General Chat / Why Time TRAVEL isn't possible.

I disagree. I really think it's a physical impossibility. Because, if you travel back in time, you could keep going back and back and back, and therefore live forever... and on what time scale do you live forever? My point is, that if you travel back in time... you're inventing a whole new dominant scale of time, in which you won't be moving backwards anyway. So even if there is a way to move around in time, it's done on another time scale which you can't change anyway. And if you move around on that one, so it is for another scale of time as well.

Do people really think that it might be possible to go back and time and to live with dinosaurs? That idea I find incredibly silly. What happened then happened, and it can't have happened any other way. Nothing we can do now can influence the past, and arguably the same could be said about the future.

As for Einstein's theory of relativity and changing time - that's slightly different. What that means, is that you can experience less time than someone else, and therefore appear "younger" than them (it happens, incidently, all the time: every time you move, every time you get on an airplane is probably the most extreme example irl, but even that is on an unbelievably miniscule scale). But even your perception of that time would be exactly the same, because your brain would be working at a relatively slower pace. So you couldn't just get in a space rocket and go insanely quick and live for twice as long or whatever, because your perception of that time changes as well as the time itself.
I should really stop smoking dope. Did anyone actually ever read this sentence? pm me if u did lol
Ok, one more thought (none of this is meant to be presented as fact, just thoughts and theories that I believe highly likely to be possible). we view the past every time we look at a star. For all we know, proxima centauri might have burnt out, but the light hasn't yet reached us and won't do for another few years. Again, the same could be said about anything - other people, objects close to us, but just on another ridiculously small scale.

Theres 3 dimension up/down, left/right, foward/backward. Time isnt a dimmension. You cant move through it like you can move in the 3 dimensions.

Theres 3 dimension up/down, left/right, foward/backward. Time isnt a dimmension. You cant move through it like you can move in the 3 dimensions.

A dimension is where a possibly infinate amount of information can be stored on a fixed point of the dimensions before it. Take a point in the universe; What can store an infinite amount of information about that point? Time. Therefore time is the fourth dimension.

Just because humans can only experience three dimensions at once doesent meqan the fourth isnt there. It took a lot to make movement in three dimensions, and it will take exponentially more to move in four. Hypothetically speaking, if a fifth dimension is found, it could be possible, but working with a fifth dimension would encompass basically all of the information in the universe to the third power.

Hello.


Time travel is in fact possible. I wrote a paper about it a few years ago.
As far as doing it any time soon, that is actually not possible for a VERY long time...

Plus the sheer fact that how it is possible might not actually send you into the past or future, but yet an alternate dimension of realiy is another debate.

There are small rips in space called wormholes. These Wormholes are actually bends in spacetime. When a wormhole appears, it could be the size of a pinhole or the size of mars. They tend to be small most of the time apparently.

As far as scientists know and what I have studied, the wormholes cross the fabric of 2 opposite spectrums of spacetime, making "time travel" possible if you could keep it open long enough to get non-exotic matter through it.

Only thing is from hubble pictures...the millisecond non-exotic matter crosses a wormhole it closes within a fraction of a second. So as far as today's standards go, time travel is not tecnologically possible, but it theoretically can be done.

My $0.02


Raven-SDI
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What I find fascinating is the Grandfather Clause.

If you go back in time and kill your grandfather, then technically you woudl have never been born. Since you were never born, then you could not have killed your grandfather. If you didn't kill your grandfather then you were born. Since you were born, you were able to go back and time and kill your grandfather. Ya da ya da ya da.....

Then again, the theory of tangent universes completely contradicts this...I just think its cool

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.

That is one hundred percent accurate. It has been done.

For all we know, proxima centauri might have burnt out, but the light hasn't yet reached us and won't do for another few years.

Stars don't just "explode" randomly. Currently now it's not going through a super nova so 4 years wouldn't make much of a difference since its about 4 light years away. It takes many, many years for a star to die off.

For all you people basing their opinions on wormholes and black holes and what not, are you basing you opinions on the laws of physics also? To go back in time is like saying there's a way of finding how the universe began. It's impossible. The universe dosen't base anything on time. So how would the universe have something were you could go back in time, when time itself is nonexistent? If you could go back in time, the atoms in your body would have to go back to it's previous state. Also, if it was possible, you could quite possibly screw the whole universe up causing a paradox. You would have two of yourselves, your future self and your past self. But time is continuous. Your past self would be going through the past, which it thinks its the present and you, the future self, would be experiencing the past. But there is an infinite number of past, present, and future selves, because that time is continuous. It's not possible, it will never be possible. Our universe is not governed by totally weird phenomenon like time.

And the phenomena dealing with objects slowing down when the approach the speed of light, is not the same thing as time travel, because they are both moving at the same "time", but one is moving at a much greater speed then the other. Our universe is governed by the laws of physics. This only happens to make the equations work out.

I've tried over the past 6 months to start a site based on discussion and debates such as, Math, Physics, Space, Philosophy, Literature etc, but I've never been able to get a large enough community to join...

Would anyone be interested in a site for discussion like this?

I might drop in every now and then.

I've tried over the past 6 months to start a site based on discussion and debates such as, Math, Physics, Space, Philosophy, Literature etc, but I've never been able to get a large enough community to join...

Would anyone be interested in a site for discussion like this?

I would.

It'll be up by the end of the weekend.

What I find fascinating is the Grandfather Clause.

If you go back in time and kill your grandfather, then technically you woudl have never been born.  Since you were never born, then you could not have killed your grandfather.  If you didn't kill your grandfather then you were born.  Since you were born, you were able to go back and time and kill your grandfather.  Ya da ya da ya da.....

Then again, the theory of tangent universes completely contradicts this...I just think its cool

EDIT: Raoul, you forgot to mention that you kill your grandfather before he gives birth to your mother/father

EDITx2: I meant before your mother/father is conceived. Thanks ride6.

This is the sort of thing everyone thinks of when they think of time travel, one of those classic paradoxes that always come up. However, experiments dealing with time so far have been very small things, like the clocks that were off by a few millionths of a second. There's a huge difference between this level and somehow transporting yourself back several decades to meet your grandfather. As fun as it is to debate killing your own grandfather, it seems highly improbable (not impossible) to bridge the gap between these two ideas.

Ideas that work on the microscopic level are often become much more complex on a larger scale. Maybe it's a bad analogy, but I compare this sort of thing to the paradox of Schroedinger's Cat (a popular quantum physics paradox). For a more complete explanation, go here.

Talking about an atom being in two states at once is one thing, but talking Schroedinger's cat that is both dead and alive complicates things. Same goes for clocks that become a few millionths of a second off compared with a person travelling back to before they were born.

Anyway, I wish I knew more about this sort of thing. Should have payed closer attention in my physics class... Fun stuff.

I've tried over the past 6 months to start a site based on discussion and debates such as, Math, Physics, Space, Philosophy, Literature etc, but I've never been able to get a large enough community to join...

Would anyone be interested in a site for discussion like this?

No, there are laws that dictate that my mind has to turn to mush in the summer, thoughtful discussions are not allowed.

EDIT: Raoul, you forgot to mention that you kill your grandfather before he gives birth to your mother/father 

Men give birth to children now do they? I don't believe that male pregnency is possable as of yet, even though a sex change is *quivers with discust*.

Time Travel is possable in thoery but impossable under current conditions as we know them. I suspect that time is, indeed, just a figment of the human mind attemping to organize events by the order of their occurence, if so, "time travel" wouldn't be possable. However prolonging life by traveling at great speed is, which could allow you to "travel" to the future, so to speak. Personally I do wonder what the future holds but I'd rather take the slow way where I can experence everything happening right here, right now. Since that's all the matters anyway. What is happening here (on earth), now. That is unless we're going to get hit by an astroid in a week, then I hope we'll figure out someway to get the damn thing away from us.

lol. If there is like we would know!
Live your life the way you want to and don't worry about the lives of those long dead or not yet living.

ride6

Whoops... I'm rather absent-minded today. If there was an emarrassed smiley face I'd be using it.

Before your father/mother was conceived then.

Okay,take it from The Time Machine(2002)

Alexander built his Time Machine BECAUSE of Emma(his girfriend)'s death,that means if she had lived it would never had existed. So how could Alex could back to save her?


Paradoxes,here People. The big whammo of it all.

I read in a book you can make a time machine(that actully works) from a wormhole. We would need to twist the two ends of the wormhole around eachother,untill they are tight. But the catch is you have to twist the two ends with something big,like jupiter. So as of now,forget time travel.

Theres 3 dimension up/down, left/right, foward/backward. Time isnt a dimmension. You cant move through it like you can move in the 3 dimensions.

Have you not been on the Tower Of Terror!? :-o

Apparently there are something like 20-odd "dimensions,"...

I get confused with anything in Physics that starts to get messy. I get everything except wave-particle duality (I can explain it for exams and stuff, but I can't really understand it) and all the quantum pjysics stuff..

Add in discussions about string theory, etc and you'll see why physics was never my favorite subject.

Theres 3 dimension up/down, left/right, foward/backward. Time isnt a dimmension. You cant move through it like you can move in the 3 dimensions.

Not quite accurate. Time IS a dimension, infact its the 4th dimension. The way most see it is that the dimensions follow as thus:

0th - A Point in space
1st - A line extending in two opposite directions
2nd - A flat square
3rd - A Cube
4th - Time

Yet, since "Time" isn't a spatial dimension, it can move, so if we were living in a 2-dimensional world, Time would be the third dimension, likewise, if we were living in a 4 dimensional (spatial) world, than Time would be the 5th.

Yep.

Any name suggestions for the site?

If time was a dimension, how can it be represented mathematically?

I don't think time was proven as a dimension. If it was, show me something were it says that.

Ever hear of chaos theory?

Possilbliy I worded it wrong, but it hasn't been proven yet that Time is a dimension, its just regarded one by scientists.

But I'll get you some links a little later, that shows that they refer to time as the 4th.

EDIT: Found one, infact, it was Einstein who suggested this theory... Click