NationStates Jolt Archive

Do you think time traveling will be possible one day?

Me? I'm certain that one day, not too soon though, time traveling will be just as common as commercial airflights are now. Mmmh, oki, maybe not that common :D

I believe it will never be possible. I have my reasons, but seeing as that I'm horrible at explaining things, I wouldn't be able to put my reasons into words.

Do you think time traveling will be possible one day?

Me? I'm certain that one day, not too soon though, time traveling will be just as common as commercial airflights are now. Mmmh, oki, maybe not that common :D

This runs into the question of why, if time travel will be invented in the future and become common, nobody has slipped back and granted it to us yet. Possibly the greatest proof for its impossibility is the fact that we don't have it already.

This runs into the question of why, if time travel will be invented in the future and become common, nobody has slipped back and granted it to us yet. Possibly the greatest proof for its impossibility is the fact that we don't have it already.

Thanks, BWO. That was one of my reasons. Yippie! Now I don't have to explain it myself. :D

This runs into the question of why, if time travel will be invented in the future and become common, nobody has slipped back and granted it to us yet. Possibly the greatest proof for its impossibility is the fact that we don't have it already.


Ahh but how would you know? ;)

This runs into the question of why, if time travel will be invented in the future and become common, nobody has slipped back and granted it to us yet. Possibly the greatest proof for its impossibility is the fact that we don't have it already.

Maybe they haven't provided us with the tech yet because they deem us too immature to handle such tech in a responsible manner. Giving us the tech to travel in time would be like giving a two year old a loaded gun with the safety off... ouch!!

I agree. I mean if we were given the ability to travel in time, people would be going crazy.The fact is we aren't responsible enough.

Run on over and check out JohnTitor.com

This guy showed up on the web around 2000 claiming he was a time traveller. Interesring read, true or not. Made some pretty dour predictions about our future, including a civil war starting in 2004-5 because of government beating up on the constitution. By 2008 everyone in the country will agree that life as we knew it is over, and in 2015 the Russians nuke us, bringing an end to the war.

Ya know, I don't wanna believe it, but the country IS sliding. People are becoming polarized. We have already lost some rights, and it looks as if Bush et al is poised to remove even more. I can almost see it happening.

"Time travel is not possible, otherwise we'd be over run by tourists from the future."
-Stephen Hawking

"Time travel is not possible, otherwise we'd be over run by tourists from the future."
-Stephen Hawking

Ahh but Stephen is not infaliable. He just admited he was wrong about Black Holes. ;)

This runs into the question of why, if time travel will be invented in the future and become common, nobody has slipped back and granted it to us yet. Possibly the greatest proof for its impossibility is the fact that we don't have it already.

Then howcome no ones found Bartman( the guy who ruined the cubs world series chances )

Run on over and check out JohnTitor.com

This guy showed up on the web around 2000 claiming he was a time traveller. Interesring read, true or not. Made some pretty dour predictions about our future, including a civil war starting in 2004-5 because of government beating up on the constitution. By 2008 everyone in the country will agree that life as we knew it is over, and in 2015 the Russians nuke us, bringing an end to the war.

Ya know, I don't wanna believe it, but the country IS sliding. People are becoming polarized. We have already lost some rights, and it looks as if Bush et al is poised to remove even more. I can almost see it happening.
Well hey, if no civil war's started by the end of the year, that proves he's telling the truth, right?!

There is a belief that you cannot go backwards in time to a point before the machine you are in was built. Others say you cannot go backwards, only forwards, which, if I remember correctly, currently happens, although not on a measurable scale. If something is moving fast, it is slightly more forward than something moving more slowly. For example, the ISS, which is moving at several thousand miles an hour, is about 1/50th of a second ahead of us. I forget the reasoning, though I think it has to do with the Theory of Relativity. Some physics person correct me if I'm wrong about anything, or if anything has been disproven since I last read about it.

This runs into the question of why, if time travel will be invented in the future and become common, nobody has slipped back and granted it to us yet. Possibly the greatest proof for its impossibility is the fact that we don't have it already.
So no possibility of a parallel universe then?

And if these people mastered time-travel, don't you think they would've mastered INVISIBILITY or something of the sort? I mean...seriously. I bet you could hide out in 1840's U.S.A. and not stand out if you knew what to do.

Run on over and check out JohnTitor.com

This guy showed up on the web around 2000 claiming he was a time traveller. Interesring read, true or not. Made some pretty dour predictions about our future, including a civil war starting in 2004-5 because of government beating up on the constitution. By 2008 everyone in the country will agree that life as we knew it is over, and in 2015 the Russians nuke us, bringing an end to the war.

Ya know, I don't wanna believe it, but the country IS sliding. People are becoming polarized. We have already lost some rights, and it looks as if Bush et al is poised to remove even more. I can almost see it happening.
Sad thing is, in 2008, I turn 18. Coincidense? Doubt it...

This runs into the question of why, if time travel will be invented in the future and become common, nobody has slipped back and granted it to us yet. Possibly the greatest proof for its impossibility is the fact that we don't have it already.
I believe that if you went back in time you would go to a parellel universe. And since you can go "to the future" you are stuck there. My personal view is that for every moment there is a parellel universe. And these stack on top of eachother.

But possible. Yes. Practical. No.

Hmmm... Time Travel...

Ah! That would be interesting! I'd love to go into the future, or visit the past. But...I would hardly doubt thats probable...considering the amount of technology and work needed, we can't even control fusion reactions.

But, there is always a possibility. ^_^

And by parallel universe, think Future Trunks from Dragonball Z...closest example of what I mean.

Run on over and check out JohnTitor.com

This guy showed up on the web around 2000 claiming he was a time traveller. Interesring read, true or not. Made some pretty dour predictions about our future, including a civil war starting in 2004-5 because of government beating up on the constitution. By 2008 everyone in the country will agree that life as we knew it is over, and in 2015 the Russians nuke us, bringing an end to the war.

Ya know, I don't wanna believe it, but the country IS sliding. People are becoming polarized. We have already lost some rights, and it looks as if Bush et al is poised to remove even more. I can almost see it happening.
Only problem is that there probably are thousands of those, we only hear about the ones that are right or close to right.

Maybe "time" itself changed; the human species was wiped out except for a few and reformulated again -- a new dark age. Maybe the farthest they can go back is to, say, the year 50,000 CE.

Actually probably according to quantum mechanics its possable, only extreamly unlickely that all of your trillions of atoms move together into the place you want to and stay together.

I think the biggest thing against time travel is actually the conservation of energy. If you move into the past then your mass moves. Which is Emc^2 in terms of energy, and it has to be replaced. Either you give off a huge explosion. I mean huge, but then you have the same problem in the past. Suddenly new mass, huge vortex sucking in mass. Or the masses swap, but then we should figure travel to the future.

Everything is possible that is not self-contradictory.

I have read into the JT story, and there is alot of evidence that supports it, but it has been ripped apart to the point where it is probably a hoax, but I am willing to wait and see if it's true or not. It certainly would be interesting if it were true, and roratonga would be a nice place to be if it were.

Do you think time traveling will be possible one day?

Me? I'm certain that one day, not too soon though, time traveling will be just as common as commercial airflights are now. Mmmh, oki, maybe not that common :D

If time travel is possible, and it is possible to change the past, then people will keep changing the past until somebody does something that makes time travel impossible - like killing the inventor, or getting the inventor a girlfriend so he's not quite a nerd, or something like that.

If it's not possible, it's not possible.

Conclusion - it's not possible no matter how you look at it.

There is a belief that you cannot go backwards in time to a point before the machine you are in was built. Others say you cannot go backwards, only forwards, which, if I remember correctly, currently happens, although not on a measurable scale. If something is moving fast, it is slightly more forward than something moving more slowly. For example, the ISS, which is moving at several thousand miles an hour, is about 1/50th of a second ahead of us. I forget the reasoning, though I think it has to do with the Theory of Relativity. Some physics person correct me if I'm wrong about anything, or if anything has been disproven since I last read about it.
Close enough ...
Time dilation occurs with anything moving and thus displacing/accruing significant mass. Right about the ISS. Good thing we've got cesium clocks now!

There is a belief that you cannot go backwards in time to a point before the machine you are in was built. Others say you cannot go backwards, only forwards, which, if I remember correctly, currently happens, although not on a measurable scale. If something is moving fast, it is slightly more forward than something moving more slowly. For example, the ISS, which is moving at several thousand miles an hour, is about 1/50th of a second ahead of us. I forget the reasoning, though I think it has to do with the Theory of Relativity. Some physics person correct me if I'm wrong about anything, or if anything has been disproven since I last read about it.

I thought it was that if you went really fast, time slowed down. The whole sci-fi thing with prolonged, fast moving space travel making it so that everyone who's planetbound is aging faster. Ender's Game and whatnot has it at the end. As for time travel in general, if any travel into the past is possible, whatever has been changed is in effect now or the whole multiple universe/dimension dealy. As for the future, I'll believe it when i see it. There's some short story somewhere(not sure who the author is) where travel to the future is possible but when you go back, you bring back nothing including memories. I'd think that'd screw with the amount of matter in the universe at any given time. I was under the impression that was a...forgot the word...concrete, unchangeable thing. Not sure about the antimatter deal either.

If time travel is possible, and it is possible to change the past, then people will keep changing the past until somebody does something that makes time travel impossible - like killing the inventor, or getting the inventor a girlfriend so he's not quite a nerd, or something like that.

If it's not possible, it's not possible.

Conclusion - it's not possible no matter how you look at it.

My theory about how time travel works (if, indeed, it does) is that anything you go back in time and do you have already come from the future and done. And like the famous 'billiard balls and wormhole pockets' thought experiment*, only configurations of the universe that are not self-defeating can exist, thus the universe is configured such that you don't get idiots going back and assasinating Hitler, because by doing so there is a different universe in which there is no imperative for the same idiot to go back and conduct the act (or indeed, even be born, what with the changing dynamics of the world).


* - Billiard ball thought experiment:
One pocket on a billard table is a wormhole, the other end of which is in the past and allows a ball to roll into the pocket and have come from the exit already, IYSWIM.

If you were to send the ball into the wormhole such that upon exiting it is in a trajectory to knock its earlier self off course (and thus not into the wormhole pocket, or at least not in the right trajectory) then you never will have had the ball knocking itself off course in the first place. Apart from the paradox, this might well require a whole new universe to be created to allow for the difference in 'futures' and/or the flip/flop nature of the future. Very energy intensive.

However, you could send the initial billiard ball across the table in a manner that would miss the entrance to the wormhole, whereupon its future self could (seemingly spontaneously) appear from the exit in such a way that its counterpart from its own past is diverted into the wormhole, thus 'supporting' its appearence from the exit. This would be a stable state that the universe could live with and at no extra expense (assuming you had no problem about having an extra ball's worth of mass and energy for the duration of the interplay, but we're more or less used to the idea that virtual particles can be created from nothing and destroyed again, in the quantum foam...).

Compare the latter case of self-supporting time-travel with a literature example, just because the pure-science explanations can get a bit dry. In MacBeth, the witches tell him he will be King, he tells his wife and the plot unfurls whereby he became King (which the witches can then have predicted, together with all the "Dunsidane Woods" and "Man not of woman born" stuff which also lead to his demise). Had the witches not said anything to MacBeth, he wouldn't have been in that situation, hence it was a self-supporting prophecy. All you have to worry about now is what would have happened if the witches had worded the phrophecy slightly differently (setting up the wormhole entrances and exits slightly different) such that the original self-supporting situation could not have occured. Well, in that case there's the possibility that the cause-and-effect circular chain of events would have been different, different words cause different actions that support the different words (this is why it needs proper witches to make premonitions come true, because no-one else could match the words to the prophecty in the right way?).

If it became absolutely impossible for a future ball to knock a current ball into the wormhole, however, you probably wouldn't get one. And don't get me started about what would happen if you tried to force an event to happen inconsistently. Let's just say that there's not just this single opportunity for interaction and there's plenty of other future events that could precipitate a chain of past events that prevent inconsistencies, and all without anyone noticing because there is no alternative... :)

However, this is all thought experiment, it could all be wrong (or not applicable) and this footnote has grown beyond all original intentions...

The possibility of temporal paradoxes is too dangerous. Such paradoxes could potentially destroy the space/time fabric due to unlimited cause and effect interaction. If you'd like to travel in time, you could only do it outside of the universe we exist in.

Time travel is not possible. That is because the concept of time, that is commonly used, is not right. Currently time is believed to be a dimension, but I don't think so. Time does not really fit into the current description of the properties of space and matter. But if you would see time only as a relation between movement (a property of matter) and distance (a property of space) that could possibly solve some serious problems that reign today's physics (you know General Relativity not matching the Standard Model of Particle/Quantum Physics).

Time travel is not possible. That is because the concept of time, that is commonly used, is not right. Currently time is believed to be a dimension, but I don't think so. Time does not really fit into the current description of the properties of space and matter. But if you would see time only as a relation between movement (a property of matter) and distance (a property of space) that could possibly solve some serious problems that reign today's physics (you know General Relativity not matching the Standard Model of Particle/Quantum Physics).

It's ages since I've done the maths on this sort of thing, so apologies if I'm slightly wrong, but isn't it the case that if you use Pythogrian principles (root of the sum of the squares) on the length of travel in any number (but typically three) 'real' space dimensions and one 'imaginary' time dimension for any particular point-to-point journey (at any speed!) in a euclidian space, it comes out as a constant relating to (if not actually) 'c'.

It's something like that, if not exactly, as the square of the time taken is a negative number that counteracts the distance moved, but I've a feeling that (counting up the 'dimensionality' of each element of calculation) it might instead give something like "relative time passed". However, even this doesn't completely negate the point, and curved space-time/curved paths differentiates out to the same result (whatever that actually is... :)

Anyway, by the above assumption (/rehashing of half forgotten principles) time is a true dimension but just has an imaginary multiplier.

Of course, I await expert correction... :)

Well, it sure is good to see everyone agreeing with each other on time travel being the latest thing in a few generations. :D

;)

Well if ever then now obviously.

I dont want to discover it - while it may discover some interesting things, the risks involved w/changing the past are too high - apparently there are some theories that one will create parallel timestreams (one changed, one unchanged) if one changes the past.

Maybe they haven't provided us with the tech yet because they deem us too immature to handle such tech in a responsible manner. Giving us the tech to travel in time would be like giving a two year old a loaded gun with the safety off... ouch!!
I second this.

Or maybe they don't know squat about us so they won't take the risk

Do you think time traveling will be possible one day?


Of course ... you're doing it right now.

Of course ... you're doing it right now.

:D

*knew was right all along!*

:D

*knew was right all along!*


Feels good, don't it? :D

1) Maybe time travellers are already among us - Those strange beings in UFO's?
2)Seeing as time is just a human construct to measure the distance between two events, how would you control a time machine? It would be more like Quantum Leap than Back to the future - uncontrollable.

Another plausible idea on time, put forth by some quantum physicists, is that it isn't constant, but is actually a series of individual events, much like a movie reel. But instead of 24 frames per second, it's measured in planck time. So of course as yet we can't detect down that far.
I can't see how time travel could be possible, as the first person to try it out other than the inventor themselves would simply jump back to a few minutes before it was patented and patent it themselves....and so on ad infinitum. So eventually no matter when it was invented, we would have it popping up here. And then back thru time until the first patent office opened.
Or maybe you can't go back further than the start of your own existence, which means if it's invented in say 100 years time by a 50yr old, we won't know about it til 2054. Unless it's given to a 101 yr old of course. But you see my point.
Reminds me of all the old 2000ADs I read as a kid, They always had awesome timetwister stories in them.

Physically time travel is impossible! but wormholes do exist!

Nostradaus predicted it would happen...about 20 years from now :) :eek:

I don't believe time travel will ever become possible. And that is a very good thing, because if it was, the effects could be disastrous.

If time travel were possible, some screwoff would use it to go back and change history to benefit himself in some way. forgetting, of course, that by changing that event from happening in the first place, there would be no reason to go back in time because the event never happened. However, the reason the event never happened is because someone went back to stop it, and the reason they went back to stop it is because it happened. However, they went back to keep it from happening, so it didn't happen.

PICTURE THIS: We'll use JFK as an example. Say his brother Ted gets hold of time travel and decides to prevent John from getting assassinated. So he goes back and incapacitates Lee Harvey Oswald long enough to prevent the assassination, and Oswald decides later on that killing JFK was a bad idea, thus JFK lives. Ted came from our timeline, in which JFK was shot. However, he returns to a new timeline in which JFK was never shot. Ted has to go back in time to prevent JFK from being asassinated, as it is his action that prevents JFK's death. However, in the new timeline, the one in which JFK was not assassinated, there's no one thinking that they have to go back in time to stop the assassination; they think it stopped itself or that there was never going to be one. Therefore, in this timeline, Ted is both fully aware of the assassination attempt, as he stopped it, and completely unaware of it, as Ted was elsewhere at the time. He cannot be both. However, according to the timeline, he must be both. This is a paradox, the consequences of which could be disastrous.

"the consequences would be disastrous" yap yap

Who rose from the dead made you expert on what is fecking disastrous?

I don't think I'd want to change anything, I'd just want proof. Good solid proof.

I'd go to various events and videotape them. I'd hang around Mary of Nazareth a lot, I'd go get some home movies of Mohammed(pbuh), Julius Caesar, and other historically significant figures. I'd videotape exactly what Nero was doing while Rome burned. I'd be in NYC on 9/10/01 and set up hidden cameras in key spots (especially a few inside the buildings themselves with a feed to an outside VCR) and then hop over to the Pentagon just to get video of whatever hit there.

Oh yeah ... I'd have the coolest home movie collection ever ... but I wouldn't change a damn thing.

This runs into the question of why, if time travel will be invented in the future and become common, nobody has slipped back and granted it to us yet. Possibly the greatest proof for its impossibility is the fact that we don't have it already.

They couldn't give us the technology without messing things up. Since we don't have it, we can assume that they didn't have it at the time that they were us, which means that they never went back in time when they did get time travel to give it to themselves... er. It made sense when I FIRST thought it up...

I'm not sure if anyone could ever time travel into the past, but you'd think it'd be quite a bit simpler to travel into the future... as we're constantly moving into the future as it is... You'd have to find a way for the future to become present for you faster, without yourself aging... or something. I don't really know. But I don't suppose there'd be much use for one-way time travel.

I don't think I'd want to change anything, I'd just want proof. Good solid proof.

I'd go to various events and videotape them. I'd hang around Mary of Nazareth a lot, I'd go get some home movies of Mohammed(pbuh), Julius Caesar, and other historically significant figures. I'd videotape exactly what Nero was doing while Rome burned. I'd be in NYC on 9/10/01 and set up hidden cameras in key spots (especially a few inside the buildings themselves with a feed to an outside VCR) and then hop over to the Pentagon just to get video of whatever hit there.

Oh yeah ... I'd have the coolest home movie collection ever ... but I wouldn't change a damn thing.
There's already a movie about that. People from the future visit great disasters from the past, but no one can find out, but they do and at the end they get killed.

There can never be an exact moment in time where time travel begin, because it ends on a different point on the time line, but time did not elapse between the two points.

Well hey, if no civil war's started by the end of the year, that proves he's telling the truth, right?!


Umm, no. He squirmed his way out of that one. Basically, he said that with timelines, there is always some variation. He put the current variation at about two percent, meaning some things may not happen in exact timelines. He also said the beginning of the war would be missed by most, but basically would be a "waco type" event every month or so.

Based on his two percent, I would give a couple of months to make any decision on that one. In my view a two percent variation must compound over time until you get to his date of origin, in 2038. So a two percent variation in 2000 could be god knows how big by now. A neat little escape clause.

Only problem is that there probably are thousands of those, we only hear about the ones that are right or close to right.

I only caught the threads a while back. It was posted on a time travel institute web site forum. There are indeed a lot of claims there now, since Titor. I don't know how many came before.

Backwards time travel is impossible, because once you go back into time to accomplish something, in the 'present' of which you went from to the past to fix something said something would have already happened, thusly eliminating the need to go back and therefore you will not go back into time and thusly such a change of past events will never happen.

Run on over and check out JohnTitor.com

This guy showed up on the web around 2000 claiming he was a time traveller. Interesring read, true or not. Made some pretty dour predictions about our future, including a civil war starting in 2004-5 because of government beating up on the constitution. By 2008 everyone in the country will agree that life as we knew it is over, and in 2015 the Russians nuke us, bringing an end to the war.

Ya know, I don't wanna believe it, but the country IS sliding. People are becoming polarized. We have already lost some rights, and it looks as if Bush et al is poised to remove even more. I can almost see it happening.


The country is getting polarized because of the election, and because of the all of the controversy over things Bush has done, and over things Kerry has said.

Backwards time travel is impossible, because once you go back into time to accomplish something, in the 'present' of which you went from to the past to fix something said something would have already happened, thusly eliminating the need to go back and therefore you will not go back into time and thusly such a change of past events will never happen.

I agree that couldn't happen (at least in the 'single universe, no branching' model of the universe) but have a look at my post (around #27?) about biilard-balls.

e.g. the example above about JFK. What if you went back to before the event try to pursuade Lee Harvey Oswald not to shoot the President. LHO thinks "Shoot the President? I was only going to go after a senator, but that sounds like a better idea." The whole point being that LHO had (in my hypothetical version of our history, at least) been pursusaded to shoot the President, and yet he wouldn't had he not been inspired to do so.

And as to trying to stop him more directly? Well, in my hypothetical history the traveller from the future was destined to encounter a situation that (had he known it) had already occured in the 'normal' past. Perhaps he got stopped by a policeman and hadn't got comtemporary ID on him, perhaps the car broke down or was involved in an accident, perhaps he overslept, perhaps someone from the time-police came along in a predestined way (that perhaps even they don't understand) and kept events on the right course (but I'd ignore the last option 'cos who would 'create' a chrono-protection team if the Universe protects itself anyway (unless the Universe protects itself by creating the stimulii required to create such a team, now its getting confusing... :) )

This is just a 'solution' to the problem of paradoxes (and just one solution at that) and does not mean that it works like that, but it clears the way for time-travel to occur.

Do you think time traveling will be possible one day?

Me? I'm certain that one day, not too soon though, time traveling will be just as common as commercial airflights are now. Mmmh, oki, maybe not that common :D
Bottom line is if anyone finds a way,if they are smart enough to work it out,they will be smart enough to keep their mouth shut.Would YOU run around telling people?
How long do you think it would be before your country sent a Special Forces Unit round to your house to acquire it and arrange a nice little "accident" ?
No way would any Government allow people to have that power.

Imagine George Bush with the power to travel through time...

THAT's why it shouldn't ever be invented.