Poll: Time travel, is it possible?

[Chicago Ted]

You can't VOTE science! Science is not a democracy!

This is like saying you have a rabbit that you don't know the gender for and will decides its gender by voting on it.

 

[Echo_419]

A big fat no from me. Unless you count alcohol? It has the power to transport you into the future.

 

[dsau]

Is time travel possible? I mean what about alternate time lines and going back in time and killing your grandfather and stuff like that? It's so confusing I don't think it's even possible... I don't think it would be worth the risks involved. The world we live in could very well be influenced by visitors from the future.
Anyway you spin it I think it would take more than a sonic screw driver, chameleon circuits, and a flux capacitor.

dont confuse parallel universes with the theory of time travel, although they are closely related they are different, i know a decent amount about it but id rather not go into detail.

OT: no time travel is not possible, but burning a hole through the fabric of the universe is possible but its very very unlikely that it will ever be accomplished by any race

 

[bakonslayer]

Time travel is really broad, but I think cryogenics and stasis fields are technically a time travel as well and seem much more plausible in the respect that there is no choice for going backwards.
Although, even how cryogenics is handled currently is silly: "Make thing cold and hopefully it be ok when warm again."

We're a long LONG ways away from anything even remotely serious...

 

[Randomeaninglessword]

Not outside of the normal progression of time. Going any where in the past is impossible because the extra addition of atoms (e.g. your body and clothes) would expand the universe to the point in which it would collapse in upon itself. Travelling to the future, well, might be possible. In the same way things in orbit progress through time at a slightly different rate, it might be possible, but very unlikely aside from normal time progression.

 

[Xrysthos]

Travelling forward in time is theoretically possible, travelling backwards is not, due to obvious physical restrictions. Voted "No".

 

[KeyMaster45]

My physics teacher actually handed out an article done by some guy who's working on time travel, apparently it is very very possible to travel through time.

The catch to this is that you cannot travel any further back in time than when the time travel machine was made you can only go forward in time and then back to a certain point.

For example if a time machine were to be made say today September 1st, 2009 and you tried to go back to the roman era; well it just wouldn't work cause once you passed the moment in time the machine was turned on for the first time you would....well he never explained what would happen I guess you would just go "smack!" and fall out of the time warp into the the time the machine was turned on.

 

[Randomeaninglessword]

Not outside of the normal progression of time. Going any where in the past is impossible because the extra addition of atoms (e.g. your body and clothes) would expand the universe to the point in which it would collapse in upon itself. Travelling to the future, well, might be possible. In the same way things in orbit progress through time at a slightly different rate, it might be possible, but very unlikely aside from normal time progression.

Traveling to the future, or at least, at a slower rate than the "normal time progression", is not only "possible", but proven. Time dilation is a mature field of science, with plenty of theoretical and empirical support, notably from high speed and high precision atomic clocks.

More than that, your ideas on additional matter causing implosions are laughable at best. There is no reason why the additional matter submitted into any point in the time line would cause a collapse. A net gain would not occur; any matter or energy taken from one point on the time line would appear at another point. The basic conservation laws are invariant to time travel, and therefore, no ill effects would occur. This is known to occur due to research into hypothetical tachyons.

I'm just giving my theories, you don't need to get all arrogant and pissy.

 

[guaranic]

yes, it is possible to move forward in time, but not backwards. if you somehow were able to suspend yourself above the horizon of a black hole, time would speed up for you. if you spent a day like that, the rest of the world would have undergone about 1000 days. theoretical but not really practical because it would be expensive and very dangerous.

 

[Warrior Irme]

Essentially time travel boils down the the destruction of present day self and the creation of an identical past or future version that is identical in every way and ultimately cannot effect the life of the other one.

On another note if you had the technology to time travel then you would go back to present day and give the technology to yourself. So since you don't time travel now you never will. Congratulations you can stop the effort for the creation of this technology.

 

[Loderian]

Time is relative. If you lived on mars, the passing of time would be different than the passing of time on Pluto, due to the distance from the Sun.

 

[Rigs83]

I actually have a theory about that. I believe that time travelers from the future come to the present and steal the best seats at concerts. Here's my anecdotal evidence, look at any concert footage or photos and notice how anonymous everyone is in the front row. Think about it, how come almost everyone in an iconic photograph from a legendary show choose to remain anonymous, you have dozens of vets and nurses claiming to be the sailor and nurse kissing at Times Square at VJ day but who was that chick or guy at the front row who touched the star or caught the guitar pick they passed down? Also notice how the clothing they wear is period correct but perfectly clean like it was new. If you are one of the lucky few who gets good seats notice how strange the other people are, they are never local and they never seem ready to talk between sets they just shout or say something weird like "They looked so much taller at the hologram museum" or similar things.

 

[sms_117b]

I support the theory physical objects cannot be moved backwards through time as that would result in a gain in entropy (where as time is a constant universal entropy change to the lowest point possible) for the human body, however, brain waves could be transported back, but only onto a suitable host, one with a very similar pattern, this could only be a younger you.

I have no evidence to support this theory, I just like it. Also it removes quite a few paradoxes.

As for effects of changing events and alternate time lines, I've always thought a nice and simple method, but it takes ages to explain still. Damn temporal physics.

 

[Muffinthraka]

There was a wierd guy who lived in our uni accomodation and he was doin a course on....... something sciency. One of the things they talked about was that each person (or life) was a line and we are travelling along it. There is a line for every person but also lines for how everyone views you (this is gonna get complicated). There are several versions of everyone, the way they view themselves and the way other people view them, these are also lines and they form either around you or around the people who think them depending on how close to you they are (can you feel your brain overheating).
Now imagine that all these lines are arrayed on a tablecloth spreading infinetly in all directions, with the lines travelling lengthways and parellel widthways. There are bumps and folds in the cloth and where a fold touches another part of the fold a wormhole is created. Time Travel (in the time machine sense) would involve trying to move the tablecloth and the amount of energy this would require would depend upon the number of lines going through the fold. In short it would be nearly impossible. However where there are folds (either in the 3rd or 4th ddimensions) is where timetravel could be possible.

Finally, if your brains have not attempted to escape yet, if you went back and killed your grandfather either you would travel back along the line to a time before this was possible or your line (and all others relating to you) would disappear.

As I say this was not my opinion but it seems to make sense, I'm sure there are others willing to point out the flaws (if they have not been reduced to drooling zombies from reading it).