Do you think it's possible for time travel to occur?
I don't mean is it possible to make a machine to travel through time, I mean that if a machine were made that had the ability to move things through time, would it work without destroying the fabric of the universe by poking holes in the space-time continuum that lead back/forward to other points in time causing a time-leak of some kind resulting in cataclysmic events and the end of the universe?
I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this before I start flourishing my wacky (possibly even zany) opinions around as if they were fact.
Time Travel
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I do not believe it is possible. I believe that once a point in time is gone, it's gone - I don't believe, as some do, that every moment past, present and future exists at once. I think of time simply as the way we perceive how each moment leads to the next.
Travel forwards in time could, perhaps, be possible - but it would not be true time travel, simply preserving something perfectly as it is (which still seems very unlikely - you'd have to pause chemical processes, for example) for any length of time.
Travel forwards in time could, perhaps, be possible - but it would not be true time travel, simply preserving something perfectly as it is (which still seems very unlikely - you'd have to pause chemical processes, for example) for any length of time.
At the temperature of ABSOLUTE ZERO (0 Kelvin, -273 degrees Celsius) no chemical processes occur because there is no energy present to allow movement of particles (or create movement of particles, or exist as movement of particles depending on how you look at it. Heat is, after all, just movement of particles), so chemical processes will not occur AT ALL. I'm sure someone will point out that we have never achieved absolute zero so I'll say it myself. However, that's not to say it's impossible. Things are only impossible if you don't try.you'd have to pause chemical processes, for example
What if the person from the future was there when that point in time existed? We don't know how it would work, time travel could place people in that point in time as it existed, rather than shifting everything else forwards and therefore going back to that point and 'playing it again'. It would be as if the point in time had only existed once anyway (and since time is a constant it will have only existed once, and the person from the future will not have changed time, he'll have just been there all along.I believe that once a point in time is gone, it's gone
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No, I don't believe it's possible. Not backward time-travel, anyway. The Einstein/Relativity sense of time-travel would seem to be a natural part of the fabric of the space-time continuum, and I guess we'll see that kind of thing as we develop ways to travel at much greater speeds. But I don't imagine that's what you're talking about now.
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aTOMiC
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I don't believe time travel is possible but that opinion is born from my essential ignorance of possibilities in the universe that we as humans are unable to grasp. I think an absolute rejection of time travel is valid within the context of our understanding but also a bit arrogant. To suggest that humans understand so much of existance that we can rule out something we don't fully comprehend in the first place is almost amusing. Without proof in one fashion or another these conversations should be regarded as opinion. I'll say this. If time travel is possible I would tend to believe that only time travel into the past makes sense. How can you travel to something that does not as yet exist? The past has already been forged. The future is still waiting to be constructed. The concept of unlimited future timelines is a lot of fun to consider though. 
None of the nonsense I have just blathered on about should be taken seriously.
None of the nonsense I have just blathered on about should be taken seriously."If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make?"
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Fist said:
Oh wait. Thats impossible, it'd break the Arch.....
Couldn't agree more. Travelling back in time is IMPOSSIBLE, there is simply nothing to travel TO. However, as Fist has mentioned, it is theoretically possible to send something forward in time, reaching a speed which outpaces time itself.No, I don't believe it's possible. Not backward time-travel, anyway. The Einstein/Relativity sense of time-travel would seem to be a natural part of the fabric of the space-time continuum, and I guess we'll see that kind of thing as we develop ways to travel at much greater speeds. But I don't imagine that's what you're talking about now.
Oh wait. Thats impossible, it'd break the Arch.....
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His response: "Holy $&!^. He's not kidding! Look at all these muffins!"
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But travel into the future is possible, if you look at it from the perspective of moving faster into the future. And that's something that happens every day; a clock on Earth and a clock in orbit of Earth will be out of sync (albeit minutely) because the clock on Earth becomes slower. It's the Earth's gravity field that slows time down. In that sense, if one was to accelerate in space ship towards the speed of light then time slows down. Relatively, the outside universe speeds up; while it takes you only, say, 20 years, about 1000 years may have passed. Thus one has traveled into the future. It's not like you have jumped into the future, but just traveled faster towards it. Sorry for the lecture.TOM C wrote:I'll say this. If time travel is possible I would tend to believe that only time travel into the past makes sense. How can you travel to something that does not as yet exist? The past has already been forged. The future is still waiting to be constructed.
As for backwards in time, well Tachyon particles are rumoured to do that. As for humans, no way. There is a theory in quantum physics that all matter is connected via transactional and retarded waves. These waves travel forward or back in time. Some physicists believe that all matter and energy is 'connected' in some fashion. Now any particle traveling back in time will upset this, in my belief. Maybe not tachyons.
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Ur-Vile wrote:No need to be concerned about lecturing me. I am a sponge for such information. I suppose I think about Time travel in a physical/practical sense. The fact that a suspended molecule might be transported 12 seconds into the past and 12 seconds into the future is pretty interesting but if you'll never be able to send my Aunt Fanny back in time to see Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo or into the future to witness the historic signing of a peace accord with Aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy then true time travel isn't going to be a lot of fun. No paradoxes. No corrupted timelines. No violation of the Prime Directive. How boring.TOM C wrote: But travel into the future is possible, if you look at it from the perspective of moving faster into the future. And that's something that happens every day; a clock on Earth and a clock in orbit of Earth will be out of sync (albeit minutely) because the clock on Earth becomes slower. It's the Earth's gravity field that slows time down. In that sense, if one was to accelerate in space ship towards the speed of light then time slows down. Relatively, the outside universe speeds up; while it takes you only, say, 20 years, about 1000 years may have passed. Thus one has traveled into the future. It's not like you have jumped into the future, but just traveled faster towards it. Sorry for the lecture.
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If time travel were possible would we not be inundated with tourists from the future?
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If time travel were possible wouldn't time travelers who are obviously possessed of advanced technology and a better understand of the universe, have tools at their disposal to prevent detection of their presence in the past? It is also possible that travelers through time are able to witness past events but are unable to physically interact with them. Sort of like phantom state of existence while in the past. Many ghost sightings could just be time travelers having a nice look see.Brinn wrote:If time travel were possible would we not be inundated with tourists from the future?
"If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make?"
"There is tic and toc in atomic" - Neil Peart
Even if it were possible... and we could do it... what would be the use... I mean look what happened the last time someone tried time-travel! He ended up being his own grand-father... 
hehe, kidding aside... if it were, people would be idiotic to do ANYTHING. Because the slightest change could amplify itself over time. And the future as was know to the "timetravellers" could be very different...
hehe, kidding aside... if it were, people would be idiotic to do ANYTHING. Because the slightest change could amplify itself over time. And the future as was know to the "timetravellers" could be very different...
Of course. My bad.Tom C wrote:If time travel were possible wouldn't time travelers who are obviously possessed of advanced technology and a better understand of the universe, have tools at their disposal to prevent detection of their presence in the past?
Is this technology you speak of known as "Television"?Tom C wrote:It is also possible that travelers through time are able to witness past events but are unable to physically interact with them.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. John Stuart Mill
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The movie "Somewhere in Time" Starring Christopher Reeves, would be a good one if you havent already seen it. ( An oldy, but it is good)
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Again a gleam sprang from under the Giant's massive brows. "There is power in names."
"That is another long story," the Giant returned and repeated, "What is your need?"
But Atiaran insisted dully, "Your name."
Again a gleam sprang from under the Giant's massive brows. "There is power in names."
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Since this thread has been resurrected, I've taken the liberty of posting something else I once wrote on this question. Please bear in mind that it's not a scientific paper, it's half tongue in cheek, it's just a concept that amuses me, and about which I was thinking. Rip it to shreds if you want, I'm not even sure if I can defend it. All thoughts are welcome. 
We know that energy cannot be destroyed. It exists in potential until we liberate it through one of a variety of mechanical or chemical processes, it performs its function, and is then converted into one of innumerable other states. We release it back into the depths of space, from whence it came, and never give another thought to it.
And yet it cannot be gone. It exists still, in whatever altered state it has achieved or been forced into. What are the implications of this? Anything that ever was, ever existed or ever happened, must, in one form or another, still be existing or happening right now.
Now if we can assume that all energy is immortal, let us ask another question. Where do we draw the line? What isn’t energy? Everything alive is obviously energy. Yet energy exists in non-living objects as well. That lump of coal for example. The rock at your feet is potential energy. What about things we cannot see? Well sunlight is energy, so is gas. Even steam is energy. What else?
How about time? Can we consider time to be a force? Of course it must be. Time can affect its surrounding, simply by virtue of the fact that nothing could happen at all if things did not exist in time. Although we cannot perceive Time without some context, once that context is in place, (the context in this case is our existence-- eat your heart out Schrödinger) its effects are instantly obvious.
So if we consider time as energy (I choose to call it Chronomic Energy) then we must concede that it cannot be destroyed. In other words, all time that has passed, must have gone somewhere. It has been converted from future energy, to present energy, and from there to past energy. Science suggests that if we were to travel at a speed greater than that of light to some distant point in the galaxy, and look toward earth, we would see events there as they occurred in the past, because the light from the Cretaceous period is still traveling out in space. It can take years for a dead star to disappear from our skies, because its light continues traveling toward us for long after the star dies.
Time is nothing but another direction, and at some point, technology will allow us to alter our position relative to the time flow. Our concept of Time is purely Human-Derived. And yet, it must have passed for millennia before we were ever there to observe it, to apply our limited understanding and manipulation to it. Why do we conceive that Time is Uni-Directional? Certainly, things in nature tend not to be. Nature and the universe are symmetrical. Why not Time? I believe that the error lies in our perceptions. The nature of our conception of time is flawed, and until we repair it, time will be forever closed to us.
A large part of our conceptual error lies in the geometry of Time. It is a fairly common consensus that Time is the so-called Fourth Dimension. And certainly this is a fair enough deduction.
Let us continue with a brief consideration of the nature of Geometry.
An excellent starting point is Euclid’s perfect geometric point. Imagine it if you will. Nothing but a single point, a placeholder, no breadth, no depth, no length.
You can’t. It isn’t possible. If you are imagining it, you must have some place for it to be. Now we have the first dimension, length. The point must have a line to support it. However, the line cannot exist independently. It too requires another dimension to support it. Breadth. The second dimension. Now we have a plane. However, and I’m sure that you can see where this is going to; something must support this dimension as well. Hence the third dimension, or depth. Now, something must support this depth. Hence a fourth Dimension, time. Somewhere to support the other three. Three dimensions cannot be perceived unless we have somewhere to perceive them from.
However, why the hell do we stop there? Surely if we recognise that for each dimension to exist there is the requirement of another dimension to support it, a viewing platform if you will, then we must postulate yet another. Do we now suspend logic and say, “that’s it now, we’ll leave time just hanging there.” Of course we can’t. Even though Time as a dimension exists at right angles to the other three, logic dictates that it too requires the support of another dimension.
And so on, ad infinitum. Its elephants all the way to the bottom. Of course, we can continue postulating one dimension after another for all time, and it doesn’t actually prove anything. For science to have any validity at all, there must be a bottom somewhere. But here we are into n-dimensional geometry, about which I know even less than I do about the normal stuff.
Time is a direction. Keep it in mind. You never know when it could come in handy.
We know that energy cannot be destroyed. It exists in potential until we liberate it through one of a variety of mechanical or chemical processes, it performs its function, and is then converted into one of innumerable other states. We release it back into the depths of space, from whence it came, and never give another thought to it.
And yet it cannot be gone. It exists still, in whatever altered state it has achieved or been forced into. What are the implications of this? Anything that ever was, ever existed or ever happened, must, in one form or another, still be existing or happening right now.
Now if we can assume that all energy is immortal, let us ask another question. Where do we draw the line? What isn’t energy? Everything alive is obviously energy. Yet energy exists in non-living objects as well. That lump of coal for example. The rock at your feet is potential energy. What about things we cannot see? Well sunlight is energy, so is gas. Even steam is energy. What else?
How about time? Can we consider time to be a force? Of course it must be. Time can affect its surrounding, simply by virtue of the fact that nothing could happen at all if things did not exist in time. Although we cannot perceive Time without some context, once that context is in place, (the context in this case is our existence-- eat your heart out Schrödinger) its effects are instantly obvious.
So if we consider time as energy (I choose to call it Chronomic Energy) then we must concede that it cannot be destroyed. In other words, all time that has passed, must have gone somewhere. It has been converted from future energy, to present energy, and from there to past energy. Science suggests that if we were to travel at a speed greater than that of light to some distant point in the galaxy, and look toward earth, we would see events there as they occurred in the past, because the light from the Cretaceous period is still traveling out in space. It can take years for a dead star to disappear from our skies, because its light continues traveling toward us for long after the star dies.
Time is nothing but another direction, and at some point, technology will allow us to alter our position relative to the time flow. Our concept of Time is purely Human-Derived. And yet, it must have passed for millennia before we were ever there to observe it, to apply our limited understanding and manipulation to it. Why do we conceive that Time is Uni-Directional? Certainly, things in nature tend not to be. Nature and the universe are symmetrical. Why not Time? I believe that the error lies in our perceptions. The nature of our conception of time is flawed, and until we repair it, time will be forever closed to us.
A large part of our conceptual error lies in the geometry of Time. It is a fairly common consensus that Time is the so-called Fourth Dimension. And certainly this is a fair enough deduction.
Let us continue with a brief consideration of the nature of Geometry.
An excellent starting point is Euclid’s perfect geometric point. Imagine it if you will. Nothing but a single point, a placeholder, no breadth, no depth, no length.
You can’t. It isn’t possible. If you are imagining it, you must have some place for it to be. Now we have the first dimension, length. The point must have a line to support it. However, the line cannot exist independently. It too requires another dimension to support it. Breadth. The second dimension. Now we have a plane. However, and I’m sure that you can see where this is going to; something must support this dimension as well. Hence the third dimension, or depth. Now, something must support this depth. Hence a fourth Dimension, time. Somewhere to support the other three. Three dimensions cannot be perceived unless we have somewhere to perceive them from.
However, why the hell do we stop there? Surely if we recognise that for each dimension to exist there is the requirement of another dimension to support it, a viewing platform if you will, then we must postulate yet another. Do we now suspend logic and say, “that’s it now, we’ll leave time just hanging there.” Of course we can’t. Even though Time as a dimension exists at right angles to the other three, logic dictates that it too requires the support of another dimension.
And so on, ad infinitum. Its elephants all the way to the bottom. Of course, we can continue postulating one dimension after another for all time, and it doesn’t actually prove anything. For science to have any validity at all, there must be a bottom somewhere. But here we are into n-dimensional geometry, about which I know even less than I do about the normal stuff.
Time is a direction. Keep it in mind. You never know when it could come in handy.