A Question about Time Travelling

[Sinbad]

I will now travel back in time to change the past.

If the Germans lost WW2 and Wednesday comes after Tuesday you will know I have succeeded.

repost.

 

[nogard]

repost.

You seem desperate.

 

[Arthur]

What if you could only travel back in time to the invention of timetravel and not before that?
What if only a select few are allowed to travel and they aren't allowed to reveal themselves now?
What if their cognition gets screwed up when they travel back and they end up in our mental institutions?

1. That's a magical conception of the universe. The cosmos would have to 'know' that time travel was discovered, which would require that it somehow 'know' this in order for your barrier to be effective only from that date. Absurd.
2. Do you imagine a fascist future where that kind of control is in place? How would those who remain behind verify the breach? Why would a police-state send/allow people back in time?
3. The overwhelming majority of people in mental institutions do not have cognition problems (I asked my wife, who's a clinical psychologist). Only a fraction of certifiable people are institutionalised, so the majority of future time-travellers would in any case be roaming free; besides, mental institutions are a relatively recent invention. If there's no way for the future fascist police-state society to recover/remove the brain-damaged who went back to the past, one wonders why they'd bother sending people back in the first place, especially when they'd just inherit worse problems down the line. You might as well ask "what if they are here and we can't see them because they're invisible?". Back to magic.

The real reason why backward time travel is impossible even theoretically lies in the very architecture of matter and thus space-time. An ens mobile changes its relations to other entis mobile, and that rate of change we call time (broad summary). Causation runs linearly and cannot be run backwards without making everything incomprehensible and absurd.

 

[Moosedrool]

A good show to watch about this is Into the Universe with Stephen Hawiking EP 2 Time Travel. It covers the basic principles of time traveling. Also explains relative motion and why the speed of light is the ultimate govern.

Traveling into the future is definitely possible and gets achieved every time you move faster than your point of reference in time. Gravity actually slows down time relative to the rest of the universe. And just like in the paradox thread, the reason why traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible is because time actually slows down relative to observers as you tend to reach that speed. Stephan hawking uses a train travelling just shy of that speed and a girl running forward inside the train as an example. She can’t break the limit because time will incrementally slow down for her relative to the other observers on the train.

If the unifying theory points to that time is a spatial dimension then you’ll just forgot you travelled back and be yourself a few years younger. Even though I agree with the aspect of 4th dimensional time this makes the most sense. Think of the universe as a long densely packed 3 dimensional tube “Spime” that has a cut out section of you. 2 spatial dimensions that we all understand and 1 spatial time dimension. It will be a richly structured blob of you.

This is what we mean when saying the universe is static. Living things just experience this as time due to how signals travel in your mind from one of these frames to the other. It indeed is then theorized to be an illusion. Going back means actually changing the object which has never happened before and probably won’t ever happen. If a human does this you will just experience exactly what you did before.

 

[zippy]

sci-fi movies should have in BIG massive letters at the beginning and at the end :

THIS IS NOT A F*****ING DOCUMENTARY

 

[mouks]

sci-fi movies should have in BIG massive letters at the beginning and at the end :

THIS IS NOT A F*****ING DOCUMENTARY

Party Pooper

If time traveling becomes possible and we are able to travel to the future.. What will be waiting there as it hasn't happend yet?

 

[Jabberwocky]

If the unifying theory points to that time is a spatial dimension then you’ll just forgot you travelled back and be yourself a few years younger

Travelling back in time, everything goes in reverse and you just become the same oblivious version of your younger self, who grows older and then travels back in time, stuck in an infinite loop.

Don`t travel back in time guys

 

[chrisc]

"Impossible" should refer to conjectures like trying to pour 1 litre of water into a 500ml container. Not things we do not understand today. History is littered with pronouncements that such and such is impossible. Not 150 years ago, heavier than air flight had been proved to be impossible.

Not only the future strange, but it is stranger than we can ever imagine.

In the early 1960's, I used to write Science Fiction short stories and was told off by one editor as I described an elevator that knew when someone had stepped in and closed the doors and started to move. He told me to "get back to reality" so I told him that he was out of touch. He rejected all my stories thereafter, but Amazing Science Fiction printed the lot, but of course you only received £1.00 a story from them in those days.

 

[Moosedrool]

Travelling back in time, everything goes in reverse and you just become the same oblivious version of your younger self, who grows older and then travels back in time, stuck in an infinite loop.

Don`t travel back in time guys

Or you'll be yourself a few years younger and follow an alternate route in choice/chance aka the 5th dimension and drift off into an alternate reality from the one you're previous version has or had. Aka 2 dimensional time.

 

[Unhappy438]

Not 150 years ago, heavier than air flight had been proved to be impossible.

Whoever made this comment didnt really think about it, i wonder how he thought birds flew? Unless birds were thought to be lighter than air :erm: .

Impossible" should refer to conjectures like trying to pour 1 litre of water into a 500ml container. Not things we do not understand today.

We have laws for the universe and breaking these laws is no different to pouring 1 litre of water into a 500ml container. I do agree that we shouldnt use the word "impossible" , maybe 99.999999% not going to happen though .

 

[ponder]

We have laws for the universe and breaking these laws is no different to pouring 1 litre of water into a 500ml container.

Depends on how slow you pour the water, if you pour it slower than than the time it takes for 500ml to evaporate then you should be fine

 

[Picard]

I still like Naas Botha's comment about the the relativity of time the best.

He said: "I don't want to speculate about the future because I don't know what's going to happen".

 

[Rosaudio]

Prove time exists first.

Think about it.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Prove time exists first.

Think about it.

here`s your proof

you have to had posted your post before I replied

and don`t tell me its all in your head, because I know I`m posting this now

 

[Picard]

here`s your proof

you have to had posted your post before I replied

and don`t tell me its all in your head, because I know I`m posting this now

Your whole existence (including your post) and mine (including my post) might be all in his head.

 

[Jabberwocky]

 

[Moosedrool]

here`s your proof

you have to had posted your post before I replied

and don`t tell me its all in your head, because I know I`m posting this now

I found this video describing my post of the 4th spatial dimension a bit better. I’m not a very good teacher though.

[video=youtube;MN4KC_zlW4g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN4KC_zlW4g[/video]

 

[Swa]

As nobody ever did it it seems impossible to say if it's possible or not.

Primer tries to address this making sure your real self and your alternate self do not meet so as not to alter reality, but still this is completely implausable.

Any ideas?

Reality will be altered even if you don't meet yourself. This is only a problem if you alter it in a way that changes you going back in time. Then on the one hand you alter it so you no longer have a reason to go back but on the other if you don't have a reason to go back you won't alter it so you'll still have a reason to go back. This could be solved with multiple realities so both timelines still exist but which one will you remember?

Alternatively the timeline may be the result of going back. Suppose you go back and instead of preventing your parents from meeting you find out you actually cause them to meet. This also seems contradictory so how can it be? Well simple actually, two dependent events happened in the same timeline so time doesn't care about the logic. At least it doesn't require multiple realities or the implosion of time or some infinite loop.

I don't think it will be possible though as there would be anarchy so likely man will make up some legal law to prevent it.

Time travel IS possible. Didn't Superman do it in the second movie?

Superman change the rotation of earth or just went around it while going faster than light. It's not clear which one it is. The loose thread is why would either result in backwards and not forward travel. Could never understand that one so clearly just a plot device, might as well have used a genie.

 

[azbob]

I time travelled last night. I drove into CT and there were some kids on rollerblades.

 

[falcon786]

"Impossible" should refer to conjectures like trying to pour 1 litre of water into a 500ml container. Not things we do not understand today.

Depends on how slow you pour the water, if you pour it slower than than the time it takes for 500ml to evaporate then you should be fine

You could always compress the water,yeah sure it would require immense amount of force but it certainly isnt impossible.