Physicist Definitively Rules Time Travel Impossible

[somersetal]

if you can travel to another dimension, then surely from there you could travel back and arrive when ever you wanted in your original - feed that to ya dingo!

 

[Alar]

I'm not certain what Hawking's "ranking" is in the top line of physicists, but he believes time travel IS possible. Dude seems pretty smart to me. I think I'll withhold judgment until we see some people try to debunk this guy's work.

 

[manythings]

It's impossible because it can't be done just now. Who says his proofs are irrefutable?

Is he trying to say that we know all there is too know about this branch of physics, right now?

"Phycicist thinks time travel is probably impossible based on all this sciencing" is a less grabbing headline. He either is certain he is right or certain no one will prove him wrong while he is alive... or this strand of divergent time.

Or just talking out of his arse to get his 15.

Money is tight these days, I'm willing to bet a lot of scientists are fuzzing research data to sound more earth shattering to secure grants.

You've obviously never applied for a grant. No one's going to give you money unless you can show that you know what you're doing, and if you try to get a grant with falsified data, I'm pretty sure that counts as fraud. At that point, no one will even listen to you, even after you get out of jail.

The only grant-givers that I know of who would be willing to take your word for something are the ones funding "scientists" who try to prove the earth is flat, 6,000 years old, or not warming/warming up on its own.

Despite our portrayal in Hollywood and the news, sensational claims are not the way we work. In fact, the more sensational and out there your idea is, the harder it's going to be to pursue it and gain acceptance for it, even if it turns out to be right in the end.

You're joking right? Usually they'll look hard but there are also plenty of occasions where people have flat out lied their way into serious buildings with serious scientists doing serious work purely because they didn't look hard enough at the application.

Any scientist worth their salt will give a limb for just the hint of a chance to overturn current scientific data and that is why science forges forward. If scientists went not testing ideas because they seemed wacky we wouldn't have bothered with that whole bacteria thing.

 

[Queen Michael]

Yaaaay! I get to go dimension-travelling! I'm gonna kill SO many Hitlers!

 

[timeadept]

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

You make that sound like that could be a sport some day. Imagine going out for the weekend on a Hitler hunting trip and getting to the other dimension only to find that their Hitler was already dead. That'd be a real bummer. Also imagine all the people who would come back and have his head mounted over their fire place... that'd be kind of creepy... And then the kids at school laugh at your family because you don't have Hitlers mounted head or prince Albert in a can.

If inter-dimensional travel is possible then i still fear for the future of society...

 

[timeadept]

Before anyone feels they should be able to comment on whether doing something with space time, they should bear in mind that we don't really, as a species, know what time even is. We might be able to understand time, but might be able to account for it in our experiments, but what is time? Is it a dimension? Is it the result of "strings"? Is it the only way our brains can comprehend the existence of a 4th spatial dimension, by viewing one atomic slice at any moment?

I wouldn't rule out time travel, not yet, anyway. There's so much we don't understand that how time works. As with all models, there's going to mistakes made with this. You should always remeber, just over a century years ago, most scientists would have assumed Newtonian mechanics were the do-all-and-end-all of physics. (and, unfortunately, a lot of people still do =\ )

That was my first impression as well, but i'm hesitant to agree that it is impossible. On one hand i believe that anything is possible if you know how, but looking back at some of the things science has given us, it's completely ludicrous for a flat world to exist. From my understanding of time, which is that i do not understand it, i still see time travel as a possibility. From an ancient sailors view of the ocean it was flat and if you kept going you would eventually fall off of it, but we all know that is impossible now. Or IS it...? What if a frisbie shaped hunk of rock was hurtling around in low atmospheric orbit around say a gas giant? But then you would have friction from the atmosphere and structural integrity of the rock to worry about, it may simply eventually slow down and crash. But you never know.... or DO you...?

 

[Skoosh]

Moving backwards in time has been theoretically impossible since Einstein. This is just a bit of experimentation confirming those hypotheses more. I get angry reading the comments on the one summary and here though from people that obviously have no scientific knowledge past high school level trying to say this is rubbish. As someone with a degree in physics, let me say his paper seems sound.

And to everyone that says "oh, scientific knowledge changes every day and we end up doing the impossible so I'm ignoring this" you're being just as bad as a creationist saying "evolution is just a theory, not really true."

 

[Daverson]

Before anyone feels they should be able to comment on whether doing something with space time, they should bear in mind that we don't really, as a species, know what time even is. We might be able to understand time, but might be able to account for it in our experiments, but what is time? Is it a dimension? Is it the result of "strings"? Is it the only way our brains can comprehend the existence of a 4th spatial dimension, by viewing one atomic slice at any moment?

I wouldn't rule out time travel, not yet, anyway. There's so much we don't understand that how time works. As with all models, there's going to mistakes made with this. You should always remeber, just over a century years ago, most scientists would have assumed Newtonian mechanics were the do-all-and-end-all of physics. (and, unfortunately, a lot of people still do =\ )

That was my first impression as well, but i'm hesitant to agree that it is impossible. On one hand i believe that anything is possible if you know how, but looking back at some of the things science has given us, it's completely ludicrous for a flat world to exist. From my understanding of time, which is that i do not understand it, i still see time travel as a possibility. From an ancient sailors view of the ocean it was flat and if you kept going you would eventually fall off of it, but we all know that is impossible now. Or IS it...? What if a frisbie shaped hunk of rock was hurtling around in low atmospheric orbit around say a gas giant? But then you would have friction from the atmosphere and structural integrity of the rock to worry about, it may simply eventually slow down and crash. But you never know.... or DO you...?

DO I? Is that an accusation? It seems like a bit of a strange word to emphasise otherwise... I can assure you the world isn't flat, if that helps.

Moving backwards in time has been theoretically impossible since Einstein. This is just a bit of experimentation confirming those hypotheses more. I get angry reading the comments on the one summary and here though from people that obviously have no scientific knowledge past high school level trying to say this is rubbish. As someone with a degree in physics, let me say his paper seems sound.

I'm going to have to call you out on that, if anything, Einstein's model of space-time is the entire basis of half the theories as to why time travel is possible. (Hell, the guy even co-wrote the theory of wormholes, which are, by their very definition, bidirectional time travel)

 

[timeadept]

Before anyone feels they should be able to comment on whether doing something with space time, they should bear in mind that we don't really, as a species, know what time even is. We might be able to understand time, but might be able to account for it in our experiments, but what is time? Is it a dimension? Is it the result of "strings"? Is it the only way our brains can comprehend the existence of a 4th spatial dimension, by viewing one atomic slice at any moment?

I wouldn't rule out time travel, not yet, anyway. There's so much we don't understand that how time works. As with all models, there's going to mistakes made with this. You should always remeber, just over a century years ago, most scientists would have assumed Newtonian mechanics were the do-all-and-end-all of physics. (and, unfortunately, a lot of people still do =\ )

That was my first impression as well, but i'm hesitant to agree that it is impossible. On one hand i believe that anything is possible if you know how, but looking back at some of the things science has given us, it's completely ludicrous for a flat world to exist. From my understanding of time, which is that i do not understand it, i still see time travel as a possibility. From an ancient sailors view of the ocean it was flat and if you kept going you would eventually fall off of it, but we all know that is impossible now. Or IS it...? What if a frisbie shaped hunk of rock was hurtling around in low atmospheric orbit around say a gas giant? But then you would have friction from the atmosphere and structural integrity of the rock to worry about, it may simply eventually slow down and crash. But you never know.... or DO you...?

DO I? Is that an accusation? It seems like a bit of a strange word to emphasise otherwise... I can assure you the world isn't flat, if that helps.

Moving backwards in time has been theoretically impossible since Einstein. This is just a bit of experimentation confirming those hypotheses more. I get angry reading the comments on the one summary and here though from people that obviously have no scientific knowledge past high school level trying to say this is rubbish. As someone with a degree in physics, let me say his paper seems sound.

I'm going to have to call you out on that, if anything, Einstein's model of space-time is the entire basis of half the theories as to why time travel is possible. (Hell, the guy even co-wrote the theory of wormholes, which are, by their very definition, bidirectional time travel)

No lol, i was trying to be silly. But i was half serious as to if you had any ideas of how a flat world could exist. Oh yeah, also having fun with the definition of the word "know". In any case, the quote comes to mind. "in the mind of a beginner there are many possibilities, in the mind of a master there are few"

 

[Dexiro]

I don't think we can say anything will always be impossible until we've discovered everything that physics has to offer, and we're nowhere close to that.

For all we know we could figure out how to reprogram particles to follow different laws of physics or something. Anything could happen.

 

[Someone Depressing]

I think this guy's been reading too much Stephen King Novels. (If you don't know what I mean, go read The Langoliers.)

 

[Daverson]

*snip*

No lol, i was trying to be silly. But i was half serious as to if you had any ideas of how a flat world could exist. Oh yeah, also having fun with the definition of the word "know". In any case, the quote comes to mind. "in the mind of a beginner there are many possibilities, in the mind of a master there are few"

Well, a flat world couldn't really exist, at least, not naturally. The reason planets form as sphere (or, ellipsoids, if you want to be technical) is gravity, without this, you've not got much more than an asteroid. That said, something similar to a flat world has been proposed as a possible way of building a sustainable ecosystem aboard a space station - a cylindrical world [http://www.puppiesandflowers.com/blogimages/july07/Nasa1.jpg], where centrifugal force (yes, it does exist) takes the role of gravity.

Counterquote: "As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance." - John A. Wheeler

 

[timeadept]

*snip*

No lol, i was trying to be silly. But i was half serious as to if you had any ideas of how a flat world could exist. Oh yeah, also having fun with the definition of the word "know". In any case, the quote comes to mind. "in the mind of a beginner there are many possibilities, in the mind of a master there are few"

Well, a flat world couldn't really exist, at least, not naturally. The reason planets form as sphere (or, ellipsoids, if you want to be technical) is gravity, without this, you've not got much more than an asteroid. That said, something similar to a flat world has been proposed as a possible way of building a sustainable ecosystem aboard a space station - a cylindrical world [http://www.puppiesandflowers.com/blogimages/july07/Nasa1.jpg], where centrifugal force (yes, it does exist) takes the role of gravity.

Counterquote: "As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance." - John A. Wheeler

Nice XKCD reference in there. Yeah i remember hearing something vague about that at one point, i don't know if the idea ever got anywhere though.

I don't see the quotes as mutually exclusive though. They seem to refer to different things. Mine says that the more we know, the less we think is plausible, while yours says that the more we know, the more we know that we don't know.

 

[ItsAChiaotzu]

So...has the multiverse theory been proven then? That whole, killing alternate-Hitler seems like a fun idea but in the multiverse it could be that we're the only universe in which Hitler was 'evil'...

Anyway...it sucks that I can't go back in time but there's still the idea of freezing myself Futurama style so as to go into the future.

The multiverse theory allows for infinite variations, which means there would be infinite other universes where Hitler was evil, along with infinite others where he wasn't.

 

[yanipheonu]

What you don't see is the fact that right as he was about to start the experiment, his future self came and forced him to write this.

 

[mrdude2010]

It's impossible because it can't be done just now. Who says his proofs are irrefutable?

Is he trying to say that we know all there is too know about this branch of physics, right now?

"Phycicist thinks time travel is probably impossible based on all this sciencing" is a less grabbing headline. He either is certain he is right or certain no one will prove him wrong while he is alive... or this strand of divergent time.

Or just talking out of his arse to get his 15.

theoretically you can mess with numbers and make time go backwards and forwards, so you could travel backwards to the point the machine was turned on (my physics professor did this but i didn't write it down because it was sort of an aside), but this guys metamaterials research looks legit enough to contradict that

 

[Hamster at Dawn]

Well that makes sense what with all the paradoxes and all that. Time travel isn't really conceivable without alternate realities anyway.
Also, we can still go into the future right? I mean, at a faster rate than normal.

 

[Custard_Angel]

I've never believed that time travel can be possible. I'm sure we would have noticed it by now.

 

[Sylocat]

It's exactly the same thing as time travel, only instead of creating paradoxes you just branch off a new timeline when you change something. It's the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

So no, this doesn't prove time travel is impossible, it just won't be your past anymore once you've been in it. So, getting back will be trickier than anticipated, but there will be workarounds.

This also explains why there are no tourists from the future (at least not that we're aware of): We are currently existing in one of the infinitely possible timelines where no noticeable travelers have jumped back to yet.