General Chat / Why Time TRAVEL isn't possible.

I was skimming through Timeline(book),and there was a part where some ITC head-case was talking about why Time Travel isn't possible for all eternity.

Read on.


Some people think that time moves with us and with everything else in the world. If that was true,that means that the present,past,and future are places,like us. Since it's been tested many times,the past,present,and future aren't locations. They aren't two different places like New York and Paris. You can't travel to them. And in that case,you can't change the past,it's hard-coded into history. And since the future hasn't happened yet,you can't go there. Period.

Then again,you can make a time machine out of a wormhole. I won't go into details,though.


Confusing? Oh,well. I went as clear as possible. No arguing,please!

No arguing,please! 

Where is the fun in that?

I did a lot of research back for a college project, it was like a Discovery Channel website flash learning center thing.

Saying Time Travel isn't possible means nothing, becuase we know so little about it. To say we never will is ignorant. (Excuse the bad Jackson SP episode)

According to what we know about time, tangent universes, and such, i think a better statement woudl be:

Time travel may be possible, though if we ever did suceed, we wouldn't know it.

I think time sux... it's either going too fast or too slow...
But really, what is 'time'?
I would like to know what DarkJanus thinks of this

SF

In my opinion, time travel may be possible only through the possible discovery of alternate universes, where when you go back and change history or whatnot, it takes you to an alternate universe so that when you return, your changes stay through.

OR it's impossible (more likely).

Well, you could travel to the future... sorta cheatingly... if you built a really fast space ship, flew it near or at the speed of light (and I mean really near, like 99.9999% of the speed of light). Time will go faster for everyone else but slower for you since you're going so fast. Fly for a little bit, and one year to you could be 10,000 years for everyone else who's stationary.

Of course, when you do land, you won't be able to go back to your own time, and all your friends and relatives will have died, so I'm not exactly sure that's the wisest thing, but hwatever.

If you think about it, unless a person has stopped the flow of time (which is impossible), they are traveling to the future every second of every day.

^ Very interesting perspective.

Also, how is it that you figure you'd survive the trip "through time"? Just because you're moving "in" or "out" of time doesn't mea it doesn't still effect you.

Like above, saying Time Travel isn't possilbe is ignoranace. A few hundred years ago, people said sailing around the world was impossilbe (either it was flat, our ships were to unpowerful, etc etc). Likewise, two hundred years ago, it would be impossilbe to fly, man can't fly, we can't defy gravity what so ever with any machine...and you know how that turned out. And again, people said we'd never reach the moon and (despite Capricorn 1), we did...

All in all, anything is possilbe.

its impossible to go forward in time, but i do beleive it would be possible to go back. If the future has yet to happen, how can you can go there?

isnt time just an idea. you cant travel through ideas. traveling though paralel univereses might work if they are real. but its not really time travel is it?

If you fuck with time, time fucks up what could be. That's all I'm saying.

Like above, saying Time Travel isn't possilbe is ignoranace.  A few hundred years ago, people said sailing around the world was impossilbe (either it was flat, our ships were to unpowerful, etc etc).  Likewise, two hundred years ago, it would be impossilbe to fly, man can't fly, we can't defy gravity what so ever with any machine...and you know how that turned out.  And again, people said we'd never reach the moon and (despite Capricorn 1), we did...

All in all, anything is possilbe.

Here's an interesting quote I heard a while ago:

When asked whether man would ever fly, Science Fiction writer H.G. Wells replied, "Man is not an Albatross."

If the future has yet to happen, how can you can go there?

Cryogenetics. Just give it a decade or two.

I would use time traveling to cheat money!=D mwuwhahahahhaaaaaa!

Technically, As far as I have read in tangent universes, everything has already happenned in an infinite number of universes. Everytime time is altered, the "timeline" splits into two. Travelling "ahead" in time just means going into an alternate universe...

Ive read a theory that our universe is like a big ice cube made of jelly. Imagine a whole bunch of these stacked in a 3D cube that float in water. They bump into eachother and forces created are "time."

I never unstood the force=time part but there is a ton that researches know about our universe and time travel that they aren't releasing. I don't wanna get all X-files up in here but i think it's interesting.

Hasn't it already been kind of proven that it is possible - kind of? I learned about it in Advanced Higher Physics.
If you put atomic clocks (or any clocks ) on a shuttle and leave one on earth, and fly one of them around the world really fast then it'll come back with an earlier time than the one that's gone nowhere (by millionths of a second), so there are some people living who are a fraction of a second "younger" than they should be.

You have to be going really fast to get this to happen though (It's about 1/10th of the speed of light before relativistic effects occur I think - that's kinda what black holes and wormholes or whatever have to do with it), and it's to do with time dilation and masses changing and stuff, and about Einstein flying at the speed of light with a mirror in his hand, asking if he'll be able to see himself . It's all pretty confusing, and makes your head hurt. And that's why you shouldn't do physics

*cough* Yes, I think time travel is probably possible. Although it's hella confusing thinking about it all.

EDIT : I also read a while ago that some scientists were building some machine that would send things back in time, using three special mirrors. And the way they were arranged meant that particles would travel in a way that would make them time travel.. I never really got it at the time, and it was ages ago.. but apparently they had already done it with some molecules (although how you're supposed to know is beyond me..)

That's what I just said!!!

Speed = Distance/Time

D=ST

Your speed goes up, the time goes down.

Say if you had an identical twin, and you went into space and flew pretty fast and came back, your brother would be older then you.

There is no such thing as time. We are just moving through a space. There is a past, present, and future, but only the present truely exists. The past can't be brought back, it is already done. Going into the the future is also impossible as it has yet to be done. Time is just a human concept really.

How could you go to the past when the past has already happened? You can't. It really is not physically possible.

And saying time travel dosen't exist is not ignorant when you give a logical explanation of why you think it doesn't exist. It's only ignorant if you say it's ignorant, without giving an explantation of why time travel exists.

Of course it's not possible. If you were to go back in time, you'd only re-experience exactly what had already happened, you can't exist before you were born. The Matrix kind of comes into it, if you take that point of view, everything is fixed, things are always going to happen as they will happen, essentially we are all programs, our DNA determines how we will react to every situation we will ever occur. And if you move back in time, what time scale do you do that on anyway?

you can view past events.

by manipulating light waves.

and you can travel to the future. by going the speed of light. you just might not be able to get back.

I was skimming through Timeline(book),and there was a part where some ITC head-case was talking about why Time Travel isn't possible for all eternity.

Crichton's idea of time travel was travelling between parallel universes. And it's quite hard to proove that with our current technology. I really like what Mystery Mod said, that it's ignorance to say it isn't possible. There are so many things we once labeled impossible, but now we do them. We operate robots on Mars, we've walked on the moon, taken pictures of Pluto, gone faster than sound and right now I can communicate to almost anyone on earth. I think it's just a matter of time before we overcome the barrier that is time travel.