Physicist Definitively Rules Time Travel Impossible

[martin's a madman]

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

Or hey, just move at the speed you regularly go at and you'll travel forwards in time too.

[sub]Serious response:
Call me a cynic if you wish but I'm reluctant to take his word as gospel.

Looking at his test: he found one thing, reported it and then speculated on his findings which is not the same as actually having found it in the first place.

I'll wait for the peer review version of it where people that understand his space age techno-wizardry offer their opinions on his validity.

Also I thought time was relative to gravity? Less Gravity present=faster flowing time? Time is also an artificial construct. Where I am at the moment (UK) I am living out the past of some people (those GMT+X) and the future of others (those GMT-X). If I wanted to be snarky I'd say you could time travel by flying round the world's timezones.
[./crackpot ill-educated troll-physics][/sub]

Less serious response: So I can rule out the possibility that I am in fact my own ancestor? Dammit I'd better get back to work on my family tree homework

I was gonna get my 'angry-scientist' on until I saw the bit in the brackets at the end.

 

[Gaderael]

Wait, wait, wait. He hasn't proved that time travel into our past isn't possible. In fact, he's proven that it is possible, albeit in a roundabout way.

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, basically, you bend light and time back into another dimension, and then bend light and time from that dimension and hop back to any time in our past.

I'm sure if they are able to create something like that, then they can also make such a system pretty instantaneous. So they jump from our reality in to another, and then back again would take a split second, maybe shorter.

EDIT: Then they can call it the Time And Relative Dimensions In Space ship.

 

[Coldster]

Awwwww, major bummer man. I kinda hope he is wrong on this one. Think of the benefits (not the disadvantages becuase there are plenty of those) time travel could do for humanity. We could send back fuel efficient vehicles to slow the comsumption of oil, etc.

 

[gigastar]

[HEADING=1]Dont lose hope![/HEADING]

Hope? Hope for what, being able to irreversibly fuck up the past and create time paradoxes?

Paradoxes dont exist if you think of time as a series of sequential universes.

Anything i fuck up with simply result in a new parallel 'verse.

That siad:

Go back,
Accelerate development of science,
After a certain point go back and do it again,
After a dozen rounds or so rounds of this, you should be ready to conquer the stars around you.

 

[SnipErlite]

I'll read the paper some other time, but if he's saying all time travel is impossible then NO. Travel to the future is technically possible by going really really fast.

To the past? I think it might be....give science a few more decades, we'll manage it

 

[The Apothecarry]

Great. Now I no longer have a reason to buy a DeLorean. For the first time since elementary school, I hate science.

 

[YawningAngel]

A more compelling argument is that, if time travel were actually able to produce observable effects on the universe, we'd be seeing them.

 

[Scorched_Cascade]

[sub]Serious response:
Call me a cynic if you wish but I'm reluctant to take his word as gospel.

Looking at his test: he found one thing, reported it and then speculated on his findings which is not the same as actually having found it in the first place.

I'll wait for the peer review version of it where people that understand his space age techno-wizardry offer their opinions on his validity.

Also I thought time was relative to gravity? Less Gravity present=faster flowing time? Time is also an artificial construct. Where I am at the moment (UK) I am living out the past of some people (those GMT+X) and the future of others (those GMT-X). If I wanted to be snarky I'd say you could time travel by flying round the world's timezones.
[./crackpot ill-educated troll-physics][/sub]

Less serious response: So I can rule out the possibility that I am in fact my own ancestor? Dammit I'd better get back to work on my family tree homework

I was gonna get my 'angry-scientist' on until I saw the bit in the brackets at the end.

Hehe, glad I got saved from the angry scientist's hate. I threw my hands up a while ago and decided that advanced physics is indistinguishable from sorcery and that I liked troll physics better.
I was working on this:

Spoiler: image

added to this:

Spoiler: image

equals science broken.

How I know that time travel is impossible in the way we understand it:

Spoiler: because this doesn't work

 

[Chris646]

I'm gonna stay in this reality, thanks. I'd hate going into a different reality and having something completely different happen (Spanish ruling America, Miyamoto never being born, stuff like that)
It is an interesting theory though.

 

[Hugo Artenis Rune]

That's funny. I'm travelling through time right now. Sure, it's only at a rate of one second per second but *fuck it*, I'm still travelling through time!

(as an aside, is it just me or is the whole idea of "time" as a thing just a load of rubbish? I dont see time existing as a thing at all. It's more of an idea than a thing.)

(edit: another thing about time travel.. Maybe someone is already coming back to the past and messing about. That might explain why everything seems to be getting more and more screwed up, exactly like someone is trying to fix something but it all gets worse every time they try. GO AWAY TIME TRAVELLERS. WE'RE ABLE TO SCREW IT UP OURSELVES! Unless of course the time traveller is a robot. Then hello robot overlord sir.)

 

[Random Argument Man]

Physicist were always boring people anyway.

Note*No offense to the physicists on this site.

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

I have only one thing to say:

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Duh...he's using a 2 dimensional material, Time is 4 dimensional.

These physicists and their N<4 thinking.

 

[John Funk]

Oh, lighten up Francis. If you want serious top-level analysis of academic papers, you should probably read an academic journal.

So, you want to report on the news, don't want to take it seriously AND don't want people to call your reporting terrible? Diddums.

There is a difference between wanting "Top level analysis of Academic papers" and expecting at least competent reporting. If you consider me too much of a buzz kill for expecting you to be accurate then you should probably preface the rest of your "News" posts with

Based on my poor understanding of the subject matter, source information and my dislike of serious journalism my half arsed summary is...

Then you can feel free to continue doing what you're doing.

Hardly. The summaries we provide on all topics are meant to be short but informative, and above all entertaining.

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.

 

[DVTK00p]

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

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..

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

 

[randomsix]

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:

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

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..

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.

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.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Finally hushed that theory.