Poll: Do you believe in time travel?

[Rockchimp69]

As the subject says, post if you believe that time travel is/could be possible or not, and why.
A few rules for this thread:
Firstly your reason has to be either scientific, logical or a gut feeling. It can't be something retarded like "time travel is just in movies so it can't be real!!!"
And secondly, no insulting other people's views as there is no definate answer for now.

Personally I think that as time has been observed to warp or "dialate" in situations such as fast moving atomic clocks in orbit showing different times to those on earth, it may also be able to be affected in other ways, e.g. Bending it or folding it to send a body to a different time.

But that's just me what are you views?

There is a definite answer- it is possible.

The reason those atomic clocks are different in space than on Earth is gravity. If a human were to orbit a black hole for 10 years, when they came back, they would be 150 years in the future. The Cosmonaut that was on MIR for 18 months is 0.048 seconds in the future. Gravity warps time. Traveling backwards is not possible in our 11 dimension universe, only forwards.

As I explained in my last post, I understand that traveling forward at varying rates is possible, my question is whether direction can be changed.

Edit: Also are you sure its not the speed the object is travelling at? Or maybe a mixture of the two?

 

[Kushan101]

I cant say I'm convinced its possible.
Time always strikes me as being a human calculation, rather than a physical force. I know time dilates the closer you get to the speed of light; I've also heard theories on going faster than the speed of light causes time to go backwards, but it just doesnt seem right to me. Considering that it is (according to Einstein) impossible for a object with mass to go faster than the speed of light anyway, it all strikes me as being a bit, well, "hollywood" and like a shitty sci-fi sub-plot.
I cant help but think that whole idea came out because someone realised that if you COULD go faster than the speed of light that, technically, if you could look back on where you came from, you would see yourself leaving on your journey. All simply because the light reflected off yourself as you were leaving was slower and is catching up with you - giving the APPEARANCE that you arrived before you left.

Not to mention the paradoxical difficulties. If you build a time machine that could go "anywhen" then surely it must exist at every point in time that it could travel to. If you wanted to go back to 1911 then the machine must also exist in 1911 for you to emerge from. Unless of course you are considering the whole machine "teleporting" itself too. But how could a machine teleport what is inside of itself as well as its outer shell?

Its difficult to explain, the very idea makes every logical part of my brain say "bullshit". I even tried reading the wikipedia article on time travel to better verse my case... yeah... Im not entirely convinced its written in english; I'm no slouch in matters physics, but I didnt understand what it was banging on about :/

Time does not move - we do.

Im only prepared to think its possible if there is a "multiverse" that is indeed infinite. If it is then there must exist a universe for every point in time and every possible outcome of every event that has ever happened. But to travel to one of these would not be time travel but simply a massive moving of distance.

 

[SadisticPretzel]

I believe it's possible, but I'm not at all sure it's a good idea. We humans are NOT very good at being careful....You know we'd screw a bunch of things up.

 

[Twad]

Dunno.
What if when you "time travel" youjust go in another version of our reality? That way no paradoxes can occur.

Or, kinda like Mages-the awakening, paradox is a real thing that works kinda like an immune system for reality. YOu screw with reality, then paradox comes and gets you.

 

[ALuckyChance]

Hey guys, listen to this:

When we see things, we are seeing them hundredths of miliseconds into the past, due to how light works.

Thus, we might not be going into the future yet (and I don't know how it would even work, as I'm not a scientist/science fiction fan), but we're already seeing the past, if you want to put it that way.

 

[DiMono]

You'd have to move through both time and space, unless all you're going for is a perception of time travel. There's a theory that if you get close enough to a black hole at a high enough speed, time would seem to pass very slowly for you despite going on at a normal speed elsewhere, but you wouldn't actually be traveling through time in that case, just perceiving it at a different speed.

 

[Slaanax]

a sci-fi version of time travel my not be possible, but in fact going really fast slows down time.

Some Einstein thought experiments have been proven through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment. Time is relevant thing, so if you got in a rocket ship going close to speed of light and came back 20 years from now, upon returning from earth everyone would be much older or possibly even dead, I forget the math. So even though you didn't time travel when returning someone your age would be older than you.

 

[CrystalShadow]

For the most part, I don't put much stock into the idea though I do find myself facinated by it. I think the biggest problem with the idea is travelling through time and not space, like Back to The Future.
See, if you were to travel through time, the space you were occupying wouldn't even be in the same place. The planet would still be moving in its orbit and you would find yourself in outer space...did I explain that right?

It's true. But it does make some serious, and probably unanswerable (short of practical tests) questions about momentum as it applies to time travel.

You see, it implies that it is possible to jump through time as if it were a form of teleportation.

The reason you don't fall off the planet because it is moving is due to momentum and gravity.

Time travel could mean anything from literally jumping from one time to another, or it could merely involve moving through time at a speed and direction other than the kind we're used to.

Regardless, if you were to jump through time, what would that do to momentum? If you end up in outer space, you would presumably still be moving at the same speed as the earth was...

... It can get very complicated very quickly if you really start thinking about it.

 

[Rockchimp69]

I cant say I'm convinced its possible.
Time always strikes me as being a human calculation, rather than a physical force. I know time dilates the closer you get to the speed of light; I've also heard theories on going faster than the speed of light causes time to go backwards, but it just doesnt seem right to me. Considering that it is (according to Einstein) impossible for a object with mass to go faster than the speed of light anyway, it all strikes me as being a bit, well, "hollywood" and like a shitty sci-fi sub-plot.
I cant help but think that whole idea came out because someone realised that if you COULD go faster than the speed of light that, technically, if you could look back on where you came from, you would see yourself leaving on your journey. All simply because the light reflected off yourself as you were leaving was slower and is catching up with you - giving the APPEARANCE that you arrived before you left.

Not to mention the paradoxical difficulties. If you build a time machine that could go "anywhen" then surely it must exist at every point in time that it could travel to. If you wanted to go back to 1911 then the machine must also exist in 1911 for you to emerge from. Unless of course you are considering the whole machine "teleporting" itself too. But how could a machine teleport what is inside of itself as well as its outer shell?

Its difficult to explain, the very idea makes every logical part of my brain say "bullshit". I even tried reading the wikipedia article on time travel to better verse my case... yeah... Im not entirely convinced its written in english; I'm no slouch in matters physics, but I didnt understand what it was banging on about :/

Time does not move - we do.

Im only prepared to think its possible if there is a "multiverse" that is indeed infinite. If it is then there must exist a universe for every point in time and every possible outcome of every event that has ever happened. But to travel to one of these would not be time travel but simply a massive moving of distance.

If that were true then time is actually a more spatial dimension than we often think and we are constantly moving through it. In which case time travel would be possible and all the paradoxes would be invalid because any action you take in the past simple moves you into a different timeline.
But as you said, it all sounds a bit like bullshit and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

 

[The Bucket]

If it was possible, we would have seen some by now

 

[A3Bf72rVWE5hA]

I think of it like this:
has the past ever changed? No? Then obviously time travel is either impossible or never discovered.

 

[katsumoto03]

For the most part, I don't put much stock into the idea though I do find myself facinated by it. I think the biggest problem with the idea is travelling through time and not space, like Back to The Future.
See, if you were to travel through time, the space you were occupying wouldn't even be in the same place. The planet would still be moving in its orbit and you would find yourself in outer space...did I explain that right?

I think this is kind of where alternate realities play in. I think that if we traveled into the past, we would be in a different reality than if we didn't.

 

[neoontime]

Possibly but by the split universe theory we could never know.

 

[blankedboy]

No, of course it isn't. If you were to time travel to 6:15 AM on the 5th of December, 1926 then at that moment, you would both be there and not be there, creating a paradox similar to dividing by zero.

 

[emeraldrafael]

I"m sure its absolutely possibly. i just think humans arent at the level yet.

But one day... some day.... it will happen.

 

[Lyx]

For fucks sake, can people please stop labeling threads as polls, when they aren't polls, but just discussions? You're annoying the heck out of me, and if the board had such a feature, i'd autoignore all threads that say poll without having one.

Obligatory discussion value:
I don't "believe" in time travel, simply because i have seen zero evidence for "time" to be more than a mental-VCR (Translation: Time as people imagine it, doesn't exist).

 

[Mad World]

I don't think that it's possible. Traveling through time and seeing my own self doesn't seem possible.

Now, it's cool to think that time can be changed. For example, someone with the power to change time can make it either go backward or forward for everyone. So, rather than one person going backward or forward in time, time changes for - and affects - everyone. It would also be cool if you could choose who remembers what time they were in before you changed it. I don't know; just something fun to think about. I don't even know if I'm really making any sense. But simply put: I don't believe that time travel is possible.

 

[Sewblon]

I subscribe to Closed-Loop Theory. I think that time travel is possible but that changing history is impossible. Since the event you are trying to change happened in the past, you and all other time travelers who will ever try to change it have already tried and failed to change it, so the only effect you could possibly have is ensuring that the event happened just as the history texts said it happened. So if you went back in time and tried to stop the Holocaust, it would turn out that you are secretly the one who the third Reich put in charge of it, and if you tried to stop the making of Scary Movie, it will turn out that you inspired Seltzerburg to right the screen play.

 

[Cypher10110]

I think if time travel is ever possible, it will be of the variety "come out of the machine at the point you turned it on" type of time travel. Like in the film Primer. So you wouldn't be able to go back in time before the first time machine. This allows paradoxes to occur, but there still solutions where a paradox is possible (so will no longer be a paradox).

Forward time travel is easier, just travel at really high speed (the closer to the speed of light the better) and when your journey ends "outside" will have experienced a lot more time than you have.

This is assuming there is no physical way to ever travel faster than the speed of light, because if you could I guess then you COULD go back in time to any time from any time. And would be also able to travel an infinite amount of time into the future in an infinitesimally small time by travelling AT the speed of light.

Asymptotes are fun, dividing by zero and whatnot. Might seem strange NOW but maybe if we get to grips with multi-dimensional space, even crazier shit could indeed happen.

 

[Tharwen]

Well... I don't believe in time itself, so I'm not exactly in a position to argue for it.