Physicist Definitively Rules Time Travel Impossible

[Reaganomics]

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.

The planet's day/night cycle is not consistent. Tidal forces between the earth and the moon are slowing the speed of the earth rotation. The moon rotated but the tidal forces of the earth slowed the rotation of the moon to a stop. Doesn't really explain the 25 hour thing though.

OT i know a doctor that might disagree with this scientist.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

Damn party pooper.
Time traveling would be fun.

 

[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 =\ )

 

[DTWolfwood]

Steven Hawking said it couldn't be done because its a feedback loop. which as a layman just seems easier to understand.

But u can time travel. Forward in time XD just not backwards is all.

 

[Sun Flash]

Well thanks for spoiling Doctor Who for me. And save for stock markets, why would you want to go into the past? It's full of disease and everyone speaks like a Shakespeare play, if you're lucky. Those things gave me a headache in High School.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a pizza to deliver to one I.C Weiner.

 

[Bostur]

I like the idea of alternate realities. We'll fuck up their timelines, but keep our one pristine.

But what if 'they' decide to get revenge and fuck up our timeline as payback.

Oooh I see some neat potential for time travelling conflicts...

 

[Petromir]

Anyway it should be pretty obvious that time travel is immposible, pretty much everything causes a paradox (prety much any minor event from far enough back would erase the original time traveller(s)). We also don't even know if the past still "exists" once its stopped being the present (and have no reason to believe it does).

Fundemental flaw in most of the paradox time change theories, it wouldnt really work like that. time traval is invalidated by things other trhan causality. Its peoples fantasies of changing known history which causality can prove impossible, not the ability to go back in time itself. To bring to light a conspirosy theory favourite area, take JFK, a time travller couldnt prevent that, but if it wasnt the identified people there, it could have been a time travller (please note this is just an example I don't really beleive it is vaugely liekly). Changing can't happen in your own universe/dimension, but actually performing an action could if physics allowed a loophole, as long as you know it happened.

On the later point, sure we have no idea either way, butt here are pleanty of similar assumtions in this that we have l;ittle idea about.

 

[jamesworkshop]

I don't see why everyone automatically thinks "kill Hitler" when time travel comes up. There are much more productive things that could be done. I'd personally go back to some time before the middle ages and start fucking with the Catholic Church. We'll see what the world would be like by now without them stunting scientific progress.

Kill Plato, believe me no man has harmed science more then he has. Had the guy not existed we would have been roughly 2000 years further then we are now.

Personally by the time time travel would be invented in the sci-movie way i doubt anyone would remember any human we today can remember from history


Why would a 4030AD time traveler care about killing someone 5 years before they go and put a bullet in their own head anyway

Time travel to the past doesn't seem to have any practical value what could possibly exist in the past that would be of value to someone with the technology to time travel

 

[Stevepinto3]

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'...

Actually there would be an infinite number of universe, which would mean an infinite number of universes in which Hitler would be evil. You could never run out of Hitlers to kill!

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Chrono Trigger says otherwise, and my whimisical nature inlines me to believe the robot and the frog knight.

Those guys would never lie...

The frog is really a toad. And the robot was programmed to lie!

 

[RobCoxxy]

Another scientist Theorised that time travel would only be possible from the point in time the Time Machine was operational onwards. IE, as soon as it's turned on, some future guy pops out.

"Just to let you know, it works. Gratz."

It was an interesting theory at least, and made a modicum of sense.

 

[Ravek]

Considering only special relativity, time travel was already known to be impossible. Since this man's reasoning is all in terms of special relativity, I don't see what he thinks to have added to the discussion. As far as I can see, he just used his metamaterial as an illustration (a simulation, perhaps) of his reasoning, not an actual experiment in time travel.

 

[KazOondo]

This is the BEST news I've heard today, maybe all year.

 

[The Reverend]

Dragonball Z had time travel spot on? What else did Akira Toriyama get right?!

Plus, to time travel (or jump through the 5th and 6th dimensions) you'd need a time and space machine. Remember, the earth is constantly spinning and orbiting the sun, which in turn is spinning round the milky way, and the galaxy is also moving; therefore the earth that existed 1 minute ago has travelled at the least a few thousand kilometres since that point, so if you went back in time or to another reality, you'd damn well better be wearing a spacesuit, or be in some kind of time-ship that has an FTL drive, so you could shoot off and find earth, which I would imagine depending on how far you go would be like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of the sun.

 

[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...?