed the speed of light. Not that the constant c will change but the distance would so you could cover it in a shorter time.

[kanem]

This is about the most accurate depiction of time travel I have ever seen in a movie.

I think if its possible it would work somewhat like this movie.

Primer 2004

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/
That was a great movie. I love movies where you have to really think to explain what the hell happened. Like Memento. I think I had to watch Primer twice before it made sense.

[kanem]

Time travel impossible simply because there is no such thing as time.

Every single mechanism we have for measuring or marking time is really a mechanism for measuring or marking a physical change in a system.

The 'time' of day is really just what angle the earth is in it's rotation.
The 'time' of year is really just what position the earth is in with respect to the sun
The second is just defined as the 'time' that it takes for light emitted from a certain transition of a Cesium atom to oscillate 9,192,631,770 times.

The passage of time can not happen without physical change. If no change is going on, time is not moving.

Going 'forwards in time' just means change is happening. Going 'backwards in time' would just mean that this change is reversed. But for this to happen everything would have to reverse, including us, and we wouldn't remember the future because our brains would also revert to a past state.

[fuscia]

no. time isn't a place you can go to. it's a relative measure for the rates of changes.

[AZzKikR]

Time travel towards the future is possible as far as I know. And no, it's not fiction and it has even been proven. An object needs to travel near the speed of light for it to happen. So if you have a spaceship which can travel at near the speed of light, you'll see that after travelling for some time, the people on earth have aged more than you do in - to the observer - same amount of time.

[forrestcupp]

It's possible. I'm traveling towards future all the time :D

Now going back in time, that's completely another thing..

You beat me to it. I time travel every day. I'm traveling forward in time at the rate of one hour per hour. Sometimes I wish I could slow it down or speed it up.

Have you ever thought about why it seems like time goes by faster when you get older? It's all relative. When you were one day old, 1 hour was 1/24th of your life. When you are 40 years old, 1 hour is 1/350400th of your life.

Where's John Titor when you need him?

[jgrabham]

Congratulations you've just asked the easiest question ever. You are always traveling through time. I have traveled through anout 30 seconds of time since istarted typing this:]

Going backwards through time is a different question :]

[Happy_Man]

I think that if time travel were possible (which it shouldn't be, for moral reasons, not technical), it would only work up to the moment of your conception/birth. Because, before that, you would lose your existence to the "shifting voids." Besides, even going back one second would set up a paradox none of you mentioned: what if you saw yourself?

[LaRoza]

What are your ideas on time travel? Do you think it is possible? If so ,how do you imagine it would work? If not, why not?

I believe time travel is possible, but only forward :D.

If "time travel" is possible, where are all the time travelers?

[tcpip4lyfe]

Now if Hitler was also your grandfather, you would end in in quite a pickle.

lmao

[ComplexNumber]

Have you ever thought about why it seems like time goes by faster when you get older?
the reason why time seems slower when one is younger is exactly the same reason why time seems to go slower when we are on holiday or in a new environment with lots of new stimuli. it's because everything is new when we are younger. the more life becomes routine and familiar, the faster time seems to go.



time travel in a forward direction is possible according to einsteins laws. however, some scientists have proposed that it's possible to go back in time. they claim this is possible because they say that there is an infinite number of parallel universes. so if you went back in time to kill your grandfather, another universe would be created to account for that splitting off of events from the universe that we all know.....so they have claimed.

[Eddie Wilson]

No. Because the past can't be changed and the future is unwritten. Other than that, sure.
Eddie

[monsieurdozier]

Time Travel is indeed mathematically possible, that is if Einstein's theory of relativity exists (Which it has been proven so.)

Let's start with what is time? When asked this question Einstein answered, "Time is what a clock measures."

Simple.

Now on to time travel.

Going forward in time is easy, all you have to do is approach the speed of light. The closer one gets to the speed of light, the faster through time you go.

The Back to the Future scenario. Two stop watches start at the same time. One begins to travel towards the speed of light. When they return, the stop watch that stayed still would be further along than the one that approached the speed of light.

So travel in the future is easy, now travelling in the past is a little harder.

There is a substance known as spacetime. Just think of it as space and time blended into one entity. Now, to go back in time, you would have to go faster than the speed of light, which is indeed impossible, so how is it done? By moving spacetime. It takes a massive gravitational force to move space time, this is where a black hole comes into play.

The area just around the ring of a black hole is composed of spacetime that is moving faster than spacetime further away from the ring. If a vessel were able to approach the speed of light while inside that ring surrounding the black hole, they would to them be only going close to the speed of light. However, to an observer outside the ring in a different spacetime movement, they would appear to be going faster than the speed of light, meaning they would be arriving before they left.

So travel in the past is indeed possible.

As to changing the past, or the future. Impossible. Let's use the grandfather paradox as an example.

Let's say I we able to travel back in time with a gun and were about to shoot my grandfather. Something would happen to prevent me from killing him. The gun fails, I miss, or the bullet just doesn't kill him. What has happened has happened and nothing can change that. Hitler can't be killed because he lived.

As for changing the future, impossible as well. Let's say I travel to the future, then come back. Can I change the future? No, because I cannot change the past.

There are three modes of time: past, present, future.

All three are interchangable. Right now is the future of five minutes ago. Five minutes from now is the past of ten minutes from now. If you can't change the past, and all time is the past of another time, you can't change the future, because it is the past.

What will be will be. What has been has been. What is now is now.

Kind of depressing when you think about it, knowing that all of our lives are predetermined and there is nothing we can do about it, but hey. C'est la vie.

That's my 2 cents.

Monsieur Dozier

[forrestcupp]

the reason why time seems slower when one is younger is exactly the same reason why time seems to go slower when we are on holiday or in a new environment with lots of new stimuli. it's because everything is new when we are younger. the more life becomes routine and familiar, the faster time seems to go.


For me it's the opposite. If something is new and exciting, time flies. If something is routine and boring, time crawls.

[LaRoza]

Hi everybody!

I haven't posted the earlier post yet, I am about to go back and time and do it. See ya!

[SunnyRabbiera]

Time travel is not impossible, but it is improbable.

what we really need for time travel is either:

A: A blue police call box
B: a phone booth
C: a DeLorean DMC-12 sports car
D: a chair with this really big whirly thing on the back of it
E: A klingon bird of prey
F: a borg sphere
G: a large temporal field generating tunnel
H: a map indicating time holes
I: a modified airplane
J: a remote control
K: Mothra
L: a strange magic door
M: A son obsessed with time travel experiments
O: A groundhog
P: A ham radio getting interference from the aurora borealis
Q: a temporal energy bubble
R: bombastium
S: a magic wand
T: a quantum leap accelerator
U: a unusual storm vortex
V: atypical area 51 technology
W: a time generating crystal
X: a oddball earthquake
Y: the Necronomicon ex Mortis
Z: a vast variety of other devices

most of these can be found at the local drug store ;)

[mips]

You left out The Infinite Improbability Drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Improbability_Drive) !!!




This should clear up some other confusion:


The Encyclopedia Galactica has much to say on the theory and practice of time travel, most of which is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t spent at least four lifetimes studying advanced hypermathematics, and since it was impossible to do this before time travel was invented, there is a certain amount of confusion as to how the idea was arrived at in the first place. One rationalization of this problem states that time travel was, by its very nature, discovered simultaneously at all periods of history, but this is clearly bunk. The trouble is that a lot of history is now quite clearly bunk as well. - Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, Chapter 15.


One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end. - Douglas Adams, Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Chapter 15,

[SunnyRabbiera]

You left out The Infinite Improbability Drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Improbability_Drive) !!!




This should clear up some other confusion:

drat :D

[TBOL3]

Actually I agree with Dogles Adam's on this point, time travel may be possible, but whatever change you made, was already made by you.

However, earlier in the Restraint at the End of the Universe, he contradicts his own quote, buy saying something like...

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galexy used many labels off of cereal boxes. The cereal companies didn't like this, and sued The Guide for sealing their intellectual property. So the creators of The Guide went back in time, and made the labels first, then suing the cereal companies for the exact same thing.

Thus showing us that the past was changed.

But anyway, maybe this is the way to finally 'defeat' Microsoft. :lolflag:

[alxjl]

What about the theory of multiple universes and branching time streams? It couldn't be possible for this world to be a single-time lined one.It could be rather one of many branches wherein every possible outcome of history is realized for each stream or branch. So if it so happened that you went back in time and altered history, you would in effect be creating another timeline wherein the history changes according to what you've altered. You would not be able to get back to your own time that easily since you would be finding that particular universe (before you altered it) among thousands, maybe millions of time streams. In short you won't be able to get back to your own time without passing thru all those alternate worlds.

[aks44]

What about the theory of multiple universes and branching time streams?
[...]
So if it so happened that you went back in time and altered history, you would in effect be creating another timeline wherein the history changes according to what you've altered. You would not be able to get back to your own time that easily since you would be finding that particular universe (before you altered it) among thousands, maybe millions of time streams.

Time as a gigantic versionning system... interesting! Yet I don't see any reason why the changes couldn't be merged back to the revision you originate from, as long as there are no conflicts (ie. no "grandfather paradox")...

(ok, I know I need to stop tinkering with git, it's getting on my nerves... :p)