Time Travel: Scientific Plausibility / Theories / Research

[rynner2]

Wouldn't it be great if they come up with a way, however theoretical, to make it happen?

Put TimeTravel into the MB Search, and you get 13 threads, dating back to 2001. Probably worth checking some of them out - it might save us reinventing the wheel!

I reckon that TT is only possible for elementary particles.

The one-electron universe postulate, proposed by John Wheeler in a telephone call to Richard Feynman in the spring of 1940, states that all electrons and positrons are actually manifestations of a single entity moving backwards and forwards in time. According to Richard Feynman:

I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, "Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass" "Why?" "Because, they are all the same electron!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

But perhaps when you get to more complex objects like atoms, molecules, trees, and people, then complex quantum uncertainty feedbacks nullify any possibility of TT.


Anyway, what's so 'great' about time travel? It sounds like a good way to put yourself in all kinds of hazardous situations, probably with no possibility of escape!

 

[Ulalume]

My 13 year old son has a theory about time travel that's pretty interesting, considering he's so young. He believes that traveling physically back in time may be impossible, but that an approximation of it might be created through extracting genetic memory from one's own DNA. It would be an entirely mental phenomena, but it would allow the experiencer to see the world as their great-great (or however many greats) grandfather or grandmother saw it.

I don't know the potential of that happening, but it seems more likely to me than building a time machine, or what not.

However, I also think if time travel ever is invented, we would already be experiencing the effects of it now. It seems to me that no matter how careful the traveler was, they would not be able to prevent changing the course of things, just by time traveling itself. In my more whimsical moments, I wonder if this accounts for those elements of strangeness that we report so often on this board.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Since reading about the time experiment, I've been Googling all about time slips, anacronistic objects and people allegedly dressed in modern clothes in old photographs and such like. Looks like pretty well everything has been debunked, except for the strange testimony of Air Marshall Sir Victor Goddard. How I would like this to be true!

llewellyn.com/journal/article/37
Link is dead. The MIA article can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150316061452/https://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/37

 

[Peripart]

My parents have started receiving emails from the future, but I suspect that it's just that the motherboard battery has run flat (their computer now thinks it's 2013 when they turn it on).

 

[Cochise]

If there was time travel in to the past then we would already have invented it.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... I suppose, in times of great uncertainty, the idea that there is a future and we haven't all been wiped out by nuclear war/Nibiru/climate change/zombie apocalypse is a fantasy that appeals to a lot of people.

There's also the convenient fact that nobody can reasonably challenge claims about events that haven't happened yet. This makes it relatively safer to talk about the future rather than the past.

 

[Timble2]

There's also the convenient fact that nobody can reasonably challenge claims about events that haven't happened yet. This makes it relatively safer to talk about the future rather than the past.

Especially if you make them for times so far in the future, nobody alive now will be alive to check, or if you make them ambiguous and open to interpretation. And if you do make near future predictions, you've got the handy get out clause, that travelling to the past (i.e. now), has changed the future and we're in a different timeline...

 

[Ascalon]

It would appear that time travel becomes mathematically possible due to the curvature of spacetime being just as applicable to the time element as it is the space element.


Sciencealert.com has the skinny here.

"Their idea recalls another theoretical time machine - the Alcubierre drive, which would also use a shell of exotic matter to transport passengers through time and space (hypothetically)."

So, should be sorted by the week after next. Probably.

 

[Mythopoeika]

It would appear that time travel becomes mathematically possible due to the curvature of spacetime being just as applicable to the time element as it is the space element.

Sciencealert.com has the skinny here.

"Their idea recalls another theoretical time machine - the Alcubierre drive, which would also use a shell of exotic matter to transport passengers through time and space (hypothetically)."

So, should be sorted by the week after next. Probably.

Yeah, now it's been proposed, there should be time travellers along any time now. Any time now...

 

[kamalktk]

Yeah, now it's been proposed, there should be time travellers along any time now. Any time now...

They were here, we had a great tea tomorrow. Temporal biscuits are amazing.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here's the citation data and abstract for the published paper ...

Traversable acausal retrograde domains in spacetime
Benjamin K Tippett1 and David Tsang2
Published 31 March 2017 • © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd
Classical and Quantum Gravity, Volume 34, Number 9

Abstract
In this paper we present geometry which has been designed to fit a layperson's description of a 'time machine'. It is a box which allows those within it to travel backwards and forwards through time and space, as interpreted by an external observer. Timelike observers travel within the interior of a 'bubble' of geometry which moves along a circular, acausal trajectory through spacetime. If certain timelike observers inside the bubble maintain a persistent acceleration, their worldlines will close.

Our analysis includes a description of the causal structure of our spacetime, as well as a discussion of its physicality. The inclusion of such a bubble in a spacetime will render the background spacetime non-orientable, generating additional consistency constraints for formulations of the initial value problem. The spacetime geometry is geodesically incomplete, contains naked singularities, and requires exotic matter.

SOURCE: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...E5578D9E6B7E07F4CF5.c1.iopscience.cld.iop.org

 

[Coal]

Timelike observers travel within the interior of a 'bubble' of geometry...

Is the bubble bigger on the inside than on the outside?

 

[EnolaGaia]

The spacetime geometry is geodesically incomplete, contains naked singularities, and requires exotic matter.

Other than overcoming these 3 pesky details, we're clear to march forward into the new era of time travel ...


Question:
Isn't there something oxymoronic about treating imminent time travel technology as 'The Next Big Thing'?

 

[ramonmercado]

It would appear that time travel becomes mathematically possible due to the curvature of spacetime being just as applicable to the time element as it is the space element.


Sciencealert.com has the skinny here.

"Their idea recalls another theoretical time machine - the Alcubierre drive, which would also use a shell of exotic matter to transport passengers through time and space (hypothetically)."

So, should be sorted by the week after next. Probably.

I'm reading a good novel about time travel: The Tourist by Robert Dickinson, I'll do a mini-review when I'm finished.

 

[Coal]

Question:
Isn't there something oxymoronic about treating imminent time travel technology as 'The Next Big Thing'?

Whereas 'The Last Big Thing' is worryingly ambiguous. :reap:

 

[Ascalon]

Is the bubble bigger on the inside than on the outside?

What you did there, I see it.

Other than overcoming these 3 pesky details, we're clear to march forward into the new era of time travel ...


Question:
Isn't there something oxymoronic about treating imminent time travel technology as 'The Next Big Thing'?

What do we want?
Time Travel!
When do we want it?
That is irrelevant!

Time Traveller.
Knock,knock!

 

[AlienView]

"
Science Talk
Published on Jan 10, 2019
Neil Degrasse Tyson talk with Michio Kaku - The Physics and Fantasy of Time Travel. Neil deGrasse Tyson unravels time travel with the help of theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, “Back to the Future’s” Doc Brown, aka Christopher Lloyd, “Doctor Who’s” Missy, aka Michelle Gomez, and co-host Chuck Nice. Plus, Bill Nye takes a ride in the DeLorean."

Neil Degrasse Tyson talk with Michio Kaku - The Physics and Fantasy of Time Travel
See it here:

Far out science buffs, Doctor Who fans, and all science fiction fans will find the video interesting
- But as far as it being believable..........??????



NOW - Why time travel is not possible for biological Humans..........

In the video above Michio kaku claims that Stephen Hawking tried to prove that time travel was impossible
and failed - Michio still thinks it is possible.

And maybe matter can be moved through time BUT you cannot!

Put plain and simple the biological Human being is designed to move in a single and limited timeline.
Your body would not survive time travel even if it is theoretically possible.
Of course our minds are not so limited - So dream on Human - But only the future exists in real time!




And of course my take on time travel into the future:
SCIENCEFICTIONALISM the Way of the FUTURE
http://universalspacealienpeoplesas...016/05/sciencefictionalism-way-of-future.html

 

[Victory]

I think we can travel to and return from with our consciousness to places a long way away that our physical bodies cannot.
Places that can be said to be in different but interconnected dimensions.
I am primarily talking about dreams...and how in them we can "visit" other countries, and see people known to us who are deceased.
Sometimes this can be imagination, but sometimes I think this actually happens on a "Soul" level.

 

[Bad Bungle]

Time travel to the future (but not back to the past) is certainly possible according to the Relativity theory, but we'd need a fast-flying spaceship to do it.

Is it posible to explain that in layman terms please ? I'm still trying to assimulate a posting from last year that suggested when you look in a mirror, you're seeing yourself in the Past.

 

[GNC]

I thought time travel WASN'T possible according to relativity theory, because nothing can exceed the speed of light?

 

[Dropship]

Time travel to the future (but not back to the past) is certainly possible according to the Relativity theory, but we'd need a fast-flying spaceship to do it.

Is it posible to explain that in layman terms please ? I'm still trying to assimulate a posting from last year that suggested when you look in a mirror, you're seeing yourself in the Past.

Time is stretchy and elastic and slows down for anything moving fast, it's been proven with airliners (but only in milliseconds).
But in a spaceship travelling near the speed of light time slows for the crew so much that in one month they'd only have aged a month, but people back on earth would have aged many years.
As for looking in a mirror, that's a "milliseconds" thing too because it takes light that long to bounce off the mirror back to our eyes.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Time is stretchy and elastic and slows down for anything moving fast, it's been proven with airliners (but only in milliseconds).
But in a spaceship travelling near the speed of light time slows for the crew so much that in one month they'd only have aged a month, but people back on earth would have aged many years.
As for looking in a mirror, that's a "milliseconds" thing too because it takes light that long to bounce off the mirror back to our eyes.

The slow-down in effective time passage at extreme speeds is an example of time dilation (as predicted by relativity theory). Some consider this a form of time travel, but some don't.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Time travel to the future (but not back to the past) is certainly possible according to the Relativity theory ...

General Relativity does in fact accommodate the possibility of retro / backward travel in time, but it would require extremely specific spacetime conditions or configurations that are controversial as theories and completely unknown as actual circumstances.

 

[Dropship]

Time is funny stuff, it can even be slowed down by massive objects as I learnt from a TV science docu fronted by Stephen Hawking a couple of years ago. He used the Great Pyramid of Giza as an example and said that time runs slower (by milliseconds) for anybody standing near it, fascinating stuff..

 

[Mythopoeika]

I've noticed that as I've got older and fatter, time definitely has run slower. Or maybe it's just me that runs slower.

 

[Dropship]

I've noticed that as I've got older and fatter, time definitely has run slower. Or maybe it's just me that runs slower.

With me it's just the opposite, time seems to be whizzing by faster now than ever before, and I dunno why..

 

[Coal]

With me it's just the opposite, time seems to be whizzing by faster now than ever before, and I dunno why..

Maybe you're especially dense?

 

[Bad Bungle]

Time is stretchy and elastic and slows down for anything moving fast, it's been proven with airliners (but only in milliseconds).
But in a spaceship travelling near the speed of light time slows for the crew so much that in one month they'd only have aged a month, but people back on earth would have aged many years.

The scientific and cultural Periodical Viz Magazine used to have a column called 'Ask Brian Cox'. Readers could send in scientific conundrums and the Editors would ask other Readers to pass on the queries to Prof Brian Cox if they ever met him (maybe in Asda or in the Pub bogs) and post back the answers.
From bad memory I believe there is a theory that Astronauts in a rocket moving at high speeds away from Earth would age at a slower rate and on their return they would be younger than the rest of us. But there is something in Relativity theory that implies that without points of reference in space, an external Observer would not be able to discern the relative motion of two objects. So it is quite possible that the Earth could have been moving away from the rocket at high speed and so we would all be younger than the Astronauts.
I assume the clever Bods at NASA have tried out space travel with an atomic clock on board ship and one in the Lab ?

 

[Dropship]

With me it's just the opposite, time seems to be whizzing by faster now than ever before, and I dunno why..

Maybe you're especially dense?

Yes like a precious diamond..

 

[Dropship]

I think we can travel to and return from with our consciousness to places a long way away that our physical bodies cannot..

Yes, in fact I've often wondered whether it's an ability that some aliens have mastered.
If they can't penetrate the light-speed barrier to visit us in person, maybe they're doing it telepathically (assuming that thought travels instantaneously).