Time Travel

frogus · Post by **frogus** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 2:23 pm

inspired by summit in the secret order of people in loving relationships, I thought I'd ask for all you're views on time travel.

Is it possible?

How *could* it happen?

Has it happened?

What would happen if it did?

here is an exerpt from a wierd book I read about it: (you would need to see the graph...but I'm sure you can all feel the vibe)

Simply put a ruler at the bottom of the chart, it's edge parralel to the space axis, and move it slowly upward [along the time axis]. At t0 you see young Smith. At t1 an old Smith suddenly materialises out of thin air in the same room along with an anti-Smith, who is seated in his time machine and living backwards. (If he is smoking, you see his cigarette butt lengthen intoa whole cigarette, and so on.) Perhaps the two forward Smiths converse. Finally at t2 , young Smith, backward Smith and the backward moving time machine vanish....

hope that gets you thinking....

AbysmalNature · Post by **AbysmalNature** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 3:53 pm

For me time travel is opened up into two possibilities, assuming time travel is possible that is.

One the time traveler is immune to changes in the time line, because the method of time travel isolates the time traveler from the universe, effectively placing the traveler outside of the rules of causility. Basically the distortion generated by time travel protects the time traveler from any paradox.

Two which relies on Everett's multiple worlds idea solves the paradox nicely by saying that when you go back in time to a past event or future event. Let's say for example you want to kill your grandfather, you go back in time shoot him, do you disappear, according to multiworld idea, no just another universe branches off from that one event, and in that universe you have ceased to exist, you still exist but have effectively isolated yourself from the home universe from which you sprang.

Time travel is not yet possible, it might be possible it might not, time travel is something that most physicists do not like to deal with as no matter what they do it is still a integral part of relativitiy and quantum mechanics. The ideas though involve creating wormholes, or superstring would all require energy on the scale of a supernovae, so we are probably far from that.

Actually if time travel is possible, no matter what we think it has already happened, it might already have happened because we simply could not tell the difference.

In any case that is what I think about time travel and what I have read.

ThorinOakensfield · Post by **ThorinOakensfield** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 5:15 pm

I don't plan to let mortals make time travel possible.
I tried it on another planet and it failed misserably. They went back and time and screwed up the whole universe.
They infact led to the end of the Urdatos.

I did not see a "no spam" sign

Alienbob · Post by **Alienbob** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 5:29 pm

traveling to the future and the past are two completely different concepts. traveling to the future is possible and has actually been acomplished, though to an extremly small degree. all you have to do is move at a fast speed (it would have to be about lightspeed or faster to make any significant differance) for a while. hers an example: an astronaut was up up on the Mir spacestation for several years. the Mir was orbiting earth at several thousand miles an hour. he had a clock with him or something and when he came down they found that he had actually traveled into the future.(but only by a few seconds or so) time travel is possible we just cant go fast enough to travel a significant distance in time.

btw there was a whole article about this in a recent Popular Science. you may want to take a look at it if you are interested in this sort of thing.

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 8:53 pm

Well, being the first person to have ever acheived Time Travel, I can tell you it won't be possible for another 500 years. Upon that time, the world will flip on it's axis, chaos will rupt, and the moon will be swallowed by a giant donkey.

Tamerlane · Post by **Tamerlane** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 3:13 am

The day we see a group of tourists depicted as Roman gods, or inscribed within the Great Pyramids. Well then we'll know.

Until then, we wait.....

EDIT- Or don't we? Hmm, can't solve this one

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 5:58 am

Time travel is easy; all you need is some plutonium and a DeLorean.

Leonardo · Post by **Leonardo** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 8:11 am

Alienbob:
traveling to the future is possible and has actually been acomplished

Travelling to the future is very easy. Just sit still for 60 minutes and when you least expect it, you are 1 hour in the future!

Der-draigen · Post by **Der-draigen** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 8:13 am

Stephen Hawking says it's possible. I think his theory is something like this: Time is not linear; that is, it has no beginning, middle, or end. Nor is it circular. It's more all-pervasive, every moment exists at once. (I think it's something akin to the theory of time existing within eternity, which is time-less.) That being the case, it wouldn't be unthinkable to travel into the "past", or into the "future", because the past and future exist in the same "place" as the present. Linear time is only a construct that humans have invented in order to keep track of things; it's not the way the universe really works. Errr, I don't think I'm explaining this right

Also because of this, people can actually "remember" their future. This is when you get "deja vu" experiences. "Deja vu" is when you realize that you "knew this was coming"; it's actually a memory of the future. The only reason why we can't remember our entire future in detail is because our conscious minds couldn't handle it.

I think Einstein also said time travel was possible.

Gruntboy · Post by **Gruntboy** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 9:44 am

That was very clear Der-draigen. You folks from Hell may have a sucky time when it comes to relationships but you don't have any problems explaining the space-time continuum.

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 9:58 am

Originally posted by Gruntboy
You folks from Hell may have a sucky time when it comes to relationships but you don't have any problems explaining the space-time continuum.

Everybody's gotta be good at something . . .

frogus · Post by **frogus** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 10:11 am

although I know nothing about physics...

Experiments have been performed in which scientists go into very very fast space shuttles and perform chemical reactions (which always take the same time to take place, unlike the ticks of a clock for example) and can tell from this that the faster you go, the slower time goes. That's where the going faster than the speed of light to travel backwards through time comes in. This is, unfortunately not possible, as one's mass also increases as one approaches light speed. If you were to go above the speed of light, you would be so heavy that your body would collapse, planets would start moving towards you, the tides of the sea would all go skewwiff and in general everything would go wrong.

Gruntboy · Post by **Gruntboy** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 10:13 am

You mean we turn into Waverly's mom when we go faster than light??!! Lawks a lordy!

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 10:22 am

Umm, did no body notice the catacylsmic end of the world, due to a giant donkey eating the moon... Comke on people! think logically!

Craig · Post by **Craig** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 10:22 am

I say, I have a nice theory, all Change in the space is nonlinear, say you went back in time to do something, what ever you did the effect is what you lived in(B4 you TTed), in short using my Time travel theory YOU CANNOT CHANGE TIME!!

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 10:24 am

Originally posted by craig
I say, I have a nice theory, all Change in the space is nonlinear, say you went back in time to do something, what ever you did the effect is what you lived in(B4 you TTed), in short using my Time travel theory YOU CANNOT CHANGE TIME!!

So, what yoursaying, is that even if you went back in time, and di something, then that was meant to happen, thus you didn't affect the timeline in any way other then doing hat you were suppposed to do in the first place... Damn... I just went cross eyed....

Lousy Temperal Mechainics.

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Wed Feb 20, 2002 11:00 am

I am content to travel into the future at my present pace.

frogus · Post by **frogus** » Fri Feb 22, 2002 10:42 am

nice theory Craig.....**** you're only 13 as well! oh joy! Fight the adults.

Der-draigen · Post by **Der-draigen** » Fri Feb 22, 2002 6:11 pm

Originally posted by Gruntboy
That was very clear Der-draigen. You folks from Hell may have a sucky time when it comes to relationships but you don't have any problems explaining the space-time continuum.

What can I say