Poll: Time travel, is it possible?

[Cama Zots]

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

Effective (not actual) time travel could be possible just by traveling to other universes. Technically, however, an alternate universe is created every instant (an infinite actually). The universe that you were in when you started reading this, is not the universe you are currently inhabiting.

 

[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...

Also, that isn't how cryogenics works.
The "cold" part is simply to slow down the decay of the biological processes.
Decay rate is based entirely on chemical reaction rate, which is based very highly on temperature.
Slow down the rate of reactions, slow down decay, keep things healthy longer.
This is the basis of cryogenics.

It is not in ANY way haphazard. The only problem is how to prevent ice crystals from forming.
A number of living things, notably fish and insects, already use cryogenics and have solved it through the use of biological anti-freeze proteins.

The next time you decide to say something about a mature field of science and medicine which has saved thousands of lives (cryo-based surgeries for heart transplants, etc etc), make sure to do the research first.

'pushes thick glasses snugly back on, pulls pants to a safe, mid-waist height'
Thanks...
No, I obviously oversimplified it. To the max. But I'm pretty sure you know what I meant. Flash-freezing bodies and the like. The Walt Disney stuff. Since the original post didn't go into much detail I didn't think I needed further than a Red Dwarf level of detail of how things work.

 

[Kit Fox]

I believe in the way time travel works in "A Sound of Thunder" (not the moive) that you can time travel, but it will butt fuck the future, but not stop you from traveling in time

 

[Cama Zots]

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.

and speed, and the gravity of each of the planets.

 

[Fritzvalt]

So long as something doesn't break the laws of physics, then anything is possible. Time travel fits neatly into that anything. Conversely, when talking about traveling through dimensions, if we were to travel via the 11th dimension (I think it's the 11th, but I'm sure someone here can quote M theory well enough to refute me) we may find ourselves in a place where physical laws are COMPLETELY different. So, I repeat, anything is possible.

 

[VanityGirl]

I've been doing chemistry more than physics, so I honestly don't know much about time travel, but I'm pretty sure that you can't go back in time.
Based on what Hawking said, you might be able to travel back in time, but only to the point when the first time machine was made. He explains it where someone like myself can understand. The reason we don't have visitors from the future is because we don't have a time machine built.

Seems simple.
Also, a side note. If you're going to explain things in a thread, try to explain them were people who don't take physics can understand. Seeing as how I'm in chemistry and will be continuing chemistry in college, I don't understand the physics aspect of it unless simplified.

 

[Fritzvalt]

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.

Got any online references concerning hypothetical tachyons? I would like to get my learn on.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Yes, only to the future, though..

At normal speed.

 

[Dragon_Master7593]

Yes, but not in the way you described. We all experience a form of time travel every day; when we look at the Sun, we see it as it was ~8 minutes ago, when it's light left.

 

[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

Effective (not actual) time travel could be possible just by traveling to other universes. Technically, however, an alternate universe is created every instant (an infinite actually). The universe that you were in when you started reading this, is not the universe you are currently inhabiting.

indeed

 

[whiskey rock n' roller]

If it were wouldn't we be seeing people from the future come back.

 

[silicon avatar]

Most of the physicists out there agree that faster than light and time travel is likely not possible. if they were why haven?t we been visited by aliens or people from the future?

 

[asinann]

Not even in theory, you'd have to break the speed of light (another thing that in theory is impossible.)

 

[AvsJoe]

As much as I would love to believe that it's possible, I highly doubt that we will ever be able to travel through time. I have nothing more to add.

 

[Justin00100]

Yes, it is. I am a time traveller...

I can travel forwards through time at a rate of 1 second per second.

 

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

Of course it's possible, those damned scientists are just too busy trying to prove God doesn't exist. I want to go back in time to meet Jesus.

<color=white>That's just the tequila talkin'.

 

[jboking]

Of course Time-Travel is possible; I'm travelling through time right now...

Spoiler: xkcd

[http://xkcd.com/630/]
[http://xkcd.com/209/]

Ah, xkcd. The source of many a great line. Also a great source for your daily dose of smartass.

Yeah, traveling forward is all we will ever do. Plus, why would you bother with traveling backwards? By doing something in the past you either:

A)create a paradox, destroying time itself
b)create an alternate timeline, so when you go back to yours nothing has changed and what you did didn't matter.
c)you were supposed to do whatever you did and everything will stay the same anyway.

It's the choice between destroying the universe and gaining nothing for your trouble. Either way it is a waste.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Personally I think people are looking at time travel the wrong way. Objects move through the universe, so going back in time would mean being able to also travel through conventional space, and landing back on Earth.

Space is also not devoid of objects ....

And even if you were able to attain the ability to go backwards in time ... you could only go back so far that would be in reach of your craft when it came out of time travelling.

You go back a 50 years, you're going to be one hell of a long way from Earth .... what would be the poin t of time travel in the first place?

So theoretically, you'd only want to go 'forwards' in time once the craft has been built. Given that the Earth would have both the technology and the means to house your craft ...... then what?

So not even reflecting on all the scientific problems of time travel .... what would be the useful applications of it in the first place? And would it even be worth the risk?

Transcendentally speaking .... the future is a dialectic analysis of the past and ever-present, assembled into a chronologically synthesised, multi sensational, multi dimensional realm.

Given that there is only one past and one present, then theoretically there can only be one possible future .....

Time travel would negate that common principal ... and ultimately would destroy the meaningfulness of human experience and perception.