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Time Travel: Scientific Plausibility / Theories / Research

Is physical time travel possible?

  • Yes

    Votes: 15 53.6%
  • No

    Votes: 7 25.0%
  • "Dude! Where's my DeLorean?"

    Votes: 6 21.4%

  • Total voters
    28
Re: Re: Re: Time travel - tonights BBC horizon program

Filcee said:
It would have been pretty good, if I could hear a word that was being said :mad: , am I the only person who has trouble hearing the dialogue track on Horizon programmes over the annoying incidental music?
But if they didn't have the over the top, portentious, emotion tugging, backing track, then how else would they lead up to that "Amazing Randi moment" of the denoument, when they reveal that it's all been just a dream?

:confused:
 
Several time travel threads merged (others on a time machine, and tachyons, left intact as they go in other directions. So to speak.).
 
Blockheads Unite

Barbour's right. Space-time is one THING. If we could see our reality from the vantage point of the Fifth or Sixth dimension, from above as it were, then we'd see it's all one thing. Time, its passage, its arrow, are illusions caused by sequential perception.

Example: We are all one thing from not only beginning and end of our lives, but continuing on all sides also into our constituent genes and, beyond that, our constituent MATTER -- including food and other chemical compounds eaten and the atoms making that up, etc.

Ad infinitum.

Until it is a dead solid certainty that All is One, No Separation possible. Once you get this, you see that time's passage is illusory.

This is standard mystical esoterica.
 
Surely if passage of time is but an illussion then we have to act as if it were real
 
Depends

Barring reliable sight of the whole, and comprehension of our part in it, yes, we must.
 
Does not Sequential Perception = Time? and if time does not exist how can I ever be late for work! Anyway there only ever is "Me" everything else is an Illusion! See. Now where did I leave my happy pills!
 
Simple Mistake

You touch, xeno, upon a simple mistake most make in these matters when you jest about being the only real thing in the world.

Truth is, though, that the Arrow of Time is built into everything, which is why you can be late for work or lunch. The thing is, one cannot separate one's self from Everything; you're as much a part of it as the clock or the arrow.

Therein lies the problem.
 
Time

Zero

If you are interested in time, you can find a theory I have been working on for many years, which can be found on my website at http://www.btinternet.com/~author.ron

It's not about time travel, (I'm currently writing some papers on this particular subject, which will be posted to my website in due course). My past work has been related to the nature of time itself dealing with questions such as: What is time? Is it grainy or not? Does it really exist or is it a figment of our mind? etc. It's been read by a few scientists as well as others unrelated to science, and all have expressed appraisal and interest in the theory.

As for time travel, did you know there's a physicist in the states by the name of Proff. Ronald L Mallett who has designed a time machine to send particles to the future, with hopes of receiving some back from the future in return. The machine has only just been completed and is in its early stages of experimentation.

Regards.

Ron.
 
Re: Simple Mistake

FraterLibre said:
You touch, xeno, upon a simple mistake most make in these matters when you jest about being the only real thing in the world.

Truth is, though, that the Arrow of Time is built into everything, which is why you can be late for work or lunch. The thing is, one cannot separate one's self from Everything; you're as much a part of it as the clock or the arrow.

Therein lies the problem.

Sorry FraterLibre but your just part of the illusion!! Damn good one too!
 
Wishes

Wishes don't make things so.

Logic dictates what I said, and I'm part of nothing.
 
as a very young rugrat i was aware that the world spun,i would jump up expecting to see the earth move under me,it wasnt till i got to school and had gravity explained to me that it made sense. bugga it!
 
Did you try running west to try and stay in place? Or was that just me?

Or running east to speed things up?
 
jumped straight up whilst looking down expecting to see the world move under me and landing in a diff spot
 
I think I tried all of those.

Of course, the whole thing about relative velocities and inertia kind of killed it off.
 
i voted no, simply because no one has come back to say "hey, we invented a time machine". ofcourse that would alter the course of events leading up to it's invention. there really would be no use for a time machine other than highly discreet voyeurism. you can't go and change your past because that would have an effect on if you invented the machine or not. and if it was supposed to happen, then not inventing the time machine is the most natural out come.

now i've gone all cross-eyed again
 
a no-paradox method.

If we work on the basis that changes in causality from a time traveller to the past travel through time at the same rate we do, then the changes will never catch up if the time traveller returns to his original time.

for example : the grandfather paradox

1. Time traveller goes back in time, kills grandfather.
2. Changed universe propogates forward in time at the 'speed of time'
3. Time traveller returns to original time and continues moving forward at the normal speed of time.
4. The changes are moving through time at the same rate as him, so they do not catch up with him.
5. If, a day later, he were to travel back to the day after he had killed his grandfather, the change would be true then, but if he were to travel to 2 days after he had killed his grandfather, the changes would not have propogated that far forward yet, and his grandfather would still exist ( at least until the changes caught up )

this seems to make sense of a lot of the time travel paradoxes.
 
"2. Changed universe propogates forward in time at the 'speed of time'"

Nice idea, but tricky...basically this involves a 'meta-time' outside of time which allows you to say 'the changes have now advanced to here'.

What happens if the grandfather zips forward a few years in time after the grandson is born but before he starts time travelling and kills him in anticipatory self-defence?

If another traveller goes back and changes one of the the bits that the original changes have not yet got to, what happens? Could one have an indefinite number of change-ripples moving forward through time, and what would this look like to a non-time-travelling observer?

Branching universes seem easier. Not much easier, though:)
 
changes in timeline

hmmm.. a flood of changes would not be any different to a non-time-travelling observer as they are IN the timeline, and thus each change has 'always' been the case to them. The only person who could perceive the flood of changes would be an outside observer capable of standing still relative to the flow of time - the time traveller..
 
"a flood of changes would not be any different to a non-time-travelling observer as they are IN the timeline, and thus each change has 'always' been the case to them."

But some of the changes are 'later' than others and would presumably overrule them..eg I change something a year ago and then a month later change something six months ago...
 
No Later

No, there is no later or earlier -- it's all one thing. Only our perception creates the illusion of sequences.

Space-time is an OBJECT.
 
Re: No Later

FraterLibre said:
No, there is no later or earlier -- it's all one thing. Only our perception creates the illusion of sequences.

Space-time is an OBJECT.

i agree, but there is a cause-effect causal sequence, and if you change an event at one location in space-time, that change has influences on other objects in space-time, and those influences will cascade through space-time in all directions - all three ( or 10 if you accept M-Theory ) dimensions of space and both forward and backward directions of time. This is consistent with current physics ( do a google on 'advance waves' to see that any event, whether caused by a time traveller or a normal event in space time will cascade influences through spacetime ).

As an example, if you were somehow able to remove an object entirely from spacetime ( those who watched Dr Who might remember the D-MAT gun ) its non existence would cascade forward at the speed of time and back at the speed of time.

you do not need a flow of time for this to be the case - just a sequence of causality - and that sequence need not follow the flow of time exactly, although in most macroscopic situations it probably would. At a quantum level it would be all over the place, as causality gets a bit odd ( time becomes a fairly irrelevant dimension ) at those scales.
 
Still Falling

Ah, but you're still falling for the illusion of sequence. Those changes you cite? Always were, always will be; part of the object itself. Seen from a suitably high enough dimensional vantage the changes would all be incorporated into a seamless whole object.
 
so, if you are working on an 'eternal present' hypothesis, no change could ever be transferred from the past to the present, as change would imply causality, and causality implies a flow of time.

If this were the case then it would mean that the multiple universe hypothesis would need to be used, because if a time traveller were to change the past, and there was no causal method to transfer this change to the future, then another universe in which the change happened would need to exist.

If we work on the idea that the universe/multiverse tends towards the most energy efficient method of doing things, maintaining multiple universes, one for each change ( down to the quantum or string level ) would have a huge energy requirement compared with one universe in which causality can be altered and spread. ( although the dark energy concept defines that the universe has a huge sink of energy available, so either is feasible )
 
Deep Groove

Your thinking runs along a deep groove of pre-conceived or received notions when it comes to causality and change.

Example: You say, "If a time traveler were to change the past..."

He or she can NOT do that.

Any apparent change would always be.

Has nought to do with multiple universe theory. Has to do only with space-time being One Thing. That it encompasses many things your perceptual level sees as contradictory or mutually exclusive is simply a failure of perspective.
 
okay. i think we are working on different sets of definitions here. yes, there can be a steady state 'universe' in which all possible changes lie and that there is no transfer of causality between any part of them other than the point of perception. This would be the 'metaverse' to my definition - the complete total of all possible existence. i have at no point said that that was wrong, in fact for that to not be the case would be peculiar indeed for it would require that certain possibilities DONT exist. by universe, i talk about a 4(or more) dimensional spacetime. by multiple universe, i talk about alternative versions of said spacetime. All of these would exist within a metaverse defining all possibilities, a maximal conceptual space with no flow of causality of itself, because causality would necessitate a motion through some additional dimension, which by its definition cannot exist.
 
All Is One, No Separation

As the Zen saying cited in my subject slug indicates, everything is one thing. Hence the term Universe.

You say, "Alternate (alternative) versions of..." as if they are separate.

If they exist and are accessible, provable, even conceptually, then there is, as always, no separation.

N'est pas?
 
as ever, terminology is woefully inefficent at describing these concepts.

They are alternatives from the point of reference of a subjective, limited perception observer within them.

The true objective observer ( an impossibility given the definitions given ) would not see them as such, just changes in perceptive reference.

By your definition, all possible forms of time travel and their side effects already exist in conceptual space, as do all possibilities, imagined and unimagined. that definition allows absolutely anything to be true, and for none of these alternatives to be accessible from our point of reference and therefore this is unprovable as a hypothesis. movement of causality through spacetime is an experimentally proven hypothesis, and causal flow backwards in time ( advance waves ) are part of current physics :

http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/dtime/node2.html
 
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