Time Travel

[pultneytooner]

What are your theories on time travel...
if it would be possible do you think it would be actual time travel. and could you affect your own life? or would it be more of a travel into parrallel dimensions? never affecting your time line directly...
would space time fall into a paradox or is it just the thought itself that's paradoxical...

Is it possible to travel forward and back in time or just one way... going forward would solidify the concept of fate, and traveling back would solidify the concept of free will... or would it really.. ?
Just wondering if anyone out there likes to dig a little deeper.. [lol]

[Kaishowing]

Personally I subscribe to the multiverse theory.
There's been many an evening when things like this were discussed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse_%28science%29

But ignoring that particular theory for a moment, I don't think you could travel forward as there's nothing or nowhere to travel too!
Perhaps just possibilities have a timeline?

If I think about this too much without a drink I get a headache.....but I find it fascinating.

[pultneytooner]

It's a lovely theory with many 'alluring' aspects. I was young once and impressionable. I grew up with Irwin Allen's 'Time Tunnel' and I am a big Sci Fi buff. But I guess the question we should ask is, Should we even want to travel time latterally or dimensionally? Look at how we handle one another now. What would be if you could jump back in time and 'deal' with people who have different opinions then you do?

We all have a desire to correct 'mistakes' that we have made in our lives and time travel draws us deep into it's prospect of being able to correct them. But along with the good it may provide (like the Internet) you have to expect the bad as well (perps).

Now I don't know how many of you have read or seen a 'Creepy' magazine but I remeber back in the 70's they did something with that subject. About a hunter that went back in time and killed Adam and Eve. Now where do you think that would leave us? (now that example is only for those who might believe in God)

I think that is a power that's great to watch at the movies or on television, but had better be left alone.
How would you deal with criminal cases of 'time' abuse? Where would the evidence be or what would the evidence be? Pandora's box at it's finest.

[Saveman]

This is one of my favourite subjects....:)

With the multiverse theory it may be possible to effectively travel back in time while time passes as normal in your own universe. A diagram easily demonstrates this possibility.
Without the multiverse option then travelling back in time suggests that the past is still happening, when all we know suggests it isn't. Travelling into the future would suggest that we don't live in the present, when all we know suggests we do.
Time is an amazing thing. Faster than light. Fleeting and yet ever present.

Each moment is a memory.


That said.......what about the experiment with two atomic clocks....one in the lab, one in a airplane.....anyone familiar with that experiment?

[pultneytooner]

I read something recently, about an experiment an american scientist was planning to conduct, which presented the possibility of time travel. It involves a neutron circulating in a light beam. I thought it was intriguing. The time dilation is such an incredible, and proven concept! Another interesting thing is that as the speed of light is finite, all kinds of wierd things happen. For example... if 2 cars head towards one another, and both are travelling at 30 miles per hour, then the closing speed is 60 miles per hour... however... if those cars were to put their headlights on, and the closing velocity of the photons were measured... you would find that it wouldn't be a closing velocity of 2 times the speed of light (plus 60 mph) but in fact would be the speed of light, yet the speed of the photons themselves would remain the speed of light!

[Gleber2]

From my first brush with H.G.Wells in 1956 and his time machine, I have thought about the possibility of time travel. Many hundreds of Sci Fi and Fantasy books since and I am convinced of the impossibility of T.T in this continuum at least. Multi verse as opposed to universe is a different kettle of cabbage (I'm a vegetarian) and opens up a completely different set of debates.

Off to my Tardis to think up suitable posts.

[Dreadnought]

I think we move through time backwards.

Think about it. Can you see what is going to happen in the future? No. You can't even see one second into the future with absolute certainty. But you can see into the past, with absolute clarity.
It is like walking backwards, you cannot see what is coming up behind you until it comes into view as you pass it. Then you can see along the way you have come and see events you have passed. So we move through time backwards.

[gleeber]

Travelling into the future would suggest that we don't live in the present, when all we know suggests we do.
Time is an amazing thing. Faster than light. Fleeting and yet ever present.

Each moment is a memory.


That said.......what about the experiment with two atomic clocks....one in the lab, one in a airplane.....anyone familiar with that experiment?

I have never met anybody who lives in the present time. The human animal has already become a time traveller. Fantasy merchants! Living in the past or planning for the future. No time for the moment. Too late its gone.
The human animal is alone in nature as the one who farts against thunder.
An elephant is too busy being an elephant to worry about last week or tomorrow. All that matters to him is now.
Leave it to the human to build a time machine so he can go back and make things better. That idea would bring a tear to a glass eye in a crocodile, if he was able to understand the craziness in the concept of going back into the future to change the present.
Adam and Eve can be killed of now. No need to travel back in time.
Anything outside of this moment is fantasy. Oops too late, it's gone.

[Gleber2]

Good grief Gleeber, you are waxing poetic tonight.

[Cedric Farthsbottom III]

Time travel is possible.The reason I say this is cos' someone might look at ye.Ye have in yer hand the most scrum-diddly umptcious ice-cream cone,perchance wi' a flake.

Folk think,Cedric is gonnae eat that ice-cream.I turn around and drop it to the ground.Splatter!!!!!

What a waste o' an ice-cream everyone shouts!!!!!

Cedric then goes on the ground and starts eating the ice-cream cone.Voila,time travel,might only be seconds but its still time!!!!:lol: :lol:

[DrSzin]

I read something recently, about an experiment an american scientist was planning to conduct, which presented the possibility of time travel. It involves a neutron circulating in a light beam. I thought it was intriguing.The man in question is Ronald Mallett (http://www.phys.uconn.edu/%7Emallett/main/main.htm). His credentials (http://www.phys.uconn.edu/%7Emallett/main/professional_summary.htm) look ok, and his research activities (http://www.phys.uconn.edu/%7Emallett/main/research_activities.htm) don't look crazy - the relevant paper is the one in Foundations of Physics. However, the paper only seems to have two academic citations - one of which claims that Mallett's solutions to Einstein's equations are unphysical (http://www.springerlink.com/%28ecmo3155r4af4drzmhtt3y55%29/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,6,8;journal,7,106;linkingpublicationr esults,1:105712,1). This is not a good sign...

Anyway, I would guess he's more interested in the sales of his popular-science book (http://www.phys.uconn.edu/%7Emallett/main/book.htm). So I wouldn't hold your breath. :(


The time dilation is such an incredible, and proven concept! Another interesting thing is that as the speed of light is finite, all kinds of wierd things happen. For example... if 2 cars head towards one another, and both are travelling at 30 miles per hour, then the closing speed is 60 miles per hour... however... if those cars were to put their headlights on, and the closing velocity of the photons were measured... you would find that it wouldn't be a closing velocity of 2 times the speed of light (plus 60 mph) but in fact would be the speed of light, yet the speed of the photons themselves would remain the speed of light!I'm afraid the gap between the two light beams would indeed reduce in size at a rate which is twice the speed of light. This is the one common situation where naive Galilean/Newtonian calculation of relative speeds gives the right (ie observed) answer.

It's the same when two extreme-relativistic beams of charged particles are fired at each other at (close to) the speed of light in an accelerator. The relative velocity of the beams as measured in the lab is (almost) twice the speed of light - each is observed to move at (close to) the speed of light and so the distance between the beams (as measured in the lab) decreases at (almost) twice the speed of light.

However, if you were to sit on one of the beams and measure the distance between your beam and the one that's heading towards you, then you would find that the latter is moving towards you at the speed of light - that's one times the speed of light, not twice the speed of light as one would naively expect. Of course, you can't actually sit on such a beam but the measured results of the collisions between the particles in the beams are as relativity predicts.

Relativistic addition of velocities and time dilation are weird counter-intuitive effects but they have indeed been measured to occur in the way Einstein predicted.

Distances, speeds and times as measured by observers in relative motion are different - that's why it's called relativity. :cool:

(I could be more precise when I say "almost" and "close to" the speed of light, but it really isn't necessary for this discussion.)

[Kenn]

Can you sit on a beam of light?

I have also spent many hours pondering on this subject and suspect that we do have access to a kind of time travel. It's common name is racial memory.
From what I have read on the subject we have some where in our make up memories that pre-date our own personal experiences and these have a tendency to crop up at the oddest moments.
The French have a word for it, "Deja vu" but there seems to be no equivalent in our language.
No doubt many of you will have experienced this phenomenom, you visit a place for the first time and some how it is familiar, it can instil a sense of well being or a sense of dread,you meet a person and it seems like you have known them all your life.
Now I may be flying off at a tangent but I seem to remember from those many years ago in the physics laboratory that there was a theory that tme was pigeon holed (something to do with that fellow Einstein) and that the emerging thoughts at the time was that it might be possible to step sideways ,forwards or backwards in time.
I also seem to recall that time is circular and therefore has no beginning and no end so why should we not be able to experience all things that have happened within the circle?
I have no idea whether this theory has ever been expounded further but it might just explain some of the things that are commonly called supernatural.
No doubt the good Dr will come along and blast my witterings to pieces but perhaps he has never experienced such a thing and I have to admit that it has only happened to me on rare occasions but has later been born out by historical evidence.
On that note I am off to check that all my molecules are in the right places and that none of them have been left in The Andromeda Nebula!

[canuck]

While you all slept, I was having a chat with Lolabelle who in fact was talking to me from tomorrow. And I was talking to her from Caithness's yesterday. So the org has its own special brand of time travel. And maybe it isn't quite sitting on a beam of light, but it feels almost as magical.

[Kaishowing]

There's been alot of intelligent conjecture about one theory or another in this thread, but only very little mentioned about the morality of it all.
I think Pultneytooner raised the point of it being a temporal Pandora's Box, and the possibilities of abuse of the ability, à la JCVD's film, 'Timecop'.

Killing Hitler or buying Microsoft shares springs to mind as the classic arguments for strict temporal policing as the resulting paradox's (what's the plural for that by the way??) could have consequences that we couldn't comprehend....It may do nothing, but who would be willing to take the chance?

But let's get back to the morality issue........If someone skipped back to say Nuremberg 1933, and popped that chavvy with the funny mustache and the silly walk, who's to say that we would have half the technical advancements we have today??
It's long been acknowledged that during wartime there are huge leaps in technology in the sciences.
So if 1939-1945 was prevented before it started, who's to say what knock-on effects that could have!

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

[canuck]

There's been alot of intelligent conjecture about one theory or another in this thread, but only very little mentioned about the morality of it all.
I think Pultneytooner raised the point of it being a temporal Pandora's Box, and the possibilities of abuse of the ability, à la JCVD's film, 'Timecop'.

Killing Hitler or buying Microsoft shares springs to mind as the classic arguments for strict temporal policing as the resulting paradox's (what's the plural for that by the way??) could have consequences that we couldn't comprehend....It may do nothing, but who would be willing to take the chance?

But let's get back to the morality issue........If someone skipped back to say Nuremberg 1933, and popped that chavvy with the funny mustache and the silly walk, who's to say that we would have half the technical advancements we have today??
It's long been acknowledged that during wartime there are huge leaps in technology in the sciences.
So if 1939-1945 was prevented before it started, who's to say what knock-on effects that could have!

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

Thank goodness time travel is just a wonderful dalliance of the imagination. Morality is so defined by time and place (well the society of a time and place) that for people to be whipping around constantly changing history based on morality would end us up in total confusion much like the nothingness of the "something out of nothing" thread.

The mind boggles at some of the scenarios in our own lives of a combination of past and future corrections done by people of even upright moral values. Take my own situation. If we rejigged the minds of the Highland landowners who wanted to raise sheep and the Clearances hadn't happened then there would have been no Winnipeg for my grandfather to move to from Edinburgh. If he had stayed in Edi I might have grown up there and had to learn to cheer on football. I might be joining golach and Mrs G at the pub instead of waiting to catch a plane to see my son receive a Nobel prize for brokering a peace accord between the Antarctic and South Africa. Oops that's the future taking hold, but with my current morality imprinted on it.

Others with more vivid imaginations could come up with far more interesting scenarios of what might happen should there be a mixing of moralities across cultures and time.

[golach]

Oh I wish I had the power to time travel, if I had I would go back in time, to the early 1960's, before TV, before drugs were an every day word, when music was good and you could understand what the muscians were on about. Life was not so stressful for us in those days, I was travelling the world and getting paid for it. I met my wife in the 60's I became a father in the 60's.
But I would miss my computer and the .Org , maybe not all the Orgers though[lol]

[Gleber2]

Oh I wish I had the power to time travel, if I had I would go back in time, to the early 1960's, before TV, before drugs were an every day word, when music was good and you could understand what the muscians were on about. Life was not so stressful for us in those days, I was travelling the world and getting paid for it. I met my wife in the 60's I became a father in the 60's.
But I would miss my computer and the .Org , maybe not all the Orgers though[lol]

Aye but the sixties set the scene for today. The seeds were planted and we now reap what was sown. The sixties produced quite a few revolutions and we now live with the consequences.

[Jeid]

I love talking about time travel.

However, I don't think it's possible. If it was, we'd already know about it as someone would have travelled back in time.

[Saveman]

Can you sit on a beam of light?
<snip>


Has that ever been asked in history before? I doubt it.


The answer is, of course, no. If you could however, then (insert hilarious witty comment.)

[golach]

Aye but the sixties set the scene for today. The seeds were planted and we now reap what was sown. The sixties produced quite a few revolutions and we now live with the consequences.
You were just a teenager in 1960, and we all know nobody of any merit listened to teenagers in those days, anyway you should have been doing your National Service [lol]

[oldmarine]

Einstein's theory appears to suggest time travel is possible although no one has been able to do so to date or at least not reported.

[Gleber2]

You were just a teenager in 1960, and we all know nobody of any merit listened to teenagers in those days, anyway you should have been doing your National Service [lol]

Too many listened to us and look where it's got us. Just missed NS thank the good whatever.

[Kaishowing]

Too many listened to us and look where it's got us.

But at least the teenagers in the 60's cared enough to get involved......Nowadays you'd be hard pushed to get most teens off the sofa let alone demonstarting for a political cause.
It's a shame that so many people nowadays think that it doesn't make any difference, so why bother.
I think even if someone went back in time and told the people demonstating against the Vietnam War, or those who wanted to 'Ban The Bomb' that in the end it wouldn't happen or that people would stop caring enough, they'd still do it anyway!
I miss that optomistic commitment.

[phoenix]

Einstein's theory appears to suggest time travel is possible although no one has been able to do so to date or at least not reported.

If it was reported would you believe it? If someone told you they had theyd travelled to a different time zone would you believe them.........I think not......you would most likely want proof.......am I right? People that have travelled into a different time zone or time warp or another world parrallel to the one we live in dont usually go around broadcasting it, knowing full well theyd be laughed at.

[pultneytooner]

But at least the teenagers in the 60's cared enough to get involved......Nowadays you'd be hard pushed to get most teens off the sofa let alone demonstarting for a political cause.
It's a shame that so many people nowadays think that it doesn't make any difference, so why bother.
I think even if someone went back in time and told the people demonstating against the Vietnam War, or those who wanted to 'Ban The Bomb' that in the end it wouldn't happen or that people would stop caring enough, they'd still do it anyway!
I miss that optomistic commitment.
That suits todays governments down to the ground.

[Dreadnought]

But at least the teenagers in the 60's cared enough to get involved......Nowadays you'd be hard pushed to get most teens off the sofa let alone demonstarting for a political cause.
It's a shame that so many people nowadays think that it doesn't make any difference, so why bother.
I think even if someone went back in time and told the people demonstating against the Vietnam War, or those who wanted to 'Ban The Bomb' that in the end it wouldn't happen or that people would stop caring enough, they'd still do it anyway!
I miss that optomistic commitment.

Why do you think education standards are so far down the government's listof priorities?