Time travel/machine? Is it possible?

[neomits]

I think you first have to determine what exactly is time. Is time just a mesurment we have for aging? I don't think we can fully comprehend anything until we (or maybe just I) understand what Time is.

 

[kt]

what is time?

 

[d1abolic]

I think that backwards time travel is impossible. It's just too messy.

 

[Adul]

The physics of Time travel.

 

[ZeroBurn]

well another thing to consider when traveling back in time is the butterfly effect. anything you do now has a ripple effect over everything else. the simpsons spoofed this in one of their halloween specials (one of the best ever, i'll add). for example just by being in the past, a future time traveler would destroy the timeline. by walking into a cafe he could make some errand boy late for his meeting, who was going to be the next BIll Gates and introduce a new technological marvel, which will never be now. the flapping wings of a single butterfly in nigeria can drastically effect the way your life goes today on a different scale, by changing the winds, climate, conditions, etc.

one question i'd like to ask is how would the law of conservation of energy play into this? since matter can neither be destroyed nor created, an appearance from an outside traveler to our timeline would make it void it seems, introducing new matter to the structure of the universe. the only way an actual person could come into our universe seems like it'd have to come from a re-arrangement of our current atoms.

as for the idea that since we haven't been visited, the site talks about it at the end. but another practical reason seems like something as highly influencial as the ability to go back in time would be strictly limited. i don't think anyone with that ability (the gov't i would assume) would exactly let people go back in time to f with it. they would probably have strict measures against going back in time.

 

[bugsysiegel]

Of course it's possible, HG Wells did a movie about it years ago, don't you folks ever watch TV?

 

[ZeroBurn]

backwards time travel seems like it would be impossible within our own timeline, and i'm sure anyone reading this thread has come across the alternate universe theory which is a different idea. in that there are an infinite number of universes. in one universe the south won the civil war, in another elvis is still alive and watching the new bruce lee flick. each are as real as ours, with every decision and action branching off into another infinite number of possibilities. this seems like it would be the only way to alleviate the time paradoxes, since by going back in time you'd actually just be going back to another universe and wiping out a different parent and a different version of you. your original universe still have your parents alive and kickin'. in that other universe you were never meant to exist.

 

[b0mbrman]

<< Its quite easy actually:

To travel to the future:
1. Set out in a very fast spaceship traveling 87% of the speed of light -- 161,000 miles per second <---> Time will pass twice as quickly for the rest of the world as it does for you

TO travel to the past takes a little more work:

To create a wormhole (and travel back to a random place in time) in 5 steps:
1. use a particle collider to heat a speck of matter to 10 trillion degrees
2. compress the hot spot by a factor of a billion billion (making a wormhole smaller than a subatomic particle)
3. Blast that opening of the hole with a million 1 terawatt laser beams until it's large enough for one passenger
4. Whip one end of the wormhole around like a lasso at nearly the speed of light to create a time differential between the entrance and exit
5. Hop in and enjoy the ride >>



Nice

 

[Pastfinder]

Hmmm, time travel. Well, a DeLorean works with a little Pu, Homer's toaster worked. If Morpheus was involved, I guess he would say that time travel is nothing more than electrical impulses interpreted by your brain. "You think that's air you're breathing?"

Seriously though, I wouldn't know where to start. If someone comes up with a way to travel through time, where can I buy a ticket for a ride?

 

[Kadarin]

<< Einstienian time travel is possible.
Science Fiction time travel is not.

Think about it, if backwards time travel were possible, there would be people from the future all over the place. >>



Maybe it's possible, but there are other reasons as to why we don't see these time travelers. I, for one, have always wondered why people like to think of time as having only one dimension (past --> future). Many SF authors postulate time as having two or more dimensions. If you're interested in this, Richard C. Meredith's "Vestiges of Time" trilogy should be required reading, as it handles the subject better than anything else I've come across.

Imagine history not as a continuous flow from past to future, but as a jagged line, with each peak and valley comprised of "crux events" where history could have diverged in two or more ways (i.e. "what if the US had lost the American Revolution", or "what if Hitler had won WWII"). Say a major historical event with multiple possible outcomes can fracture time; the single timeline hits a point of departure and new timelines are born. Now imagine being able to travel from one to the other.

So what could this have to do with us not seeing all those visitors from the future? Perhaps the action of traveling back in time creates an event splitting the timeline, meaning that every time this happens, a new timeline is spun off and we no longer see the events therein. I realize that my logic is flawed, but it's a very interesting idea.

 

[Elledan]

<< So what could this have to do with us not seeing all those visitors from the future? Perhaps the action of traveling back in time creates an event splitting the timeline, meaning that every time this happens, a new timeline is spun off and we no longer see the events therein. I realize that my logic is flawed, but it's a very interesting idea. >>


Like I suggested a few posts back, it could be that one who travels back into time simply can not return to whatever timeline s/he came from.

 

[cx32m4]

hmmm

 

[Presence]

Adul, good read on that link you provided hehe, I liked that Jane/Jim paradox, that gave me a good laugh

 

[SackOfAllTrades]

two words: FLUX CAPACITOR

 

[SagaLore]

<< i dont think backward time travelling can be done

here is a simple logic behind it:

if this was possible, then how come we dont have any records showing people who claim that they are from the future in the history of mankind? i mean, if they invented time travelling in the future, they would have to travel back and tell us about it right? yet since the time when men developled writing, we dont have any written records indicating any occurence regarding to that subject. >>



Time travelers wouldn't necessarily stoop so low as to affecting the continuum in such a careless way.

 

[StinkyMeat]

<< i dont think backward time travelling can be done

here is a simple logic behind it:

if this was possible, then how come we dont have any records showing people who claim that they are from the future in the history of mankind? i mean, if they invented time travelling in the future, they would have to travel back and tell us about it right? yet since the time when men developled writing, we dont have any written records indicating any occurence regarding to that subject. >>



Well....what if the only reason we are here is because of time travel? What if someone went back to the beginning, and made some kind of change that produced us? That'll fix this whole creationism/evolution thing ! But seriously, what if it is up to US to create us?

 

[J Heartless Slick]

I'm convinced that almost anything is possible.

 

[Elledan]

<<

<< i dont think backward time travelling can be done

here is a simple logic behind it:

if this was possible, then how come we dont have any records showing people who claim that they are from the future in the history of mankind? i mean, if they invented time travelling in the future, they would have to travel back and tell us about it right? yet since the time when men developled writing, we dont have any written records indicating any occurence regarding to that subject. >>



Well....what if the only reason we are here is because of time travel? What if someone went back to the beginning, and made some kind of change that produced us? That'll fix this whole creationism/evolution thing ! But seriously, what if it is up to US to create us? >>


*here the brains of many ATOTers spontaneously combust*

 

[MikeO]

<< if this was possible, then how come we dont have any records showing people who claim that they are from the future in the history of mankind? >>



Isn't mental institutions full of these people?

 

[SpecialEd]

<< two words: FLUX CAPACITOR >>





yup.. of course its possible! all you need is one of these bad boys. In fact, i'm designing one right now! This is what I have so far...

..........

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I'll see you guys yesterday!!!

 

[AnthraX101]

I see your problem, special! Your downward facing wire is shorter then the other two wires! It would cause a clock drift!

One things you guys are forgeting when you talk about this is that we don't know if the curvature of the universe is positive or negitive. With a positive curviture, anything we do to screw it up will smooth itself out. With a negitive curve, everything would have a expanding ripple effect. Then you have to determine the degree of its curve, to find it's tolerance.

Of course, this is all discussed in relation to the MWI theory. All who beleve in superstring theory need not apply.

Armani

 

[Elledan]

<< two words: FLUX CAPACITOR >>

I've got one lying somewhere around here, next to the design for a Heisenberg compensator

 

[Elledan]

AnthraX101,

MWI theory?

And yes, I'm a 'superstring'-guy

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

If it is possible no human will ever be able to.
Simple reason for that: If a human could, he or she would have done it (would do it in the future) to alter the past to his/her own advantage, followed by loads of others trying to do the same. Basically humanity would prolly have gotten rocked by all the time travellers killing eachother and eachother's ancestors millions of years ago.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Now that I think of it: Maybe all those fossils are the remains of our great-great-great-....-great-grandchildren killing off eachother, who's offspring produces us all, and who were almost all eliminated by 1 heavy weapon one of them brought along.
That's a nice idea indeed for a new theory. So if someone kills the inventor of the time machine before he can invent it, we suddenly all will never have been born at all.