Time travel will never be possible.

[JC175]

Sorry for the double post, but to add, time travel is perfectly feasible as long as we only consider moving into the future. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, time dilates the faster you move. Obviously the faster you move, the closer you get to infinite mass, the more energy is required, etc, but time travel into the future exists today. Some subatomic particles survive twice as long as their normal lifetimes if they are sped up to large speeds.

 

[Arcticflame]

It?s not only possible but it is being done (On a very small scale).

According to the general theory of relativity time is relevant. So without going too deep into the finer details, the faster you go the slower the time flow. This has been tested by shooting decaying particles at speeds close to the speed of light. They then measure the particles to find that they didn?t decay as fast as they should have thus proving that the particle experienced a decrease in time flow. The next big step that has to be taken is to make it so a person would be able to go that fast and survive it but they would only be able to travel forward in time and not back.

actually that's the misnomer about it. it's not that time slows down when you approach the speed of light, it's your perception of time that is affected. it's one of the more tricky parts of the theory and a lot of people don't get it right.

so basically a person would be seen as standing still if you went by them at the speed of light and you would be a blur. it's basically the exact opposite of what you'd see with a black hole and it's event horizon

I just want to make sure I have this experiment right then. According to Einstein the speed on light is a constant. So if you bounce light off of two mirrors that are directly above each other it takes the light light x amount of time. Then we do this in a moving environment, to the person in the car the light is still going up and down but to the outside world it is actually moving in a triangle shape. But because the speed of light is constant it takes more time to travel this larger distance then the smaller up and down distance. Proving that time is relevant to the environment.

Sorry it took a while to reply I had to dig out my physics book. Example was taken from Pg1118 of "Physics for scientists and engineers"

The best example of is that scientists have taken two clocks which were amazingly accurate, electronic clocks that can measure accurately to some huge power over like a year.

They took one, put it in a hugely fast plane and flew it around the world, the other one they left back in base.

When the clock that was flown around the world came back, it was a second behind the other clock.

There, human's have caused some form of time fluctuation, or at least some form of "de-syncing" time.

I'm surprised that you haven't mentioned yet that, yes, people's perception of your time slows when you travel faster, and exponentially gets slower when you approach the speed of light, but a continuation of that is that if you draw a curve with that knowledge in mind, you get a point where time stops at the speed of light. (which theoretically you can't reach unless you are massless).

But if you could go faster than the speed of light, following the trend of the curve you would be travelling backwards in time.
Following one of the postulates of relativity is that everything should work the same way in every inertial frame, so theoretically it would be possible for things to occur in reverse.

But then quantum theory I >think< disproves all that, but then Quantum entanglement may show that somehow particles react to each other faster than the speed of light. (Although that's still heavily in debate). Which would give you the impression that things can travel faster than the speed of light.

 

[Sieg The Bum]

The only thing you proved is that the measurement of time would not exists without people; not time itself. Even if everyone in the world dies all of the bodies will still decompose, mountains will still crumble, and rivers will still flow. Why is this? Time.

Organic matter decomposes because it is eaten by other organic matter. Mountains crumble because of erosion. Rivers flow because of gravity. My original post comes from the perspective that there are only three dimensions, not four.

Basically, it's like saying without people there will be no mass because there will be no Kg. Because kilogram does not exists outside our minds.

Mass, density, and volume are detectable, measurable aspects of the Universe. Time can only be measured as arbitrary human designations. Time is only theoretical.

The measurement of time is done with "arbitrary human designations". Time is an aspect of the universe.
I'm not going to argue this common fact anymore.

 

[BaronXS]

Sorry for the double post, but to add, time travel is perfectly feasible as long as we only consider moving into the future. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, time dilates the faster you move. Obviously the faster you move, the closer you get to infinite mass, the more energy is required, etc, but time travel into the future exists today. Some subatomic particles survive twice as long as their normal lifetimes if they are sped up to large speeds.

But think about this: If you leave the current time to go forward in time, you disappear for however long you went forward. So, this means that you could never meet your future self through time travel. That sucks. I wanted to see what I'm doing in 20 years. But this also allows people to skip years, thus letting them live longer. I don't know, I've been up for 30 something hours, I can't think straight...

 

[Standby]

Forgive me if a i mis-understood, but you're saying time is cyclical?

 

[teisjm]

Dude, wtf is lazor?

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/timetravel
epic flash movie about time travel.

 

[NattyMichael]

if it were possible wouldnt we, being in the past, see some effect?

anyway teleportation is possible on very small things, like atoms, at the moment. anything is posible really.

 

[Sieg The Bum]

It?s not only possible but it is being done (On a very small scale).

According to the general theory of relativity time is relevant. So without going too deep into the finer details, the faster you go the slower the time flow. This has been tested by shooting decaying particles at speeds close to the speed of light. They then measure the particles to find that they didn?t decay as fast as they should have thus proving that the particle experienced a decrease in time flow. The next big step that has to be taken is to make it so a person would be able to go that fast and survive it but they would only be able to travel forward in time and not back.

actually that's the misnomer about it. it's not that time slows down when you approach the speed of light, it's your perception of time that is affected. it's one of the more tricky parts of the theory and a lot of people don't get it right.

so basically a person would be seen as standing still if you went by them at the speed of light and you would be a blur. it's basically the exact opposite of what you'd see with a black hole and it's event horizon

I just want to make sure I have this experiment right then. According to Einstein the speed on light is a constant. So if you bounce light off of two mirrors that are directly above each other it takes the light light x amount of time. Then we do this in a moving environment, to the person in the car the light is still going up and down but to the outside world it is actually moving in a triangle shape. But because the speed of light is constant it takes more time to travel this larger distance then the smaller up and down distance. Proving that time is relevant to the environment.

Sorry it took a while to reply I had to dig out my physics book. Example was taken from Pg1118 of "Physics for scientists and engineers"

The best example of is that scientists have taken two clocks which were amazingly accurate, electronic clocks that can measure accurately to some huge power over like a year.

They took one, put it in a hugely fast plane and flew it around the world, the other one they left back in base.

When the clock that was flown around the world came back, it was a second behind the other clock.

There, human's have caused some form of time fluctuation, or at least some form of "de-syncing" time.

I'm surprised that you haven't mentioned yet that, yes, people's perception of your time slows when you travel faster, and exponentially gets slower when you approach the speed of light, but a continuation of that is that if you draw a curve with that knowledge in mind, you get a point where time stops at the speed of light. (which theoretically you can't reach unless you are massless).

But if you could go faster than the speed of light, following the trend of the curve you would be travelling backwards in time.
Following one of the postulates of relativity is that everything should work the same way in every inertial frame, so theoretically it would be possible for things to occur in reverse.

But then quantum theory I >think< disproves all that, but then Quantum entanglement may show that somehow particles react to each other faster than the speed of light. (Although that's still heavily in debate). Which would give you the impression that things can travel faster than the speed of light.

I'm a little sketchy on this theory. (I'm an engineer)
I thought that the speed of light was in theory the fastest you could travel?

But yah I have not heard of the de-syncing experiment. Sounds interesting.

 

[mangus]

oh my, someone needs to get their future history straight!
Time travel was invented in 2184!
the distance one can travel back is extremely limited at this point, so "some idiot/crazy person/terrorist" cannot go far enough back to cause any effects like the ones you speak of, and since each jump is to a separate timeline, we wouldn't see any repercussions anyway. On the one incident when a timeline was collapsed, it was from an experiment with the now banned combination of dial-up and temporal warping technologies, and due to the fact the the current entanglement mechanism has rendered both of those obsolete, there's no need to fear. For more information on this, and any other questions you may have about time travel please contact your region's society for the protection of the temporal continuum and animals branch.

 

[JC175]

Sorry for the double post, but to add, time travel is perfectly feasible as long as we only consider moving into the future. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, time dilates the faster you move. Obviously the faster you move, the closer you get to infinite mass, the more energy is required, etc, but time travel into the future exists today. Some subatomic particles survive twice as long as their normal lifetimes if they are sped up to large speeds.

But think about this: If you leave the current time to go forward in time, you disappear for however long you went forward. So, this means that you could never meet your future self through time travel. That sucks. I wanted to see what I'm doing in 20 years. But this also allows people to skip years, thus letting them live longer. I don't know, I've been up for 30 something hours, I can't think straight...

Well the current theories don't suggest that you simply disappear and reappear at moments in time, you simply move through time at an accelerated rate. So to you the world appears to be moving ridiculously fast, but they see you moving ridiculously slowly. To acheive this though, you have to be moving insanely fast, and your mass and size would increase to a bystander moving in "normal" time.

So yeah, it would be impossible to meet yourself, only to extend their lives. For example, there was an experiment undertaken with synchronised atomic clocks, one stayed on Earth and the other was flown around in a plane for a while. When the clocks were compared, the clock that was in the plane was behind the other clock (only by a marginal amount, but the point remains).

If you're interested in the topic I suggest you read up on Einstein's theory of relativity, it helps to understand the concept a lot better.

 

[Danny Ocean]

No no! You miss my point, I understand that you are one of those people who believe it does make a sound, and I'm not even disagreeing with you. Just stating that your logic inherently implies that perception is the basis for measurement because we measure things, so if no-ones around to measure it then there is no perception of it at all and therefore it doesn't exist, nothing does.

So... following that train of logic that we both recognise neither of us believe: if there's nothing to perceive something, then something doesn't exist?

What if a machine measures it? Is it being perceived?

Well the current theories don't suggest that you simply disappear and reappear at moments in time, you simply move through time at an accelerated rate. So to you the world appears to be moving ridiculously fast, but they see you moving ridiculously slowly. To acheive this though, you have to be moving insanely fast, and your mass and size would increase to a bystander moving in "normal" time.

Like how the rotor blades on a helicopter appear to be spinning quite slowly, but they are actually just spinning much faster than we can perceive?

Although, what about the illusion that car wheels make when they appear to spin the wrong way?

Should time perhaps be considered a vector rather than a separate dimension?

 

[BaronXS]

Sorry for the double post, but to add, time travel is perfectly feasible as long as we only consider moving into the future. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, time dilates the faster you move. Obviously the faster you move, the closer you get to infinite mass, the more energy is required, etc, but time travel into the future exists today. Some subatomic particles survive twice as long as their normal lifetimes if they are sped up to large speeds.

But think about this: If you leave the current time to go forward in time, you disappear for however long you went forward. So, this means that you could never meet your future self through time travel. That sucks. I wanted to see what I'm doing in 20 years. But this also allows people to skip years, thus letting them live longer. I don't know, I've been up for 30 something hours, I can't think straight...

Well the current theories don't suggest that you simply disappear and reappear at moments in time, you simply move through time at an accelerated rate. So to you the world appears to be moving ridiculously fast, but they see you moving ridiculously slowly. To acheive this though, you have to be moving insanely fast, and your mass and size would increase to a bystander moving in "normal" time.

So yeah, it would be impossible to meet yourself, only to extend their lives. For example, there was an experiment undertaken with synchronised atomic clocks, one stayed on Earth and the other was flown around in a plane for a while. When the clocks were compared, the clock that was in the plane was behind the other clock (only by a marginal amount, but the point remains).

If you're interested in the topic I suggest you read up on Einstein's theory of relativity, it helps to understand the concept a lot better.

Indeed I will. This whole subject has peaked my interest.

 

[Mjolnir07]

Forgive me if a i mis-understood, but you're saying time is cyclical?

Anything that is infinite is a pattern, anything that is a pattern has a cycle.

 

[Mjolnir07]

No no! You miss my point, I understand that you are one of those people who believe it does make a sound, and I'm not even disagreeing with you. Just stating that your logic inherently implies that perception is the basis for measurement because we measure things, so if no-ones around to measure it then there is no perception of it at all and therefore it doesn't exist, nothing does.

So... following that train of logic that we both recognise neither of us believe: if there's nothing to perceive something, then something doesn't exist?

What if a machine measures it? Is it being perceived?

If it is being measured it is being perceived. This is only my opinion.

 

[theultimateend]

Because if it WERE, the public would eventually get their hands on it, which means millions of people would have the ability to change history to their will. Now, eventually, some idiot/crazy person/terrorist is going to go back in time to where the first humans were, and kill them, or something along those lines. That would cause a major paradox, seeing as the killer's ancestry line would never exist. So as long as the universe as we know it isn't destroyed, we can be certain that time travel will never be possible, at least for humans.

This isn't the only example to prove my point, there are an infinite amount of possible paradoxes, thanks to the butterfly effect.

Your thoughts on this matter?

Depends on how many decades old your conception of time travel is. If we are looking at what appears to be your view (IE the 1940's) then yes it likely won't happen.

However given the modern views of it it is likely to be possible only because it'll be the inevitable side effect of warp travel. Essentially the distance you would circumvent through warp travel would end up actually transpiring so by traveling in this manner you would be time traveling.

Which doesn't necessarily seem like a positive thing, I know I'm in no hurry to rush a thousand years into the future. Unless Futurama is hard fact.

Also to answer what I think I just read...if you don't hear something that made a sound it still makes a sound, if you don't see something that doesn't mean it isn't there, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence HOWEVER if you can find no means to prove that something exists then it is highly likely that it doesn't.

We can't see Microwaves but they still will beat the ever loving shit out of our insides.

 

[stabnex]

Personally I hope time travel is never possible, that kind of technology can only fuck things up for the worse. And I think if someone decide to test the Grandfather Paradox all they'd manage to do is create a parallel universe (and in the process eliminating his universe) wherein another of the homo genus of higher apes would evolve (say for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis) and lived happily underground and not gone off on stupid adventures with prick dragons and fruity senile wizards.

 

[Mjolnir07]

Because if it WERE, the public would eventually get their hands on it, which means millions of people would have the ability to change history to their will. Now, eventually, some idiot/crazy person/terrorist is going to go back in time to where the first humans were, and kill them, or something along those lines. That would cause a major paradox, seeing as the killer's ancestry line would never exist. So as long as the universe as we know it isn't destroyed, we can be certain that time travel will never be possible, at least for humans.

This isn't the only example to prove my point, there are an infinite amount of possible paradoxes, thanks to the butterfly effect.

Your thoughts on this matter?

Depends on how many decades old your conception of time travel is. If we are looking at what appears to be your view (IE the 1940's) then yes it likely won't happen.

However given the modern views of it it is likely to be possible only because it'll be the inevitable side effect of warp travel. Essentially the distance you would circumvent through warp travel would end up actually transpiring so by traveling in this manner you would be time traveling.

Which doesn't necessarily seem like a positive thing, I know I'm in no hurry to rush a thousand years into the future. Unless Futurama is hard fact.

If at the point of light speed time stops, does light travel through time because it is so fast that it transcends itself?

 

[Strategia]

No, you're all getting this all wrong. See, when someone invents time travel, and shitheads like (insert appropriate politico-socioeconomic demographic here) fuck everything up, someone will always eventually be smart enough to go back in time and stop the invention from being made, one way or another.

And then you get stuck in this timeline. And instead of transcommunicating directly with other peoplebeings using mindlink, you're forced to use a "key-board" to "type" out your thoughts. God, I miss the twenty-eight-thousand-nine-hundred-and-fourth millennium.

 

[Mjolnir07]

No, you're all getting this all wrong. See, when someone invents time travel, and shitheads like (insert appropriate politico-socioeconomic demographic here) fuck everything up, someone will always eventually be smart enough to go back in time and stop the invention from being made, one way or another.

And then you get stuck in this timeline. And instead of transcommunicating directly with other peoplebeings using mindlink, you're forced to use a "key-board" to "type" out your thoughts. God, I miss the twenty-eight-thousand-nine-hundred-and-fourth millennium.

Nice.

 

[LewsTherin]

Possible: maybe.

Legal and widely available; certainly not.