A Question about Time Travelling

[Devill]

Must say, the first time that someone thinks of time being the measurement of change it takes a while to sink in.

 

[Geriatrix]

Must say, the first time that someone thinks of time being the measurement of change it takes a while to sink in.

I've done it before. I can see it. It still hurts. Just run multiple sims and senarios and relate them. Ow.

 

[zippy]

if you could go back in time and meet yourself, then you have managed to create matter. This is completely incompatible with current acceptable physics. So while mathematically time travel may be possible, physically you cant do it. Sci-fi has tried to get around this anomaly by implying your past and present self will destroy each other should they come into contact.

The only version of your self whose matter exists, is your present self. Your previous self is your present self. You cant seperate. If someone does manage to meet another version of themself, then they haven't achieved time-travel. Its more likely they have travelled to an alternative universe and there you can have 2 versions of yourself, because the version of yourself in that universe is made of matter from that universe.

The extent of our ability to time travel is limited to detecting electromagnetic radiation which was created at some point in the past and which reaches in our present. i.e we can "look" back, but we cant "touch"

Even this is isnt real "time travel" because we cant manipulate the em radiation's time componant. We cant detect the same photons we detected yesterday. Today we detect photons that left the distant galaxy the day after the photons we detected yesterday.

 

[Geriatrix]

if you could go back in time and meet yourself, then you have managed to create matter. This is completely incompatible with current acceptable physics. So while mathematically time travel may be possible, physically you cant do it. Sci-fi has tried to get around this anomaly by implying your past and present self will destroy each other should they come into contact.

The only version of your self whose matter exists, is your present self. Your previous self is your present self. You cant seperate. If someone does manage to meet another version of themself, then they haven't achieved time-travel. Its more likely they have travelled to an alternative universe and there you can have 2 versions of yourself, because the version of yourself in that universe is made of matter from that universe.

The extent of our ability to time travel is limited to detecting electromagnetic radiation which was created at some point in the past and which reaches in our present. i.e we can "look" back, but we cant "touch"

Even this is isnt real "time travel" because we cant manipulate the em radiation's time componant. We cant detect the same photons we detected yesterday. Today we detect photons that left the distant galaxy the day after the photons we detected yesterday.

No, moving matter from the present to the past doesn't 'create' matter any more than moving matter from the present to the future would create it. It's a whole; past, present and future.
:edit: This gave me an idea... But I have no idea how to articulate it. I need a moment. :wtf:

 

[Swa]

if you could go back in time and meet yourself, then you have managed to create matter. This is completely incompatible with current acceptable physics. So while mathematically time travel may be possible, physically you cant do it. Sci-fi has tried to get around this anomaly by implying your past and present self will destroy each other should they come into contact.

That would depend on time. If it is another dimension where all the matter past, present and future exists then no you would merely be moving your present matter to the past. If it's real change, whether from moving through another dimension or not, then as said you would have to reverse the state of matter. You can reverse it locally (on earth) or globally (the universe) but either way you would have to exclude yourself so there isn't actually a possibility of meeting yourself. If you don't exclude yourself you'll then be creating another you.

One theory even has it that space contracts sending every particle back to its expansion. So every every electron is really the same one. :wtf:

 

[RiaX]

Hmmm zippy interesting points, but your point assumes the fact of the future is not made yet. You cant just assume that, because what if past present and future exisit at the same time? then you would simply be moving matter from point a to b within the dimensions of the universe. Your arguement doesnt hold for traveling forwards in time. Keep in mind there is NO definition of time, you cannot define the concept of time without using the word time or any of its units of measure. Also in the laws of physics there is nothing that says time cant flow in reverse, every single equation works equally well in the negative. It doesnt happen because of entropy and the concept known as the arrow of time, so if time is a dimension then its not absolute in direction

@ swa all electrons are the same, every single one in the universe and they are present everywhere in the universe at the same time, they only appear to be what they are when you look at them... quantum mechanics, throw logic and reason out the window

 

[Swa]

@ swa all electrons are the same, every single one in the universe and they are present everywhere in the universe at the same time, they only appear to be what they are when you look at them... quantum mechanics, throw logic and reason out the window

I didn't say they are the same. From what we can gather they all have the same properties. If there are any differences it's undetectable.

I said it says that all electrons is the same electron as in the same individual.

 

[zippy]

Hmmm zippy interesting points, but your point assumes the fact of the future is not made yet. You cant just assume that, because what if past present and future exisit at the same time? then you would simply be moving matter from point a to b within the dimensions of the universe. Your arguement doesnt hold for traveling forwards in time. Keep in mind there is NO definition of time, you cannot define the concept of time without using the word time or any of its units of measure. Also in the laws of physics there is nothing that says time cant flow in reverse, every single equation works equally well in the negative. It doesnt happen because of entropy and the concept known as the arrow of time, so if time is a dimension then its not absolute in direction

@ swa all electrons are the same, every single one in the universe and they are present everywhere in the universe at the same time, they only appear to be what they are when you look at them... quantum mechanics, throw logic and reason out the window

If you are moving matter from point a to point b when time travelling, then that means matter does not "move" in time, but replicates as time moves. Therefore multiple versions of matter exist across time lines. I.e. a version of myself exists in the past and a version of myself exists in the present.

This means that time itself is creating matter? Where does the energy for this come from?. The fact that yesterday there was a version of me, and today there is a version of me, means new matter had to have been created.

This is a staggering thought, because how many "ticks" of the time clock does it take to create a new version?

How many possible "destinations" are there?

You can only time travel to a place that has matter, no?

The problem of a version of an object bring replicated to make the time travel possible is something I can't get my head around. Even if we assume you can't time travel to time when you where alive, the destination consists if matter, or it doesnt exist at all, therefore we can't go back to it. It ain't there no more ?

Let's for a moment assume(for sake of what sanity is left ), that the future doesn't exist yet and is being continuously created.

The future can only already exist if you have time travelled backwards.

 

[RiaX]

careful matter is not energy, I can destroy matter so by that notion the converse should be true.

You cannot apply the second law of thermodynamics to matter

 

[Techne]

Hmmm zippy interesting points, but your point assumes the fact of the future is not made yet. You cant just assume that, because what if past present and future exisit at the same time? then you would simply be moving matter from point a to b within the dimensions of the universe.

This is actually an interesting view of reality. It is a view that appears to implicitly follow from a 4-dimensionalistic (4Dist) view of reality as developed by Einstein. On this view reality is a single block of space-time and everything that exists have spatial parts as well as temporal parts.

There is an interesting contemporary debate between 3-dimensionalism (the 3Dists) and 4Dists about which view is correct.
Perhaps an analogy can help visualize the concepts.
Let's take the example of Fido, Brutus and Pluto, Sylvester, Felix and Garfield. Fido, Brutus and Pluto have the same identity, meaning they are all examples of Canis lupus familiaris. Sylvester, Felix and Garfield have the same identity, meaning they are all examples of Felis catus. Fido, Brutus and Pluto, Sylvester, Felix and Garfield are also distinct individuals (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Identity vs Individuality​

Let's now apply these example to see how individuals and identities endure or perdure through change in 3-Dimensionalistic and 4-Dimensionalistic views of reality.

The 3Dist view can be summed up as follows:
An individual on this view has parts at different spatial locations (X,Y,Z = 3D). It's 3D parts does not exist yesterday or tomorrow, they only exist now. Given a line drawn on a piece of paper, the 3Dist thinks of him as the tip of the pen that produces the line. The tip is present at every interval that the line is drawn, but he only exists as a single point (thus wholly the same as it persists through time).

The 4Dist view can be summed up as follows:
An individual on this view has parts at different spatial locations (X,Y,Z = 3D) as well as different times (temporal parts). Reality is a single block of space-time. Given a line drawn on a piece of paper, the 4Dist thinks of the line as a representation of himself. He is thus spread out in time, he is the line spread out in space-time like a 4D worm (or 2D line in the analogy).

Or to use the examples above, take Pluto and Felix.
• Pluto was born in 1999 and Felix was born in 2001.
• Pluto is an individual with the identity of Canis lupus familiaris. Felix is an individual with the identity of Felis catus.
• Pluto the 3Dist has spatial parts. Pluto has a spatial part in his toe (Pluto's toe), in his brain (Pluto's brain), in his arm (Pluto's arm) etc. Together all these parts are real and constitute Pluto the individual Canis lupus familiaris as he moves through time. The same goes for Felix the 3Dist.
• Pluto the 4Dist has spatial parts as well as temporal parts. Pluto has a spatial part in his toe (Pluto's toe). Pluto also has temporal parts for example one temporal part is Pluto's-toe in-2000 and another temporal part is Pluto's-toe-in-2010. All these spatial and temporal parts together constitute Pluto the individual Canis lupus familiaris. The same goes for Felix the 4Dist.


If that does not make sense, let's assume Pluto is a 1-Dimensional object moving through time (Figure 2 – analogous to 3Dism) or a 2D space-time object (Figure 3 – analogous to 4Dism).

Figure 2: Pluto is a 1-dimensional object moving through time.

Figure 3: Pluto is a 2-Dimensional space-time object.​

A few peculiar things arise for the 2Dist view. The “at-at” theory of motion states that: to move is to be at one place at one time and at another place at another time. Pluto does not actually move from one place to another on the 2Dist view. Pluto is the sum of all his spatial and temporal parts. Instead, Pluto just gets new parts added to him. The 2Dist (i.e. 4Dist) view does not allow for motion (local change) to be real, instead temporal parts are added via creation ex nihilo. While an individual in the 2Dist view is the total sum of all its temporal and spatial parts, it is difficult to assign an identity based solely on the sum of its parts.

The 1Dist (3Dist) presentist view suffers from the same problem for identity. The only thing that exists for the 1Dist is what exists now. An individual on this view is a sum of all his parts now. It is thus difficult to assign an identity for something that only exists now. In both the 1Dist and 2Dist views, identity seems to be an intellectual abstraction without any basis in the reality of spatial parts or temporal parts.

And so the debate continues...
For those who are interested, here is more information about the contemporary debate between 3dism and 4dism:
wiki
3D vs 4D
Four Dimensionalism
Stanford
IEP

PS, sorry for the large pics .

@ swa all electrons are the same, every single one in the universe and they are present everywhere in the universe at the same time, they only appear to be what they are when you look at them... quantum mechanics, throw logic and reason out the window

I don't see any reason to throw logic and reason out when it comes to quantum mechanics.

 

[Techne]

careful matter is not energy, I can destroy matter so by that notion the converse should be true.

You cannot apply the second law of thermodynamics to matter

That depends on your definition of matter. The modern view of the concept of “matter” became prominent during the 16th century with philosophers and mathematicians such as Galileo and Renee Descartes. This view can essentially be summed up as:
1) Matter is homogeneous and of the same nature and only distinguished by quantitative differences of size, shape, mass, spin, tension (string theory) and motion.
2) Matter does not act for an end. It has no intrinsic finality or goal-directedness.
3) At the fundamental level matter has no conscious activity.
4) All change is described as the arrangement and rearrangement of matter.

For the Aristotelian, matter is the underlying principle of change. Change (or motion) is described as the reduction of potentiality to actuality. The concepts of potentiality and actuality together with prime matter and substantial form are central to the Aristotelian view of reality. All material substances (in many ways similar to the modern view of matter) according to this view are composites of potentiality and actuality, prime matter and substantial form.
Prime matter according to this view:
1) Is pure potentiality. It is something that can be transformed by an actualizing principle into anything which nature allows.
2) Is wholly indeterminate substrate underlying change.
3) Prime matter itself does not undergo change.
4) Has no form.
5) Is the closest there is to nothingness without being nothingness.
6) Is a state of being without form.
7) Cannot actualize itself since it has no actuality, it is only actualized by something actual.

There are good arguments that the Aristotelian view of matter is analogous to the modern concept of energy.

A third way to look at matter is the panpsychist view of matter. For the panpsychist, at the fundamental level, matter has some sort of mental activity or the underlying something that makes up "matter" has a mental element or a conscious element to it.

So the relationship between matter and energy depends on a person's view of matter.

 

[RiaX]

hmmm interesting. Though if I take an anti-matter particle and introduce a particle of matter, they would obliterate each other with a 100% conversion to pure energy, and the matter is gone. Though I dont think I can obliterate the energy itself into well ... who knows cause no one has destroyed energy.

Dude really your so called explainations are a bit complex even when you try to make it easier rofl... i didnt read it fully too tired

and when it comes to quantum mechanics you have to throw logic out the window, that is conventional logic. Otherwise you wont be able to comprehend the randomness of an electron. In other words how can an election rotate clockwise and anticlockwise at the same time? or how can it be at point A point B and point C at the same time when the distance between the points is 500 million light years? logic will tell you thats not possible! I mean you are made up of atoms which have electrons and you are not present in CPT JHB and DBN at the same time are you? Instant information travel that negates space (quantum pairs) logic will tell you that its not possible that information cant just appear like that.... if you hold to your so called "logic" in quantum theory then it will prohibit you from discovering the truth. As it did for Einstein

 

[Techne]

hmmm interesting. Though if I take an anti-matter particle and introduce a particle of matter, they would obliterate each other with a 100% conversion to pure energy, and the matter is gone. Though I dont think I can obliterate the energy itself into well ... who knows cause no one has destroyed energy.

Or one can say, (from an Aristotelian point of view) that when an anti-matter substance and a matter substance are introduced into a system both cease to exist and the underlying principle of change (prime matter) takes on a new form.

Dude really your so called explainations are a bit complex even when you try to make it easier rofl... i didnt read it fully too tired

If you are talking about 3Dism vs 4Dism... I tried, it's a difficult but interesting area. The links provided most probably explain it much better.

and when it comes to quantum mechanics you have to throw logic out the window, that is conventional logic. Otherwise you wont be able to comprehend the randomness of an electron. In other words how can an election rotate clockwise and anticlockwise at the same time? or how can it be at point A point B and point C at the same time when the distance between the points is 500 million light years? logic will tell you thats not possible! I mean you are made up of atoms which have electrons and you are not present in CPT JHB and DBN at the same time are you? Instant information travel that negates space (quantum pairs) logic will tell you that its not possible that information cant just appear like that.... if you hold to your so called "logic" in quantum theory then it will prohibit you from discovering the truth. As it did for Einstein

Not entirely sure what you mean by "conventional logic".

Though, I don't think anything in quantum mechanics suggest that the principle of non-contradiction has to be abandoned (if that is what you mean by "conventional logic").

For example, quantum mechanics does not explicitly state that an electron "rotates clockwise and anticlockwise at the same time".
It does not explicitly state that electrons occupy different points at the same time.

Re information. Yeah, Bell's experiments pretty much demonstrated that action at a distance is true though there isn't anything about it that suggest we abandon logic.

The Stern-Gerlach experiment is s pretty good experiment to demonstrate quantum indeterminacy.

Click on this link for a pretty neat flash animation.

To demonstrate and understand the sheer bizarreness of quantum physics, set the flash animation up in the following manner.

Spin orientation: +z
Number of magnets: 3
Angle 1: 0
Angle 2: 90
Angle 3: 180

Before we start, let’s first try to understand what this setup may imply.

A) One can say that an electron with a spin of z=+½ (spin pointing upwards along the vertical axis) is prepared and released.

B) Magnet 1 is pointing upwards along the vertical axis as well in the positive direction. This means that all electrons with spin of z=+½ will move through the “plus” hole. After the electron move passed the first magnet, the electron should still have a spin of Sz=+½. For arguments sake one can assume some sort of determinism and say that it may be conceivable that some electrons face either to some degree along the positive horizontal x-axis or the negative horizontal x-axis. So you can have an electron that is z=+½ and x=-½ like this:

Figure 1: Electron with z=+½ and x=-½ spin (given some sort of deterministic interpretation).​

So all the electrons that pass through the first magnet may have a 50:50 chance of having a positive x-spin or a negative x-spin while all the electrons will have a positive z-spin. And we can predict, using deterministic assumptions that this will be the case.

C) Magnet 2 is pointing along the horizontal axis and along the negative direction. In this case all the electrons with spin of x=-½ will pass through the red hole in magent two. So, when the electron moves through magnet 2, one can possibly expect them to move through both holes at 50%. So we can at least expect 50% of the electron to pass through magnet two’s red hole. And it may mean that all the electrons going out of this red hole will have spin z=+½ and x=-½ if our determnistic interpretation and predictions are true.

D) Magnet 3 is pointing along the vertical axis and along the negative direction. In this case all the electrons with spin of z=-½ will pass through the red hole of magent three. After all this we may rightly expect AND predict that ALL the electrons coming out of magnet 2′s red hole will pass through the blue hole in magnet 3 since none of the electrons will have a spin of z=-½, assuming a deterministic interpretation.

Ok, now run the experiment and see what happens.

If you let it run long enough you will notice that 50% of the electrons coming out of magnet two will come out of the red hole in magnet three. So our deterministic interpretation is obviously wrong and it appears there is no way we can predict the outcome with any certainty above 50%. The event is indeterministic, we cannot predict the specific value if of the spin of an electron before it exists if the magnet faces a different direction.

Now this does not imply that quantum mechanics is "random".

There is no agreed definition of randomness, however, one can perhaps make sense of the concept as an absence of ALL order or ALL predictability or the opposite of ANY order.

Suppose there is something that behaved in a way that could only be described as random, something that changes in a totally unpredictable manner. Let’s take an electron with spin Sz=+½ as an example. One moment it is an electron with Sz=+½ around the nucleus of hydrogen in laboratory on earth, the next moment it is moving towards the sun and randomly changes to a proton of carbon and then inexplicably moves back, the next moment it is some gold nugget on its way towards Mars. Suppose you want to measure Sz, you could never in principle know or predict whether it would suddenly change into a gold nugget or a proton or fly to the sun or Mars and back or just be Sx=+½ or Sx=-½ or not change at all etc. One can argue that such an electron behaves in a random manner as there is no way to predict any kind of behaviour.

Contrast this with an electron that behaves in an indeterminate manner. Let’s take the electron with spin Sz=+½ again as an example. From experiments we know that Sx is indeterminate and that the electron is free to be either Sx=+½ or Sx=-½ upon measurement of Sx. We are able to predict that it will be either Sx=+½ or Sx=-½ even though it is indterminate before measurement. The freedom is determined by something that is part of the electron, some property of the electron. One can say that the electron has certain dispositions, there is order (either Sx=+½ or Sx=-½, not pure radmoness) in the freedom of an electron. The freedom is not random, it is merely indeterminate. So while randomness entails indeterminism, indeterminism does not entail randmoness. One can have indeterminism and order and one can have indeterminism and randomness but one cannot intelligibly argue to have pure randomness and order or orderly randomness.

One can claim that quantum mechanics demonstrates that, at the quantum level, determinism is false and some form of indeterminism is true and this does not imply that it is random. In fact, at best one can claim quantum mechanics is indeterministic and NOT random in any ontologically interesting manner.

Also, none of this implies that electrons have a Sx=+½ AND Sx=-½ spin at the same time or that the same electron exists in many locations at the same time. The principle of non-contradiction does not have to be abandoned due to quantum mechanics.

 

[zippy]

careful matter is not energy, I can destroy matter so by that notion the converse should be true.

You cannot apply the second law of thermodynamics to matter

Explain how you would create matter without energy?

When you destroy matter, you create energy. That's what a nuclear reaction is.

e=mc^2 ?

 

[Techne]

Explain how you would create matter without energy?

When you destroy matter, you create energy. That's what a nuclear reaction is.

e=mc^2 ?

The "m" in the equation stands for "mass" not matter.

Energy just changes form without being changed/destroyed in the process.

 

[RiaX]

again with the thesis :wtf: lol

 

[Moosedrool]

@Techne. I hate rage comics but:

 

[RiaX]

ROFL

 

[zippy]

The "m" in the equation stands for "mass" not matter.

Energy just changes form without being changed/destroyed in the process.

good point.

 

[Geriatrix]

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...imeless-a-radical-theory-weekend-feature.html

Scientists at the Scientific Research Centre Bistra in Ptuj, Slovenia, have theorized that the
Newtonian idea of time as an absolute quantity that flows on its own, along with the idea that time is the fourth dimension of spacetime, are incorrect. They propose to replace these concepts of time with a view that corresponds more accurately to the physical world: time as a measure of the numerical order of change.
This view doesn’t mean that time does not exist, but that time has more to do with space than with the idea of an absolute time. So while 4D spacetime is usually considered to consist of three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, the researchers’ view suggests that it’s more correct to imagine spacetime as four dimensions of space. In other words, as they say, the Universe is “timeless.”


In two recent papers in Physics Essays, Amrit Sorli, Davide Fiscaletti, and Dusan Klinar, begins by explaining how we usually assume that time is an absolute physical quantity that plays the role of the independent variable (time, t, is often the x-axis on graphs that show the evolution of a physical system). But, as they note, we never really measure t. What we do measure is an object’s frequency and speed. But, by itself, t has only a mathematical value, and no primary physical existence.

“Minkowski space is not 3D + T, it is 4D,” the scientists write in their most recent paper. “The point of view which considers time to be a physical entity in which material changes occur is here replaced with a more convenient view of time being merely the numerical order of material change. This view corresponds better to the physical world and has more explanatory power in describing immediate physical phenomena: gravity, electrostatic interaction, information transfer by EPR experiment are physical phenomena carried directly by the space in which physical phenomena occur.”

“The idea of time being the fourth dimension of space did not bring much progress in physics and is in contradiction with the formalism of special relativity,” he said. “We are now developing a formalism of 3D quantum space based on Planck's work. It seems that the Universe is 3D from the macro to the micro level to the Planck volume, which per formalism is 3D. In this 3D space there is no ‘length contraction,’ there is no ‘time dilation.’ What really exists is that the velocity of material change is ‘relative’ in the Einstein sense.”

The researchers give an example of this concept of time by imagining a photon that is moving between two points in space. The distance between these two points is composed of Planck distances, each of which is the smallest distance that the photon can move. (The fundamental unit of this motion is Planck time.) When the photon moves a Planck distance, it is moving exclusively in space and not in absolute time, the researchers explain. The photon can be thought of as moving from point 1 to point 2, and its position at point 1 is “before” its position at point 2 in the sense that the number 1 comes before the number 2 in the numerical order. Numerical order is not equivalent to temporal order, i.e., the number 1 does not exist before the number 2 in time, only numerically.

Without using time as the fourth dimension of spacetime, the physical world can be described more accurately. As physicist Enrico Prati noted in a recent study, Hamiltonian dynamics (equations in classical mechanics) is robustly well-defined without the concept of absolute time.

Other scientists have pointed out that the mathematical model of spacetime does not correspond to physical reality, and propose that a timeless “state space” provides a more accurate framework. The scientists also investigated the falsifiability of the two notions of time.

The concept of time as the fourth dimension of space -- as a fundamental physical entity in which an experiment occurs -- can be falsified by an experiment in which time does not exist, according to the scientists.

An example of an experiment in which time is not present as a fundamental entity is the Coulomb experiment; mathematically, this experiment takes place only in space. On the other hand, in the concept of time as a numerical order of change taking place in space, space is the fundamental physical entity in which a given experiment occurs. Although this concept could be falsified by an experiment in which time (measured by clocks) is not the numerical order of material change, such an experiment is not yet known.

“Newton theory on absolute time is not falsifiable; you cannot prove it or disprove it -- you have to believe in it,” Sorli said. “The theory of time as the fourth dimension of space is falsifiable and in our last article we prove there are strong indications that it might be wrong. On the basis of experimental data, time is what we measure with clocks: with clocks we measure the numerical order of material change, i.e., motion in space.”

In addition to providing a more accurate description of the nature of physical reality, the concept of time as a numerical order of change can also resolve Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. In this paradox, the faster Achilles gives the Tortoise a head start in the race. But although Achilles can run 10 times faster than the Tortoise, he can never surpass the Tortoise because, for every distance unit that Achilles runs, the Tortoise also runs 1/10 that distance. So whenever Achilles reaches a point where the Tortoise has been, the Tortoise has also moved slightly ahead. Although the conclusion that Achilles can never surpass the Tortoise is obviously false, there are many different proposed explanations for why the argument is flawed.

The paradox can be resolved by redefining velocity, so that the velocity of both runners is derived from the numerical order of their motion, rather than their displacement and direction in time. From this perspective, Achilles and the Tortoise move through space only, and Achilles can surpass Tortoise in space, though not in absolute time.

Some recent studies have challenged the theory that the brain represents time with an internal “clock” that emits neural ticks (the “pacemaker-accumulator” model) and suggest that the brain represents time in a spatially distributed way, by detecting the activation of different neural populations. Although we perceive events as occurring in the past, present, or future, these concepts may just be part of a psychological frame in which we experience material changes in space.