Do you understand Space/Time Relativity?

[Nothxkbi]

Don't believe in time travel? Travel a million light years away, and you could watch the earth through a telescope as it was a million years ago. Imagine if you could record that information and bring it back in an instant?

The catch is, no matter what information is transmitted back from the outside observer to the point of light origin it would always be history.

However, if you were able to transmit instant data to the outside observer from the point of light origin, although you would not ever be able to change the events, you would in effect allow them to see events which have not taken place yet. Hence time travel aka space/time general relativity, the very building blocks of the singularity and wormholes.

That's all there is too it. Theoretically speaking of course it is possible to travel both forward and back in time, although impossible to change time itself or the outcomes. The constants of time are permanent and relative to space/time and nothing can break those laws.

Some light reading - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole

[video=youtube;xl8IT4AQqis]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl8IT4AQqis[/video]

 

[guest2013-1]

Negative-Matter? WTF? Is he on Charlie Sheen? I'm sure his face melted off and his body exploded when he finished that interview.

Excluding science "fiction" (fiction = something that hasn't been proven yet and is highly hypothetical at this stage) and based on your first sentence:

If you were to travel a million light years away, it would have taken you a million light years to get there. That means that *time* has already passed here on earth (provided you could survive that type of trip, but for arguments sake you're 1 million light years away, by any means - wormhole - cryo-stasis - whatever floats your boat). As with Einstein's theory of relativity, time on earth will go slower than it would in relation to you (As they explained with the two clocks and the GPS satellites), but in no ways mean that because you're "ticking" faster than us that you would be able to view our past or future.

Here's an example of forward time travel. now. now. nah-now...NOW... NOOOW...now...now...now (look I'm travelling forward in time so fast that it actually goes back into the past... because once you finished reading this, it's in the past! AMAZING!)

You have to keep in mind that we're talking about clocks here. Stuff that's ticking away, be it nuclear or Swatch. It doesn't prove that one person would age quicker than another if they were out in space or not. (Even though I would agree that gravity does age our bodies quicker since there's a lot more vertebra's involved in standing up and counter-acting the affect of gravity to move around than there is in space).

My opinion, time isn't linear and I'm more inclined to think that we would resonate/tick at the same rate we always will (even though it might go up and down) regardless of our position in the universe. Be it on this planet, another or even just somewhere in the blackness drifting away partying on tigers-blood and winning with our goddesses. But science is there to prove things in cold hard facts and scientific papers instead of the voodoo that some tend to believe in. I for one hope they prove it, but meh, if they don't who cares. Once you're done reading this, there is nothing you can change about it since it's in the past. As you're travelling into the future by reading these specific words, the only recollection you would have is what happened previous. Nothing forward. Just past. Nothing present. Just past. Because the present already passed when you realized what was happening and then it's turned into the past.

"The future is happening now" and so is the past. If I'm here or 1 billion-ka-jillion-pa-pillion-smoochie-trillion light years away or not. As the observer time will be the same for me as it would be for you.

 

[Archer]

Negative-Matter? WTF? Is he on Charlie Sheen? I'm sure his face melted off and his body exploded when he finished that interview.

/mega facepalm
Thats why its called theoretical physics.

You also dont dont seem to have heard of the well known gravitational time dilation. Gravitational time dilation is actually a direct consequence of the special theory of relativity AND has been proven right here on Earth. Perhaps next time dont be so quick to dismiss the work of those that are far smarter than you.

 

[fastesthamster]

That's all there is too it. Theoretically speaking of course it is possible to travel both forward and back in time, although impossible to change time itself or the outcomes. The constants of time are permanent and relative to space/time and nothing can break those laws.

Disagree, travel into the future? Yes. That's easy, travel close to the speed of light for a bit, or sit close enough to a gravitational well. Travel backwards in time? Impossible. You would have to reverse all the interactions between all particles perfectly to get back to the desired state that corresponds to the time you're trying to get to. This is not possible even in principle.

This is using the view that spacetime arises due to the interaction of particles, which I feel is the theory that has the most going for it. If it wasn't how things are, and travel into the past is possible, we would be overrun with time-travellers from the future.

 

[SoulTax]

Disagree, travel into the future? Yes. That's easy, travel close to the speed of light for a bit, or sit close enough to a gravitational well. Travel backwards in time? Impossible. You would have to reverse all the interactions between all particles perfectly to get back to the desired state that corresponds to the time you're trying to get to. This is not possible even in principle.

This is using the view that spacetime arises due to the interaction of particles, which I feel is the theory that has the most going for it. If it wasn't how things are, and travel into the past is possible, we would be overrun with time-travellers from the future.

I think you are missunderstanding the space/time relativity here. By travelling back in time you are not remaining where you are to go back and have a physical effect on time. You can only travel to a distant place, instantly. You would still be in the present wherever you are, but if you were 10 light years away from earth, you would be viewing the visual events of 10 years ago. You would even see yourself, but you would not be close enough to change anything. You would then have 2 options of getting back, either instant travel. which would put you back into the present on earth. Not into the past as you saw it. Or travel at the speed of light or close to, for 10 years to get back to earth, but then it would be 10 years further along than the date at which you left. With you being absent from earth for those 10 years.

Here is a full example:
The date is 01.01.2012. You travel instantly to a planet 10 light years away. Then look back at earth with a super advanced telescope. You view events as they transpired in the year 2002. As the light of those events takes 10 years to reach you. You are viewing the past, but you cannot change it from where you are. If you stay there for 3 months and then return instantly. The present time when you return to earth will be 01.03.2012. You will have been gone for 3 months. You cannot physically travel back in time, but you can effectively travel to a point in space instantaneously and view events as they transpired in the past.

Travelling forward in time is only taking your physical existence forward by making time around you move relatively faster than it normally would, but still preserving your physical existence. But once you went forward in time, you would not be able to turn back the clock.

 

[fastesthamster]

I think you are missunderstanding the space/time relativity here. By travelling back in time you are not remaining where you are to go back and have a physical effect on time. You can only travel to a distant place, instantly. You would still be in the present wherever you are, but if you were 10 light years away from earth, you would be viewing the visual events of 10 years ago. You would even see yourself, but you would not be close enough to change anything. You would then have 2 options of getting back, either instant travel. which would put you back into the present on earth. Not into the past as you saw it. Or travel at the speed of light or close to, for 10 years to get back to earth, but then it would be 10 years further along than the date at which you left. With you being absent from earth for those 10 years.

I thought the OP meant traveling back in time, as in actual time travel (hence the link to Wikipedia).

Your scenario is fine, but it's not time travel per se.

 

[SoulTax]

I thought the OP meant traveling back in time, as in actual time travel (hence the link to Wikipedia).

Your scenario is fine, but it's not time travel per se.

Ye I think the OP has gotten something confused here actually:

However, if you were able to transmit instant data to the outside observer from the point of light origin, although you would not ever be able to change the events, you would in effect allow them to see events which have not taken place yet. Hence time travel aka space/time general relativity, the very building blocks of the singularity and wormholes.

The problem here is that to travel forward in time you actually allow time to increase in speed around you. You cannot now go backwards in time to pass on the data that you just found. You could go 1000 light years away and then observe earth's history of that time, then record it and bring it back instantaneously. But you cannot view future events and bring it back to our present time, because to view future events, you yourself have to travel into the future, once there you would not be able to come back. As future time travel is simply an extension of allowing time to be compressed around you so drastically, that time outside moves faster than inside your "Capsule". The future would be your new present, and the rules of how to "view" history would apply once again. You can never take your physical existence back in time, even if you travelled forward from that time.

This is my understanding of it all at least. I am not that well versed in it I must be honest. Although it is an interesting topic.

 

[ponder]

The catch is, no matter what information is transmitted back from the outside observer to the point of light origin it would always be history.

However, if you were able to transmit instant data to the outside observer from the point of light origin, although you would not ever be able to change the events, you would in effect allow them to see events which have not taken place yet. Hence time travel aka space/time general relativity, the very building blocks of the singularity and wormholes.

That's all there is too it. Theoretically speaking of course it is possible to travel both forward and back in time, although impossible to change time itself or the outcomes. The constants of time are permanent and relative to space/time and nothing can break those laws.

But if you can see 5mins into the past surely you can change the future with the information gleamed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past

 

[fastesthamster]

But if you can see 5mins into the past surely you can change the future with the information gleamed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past

I remember that story, rather good.

But can't you do that now? That is, 'change' the future with your memories of the past.

 

[ponder]

I remember that story, rather good.

But can't you do that now? That is, 'change' the future with your memories of the past.

In that story they could see anything they wanted up to a certain time, it did not have to be related to them or their memories.
Lets say I'm able to see what's going on in big corporate boardroom meeting wrt company strategy/direction or new product launch. If what I see is delayed by a fraction of a second relative to present time it's as good as me being present at the meeting. I can now use this info to buy/sell shares in the company and it's competitors thereby enriching myself and through my actions affecting the markets which would not have happened if I could not see 0.0000000001 second into the past.

 

[fastesthamster]

In that story they could see anything they wanted up to a certain time, it did not have to be related to them or their memories.
Lets say I'm able to see what's going on in big corporate boardroom meeting wrt company strategy/direction or new product launch. If what I see is delayed by a fraction of a second relative to present time it's as good as me being present at the meeting. I can now use this info to buy/sell shares in the company and it's competitors thereby enriching myself and through my actions affecting the markets which would not have happened if I could not see 0.0000000001 second into the past.

I know, I'm just pointing out that there's nothing 'special' about being able to change the future by observing the past, we do it on a daily basis. Your example could also be effected by bugging the boardroom. I think what the OP was getting at is that if you could transmit information instantaneously (i.e. you're unaffected by speed of light constraint) then you could change events that have already happened. This is because you could then affect time-like separated events (i.e. events where there is a causal relationship between two events).

 

[scotty777]

Hmmm, interesting ideas... I guess you can't mess with the consistency of causality...

Like you can't travel back in time, and kill your mother before you were born, because then you messing with causality... how can you exist before you actually existed, or live after you died?

So maybe you can observe the future or past. Things like quantum entanglement mean you could be 100 light years away from the earth, but if you had a machine that sent information via quantum entanglement (instantaneous information), you could know that something will happen, before you observe it happening, which doesn't violate causality.

 

[Nothxkbi]

Hmmm, interesting ideas... I guess you can't mess with the consistency of causality...

Like you can't travel back in time, and kill your mother before you were born, because then you messing with causality... how can you exist before you actually existed, or live after you died?

So maybe you can observe the future or past. Things like quantum entanglement mean you could be 100 light years away from the earth, but if you had a machine that sent information via quantum entanglement (instantaneous information), you could know that something will happen, before you observe it happening, which doesn't violate causality.

+1 Nail on the head.

A wormhole would simply be means of sending and receiving instantaneous up to date information.

 

[SoulTax]

Hmmm, interesting ideas... I guess you can't mess with the consistency of causality...

Like you can't travel back in time, and kill your mother before you were born, because then you messing with causality... how can you exist before you actually existed, or live after you died?

So maybe you can observe the future or past. Things like quantum entanglement mean you could be 100 light years away from the earth, but if you had a machine that sent information via quantum entanglement (instantaneous information), you could know that something will happen, before you observe it happening, which doesn't violate causality.

Yep nice one. The knowing that something will happen does not change anything. Like watching a movie, leaked before its realease date, and then watching it on its release date. You know what will happen, but cannot change anything about the movie.

The thing I find close to impossible about time travel in a forward direction, as in travelling to the future. Is that in order for it to happen, you need to be stuck in an anomoly in space where the gravitational forces are elongating time, thus getting trapped in there would make everything else in the universe seem compressed, or moving faster. Once you come out you would theoretically be in the future.

But what could we create that would protect us from such immense gravitational forces, that we could enter such an anomoly. If we could create something powerful enough to counter it, then we would not need the anomoly in the first place, because we would have the level of technology to create an artificial anomoly. I dont think that we could ever harness a power of that magnitude, as in control it once it was created. So the only way to advance that type of technology would be through trial and error. Create worm hole, jump in, see if it works. The problem is, that all the info that might have been collected on such an expidition, is forever lost to the future as the wormhole drags that info into the future. Never to be recovered.

Its a real conundrum of how we would actually decode and advance our knowledge of such an awesome power. Calculations can only get you so far. Then we have to physically experiment. I dont know about you but im not so cool with people experimenting with unknown wormhole technology anywhere near me.

 

[Nothxkbi]

Yep nice one. The knowing that something will happen does not change anything. Like watching a movie, leaked before its realease date, and then watching it on its release date. You know what will happen, but cannot change anything about the movie.

The thing I find close to impossible about time travel in a forward direction, as in travelling to the future. Is that in order for it to happen, you need to be stuck in an anomoly in space where the gravitational forces are elongating time, thus getting trapped in there would make everything else in the universe seem compressed, or moving faster. Once you come out you would theoretically be in the future.

But what could we create that would protect us from such immense gravitational forces, that we could enter such an anomoly. If we could create something powerful enough to counter it, then we would not need the anomoly in the first place, because we would have the level of technology to create an artificial anomoly. I dont think that we could ever harness a power of that magnitude, as in control it once it was created. So the only way to advance that type of technology would be through trial and error. Create worm hole, jump in, see if it works. The problem is, that all the info that might have been collected on such an expidition, is forever lost to the future as the wormhole drags that info into the future. Never to be recovered.

Its a real conundrum of how we would actually decode and advance our knowledge of such an awesome power. Calculations can only get you so far. Then we have to physically experiment. I dont know about you but im not so cool with people experimenting with unknown wormhole technology anywhere near me.

Exactly, trial and error. Remember though, information is relayed in both directions. In other words, if you send information one light year away, in one year you will be able to see if that information reached it's destination due to light information naturally reaching earth, like dropping a stone into the far side of a pond and waiting for the ripples to reach earth.

The stone doesn't reappear in some alternate reality, but in our one, it simply got given a head start.

 

[SoulTax]

Exactly, trial and error. Remember though, information is relayed in both directions. In other words, if you send information one light year away, in one year you will be able to see if that information reached it's destination due to light information naturally reaching earth, like dropping a stone into the far side of a pond and waiting for the ripples to reach earth.

The stone doesn't reappear in some alternate reality, but in our one, it simply got given a head start.

Good point, although I am more concerned about how they will be able to gauge where in the universe the stone should end up and in exactly how many years should they be looking in exactly which direction?
To use your stone analogy, you would need to be looking exactly towards the point of origin, precisely perpendicular to the "wave", at the exact time it comes across you. Looking even 0.000001 degree off will result in you missing it so to speak. Once they get the hang of it your process would certainly be a good observational one for analyzing and advancing the precision of the technology. I am talking about the gap between inventing the technology, and then coming to grips with it and gaining some control over it. How will they know where the wormhole exit should be if they create one. They might create one and then look in a direction and see nothing, thinking that they failed. But in actuality they succeeded, they were just looking at the wrong place. Space is so vast, it would be easy to miss-calculate, especially since the mathematics of wormholes is not even close to being understood.

I could imagine that they would have to create something that could go through a wormhole and then wherever it ended up, would broadcast a constant signal in every direction, not knowing exactly where earth was, it would simply throw out a net. But that signal could take thousands of years to get here because we dont know how far off the exit point will be, or how far into the future that exit point might have thrown our "Satelite". The trial and error of that technology could theoretically take thousands of years to advance.

 

[scotty777]

Exactly, trial and error. Remember though, information is relayed in both directions. In other words, if you send information one light year away, in one year you will be able to see if that information reached it's destination due to light information naturally reaching earth, like dropping a stone into the far side of a pond and waiting for the ripples to reach earth.

The stone doesn't reappear in some alternate reality, but in our one, it simply got given a head start.

Well, the idea with quantum entanglement is that you have two stones, drop one into the pond, the other drops into the pond too. instant information.

In any case, whenever you in a gravitational field, or traveling at nearly the speed of light, then time slows down (relative to everyone else). Hence why GPS systems are a pain in the arse... Time on the GPS system runs faster than it does for us because we are in a gravitational field, and it's not being accelerated (well, it's experiencing centrifugal acceleration, which cancels out the gravity effects).

The problem is that if you were in a gravity field strong enough to cause time to dilate at a rate useful enough for you to time travel, then you'll probably not live to tell the story. However, information maybe be able to survive.

 

[Nothxkbi]

Well, the idea with quantum entanglement is that you have two stones, drop one into the pond, the other drops into the pond too. instant information.

In any case, whenever you in a gravitational field, or traveling at nearly the speed of light, then time slows down (relative to everyone else). Hence why GPS systems are a pain in the arse... Time on the GPS system runs faster than it does for us because we are in a gravitational field, and it's not being accelerated (well, it's experiencing centrifugal acceleration, which cancels out the gravity effects).

The problem is that if you were in a gravity field strong enough to cause time to dilate at a rate useful enough for you to time travel, then you'll probably not live to tell the story. However, information maybe be able to survive.

Thx scotty, doing some reading up on quantum entanglement now, very interesting especially quantum teleportation. Some very interesting stuff.

 

[Nothxkbi]

Ye I think the OP has gotten something confused here actually:


The problem here is that to travel forward in time you actually allow time to increase in speed around you. You cannot now go backwards in time to pass on the data that you just found. You could go 1000 light years away and then observe earth's history of that time, then record it and bring it back instantaneously. But you cannot view future events and bring it back to our present time, because to view future events, you yourself have to travel into the future, once there you would not be able to come back. As future time travel is simply an extension of allowing time to be compressed around you so drastically, that time outside moves faster than inside your "Capsule". The future would be your new present, and the rules of how to "view" history would apply once again. You can never take your physical existence back in time, even if you travelled forward from that time.

This is my understanding of it all at least. I am not that well versed in it I must be honest. Although it is an interesting topic.

No you and I are on the same page, I may have worded it slightly incorrectly but yes, like scotty and others mentioned and as was the idea behind my OP (although Scotty has added an interesting angle to this), Einstein's time travel is not science fiction, it's theoretical physics. However depending on where you are in the universe time/space dialation varies, like ripples in a pond.

As you mentioned amongst other things, this a very interesting topic.

 

[scotty777]

No you and I are on the same page, I may have worded it slightly incorrectly but yes, like scotty and others mentioned and as was the idea behind my OP (although Scotty has added an interesting angle to this), Einstein's time travel is not science fiction, it's theoretical physics. However depending on where you are in the universe time/space dialation varies, like ripples in a pond.

As you mentioned amongst other things, this a very interesting topic.

Well, Einstein was onto something . We just need the numbers to start matching.

The only problem is that our little brains are meeting their match with the physics. Like things are getting intense now, and it's getting harder and harder to get the proofs working. I'm sure we will crack it, but it's tricky, and complex, and we need another genius to come up with something ludicrous (like Einstein saying the speed of light is constant, and it's time + space that bends/warps to make this happen).