Is time travel possible?

[Dion]

Originally Posted by photon

Time travel forward is much easier, and really that's the one I'm interested in.

See ya later suckers! *Poof*

Is that you John Titor?

[CaptainCrunch]

Time travel is next to impossible due to the energy required, the linear nature of time, and the further forward or backwards you go the less precise your relative location calculation becomes.

Lets say that you want to go back in time to see the dinosaurs. So you strap into your time machine, fire up your flux capacitor, power up from your nuclear reactor and poof you pop out at the right time, but your floating in space with your head swelling, your lungs boiling, your eyes popping out of your head. Because the earth doesn't sit in the same space in the universe a billion years ago as it does now. You thought that you made the right calculation but you ended up on the moon because of quantum jitter.

Lets say by fluke you get back to the dinosaur days you get out and see a velocerapter staring at you, run back to your team machine, turn the key and feel the reassuring softness of your bunny foot keychain, you turn the key, clunk, crap no nuclear reactor.

24 hours later you emerge in pieces from several raptor rectum, nice planning Einstein.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by kermitology

But you could completely unfold the very fabric of time with a time machine in our ######ed hands..

That has universal impacts not just terrestrial.

Of course, but that doesn't change the fact that just because some members of a society are smart enought to come up with something that could seriously mess with the universe, that it's safe to assume that everyone in that society will understand the impact and use the technology only for good.

[FireFly]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Of course, but that doesn't change the fact that just because some members of a society are smart enought to come up with something that could seriously mess with the universe, that it's safe to assume that everyone in that society will understand the impact and use the technology only for good.

But perhaps if they're smart enough to come up with the technology, they're smart enough to keep it secret from the average citizen?

[Textcritic]

I think that the video link and much of the most recent work in quantum physics has demonstrated that time travel is theoretically—if not practically—possible. Whether or not human beings are capable of actually manipulating time, important progress has been made which alters our entire perception of what time is and how it functions. A renewed understanding of time and space has drastic philosophical and theological effects (some might suggest that the impact produces affect, but I for one am quite excited about the future possibilities that "fluid" time allows). A couple for consideration:

1. How does the nature of time affect our concept of infinity or eternity?
2. How does the multiverse affect our understanding of a "theistic" reality?

[CaptainCrunch]

Time travel would be the ultimate revenge tool, except that the person that you got revenge on would never realize that it happened.

One day his wife is normal, that instant she's totally knocked up.

One day his best friend punches his eye out for no apparent reason while yelling "Pow right in the kisser"

He's rich, he's poor, he never knew that he was rich.

One reality he's got a wife and two smart intelligent kids, then you mess up his time line and he's eating beans from a can over a sink in a doublewide trailer while looking at his $275/weekly unemployment check.

[troutman]

There was a Star Trek episode about time travel. Kirk got to make-out with a young Joan Collins IIRC.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by troutman

There was a Star Trek episode about time travel. Kirk got to make-out with a young Joan Collins IIRC.

There was a Futurama episode about time travel as well. Fry hooked up with his grandmother.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by kermitology

But you could completely unfold the very fabric of time with a time machine in our ######ed hands..

That has universal impacts not just terrestrial.

Or as Doc Brown would put it: the encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which could start a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe!

[MarchHare]

I'm not sure if travel to the past will ever be possible, but you could theoretically build a machine to travel into the future as follows:

As was mentioned previously in this thread, the closer an object is travelling to the speed of light, the slower time passes for that object. This is best explained by the well-known Twin Paradox:

In physics, the twin paradox refers to a thought experiment in Special Relativity, in which a person who makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket will return home to find he or she has aged less than an identical twin who stayed on Earth.

Imagine that it was possible to build a centrifuge here on Earth that could move at the speed of light. Obviously the energy requirements would be extremely prohibitive and the g-forces of such a centrifuge would crush anyone inside, but for the sake of this discussion we'll pretend that future technology is able to overcome those and any other practical limitations.

So a man enters the centrifuge and it spins up to light speed. Say he spends a year (by his reckoning) spinning around like this. When he emerges, the world outside the centrifuge will have seen many more years pass. If he had a twin brother (as in the aforementioned paradox), his brother might now be an old man while he still appears to be young.

[Ozy_Flame]

Well, the simulation theory could be the most logical one, especially if you're religious. You are not infinite on Earth; your destiny lies beyond it.

If one looks at it that way, then yes - time travel might be possible in the afterlife, or, after the simulation is over.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by troutman

There was a Star Trek episode about time travel. Kirk got to make-out with a young Joan Collins IIRC.

You're thinking of episode #28, "The City on the Edge of Forever"



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cit...TOS_episode%29

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Dion

You're thinking of episode #28, "The City on the Edge of Forever"



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cit...TOS_episode%29

We actually watched this show at UWO in my English Lit course (SF and Fantastic Lit).

[Matata]

A little OT, but scientists have performed teleportation on the molecular level.

Once you bend space, can time be far behind?

[Dion]

Originally Posted by troutman

We actually watched this show at UWO in my English Lit course (SF and Fantastic Lit).

That is my all time favourite episode. Collins at that age was quite a looker.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Matata

A little OT, but scientists have performed teleportation on the molecular level.

Once you bend space, can time be far behind?

Well we already know one way to bend space and time; gravity.

But saying that scientists have teleported atoms and then talking about bending space is a little misleading; when they teleport an atom, the actual atom isn't teleported, the quantum state of that atom is.

It's more like faxing than teleportation. If this were done to a human the original human would be destroyed in the process and a new one would be built with the same quantum state.

[Antithesis]

But ... we are always traveling through time ...

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by Dion

Then there's those that suggest that crashed UFO's and their technologies are being used in some of the militarys latest top secret aircrafts.

There are also those who suggest that ancient aliens interbred with humans long ago and now those alien human hybrids control the world. And yes Bush is one of them.

*points finger at side of head and makes circular motion*

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Burninator

There are also those who suggest that ancient aliens interbred with humans long ago and now those alien human hybrids control the world. And yes Bush is one of them.

*points finger at side of head and makes circular motion*

How can you not get behind the idea of alien interbreading, I hear they have extra sex organs behind their knees.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Burninator

There are also those who suggest that ancient aliens interbred with humans long ago and now those alien human hybrids control the world. And yes Bush is one of them.

*points finger at side of head and makes circular motion*