Physicist Definitively Rules Time Travel Impossible
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Duh...he's using a 2 dimensional material, Time is 4 dimensional.
These physicists and their N<4 thinking.
These physicists and their N<4 thinking.
Hardly. The summaries we provide on all topics are meant to be short but informative, and above all entertaining.immovablemover said:
As I mentioned, I'm hardly a scientist, many of the terms mentioned in all cases just go over my head, but it was still an interesting topic that fits the interests of our community. The reason we provide links to the original sources on many of our news posts is for the precise reason that people who want to learn more can take the opportunity to educate themselves. We are not a science blog, we are a website about games and gamer culture. In which, actually, we do profess deserved expertise.
If you want a full analysis of the paper from someone who studies high-level science, there's a site for that. If you want to know "Hey, this scientist has evidence that time travel is impossible" with a nod to a classic Squaresoft RPG and a TVTropes joke here or there, that's why we're here.
So again:
Lighten up, Francis.
That exact experiment was done in 1971 with atomic clocks.. the net result was-drum roll please- 180billionths of a second faster. Might get better results the further and faster you go, but the point is this. You have to go both 180 billion times faster and 180 billion times farther then that plane going round the world to go 1 second into the future. This is also completely dismissing gravity as a force to be dealt with in the equation. Just wait.. The future will be here.. now. Aaaand now.. and now.. definitely now..Megacherv said:
If anyone is actually interested in this stuff, go read The Grand Design by Hawking and Mlodinow and if you make it through that without your head exploding, try for Hawking's earlier A Brief History of Time. Its a little more technical and they have that math stuff in there, but it does go into way more depth. Cool beans and thanks for the posting
Well of course. The only feasible method of time travel is through the manipulation of spacetime. That takes serious gravitational force....something this guy couldn't have been able to test in an artificial material.
EDIT:
To DVT: The one thing interstellar space is good for is achieving massive speeds with little drag.
OK imagine this: a black hole is spinning so fast that the spacetime around it is twisted like a whirlpool. The space time "flowing into" the black hole is moving at a high speed compared to "stationary spacetime." Result? You dip into the fast moving spacetime, ride around for a bit and pop back out at a position which is farther from your original position than light could have traveled normally. Time travel achieved.
EDIT:
To mega: it's not about speed. It's about accelleration/force. For example, clocks at sea level tick at different speeds than clocks on a mountain (due to a difference in gravitational force). If you're just moving, then both observers see the other as moving slower.DVTK00p said:
To DVT: The one thing interstellar space is good for is achieving massive speeds with little drag.
OK imagine this: a black hole is spinning so fast that the spacetime around it is twisted like a whirlpool. The space time "flowing into" the black hole is moving at a high speed compared to "stationary spacetime." Result? You dip into the fast moving spacetime, ride around for a bit and pop back out at a position which is farther from your original position than light could have traveled normally. Time travel achieved.
Forgive me for any and all ignorance found in this post. I'm only a Junior in highschool. XDScorched_Cascade said:
I've actually somewhat formed my own theory for gravity. as for time being relative to gravity? Well, yes and no. Our frame of reference with time is c, the speed of light. Light is affected by gravity, ergo gravity affects time. Except it has to be a seriously dense gravity for it to have much effect on light, such as a black hole (thank you informative stargate episode...). Since it has little to no mass, it's basically our ruler for time. due to it's inability to be affected by anything other than a heavily dense mass gravity. Now that we've established time is based on light, let's look at time travel.
In order to travel back in time, you effectively need to rewind light. God, even thinking about this seriously makes me wonder how people could even think it possible. To travel backwards in time, you'd need to TURN BACK TIME, and since you can't reverse light, you can't reverse time. Even if you COULD, you'd need to do it on a universal scale, because if even one atom is out of place, it wouldn't be your past. It'd be an alternate dimension. Hence the original post about fucking up somebody ELSE's hitler. Even if you DID do all this time travel shit, and you DID kill our hitler... it wouldn't be our hitler anymore. It'd be ANOTHER hitler who died, and OUR timeline would be an alternate where hitler was still alive.
So, yeah. Time travel FTL. Try dimensional travel, and we might be talking.
Time Travel already didn't make sense before this guy threw a wall of text at it...
Simply put:
If in the history of time, if someone went back and did something, then it's already played out. Take, like, Hitler not being time-assassinated. If someone did indeed go back, it was already in the timeline that it would, thus, they failed.
This is hard to explain. Bleh. Go read the man's wall of text. I'm bored now.
Simply put:
If in the history of time, if someone went back and did something, then it's already played out. Take, like, Hitler not being time-assassinated. If someone did indeed go back, it was already in the timeline that it would, thus, they failed.
This is hard to explain. Bleh. Go read the man's wall of text. I'm bored now.
I know I put "Serious Response" but it actually wasn't one. I was taking a side swipe at everyone here suggesting similar things (and my own ignorance in this field see: here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.275642-Physicist-Definitively-Rules-Time-Travel-Impossible?page=3#10692028])Averant said:
This area of physics is something I really don't understand. I can grasp most of the rest of it but astrophysics melts my brain; psychology is more my speed. Did you know for example that without any external indicators of time (i.e living in an underground bunker/cave) your average human reverts to a 25 hour day? (ranges from 21-27). That is all kinds of messed up when you consider that our planet's day/night cycle is fairly consistent time wise.
I understand the theory about alternate timelines and universes in parallel but thanks for the gravity information. If you want a philosophy question: if you change an alternate universe's history and are resident in that alternate with no present analogue (other you) what makes this universe alternate? To put it another way: how can you be sure the history you came from is the unbroken, unmeddled with "true" course of history?
I want to time travel... I want to go forward to march next year... for march mayhem and for a 14 day cruise to fiji... but i guess ill have to travel at the speed of earth seconds/minutes/hours/days/weeks/months Owwwww
It doesn't rule time travel out at all, it just gives hope for the Many Worlds Theory.
If you go back in time, as soon as you materialise in the past, you've made a little change in the universe that wasn't there before, an impact that will permanently change the future, and will never be the same future that you came from in the first place. If you go further back in time to make changes, the change in how things pan out in the future increases really quickly. That's the Butterfly Effect.
Even if you travel in what you perceive to be a loop and end up at the same point in space and time from your point of view, you won't be in the same universe you started in, and you can never get it back exactly as it was because entropy will kick in and make your actions irreversible.
You can kill Hitler, or teach him to paint better, but the Holocaust would still have happened in your original universe. Actually, it would probably still happen in the universe you landed in as well, but I won't get into that.
If you go back in time, as soon as you materialise in the past, you've made a little change in the universe that wasn't there before, an impact that will permanently change the future, and will never be the same future that you came from in the first place. If you go further back in time to make changes, the change in how things pan out in the future increases really quickly. That's the Butterfly Effect.
Even if you travel in what you perceive to be a loop and end up at the same point in space and time from your point of view, you won't be in the same universe you started in, and you can never get it back exactly as it was because entropy will kick in and make your actions irreversible.
You can kill Hitler, or teach him to paint better, but the Holocaust would still have happened in your original universe. Actually, it would probably still happen in the universe you landed in as well, but I won't get into that.
Yeah, I might have a few things to note:
The guys are using metamaterials, and that's great, but I assume that he's taken as a given that the universe is isotropic and homogenoeous in his model otherwise he'd not be able to use the tools he's using. If that were to not be the case then the whole thing goes out the window.
Let's keep in mind that according to modern findings, and accepting that Dark Matter is a real thing, it would constitute 80% of the matter in the universe, while ordinary matter makes up only 20%. To say the universe is isotropic and homogeneous, considering that, and on top of it say that because of that, plus your theory, time trivel is 100% impossible seems a little out there, if you ask me.
Again, I'm not saying he's wrong, but the fundaments of the assumptions should be noted.
EDITED: because I left out something
The guys are using metamaterials, and that's great, but I assume that he's taken as a given that the universe is isotropic and homogenoeous in his model otherwise he'd not be able to use the tools he's using. If that were to not be the case then the whole thing goes out the window.
Let's keep in mind that according to modern findings, and accepting that Dark Matter is a real thing, it would constitute 80% of the matter in the universe, while ordinary matter makes up only 20%. To say the universe is isotropic and homogeneous, considering that, and on top of it say that because of that, plus your theory, time trivel is 100% impossible seems a little out there, if you ask me.
Again, I'm not saying he's wrong, but the fundaments of the assumptions should be noted.
EDITED: because I left out something
I am reminded of something I can't quite remember.
"I thought time travel was impossible?"
"Oh no, it's very possible, it just that changing anything creates a logical paradox, so there's not much point and you usually fall into a cave or something and never get found"
"Then how do we change the past?"
"Simple, we go over to a universe almost the same as ours, except it's clock is running a little slow."
"I thought time travel was impossible?"
"Oh no, it's very possible, it just that changing anything creates a logical paradox, so there's not much point and you usually fall into a cave or something and never get found"
"Then how do we change the past?"
"Simple, we go over to a universe almost the same as ours, except it's clock is running a little slow."
Isn't it basically a requirement that if you travel through time, you're within another dimension? You know, conservation of mass and energy, wot wot?
Anyone who claims to be a scientists but believes in absolutes such as impossibility rather than plausibility are frauds and / or idiots.
There is no way to state something is outright impossible when we have yet to expand to other planets, or galaxies for that matter. Just because something applies here in the Milky Way does not mean it'll apply every where else
There is no way to state something is outright impossible when we have yet to expand to other planets, or galaxies for that matter. Just because something applies here in the Milky Way does not mean it'll apply every where else