Physicist Definitively Rules Time Travel Impossible

[Danpascooch]

Actually, in my opinion traveling FORWARD through time is entirely possible, and we very nearly have the technology to make it happen.

You know how when you travel incredibly fast in a spaceship you age less and time moves faster around you? (We won't actually be able to do anything useful with this until we can hit much higher speeds, but the effect has already been proven small scale)

Well what the fuck do you call that if not traveling forward through time? If I'm in a spaceship moving near the speed of light, and one year passes for me while a century passes for everyone else that is time travel

 

[Fidelias]

So no more time travel, but instead spontaneous alternate dementions creation? Why that sounds even better!

Until cloned evil mecha-Hitlers teleport to our universe and kill us all in our SLEEP!!!

 

[Fidelias]

I like to think that time travel may be possible if and only if molecules all over the universe are rearranged to the exact state and position they were at the intended time minus the time traveler, kind of like a pseudo time travel.

So, everything in the universe is changed except for the one person. That seems like a lot of work. Though I'd totally sign up for this.

Though I think time and resources would be better spent on developing 'Mechs. Just saying. Giant robots > time travel.

 

[Aetera]

Well, obviously, we can't travel through time. We're not Time Lords.

 

[NathLines]

Although I want to say "tell us something we don't know", I have to say that I'm glad he did this if it will stop other people from wasting their time trying to prove otherwise.

There is no goddamn timeline, people need to get that out of their heads. If you're going to draw something representing time, it would be a dot. That's the present. Going back through time would mean spinning the entire universe backwards and have everything but yourself evolve backwards too.

 

[matrix3509]

Too bad the guy missed the obvious flaw in his hypothesis: Time is completely non-existent. You heard me right. Time is nothing more than a bullshit scale made up off the top of our heads for no other reason than we like to classify and put shit in order. It is the most arbitrary out of all our arbitrary measurements of the universe.

 

[Bobbity]

It's kind of a bummer, isn't it? There's good news, though: Smolyaniov's experiment showed that while light can't be bent to go to its former location, it could go to somewhere like its former location - in another dimension.

So time travel is out, but visiting alternate realities and killing their Hitlers for fun could still be in! Keep the dream alive, guys.

Permalink

So Terry Pratchett was right! Another path in the trousers of time, here I come!

 

[Dominus Nox]

Meanwhile all the time travelers around the place are chuckling to themselves thinking "In 20 years that guy is going to look like an idiot."

 

[matrix3509]

Too bad the guy missed the obvious flaw in his hypothesis: Time is completely non-existent. You heard me right. Time is nothing more than a bullshit scale made up off the top of our heads for no other reason than we like to classify and put shit in order. It is the most arbitrary out of all our arbitrary measurements of the universe.

Here's a flaw in your thesis: Time is not a constant throughout the universe. This is proven. Time flows differently depending on circumstances. For example, time is effected by gravity. It's pretty complex stuff and I don't want to blow your mind, but it was proven that time moves faster in areas without gravity because clocks always go faster in its absence.

The fact that time is said to move faster or slower in different areas pretty much proves how much bullshit the very concept of time really is. Your perceptions change, that must mean the universe changes right? *sigh*

 

[matrix3509]

Too bad the guy missed the obvious flaw in his hypothesis: Time is completely non-existent. You heard me right. Time is nothing more than a bullshit scale made up off the top of our heads for no other reason than we like to classify and put shit in order. It is the most arbitrary out of all our arbitrary measurements of the universe.

Here's a flaw in your thesis: Time is not a constant throughout the universe. This is proven. Time flows differently depending on circumstances. For example, time is effected by gravity. It's pretty complex stuff and I don't want to blow your mind, but it was proven that time moves faster in areas without gravity because clocks always go faster in its absence.

The fact that time is said to move faster or slower in different areas pretty much proves how much bullshit the very concept of time really is. Your perceptions change, that must mean the universe changes right? *sigh*

Either you don't get it, or you're arguing semantics.

Read some Leibniz once in a while, you might then understand what I'm talking about. In short, the notion that time is "substance-like" is absurd, it is nothing more than the product of the way humans represent things. "Time [is] nothing more than the order of successive events."

 

[AgentNein]

Too bad the guy missed the obvious flaw in his hypothesis: Time is completely non-existent. You heard me right. Time is nothing more than a bullshit scale made up off the top of our heads for no other reason than we like to classify and put shit in order. It is the most arbitrary out of all our arbitrary measurements of the universe.

Here's a flaw in your thesis: Time is not a constant throughout the universe. This is proven. Time flows differently depending on circumstances. For example, time is effected by gravity. It's pretty complex stuff and I don't want to blow your mind, but it was proven that time moves faster in areas without gravity because clocks always go faster in its absence.

The fact that time is said to move faster or slower in different areas pretty much proves how much bullshit the very concept of time really is. Your perceptions change, that must mean the universe changes right? *sigh*

Actually that's your own misunderstanding. The perception of time doesn't change. In fact, if I was accelerating to a sizable fraction of the speed of light relative to you, we'd both experience a minute as a minute. Yet depending on my actual speed, I might age say a year while you'd age fifty.

If that doesn't show that time is more than a human construct I don't know what does.

 

[SilentHunter7]

Actually, he's not ruled out time travel into the future, which is sort-of possible. The faster you're moving, the slower time goes for you. Here's an example

You have 2 (theoretically) identical clocks. One stays in the exact same spot in on the planet, moving at the speed of the earth's orbit, whilst one is sent round the earth at such a speed that it returns to to its starting position (next to the other clock) in exactly one hour. The clock that orbited the earth in an hour would be slightly behind the other one, as it travelled faster.

Sure, it's not instant time-travel, but it's similar

You can time travel into the future (Technically, everyone is doing it as we speak), but not into the past. Because the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes for you.

For example; Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away. If you were to take a ship and travel there near the speed of light, it would take you 4 years to get there, but for everyone on the ship, it would only seem like a few hours. You essentially travel 4 years into the future.

Going into the past would require exceeding the local speed of light, which would require more than an infinite amount of energy to do. It would also destroy causality, which opens up a whole new can of worms, physics-wise.

Well, that's the theory, anyway.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

And good thing, too.

Time travel is not all riding hoverboards and singing "Johnny B. Goode", you guys.

No, really, I hope he's right.

 

[Ghaleon640]

He saids this now but when someone goes back in time and beats him over the head with a baseball bat he'll be sorry~

I think the statement was going to be made that time travel was possible, but this guy went back in time to beat the shit out of his original self, forcing himself to say otherwise to prevent catastorphe.

 

[crudus]

Unfortunately, actually traveling through time seems to be the real sticking point - we don't have time travelers popping up here and there, so most people consider it an impossibility.

That is saying "If a hasn't been invented yet it never will" which makes nobody try and a self-fulfilling prophecy, but enough nitpicking. Even going back to the 1980's it was ruled out that 4th dimensional travel was impossible (just watch Back to the Future 2 again). Even the way Stephen Hawking explains how time travel would be possible (though he says it isn't) he is talking about 5th dimensional traveling rather than 4th.

 

[Inmate13]

What I'd like to know is why the collective conscious of humanity is still faffing about with the (now impossible) concept of time travel filed under the "Gee, wouldn't it be neat if" clause when there are so many more useful (plausible too for that matter) sci-fi technologies that have yet to be invented.. like hyperspace travel, teleportation and and microatomic reactors? Seriously, the first thing anybody learns about time travel is that it's a bad idea; period. Unless you are yourself and actual Timelord, nobody anywhere has any right or reason to be dicking around with the delicate fabric of time (space is another question) especially when they know full well the consequences of doing so. C'mon people... Terminator is an exciting franchise, but it's high time for mankind to grow up and start focusing on what will actually become our future tech.