Time travel.

[MagicJuggler]

I'm looking for a good chat on time travel from a theoretical physics perspective.

Considering the current beliefs are:
-If one manages to surpass the speed of light, time speeds up around him.
-The only way for an object to attain FTL speed is if infinite energy were channelled through it.
-Any amount of positive mass is capable of warping space-time, causing time to speed up.
-It is impossible to simutaneously know the exact position and velocity of an electron at any given point in time.
-There exists the potential for negative mass, including leptons, tachyons, etc.
-There are different variants on black holes. One, the Kerr Hole, has enough centrifugal force as to prevent objects in the center from being crushed completely. In addition, there exists the potential for a "white hole" that repulses everything near it.

How does this all come together? Would you envision time travel as feasible in 100 years? 1000? What would be the best way for an object to attain infininte energy?

Discuss.

[Viper]

Infinite energy has the most potential from anti-matter/matter conversions. The energy yeild from a few ounces makes a nuclear bomb look like a fire cracker.

I don't have much time right now or I'd go more indepth. Nuke and I are going to have fun with this one.

[Backlash]

I'm totally interested in this stuff, I saw one theoretical physicist talk about it on TechTV one time, he's pretty interesting. I don't know enough to contribute much though...

[SuperLuigiBros]

time travel cant happen

[MagicJuggler]

Not yet...or are you saying ever?

The intent of this thread was to theorize. If you do not have any backing for your claim, then it will be deemed invalid.

[SuperLuigiBros]

ok sorry. well im saying it cant happen ever. if u really think about i, it just wouldnt work. for instance, i was watched "minority report" recently and at the end he goes into the building because thats wat he saw in the future. but he never would have gone there if he didnt see himself kill that guy on the screen.
thats just one crap example, but ill ask my friend who proved it wrong or sumin a while ago. it just would work.


EDIT: oh. i just had another thought. if one were to go forward through time then he would disappear for the whole time in between and then just appear. which kinda would work cause it would mean that he existed, then didnt exist then existed again. but then theres the thing where time speeds up around u so if one were to go forward through time then it might happen instantly, like a jump through time, or a thing where everything around him slows down or speeds up or watever.

im gonna stop now cause i dont know wat im talking about and probly sound like an idiot. but i just dont htink it could ever happen. theoretically it probly could, but u no...

[Broken Sword]

I don't believe that we will ever be able to time travel.

I don't believe that it is possible.

I don't know alot aobut this kind of stuff though, so go easy on my uneducated brain.

I just think that there is only one timeline, which is this one.

[I started 3 sentences with 'I don't...'.]

[Boggy700]

You also started five sentences with "I", which I tend to do often.


I don't believe in the general concept of 'time'.
It is something completely intangible and artificial.
There is only motion (or something that I don't know the word for, so I said 'motion' in it's place.)
I believe that there is only one 'time'.
That 'time' is a single instant that isn't any legnth of time at all.
Like a single frame of film, the only thing that exists is NOW.
This means that nobody has ever actually done anything, but we think we did due to our memory of having done it.
And nobody will ever do anything in the future.

But supposing that each person had a single instant which they were living, which differed to mine or anyone else's.
They could be living in my past, and I in their future.
In which case, to travel through time would be to speed up or reverse everything that the individual experiences and doesn't experience.
It's like the old... thing, about how I see blue as my version of blue, but maybe someone else sees their version of blue as my version of red.
Something about how we cannot truly share our experiences because it never happens to anyone else.

To have an idealised system of time travel, we would need to experience our entire lives in the single instant.

Going backwards in time would just mean that everything besides the traveller would do everything that was done, in reverse.
Of course, that couldn't happen if the traveller were to remain in the same place during travel.
So I don't think going back in time could ever be achieved.
Well not safely anyway.
Because of that whole thing where doing something in the past would create change in the future, thus possibly nullifying the discovery of time-travel.
Coupled with the Chaos Theory, I believe that going back in time would certainly invalidate everything beyond that point, and overwrite the time between the 'past' and the 'present' and infinitely into the future.
I also believe that travelling forward in time would be nothing more than something similar to stasis, or something.


So by now you may have realised that I don't really know anything about time travel, besides the stuff I make up and see on TV (because Red Dwarf is so cool!)
That being said, never expect me to back up anything with science.
Because I don't like thinking about the unrealistic realistically.

[Flaccid Acid]

It really depends on how we think of time, and how we think of travel. By travel you mean speeding time up, thats one thing, but to be able to go back and forth as we please? Is there only one time? the time we are in now? or does time copy itself as it moves? Is time like a ribbon? Each moment in time is frozen, and it is our minds that determin how fast we experience it? Time does not occur at the same speed for everyone. Some animals actualy see the world in a kind of slow motion. So time could really be anything. The last billion years to us well would have been a billion years, but for an alien civilitation hundredsof trillions of light-years away, it could be a matter of minites.
And if we could go back in time, whose to say this "ribbon" of time can be changed? Perhaps if we tried to change something it would just creat a second path of time. So history would change out that way too. And does this mean that everywhere on the ribbon time is moving forward? If you went back in time 100 years would everything be frozen still? Or would time continue forward?

[MagicJuggler]

First off, there are so many different ideas put forth:

-You see your past self performing actions. If you kill him though, you die. Also, don't kill your dad, the milkman, etc. (very common; no specific writer).
-We are living one of multiple realities. Each reality has a probability of occurring, or they've all occurred, and we are stuck in one. This means the possibility for paralell universes. (Hawking)
-You are an individual. Time operates like in Chrono Trigger, meaning you can move through worlds like that. (video-game pop culture)
-The more you mess up history, the less grounded to the reality you exist in; you become a ghost of sorts (I honestly forgot whom wrote this one).
-Time travel is possible; however, interaction w/ the world is impossible (Isaac Asimov).

If it were possible to amplify the Casimir Effect (involving an attractive force between two uncharged plates in an electromagnetic field), then it might theoretically be possible to create an Einstein-Rosen Bridge (subset: Lorentzian Wormhole. Essentially it's a black hole and white hole connected to one another) that could be sustained long enough for matter transmission. But the only problem is finding such a way.

[Viper]

What you are describing M.J. is not time travel but physical travel of extreme distances over a short time period by using a 'shortcut'.

Going back in time:

To travel back, it would mean that time must be a recorded event. Similar to what Boggy mentioned, history exists only in our memories. It's like trying to rewind regular TV. It happens and in that same moment, it's gone. Even if it IS somehow recorded, how do you calculate time and location to go back to? Merely typing in a date is great in movies but it's really not that simple. What is 24 hours ago calculated into? Like a restore point on your computer. You can type in a time to restore to because all that data is saved to the harddrive and typing in '24 hours ago' is translated by the computer into the binary language for calculation of the correct desired time. But what is time saved to? How do you translate '24 hours ago' into a coordinate of location and time that can be used? '24 hours ago' is a clock reading. It's not a continual restore point of time itself.

Next would be the problem of the beginning of time and the beginning of the physical world. Same for both ends. It is speculated the universe is 13.7 billion years old. What if you typed in 13.8 billions into the past? Then what? No physical universe to exist in though that doesn't mean it can't happen, but it would most ertainly cause major issues in how and when the big bang took and thus could alter time and space completely for the remainder of time itself.

Next issue. Particle integrity and matter transference. How do calculate just what gets time traveled? How do you calculate as the machine and it's components and passengers and how do you maintain particle integrity?

What happens if some of the air in the cabin or even in the travelers lungs come in contact with that same air from the past? The same matter cannot occupy the same space or you run into some major issues.

To add on to Boggy again. What is your past is another persons present when you travel back in time. Time is a collective thing. Everyone and everything is on the same timeline but what happens when you go back? You are no longer part of the collective timeline because you are experiencing a continuation in time for yourself yet are in the past meaning cannot go back to that collective. Say you had a twin and both of you are 30 years old. You go back in time for a year and come back to the exact time you left. You are now 31 but not your twin. You are a year older than the collective timeframe you left. Now you have a personal timeline. A branch of time dedicated to those particles that traveled through time. This actually would happen the moment you go back in time.


Going forward:

If time has ot happened, how can you 'jump' to it? It must take place first. It's like trying to watch the end of a movie that hasn't been filmed yet.

Please do not get worm holes and the like confused with actual time travel. Wormholes are actually much more probable than time travel.

[MagicJuggler]

What you are describing M.J. is not time travel but physical travel of extreme distances over a short time period by using a 'shortcut'.


And this shortcut involves altering time so to speak. Going back in time is the most controversial one, because there are too many what-ifs involved. What if there is a beginning to the universe. What if Big Bang really did exist and beforehand, all mass was comprised of infinite density? As for your question as to how we know what time to travel Creating a date of travel would involve creating an insane math formula for determining leap years, energy required to maintain an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, just how much negative mass is needed, etc. Don't forget leap-years, or the fact that the Gregorian calendar is slightly imperfect.

As for future travel, the current theory is that you have to attain FTL speed. Time then speeds up around you, and for every 5 minutes, 20 years pass around you.

[Boggy700]

I guess time travel would only exist as imagination.
Like, going back in time would be to have a thought extremely historically accurate and realistic.
And forward, a thought about the possible future, as realistic as before, but with the infinite range of possible outcome of present actions and inactions.
So in a sense, we create our own time to travel to.
Of course, none of that would change the present time.
But instead, just as we invent the time to travel forward to, our present is one of the infinite futures created by thought in the past.
(And none of these thoughts actually need to be thought.)
And as such, every single moment in our 'timeline' has been one insignificant result of infinitely wide forward thought.
Which is to say that the entire past has been created in the same way.
Which then goes into the thing about multiple alternate realities based on the decisions we do and don't make.
But what I wonder is that because time is infinitely wide, then...

...No, I went away for a while and lost my train of thought.
Damn.

[GTATrumpet]

What if time freezes a lot, but we don't know about it.


*breaks out a bag of weed*