Poll: Time travel, is it possible?

supersixfour

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well einstein proved the theory was possible but if u sent a space ship into a backhole there is no telling where you'll end up and thats if u can even survive the suction which would rip an unprotected man limb from limb because of the force involved
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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supersixfour said:
well einstein proved the theory was possible but if u sent a space ship into a backhole there is no telling where you'll end up and thats if u can even survive the suction which would rip an unprotected man limb from limb because of the force involved
And what wound be the point of getting to relive the 2000 new years eve in another galaxy, on a ship as big as your first studio apartment? :p lol ... I can imagine the pr though IF he got back "We rocked out like it was 2000 all over again!!! WOOOO........ 30000000 light years from Earth ... but still ..... well worth the 20 trillion dollars" XD
 

aaronmorg

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I have always had a theory ever since I saw some show on the Discovery channel (I believe) about the relation between speed and time.

If I recall correctly, closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes in relation to you. So, theoretically, if you could build a craft that could take you into space, then use a black holes gravitational pull to slingshot yourself back to earth at unfathomable speeds, then when you arrived back at earth, 100s of years would have gone by.

I do not believe there is any way to go back in time, but going forward seems plausible.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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aaronmorg said:
I have always had a theory ever since I saw some show on the Discovery channel (I believe) about the relation between speed and time.

If I recall correctly, closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes in relation to you. So, theoretically, if you could build a craft that could take you into space, then use a black holes gravitational pull to slingshot yourself back to earth at unfathomable speeds, then when you arrived back at earth, 100s of years would have gone by.

I do not believe there is any way to go back in time, but going forward seems plausible.
How do you slow down though? o_O thats what I haven't seen anybody suggest ... if you have to travel megafast, then how does your ship survive slowing down? How many centuries would it take to slow your craft down......? It's not like travelling through space theres a whole lot of surface resistance.

And Murphy's law basically stipulates the longer there is for a potential problem to arise, the more likely it is to happen eventually.

So whilst that craft is getting to those speeds, and then whilst slowing down ... EVENTUALLY a piece of space rock is going to smash through your craft and insta-mushify everybody inside.

I don't know .... and there's no way anybody could find out whether what you did was successful or not. Nobody would know for centuries.

I like the Doctor Who theory .... Time Travelling killed the dinosaurs :p
 

tsb247

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All the theories I have seen state that it is only possible to go forward in time. So yeah, it is possible... It occurs all the time - every second we are alive. The rate at which we get there (the future), however, is another matter altogether.
 

Eclectic Dreck

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No. At least, as far as physics can discern.

The problem is incredibly complex to explain, and in fact if one were interested Stephen Hawking does a far better job of it that I can, but I'll do my best. The field of physics, if one were interested in studying the problem in depth is of course relativity, which is a fairly modern field of physics (launched by Einstein in the early 1900's).

Before relativity, the study of physics was concerned primarily with electromagnetism and mechanics - the studies of electric field and engergy and the study of the motion of matter respectively. Through the study of mechanics in particular, one will find that that matter and it's motions are actually little more than the mathematical relationship of a handful of things. Mass (quantity of matter), distance or space, and time. Force for example is not a unique quantity - it is instead the relation ship of mass and acceleration. According to newton, the simplest way to express this relationship is force = mass*acceleration, or more correctly force = mass*momentum. (In more detail: force = mass * (change in velocity/change in time)). Some people may decry such a statement as overly simple or outright false because the force equation given results in the average force over a length of time (mathematically a secant line if graphed) when in reality we are usually more concerned with instantaneous force (mathematically a tangential line), but I hope you'll find this isn't important. The key is to recognize that physics is based upon the understanding of the relationship between these quantities.

During the course of physics investigation, one may come to realize that mechanics are often just a bit off, especially when things start moving very quickly (say greater than 1/10 the speed of light) or become very small (single smaller than a handful of atoms). Investigation in this regard lead to interesting discoveries, not the least of which is relativity.

I can assume that we all know that speed is itself nothing more than the relationship of displacement (space) and time (literally, displacement/time). Einstien's essential theory, if you dig deep enough is a statement that is as simple as it is profound - space itself is not a constant, it is relative to time. Now, I'm sure we are all thinking "so what" at this point but bear with me. If Space is directly related to time, it stands to reason that speed itself (which is also a relationship between space and time) ought to modify the percieved passage of time. There have been a number of famous tests done over the years, from the first experiments that provided the first proof of Einstein's theory (measuring the difraction of a star during a complete solar eclipse) to experiments using sets of super accurate clocks moving at different velocities. The tests prove time and again that this theory seems to hold true - the faster you move the slower time passes.

If we accept the previous part as being true, then we can come to a conclusion - if time slows in a linear fashion (as it appears to) with speed, there must be a speed at which time would reverse itself, and this would follow the general assumption that science has come to. The speed required is, coincidentally enough, the speed of light. The problem is, as near as physics can tell there isn't a way to directly propel an object with mass to the speed of light. The energy required, if graphed actually resembles an exponential curve. As one approaches the speed of light with an object of any mass you find that the energy required to accellerate increases. Mathematically, this is what is known as an asymptote - a line that a graph approaches but never actually meets no matter how far one feels like going. The short version is of course that to exceed the speed of light and thus go backwards in time, one would need an infinite supply of energy. Here, a classical field of physics comes back to bite us - thermodynamics. It turns out that there doesn't seem to be any way to collect an infinite amount of energy thanks to the second law of thermodynamics that states no mechanic process that does work is fully reversible (the law that says useful perpetual motion is impossible).

Of course, there are kinks in this plan, and it comes to us from the absolute leading edge of physics. It appears that certain objects are moving faster than the speed of light, apparently the result of the expansion of space itself. Interesting experiments in quantum mechanics have given results that suggest things as strange as tests done in the future affect the past, or that in some circumstances one can get a result before a test has been completed. There are a number of working theories related to the idea of FTL travel, the most plausible of which revolve around the premise of modifying space itself. The assumption goes that if space can indeed be bent and broken (modern theories regarding gravity for example) then it may be possible to bend or warp space in such a way as to allow for faster than light travel.

Of course, this brings up an interesting question. If the assumption that matter cannot travel faster than light holds true, then will warping space actually resolve this problem? Afterall, relative to space itself this super fast object might only be traveling at a small fraction of light speed, but from the perspective of an observer it might be travelling at many times the speed of light. My own theory (and keep in mind this would be coming from the furthest edges of physics knowledge and is being postulated by someone who has a mere 2 years of college physics under his belt so I'm hardly qualified to make such a statement) is that even in this case you would not travel in time (or at least not backwards). The reason is fairly simple - at the point at which the object is traveling while warping space it is still not exceeding the speed of light. Such a statement is fortutious in some ways - it's utterly impossible to test and one could certainly generate the math required to make it seem true.

I'll end basically where I began - based on our current understanding of physics, travel in time may vary in terms of rate but never in direction. There are things coming out of the theoritical physics departments the world over that suggest our understanding of both space and time is still hilariously limited, but thus far nothing has surfaced that has made me believe that time is reversible.
 

Justin00100

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No, it doesn't seem like time travel would be possible, if it did some nerd from the future would come back in time and brag about it, and act like a total douche.

You know I'm right, you don't need to be a Physicist to figure that out.
 

vamp rocks

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well... you can feel like its possible... with copious amounts of drugs.... lol..

OT: i dont know much about physics so i cant really place an opinion... but i will say it would be pretty cool.. as long as there are no severe consequences... which there probably will be...
 

space_oddity

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theklng said:
It's not impossible; the theory of relativity even states that a certain form of time travel occurs when traveling at the speed of light. Time travel as it is casually know, however, is still technologically distant and implausible (but not impossible - we just don't know enough about the nature of our universe to know how to manipulate time).
I agree.
You sort of need a Physicists view of time, as a dimensional medium, to really get your head around why it would or would not be possible.
I mean, nobody is going to jump into a rainbow coloured Volkswagen tomorrow and travel back to the 70's, but you can't just dismiss time as a constant locomotive travelling forever forward at the exact same speed.
A year 9 physics student can tell you time isnt constant.
 

Eclectic Dreck

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Justin00100 said:
Yes, it is. I am a time traveller...

I can travel forwards through time at a rate of 1 second per second.
Not to get silly, but if you travel at 1_second/1_second then you actually travel at a rate of 1 with no specification of what that 1 means. 1 what? 1 clam? 1 Orange?
 

Redingold

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Danz D Man said:
One of the main theories of antimatter is that it is matter moving backwards through time.
What? When did you here that? Antimatter is the same as normal matter, but with an opposite electrical charge. You may be talking about tachyons, which are supposed to have negative mass, and so travel backwards in time, faster than the speed of light, but they've never been observed.

Eclectic Dreck said:
Not to get silly, but if you travel at 1_second/1_second then you actually travel at a rate of 1 with no specification of what that 1 means. 1 what? 1 clam? 1 Orange?
You've read "Introducing Time"?
 

US Crash Fire

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Apr 20, 2009
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yes we are doing it now! sitting in one spot we are traveling forward thru time at the rate of 1 second per second.
if you want time to speed up go east up to the dateline
if you want tome to slow down go west up to the dateline
if you want time to go backwards go east over the dateline
 

curty129

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Jul 24, 2009
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I wouldn't think so, or the future us's just don't think we're ready to be given the ability to time travel.
 

YuheJi

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Of course its possible. I mean we do tend to travel forwards in time at an unchanging rate.
 
Feb 13, 2008
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Kriptonite said:
No, and this is the third time travel thread I have had to say this in.
And I refute it. There are quite a few ways to get around the paradox boundaries, and the best one is that changes to the past would happen without anyone knowing about it.

To Mr. Eclectic Dreck and his physics textbook, one of the first things you realise in Mechanical Mathematics is that Physics is a Standard Model Equation. There are a number of points in the Universe where the speed of light isn't constant, and it already acts as a particle and a wave, so you can only disprove the theory of time travel along a line.
Add an axis or two for other dimensions and time-hopping is as easy as stepping across a fold in fabric.