Time Travel

[devonin]

Maybe? Not necesarily? I mean that the actual flow of "time" operates like movie film, a constant flowing of still images over time giving the semblance of movement that we can percieve.

I suppose if we take the analogy literally, then like film, we could potentially develop a technique to splice the frames around, or cut some out, but the analogy was more a vehicle for understanding than an actual theory about the objective reality of the situation.

[The Dragon Knight]

Originally Posted by devonin

Maybe? Not necesarily? I mean that the actual flow of "time" operates like movie film, a constant flowing of still images over time giving the semblance of movement that we can percieve.

I suppose if we take the analogy literally, then like film, we could potentially develop a technique to splice the frames around, or cut some out, but the analogy was more a vehicle for understanding than an actual theory about the objective reality of the situation.

Which is why I said theoretically sir

You have to admit, with the numerous amount of scientific discoveries and processes that are available, it's only a matter of time until there's a way to, more or less, control time.

[reuben_tate]

I think it would only be possible to go into the future going into some wormhole or something. According to Einstein, to stop time you need to go at the speed of light, and to go into the past you need to go faster than the speed of light, which is techically impossible because then you would be ifinitivley massive, larger than the universe itself.

[Frozen Beat]

Isn't this just simply impossible?

[rzr]

What, the concept on time travel? If so, no, not at all. It is entirely possible, just not at this individual time.

[devonin]

You have to admit, with the numerous amount of scientific discoveries and processes that are available, it's only a matter of time until there's a way to, more or less, control time.

I'm also more prone to believe in the potential for things like closed time loops (made famous by all forms of Star Trek) where for various reasons, localised distortions cause time locally to skip, repeat or otherwise be modified. It just seems a lot less farfetched than the idea that like Superman, you can move time for the entirety of existance except yourself.

According to Einstein, to stop time you need to go at the speed of light, and to go into the past you need to go faster than the speed of light

You've got the direction of the logic wrong there. Einstein said that if you could go at the speed of light, your subjective time would seem to stop in relation to objective time, and if you went faster than the speed of light, your subjective time would seem to go backwards in relation to objective time. You therefore can end up with something that to you seems like time travel to the future, but it isn't fundamentally different than the way that in 10 minutes, you've time travelled 10 minutes into the future.

IE. If I travelled faster than the speed of light, I would seem to the rest of the universe to have arrived at my destination before I actually left. This is actually already something that is documented. The few people who've spent the most time in space out of anybody (And thus, more time moving at incredibly high speeds [leaving the gravity well, being in orbit etc]) are actually a fraction of a second younger than everyone else by objective time. Years of moving that much faster have only added up to a 0.01 second difference, but the difference is already there and measured.

Isn't this just simply impossible?

We're discussing the theoretical ramifications of some of the theories of time travel that it has been proposed might be developed. The whole thing is a thought experiment because the practice is beyond the current level of our science.

[Verruckter]

Originally Posted by devonin

IE. If I travelled faster than the speed of light, I would seem to the rest of the universe to have arrived at my destination before I actually left. This is actually already something that is documented. The few people who've spent the most time in space out of anybody (And thus, more time moving at incredibly high speeds [leaving the gravity well, being in orbit etc]) are actually a fraction of a second younger than everyone else by objective time. Years of moving that much faster have only added up to a 0.01 second difference, but the difference is already there and measured.

I don't believe in this. Honestly, how can you mesure the fraction of a second in terms of age? It's ridiculous. Age is always an approximation, and it's impossible to tell that someone has lived exactly ten million five hundred and fifty six second in his life, because most of the cells you were born with are not the same as those that constitute your body right now and those that are can't be dated so precisely anyways.

Yes, traveling at the speed of light or beyond it will change your perception of time (this is what the Theory of Relativity is based on), but will not alter it's course for the object that's traveling this fast.

As I've said before, time is just a concept that we observe and quantify because it affects everything around us, but in fact it's not empiric.

[rzr]

Originally Posted by devonin

We're discussing the theoretical ramifications of some of the theories of time travel that it has been proposed might be developed. The whole thing is a thought experiment because the practice is beyond the current level of our science.

Nonetheless, the key word there s "current." We most likely will have the onformation, technology, etc to produce a time machine.
A good track to go on, however, would be to onlt travel [at least at first] through a parallell universe.

[devonin]

Age is always an approximation, and it's impossible to tell that someone has lived exactly ten million five hundred and fifty six second in his life, because most of the cells you were born with are not the same as those that constitute your body right now and those that are can't be dated so precisely anyways.

They tell because of the use of incredibly accurate timepieces that they keep on things like the space shuttle, and on satellites in orbit, and on Mir etc. Over years, the timepiece has slowly "lost" time compared to similar timepieces on earth that are linked together.

[Verruckter]

Originally Posted by devonin

They tell because of the use of incredibly accurate timepieces that they keep on things like the space shuttle, and on satellites in orbit, and on Mir etc. Over years, the timepiece has slowly "lost" time compared to similar timepieces on earth that are linked together.

Well then probably the speed at which those timepieces were going slowed down the speed at which electrons moved through electric circuits. Since the timepieces are based the frequency of the vibration of those electrons, they slowed down a few nanoseconds too.

[devonin]

Pretty sure that this is just an accepted scientific "fact that happens" I mean, I can try to look for some appropriately credible (IE Non Wiki) sources for you, I know a few physicists who can probably come back me up. The whole of relativistic theory backs up the idea that time dialation happens at velocities approaching the speed of light, and that something going suitably faster than everything else will experience this discrepancy.

Originally Posted by An astrophysicist friend of mine

To swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human. says:
have a physics question

Tsarkon says:
Heheh. Okay, I'll do my best to answer it

To swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human. says:
Well, I'm correct in theorizing that Einstienian time dialation is pretty much accepted as a scientific fact right?

Tsarkon says:
*nod*

Tsarkon says:
As much as anything can be

To swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human. says:
Like if I got up to the speed of light, turned around, came back, more objective time would have passed than my subjective time suggests

Tsarkon says:
That's correct

To swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human. says:
I suggested that it has been measured that for some of the people who've spent the most time in space out of anybody, that there's already a miniscule discrepancy (like a fraction of a second even) and that this has probably been determined by the use of as accurate as can be made timepieces on both earth and various spacegoing things.

To swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human. says:
Was that just something I heard made up from somewhere?

Tsarkon says:
No, that's real. In the 1960's, or perhaps even earlier physicists put atomic clocks on two separate planes, one heading west and one heading east (this was to put to rest the concept of the ether, but that's another story) and synched them with an atomic clock on the ground. After flying halfway around the Earth (both planes), it was seen that the clocks on the planes had less time pass

Tsarkon says:
Less than the one on the ground, that is

Tsarkon says:
Bare in mind, the difference was miniscule, but still measurable. But you are right, people who fly often or fly fast (such as astronauts) are in fact "younger" than someone born at the same exact time who has never flown.

[Verruckter]

Hmm, I'd love to speak to one of your sources in IM, actually (with you too).

But yeah, the reason why I have difficulty believing this stuff is that to me, as I've explained before, time is not a force, not a physical phenomenon but more of the result of all the physical phenomenons that affect everything in our lives, i.e. the sun rising and setting, but also the decaying of our cells, the ongoing desintegration and reformation of everything that consists our universe, all correlated to each other in a notion we call "time".

Thus, to bend, slow down, speed up or go backwards in time (which is impossible in my views), one would have to affect all those factors of modification and still find a way to have his own body stay intact.

[devonin]

I think you've just got an inaccurate conception of what "time" is. I think you'll find that in physics, it -is- a physical phenomena, measurable. "The sun rising and setting" isn't a physical phenomena, it's the natural rotation of the earth in orbit around the sun bringing it in and out of view from our perspective.

Time is the context for understanding all of these phenomena. Cells only "die" because we can watch them go from being alive to being not alive. The stringing together of what would otherwise be a series of still states is "time" which I feel, as it seems to many others in various scientific fields, is a dimension like any other.

These things don't all combine together into "time" these things are all understood by their changes in state through time, which exists on its own.

Thus, to bend, slow down, speed up or go backwards in time (which is impossible in my views), one would have to affect all those factors of modification and still find a way to have his own body stay intact.

Well, science seems to have proven that if you get going gast enough, the time that passes to you subjectively is not the same as the time that passes for others. It's really up to you how you want to try to adapt this belief with that information, but there you have it.

[Verruckter]

Originally Posted by devonin

Time is the context for understanding all of these phenomena. Cells only "die" because we can watch them go from being alive to being not alive. The stringing together of what would otherwise be a series of still states is "time" which I feel, as it seems to many others in various scientific fields, is a dimension like any other.

Yes, all the cells of our bodies are decaying over time. Not only are they dying, they are passing from one state to another, to another, and so forth, from the moment they start to be (the end of mythosis) to the moment they die. But all cells are individually changing, and not bound by a same "force". We just percieve "time" as a single force because it affects everything around us without any exceptions, but all in all, it's just separate cases which obey the laws of physics and chemisty and thus seem to humans as bound by a single driving force which causes all these changes. It thus cannot be bent, because that would imply affecting every single of these changes at the same moment.

The reason why you can bend a steel bar is because all molecules are linked together (I'm no physics specialist) and when you move one in space, applying a pressure it drives the others along, etc, and you've bent matter. But you can't do that with "time".

I'm not sure if I'm being really clear here.

[devonin]

Nono I get what you're saying, and to one respect, time is a human construction. The issue is that you seem to be thinking that Time (capital T) is a human construction, which I don't think it is.

Time exists objectively, and humans constructed time (Where we measure things as happening over time [years, hours, seconds, picoseconds and whathaveyou) as a means of mutually understanding and recognizing what is going on. We needed a consistant labelling system to understand it, but that doesn't make it any less real on its own.

[Ice wolf]

Originally Posted by Verruckter

(the end of mythosis)

I may be wrong, but I think you mean mitosis.


BTW, I found this: Scientists say that you can't time travel. I haven't actually read it, but I need to go to sleep.

[Tps222]

That link just states that Scientists say we can't do it yet, but it's possible.

What a terribly misleading topic header.

Also, I like the example they provide at the bottom concerning time dilation.

Although I'm more interested in how time is viewed at the event horizon of a black hole. That's when **** gets crazy.

[rzr]

How did mitosis get into this conversation? I see absolvely no conceivable way where it would fit into a debate about time travel.

[Lipidman]

No one said mitosism (is that correct?) was related to time travel. I suggest you read Verructer's post again.

[rzr]

I read Ice Wolf's post.