Theories of Time Travel

[Mewtwo Ex]

True. But if you exist outside the time line you should be fine.

[Zafur]

Yeah, I know planes would... probably never reach speeds high enough to affect time, but it was just an example from something I saw on TV.

It would make things interesting though, if it worked.

[Enzo]

True. But if you exist outside the time line you should be fine.

If something didn't exist within the 4th dimension (time), then why would it be interested in traveling through time? And if it DIDN'T exist in time, how could it travel through Time anyway?

That is, everything has to exist within Time, since it wouldn't be a dimension otherwise (everything exists in all dimensions somehow, even if in a very strange or hard to see way).

[nathanmcnutt]

Well, someone from the future might have went back to ancient times and somehow influenced life from the past. They might have taught Egyptians how to build pyramids, they might have taught humans about herbs and cures for diseases that even us in the present don't know about, information about the past is very blurry, we almost know nothing, and, remember, people in ancient times knew stuff we don't

This is impossible. All information must originate from someone. If the future people teach the past people something thus establishing the knowledge of said something in the time line, then how would the future people teach the something to the past people if they were the ones to historically "create" the information. This is called Can-Not Because Has-Not theory. Said and done. Pretty much case closed.

[RenegadeShroom]

I certainly hope that time-travel isn't possible - there'd be too many people screwing around with the past and end up ripping apart the entire future course of events, and that probably includes people being born. I say, if it is possible, that as soon as you go backwards in time, you create an alternate universe, which exists in sync with our own. This actually isn't my idea, but it's off Star Trek, and it makes me worry less about some idiot erasing me from existence.

[DeathWatch]

They were both intersting reads so I don't know which one to pick.

[pup5115]

I can't really say anything because this all seems bogus to me not knowing the physics of time travel. Technically, no matter where you look, you are seeing fractions of a second into the past because of the time it takes for the light to reach your eye varying in the distance away the object is.

[Scotteh]

I certainly hope that time-travel isn't possible - there'd be too many people screwing around with the past and end up ripping apart the entire future course of events, and that probably includes people being born. I say, if it is possible, that as soon as you go backwards in time, you create an alternate universe, which exists in sync with our own. This actually isn't my idea, but it's off Star Trek, and it makes me worry less about some idiot erasing me from existence.

This.

[Sabeta]

I believe it's called the Grandfather Theory, where if you travel back in time, and say kill your grandpa, you should cease to exist. According to this theory though, instead of your existence coming to a drastic halt an alternate universe is then created in which you don't exist. Really though, we can't know what happens unless we try. Although we have managed to to achieve a very rudimentary form of Time Travel. (It involves a complex array of light particles, and so far we've only managed to send a single particle of light back in time, the problem with this method is that you cannot send an object back to a point in time that the machine itself hadn't been operational, so if I start the machine up on the 1st of january, I can't go back to any point before it.) Another form of Time Travel is to simply travel at the speed of light, although this would not come with a return trip.

[questioner]

If conventional time travel was possible (and it might well be, and people from the future may be using it and being careful not to let us know), then certainly surviving the trip would be easy. All that needs to be done is travels back to a point in time-space relative to the current point in time-space.

And remember, just because it's not possible now, does not mean it won't be. Radiation was impossible, and then it wasn't.

[Codr]

I think this could possibly be one of the worst forums ever to try to discuss something intellectually challenging. On the topic, however, I like how everyone is making the assumption that entry into a previous point in time must mean you're still in the same universe and therefore will affect future events.

[evandixon]

On the topic, however, I like how everyone is making the assumption that entry into a previous point in time must mean you're still in the same universe and therefore will affect future events.

Ignoring that assumption, if you travel directly into the future from there, you will (probably) find an alternate version of yourself (unless you died), because you do not belong in that universe. That defeats the purpose of time travel in order to change something.

[Full Metal]

There's a problem with the concept of time travel.

The law of conservation of matter / mass / energy.

To go into the past:

1) Ctrl Z $x = md5($x) ( for you non-php informed, this assigns an irreversible ( and destructive ) encryption on x, then stores it in x. Effectively removing any evidence of the original x. ) -- 2nd law of thermodynamics.

2) You would essentially be creating matter wherever you arrive. OR you would be taking matter that was there. However it works, it can't possibly be good.

3) With #2 in mind, it would only make sense to be able to travel to a point where time machines already existed. So uh...redundancy?

4) You would have to make a time machine fit inside a time machine if you did not go along with #3 so as to get back 'home'. Which relies on time travel FORWARD to work.

-------------------------------------------------------

To go into the future:

1) You're still creating, or taking matter and energy, which kills physics.

2) Events are un-certain; The future can't be determined. Thermodynamics says heat is random movement of particles. So at best, a super-super-super computer could generate a matrix of possibilities. A very, very large matrix.

3) -- In theory however, you can 'emulate' time travel, if you will. You can slow down the movement of your particles ( using the event horizon on from a black-hole ) while the rest of the world continues at 'normal speed'. The problem with this is that (A) you'll be pulled in and ripped apart to the black hole. and ( B ) To counteract A you need 'anti-matter' the size of a black-hole, which debatably exists, and is a very complicated science.

I'm sure there's more, but I just showed you that time travel is not possible, with elementary `physics`. :l

I want to get into real physics. >.<

[Full Metal]

Simply going as fast as you can in a plane would not effect the flow of time around you. You'd need to go faster than the speed of light to actually effect the flow of time around you, and as far as I know you'd never be able to go "back in time". It would appear to you that everything else was simply moving faster in time than you (if you could somehow observe anything whilst going faster than the speed of light).

Even if human beings could go faster than the speed of light, they would certainly die as soon as they achieved this and they would not go "back in time", which again makes this thread's original scenario impossible to begin with.

Hm...are you sure? Surely there's a way to survive traveling that fast! :\

Maybe. Okay, you're probably right.

I'm going to say again that even if time travel was possible, it would kill you instantly.

Yup.

"OH CRAP! The EARTH is all the way OVER THERE! - chokes & dies - "

Yeah, I know planes would... probably never reach speeds high enough to affect time, but it was just an example from something I saw on TV.

It would make things interesting though, if it worked.

If something didn't exist within the 4th dimension (time), then why would it be interested in traveling through time? And if it DIDN'T exist in time, how could it travel through Time anyway?

That is, everything has to exist within Time, since it wouldn't be a dimension otherwise (everything exists in all dimensions somehow, even if in a very strange or hard to see way).

Yes. Time == An array of existences. Each slightly different than the last in the series. ?

I think that's what I got out of this.

I certainly hope that time-travel isn't possible - there'd be too many people screwing around with the past and end up ripping apart the entire future course of events, and that probably includes people being born. I say, if it is possible, that as soon as you go backwards in time, you create an alternate universe, which exists in sync with our own. This actually isn't my idea, but it's off Star Trek, and it makes me worry less about some idiot erasing me from existence.

^ This is the only post that makes me think there might be a possibility of time travel, but I highly doubt it depends on something as trivial as birth. Life is a bunch of cells. Cells are just a bunch of molecules with chemical reactions that tend to cause repetition ( reproduction ).

It doesn't matter because even if Time Travel were possible, it wouldn't be like it is in the movies. Let me explain:

Consider time and space and your rapid movement through both. I'm not just talking about getting up to go to the bathroom after a long pokemon chaining session when I say "movement", either. First, the Earth is constantly spinning on it's axis at some proposterous speed which turns the days, and so you are also moving at this speed through space. Compounding this, it's not just the Earth spinning that moves you, but the earth circling the sun to make the years. We have traveled through space a ridiculous many miles in the past few minutes alone in that circular journey and that's not even all of it! The sun rotates around the central star of our Milky Way galaxy in the same super-speedy manner, and the galaxy? It's rocketing through space, likely away from the center of the universe where the singularity that started it all used to rest.

What does this mean for time travel? Well, sir, considering we are constantly moving through SPACE so quickly, what makes you think you can move through TIME backwards to the same point in space you are in this moment and survive the encounter? Your point in space is constantly changing just like your point in time whether you realize it or not, and so attempting to travel to your point in space at a different time, backwards or forwards, will almost certainly result in your death as you would very likely find yourself in the vast expanse of outer space which is not friendly to human beings that require air to breathe.

Therefor, wondering about which "theory" of time travel is true is a complete waste of time. <3

Seriously people, listen to this guy.

Wasn't there a theory about going fast enough?XP Some people put a clock in a plane and kept one outside it, calibrated them and they found out that there was a slight difference in the milliseconds when they compared them again.

... And isn't the reason we die not because of a gene but because our DNA ages so much through all the replication of cells it is no longer well enough to keep us alive... Or something... Also explains why older people lose eyesight first. And supposedly starving yourself to slow down the replication of cells should theoretically make you live longer.

Actually, I think it was a train, and these clocks operated on nuclear decay, which is probably the most sensitive / accurate timing there is.

What happens w/ DNA is that the DNA slowly unravels ( VERY slowly. ) and eventually you loose information. You also get a collection of bad cells in your bloodstream ( white blood cells that are either dead, or disfunctional )

[wraith89]

I remember reading a recent discovery about these particles called Neutrinos (you know, one of the products of Beta decay?) actually travel faster than the speed of light. Now how would that be possible? According to the law of physics, nothing should be faster than light, and there are several theories on how they do it, one involving time travel. Now I'm quite skeptical about the time travel claim, but this is certainly groundbreaking.

[Sabeta]

Einstein's Theory has sadly been disproven several times now Wraith, a bit late on the trigger there. Under very specific circumstances (that I won't pretend to fully understand) we have accelerated photons (the essence of light) to move faster than light. we have also achieved this with sound waves. Neutrinos are interesting things though. Whenever there's a massive exchange of energy in the Universe, such as the existence of a Star or the detonation of a Nuclear Bomb Neutrinos are created.

If you grow a tree, then burn it, the energy produced from burning the tree is not the same as the energy it took to grow it. This is known as Entropy (and is very slowly dooming the entire Universe, but that's not a big deal). That 'lost' energy, is where Neutrinos come from. At this point in time, several trillion Neutrinos are floating around your thumb. Here's the truly remarkable thing about Neutrinos though. They don't have mass, at all. This means they aren't affected by Gravity, nor would any object with mass be able to interact with them. (All those neutrinos floating around your thumb right now are free to pass right through your thumb without even 'acknowledging' your existence. Due to this unique nature, they can accelerate infinitely, and I mean infinitely. This means that, assuming one could properly direct a Neutrino (Which SERN has done, but only to around 12000 of them. Considering their relative quantity, that's not a lot) then it's possible to get it to accelerate faster than light. (which it has in fact done) This doesn't exactly mean we'll have Time Travel though, as Neutrinos are sort of the exception to the rule; although they can Time Travel. (We don't know how they do it, but they have been known to jump a few seconds into the past. When tracing a neutrino, they've noticed they'll occasionaly get impossible blips that suggest time travel, but there's no way to prove it, or explain it.

Also, I would like to revise my personal time travel theory.

Imagine you have a few lengths of rope. Each rope represents a "World Line" These world lines are all completely unique, where major historical events are changed. For the sake of naming things, let's say we are Alpha world line, but maybe on the Beta world line, hitler took over the world, and we're all germans. Now imagine each and every strand of hair on that rope, is it's own miniature world line. These are called "Divergences" They comprise of the small changes in a world, such as "did I ask her out today" or "pizza for dinner or Spaghetti" Through time travel, it easy to alter the Divergences; however, Altering the entire Worldline is impossible. (And if such a theory were to be correct, and you sucessfully changed the divergence, you wouldn't remember it, so it's sort of a moot points.)

[wraith89]

To be honest, I am not a very science-oriented person (that makes me a fake Asian?). However, it was just interesting to me because I heard the news from my friend on how CERN discovered this recently. My friend tried to teach me in a fashion that time was a loop and somehow Neutrinos were able to get to the other side of the loop, performing impossible movement. It was just something I found very curious. I'm not one who thinks it is possible for us to time travel however, but the case for neutrinos did raise my eyebrows.

[Mewtwo Ex]

I remember reading a recent discovery about these particles called Neutrinos (you know, one of the products of Beta decay?) actually travel faster than the speed of light. Now how would that be possible? According to the law of physics, nothing should be faster than light, and there are several theories on how they do it, one involving time travel. Now I'm quite skeptical about the time travel claim, but this is certainly groundbreaking.

Forgive me if i am writing something said/hinted or otherwise, but the ''nothings is faster than light'' seems to be broken, because i heard something similar not long ago. What's more is that to break that ''law'' an object must be moving faster, something i find not so hard to believe.

If we ever hope to reach the planet of the pokemonS!

I have always believed that the universe has more to give us than what we have, the constant advances in technology i and discoveries help me believe that.

[coltonsmogon]

On 3/20/2010 at 0:46 AM, RenegadeShroom said:

I certainly hope that time-travel isn't possible - there'd be too many people screwing around with the past and end up ripping apart the entire future course of events, and that probably includes people being born. I say, if it is possible, that as soon as you go backwards in time, you create an alternate universe, which exists in sync with our own. This actually isn't my idea, but it's off Star Trek, and it makes me worry less about some idiot erasing me from existence.

This also goes for any decision you make. You make the decision & an alternate universe pops up where you did something else or didn't do anything at all (and with my luck, there'd be many alternate universes popping up each & every infiniteth of a second due to this logic).

Infiniteth: An infinitely small piece of something, whether it be time, a cookie, or a house (because wynaut?).
Also, multiple other series (like Sonic X for example) also touch on the theory of alternate universes & even time dilation.

Edited March 23, 2017 by coltonsmogon