Whatever Happened To Time Travel?

[KarlD]

Time travel?

there was an article a couple of month back in the magazine in which some guy was wibbling about time storms and the thing which caught my eye was an off the cuff remark he made about having proved a connection between electromagnetism and gravity, he basically said he could prove it but there wasn't space in the margin or some such.
So anyway as most of the more intense physics research over the past 50 years has been a fruitless search for a grand unified theory which would show that electromagnetism and gravity where part of the same phenomena only at different energy levels and although it has produced some spectacularly inpenetrable mathematics papers it has so far failed.I wrote to the author of the article suggesting that he was in line for a nobel prize in physics and he should publish and be damned, expose his results to peer review, but so far the silence has been deafening. Anyone know whats happening or is he just another chancer writing dribble in the hope that his audience is as scientificaly illiterate as he is?

 

[KarlD]

I think what i am saying is

If you are going to try to explain your pet delusional theory which 'proves' that you have just invented an anti-gravity device using pseudo-science in the hope that it will impress people who don't know any better, don't forget that there are people who might read your proof and actualy know what they are talking about.

 

[spellbound]

There have been tons of articles and stories about "scientists" claiming to have discovered fantastic new thingies etc, and none of them have come through, they've just faded away. TYime travel, free energy, perpetual motion machines etc... twaddle.

 

[KarlD]

Nooo

I was burbling about the article that appeared in FT a couple of months ago, I desided that as the original author wasn't going to submit his findings to physics letters for peer review I should write about it here.
It was partly out of surprise that FT should publish such a starnge article more suitable for some magazine that prints stories about how to avoid being abducted by aliens(again)

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

This episode of The Why Files explores the home-made time machine of Mike “Mad Man” Marcum.
Contains some nice footage of the Art Bell C2C interview too.

 

[JimELUCIER]

Time travel?

there was an article a couple of month back in the magazine in which some guy was wibbling about time storms and the thing which caught my eye was an off the cuff remark he made about having proved a connection between electromagnetism and gravity, he basically said he could prove it but there wasn't space in the margin or some such.
So anyway as most of the more intense physics research over the past 50 years has been a fruitless search for a grand unified theory which would show that electromagnetism and gravity where part of the same phenomena only at different energy levels and although it has produced some spectacularly inpenetrable mathematics papers it has so far failed.I wrote to the author of the article suggesting that he was in line for a nobel prize in physics and he should publish and be damned, expose his results to peer review, but so far the silence has been deafening. Anyone know whats happening or is he just another chancer writing dribble in the hope that his audience is as scientificaly illiterate as he is?

The problem is in the enormous amount of variables. Maybe faster super computers will be able to tie these together.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Just read an interesting example of the “Consistency Paradox” on Quora.
This is a powerful argument for why time travel to the past is impossible (unless you throw alternate / branching timelines and parallel universes into the mix).

"Imagine a room with a clock. The clock reads 10pm.
Imagine the same room one minute into the future where the clock reads 10:01pm.
At 10:01 pm you send a marble one minute back in time.
Now at 10:00pm the room has 1 marble.
What happens at 10:01pm? You send a marble 1 minute back in time.
Now at 10:00 pm the room has 2 marbles. One that was already there, and one that you sent back this iteration.
Each successive iteration of this time loop will add one marble to the room. Assuming the room is infinite, the marbles will condense into a mass eventually collapsing into a neutron star and finally a black hole of infinite mass. All this happens precisely at 10:00 pm so 10:01 never occurs because time as we know it would cease to exist at 10:00 pm.
Sending even a single photon back in time would produce the same effect."

 

[eburacum]

All this happens precisely at 10:00 pm so 10:01 never occurs because time as we know it would cease to exist at 10:00 pm.

And (of course) the fact that 10:01 never occurs means that no marbles at all are ever sent back in time. That is why closed time-like curves cannot exist. Any time machine that can produce a paradox would be protected by an impassable event horizon, known as a Cauchy horizon, which separates parts of the universe which are possible from those which are impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy_horizon

 

[What Tyler]

Just read an interesting example of the “Consistency Paradox” on Quora.
This is a powerful argument for why time travel to the past is impossible (unless you throw alternate / branching timelines and parallel universes into the mix).

"Imagine a room with a clock. The clock reads 10pm.
Imagine the same room one minute into the future where the clock reads 10:01pm.
At 10:01 pm you send a marble one minute back in time.
Now at 10:00pm the room has 1 marble.
What happens at 10:01pm? You send a marble 1 minute back in time.
Now at 10:00 pm the room has 2 marbles. One that was already there, and one that you sent back this iteration.
Each successive iteration of this time loop will add one marble to the room. Assuming the room is infinite, the marbles will condense into a mass eventually collapsing into a neutron star and finally a black hole of infinite mass. All this happens precisely at 10:00 pm so 10:01 never occurs because time as we know it would cease to exist at 10:00 pm.
Sending even a single photon back in time would produce the same effect."

Err, pardon my "Particle Physics For Dummies" level of understanding... but aren't Photons mass less?

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Err, pardon my "Particle Physics For Dummies" level of understanding... but aren't Photons mass less?

Fair comment. Photons do have a minuscule but finite amount of energy though, so an infinitely increasing number of photons would surely result in some sort of electromagnetic apocalypse.

 

[Amergin]

Just read an interesting example of the “Consistency Paradox” on Quora.
This is a powerful argument for why time travel to the past is impossible (unless you throw alternate / branching timelines and parallel universes into the mix).

"Imagine a room with a clock. The clock reads 10pm.
Imagine the same room one minute into the future where the clock reads 10:01pm.
At 10:01 pm you send a marble one minute back in time.
Now at 10:00pm the room has 1 marble.
What happens at 10:01pm? You send a marble 1 minute back in time.
Now at 10:00 pm the room has 2 marbles. One that was already there, and one that you sent back this iteration.
Each successive iteration of this time loop will add one marble to the room. Assuming the room is infinite, the marbles will condense into a mass eventually collapsing into a neutron star and finally a black hole of infinite mass. All this happens precisely at 10:00 pm so 10:01 never occurs because time as we know it would cease to exist at 10:00 pm.
Sending even a single photon back in time would produce the same effect."

Intriguing stuff. But here is another way to look at it: At 10:01 you send a marble into the past, to 10:00. The marble dutifully appears in the past, thus there is a state created at precisely 10:00 where there are two identical marbles. But that state is 1 minute behind you. How “long” does it take for two marbles to catch up and meet you? Assuming the past, and changes to the past, obey the same rules as the present and the future, then it’s going to take 1 minute for the change to take root. But in the 1 minute you have been waiting to observe this time-travel magic, you have moved to 10:02. Thus the 2 marbles state can never catch you up. There will be a sort of “timefront” that you can never see, because it is forever in your past, marching in lockstep always 1 minute behind you, creating a modified present that is as inaccessible as a parallel universe.

And when 2 marbles reaches the point you sent it back, it will just see its future marble-self vanish, being sent to 10:00, as it should.

And what is the ultimate outcome? Every minute that ticks by in your present, there is no marble. So a vanishing trick has been performed perhaps? Perhaps not… Maybe ultimate reality is conserved, because for each and every minute of the future universe where the marble has left the plane, there is forever a closed single minute-long loop ticking by, with two marbles, perfectly making up for all those future minutes that yours is lost.

And now I’ve lost my marbles.

 

[charliebrown]

From a 1955 Walt Disney program “ Man in Space “ ( I know you can laugh at me now ) gravity influences space and time.

Einstein was sure time travel was possible because he believed time traveled in a circle.

It has been proven the faster one goes time slows, so maybe this can be used to go to the past.

I personally believe that not time travel but different dimensions bump up against each other creating time portals.

 

[Robbrent]

I am more for thinking that anytime travel will be of the visionary type rather than the physical type, there are far too many paradoxes although reading some timeslip stories does make one think

 

[Amergin]

I am more for thinking that anytime travel will be of the visionary type rather than the physical type, there are far too many paradoxes although reading some timeslip stories does make one think

See my post above. Perhaps there are no paradoxes after all?

 

[dannycheveaux1]

I am more for thinking that anytime travel will be of the visionary type rather than the physical type, there are far too many paradoxes although reading some timeslip stories does make one think

My favourite film Somewhere in Time has Christopher Reeve travelling back in time to meet Jane Seymour using a kind of self hypnosis. Richard Matheson used a story by Jack Finney as for the idea - always wanted to have a go!

 

[charliebrown]

Robbrent are you talking about “ remote viewing “ ?

My opinion is when there is a strong gravitational force or a strong electromagnetic field, dimensional portals happen.

Are dimensional portals the same as time travel ?

 

[eburacum]

There will be a sort of “timefront” that you can never see, because it is forever in your past, marching in lockstep always 1 minute behind you, creating a modified present that is as inaccessible as a parallel universe.

The situation you are describing is basically the creation of an alternate timeline, and it is a viable theory of time travel, although many physicists reject it for some reason. The model favoured by most physicists is the Novikov Consistency model, where events can't be changed, so if you send a marble back in time for one second, you will always have seen two marbles for that second, even before you perform the action of sending it backwards through time. In a Novikov Consistent (NC) closed timelike curve (CTC), the events that occur are unchangeable, even if cause does not always precede effect.

I can't imagine how a NC CTC would work in practice. It implies that you have no free will whatsoever. If you decide to do this experiment using a marble, even before you act you will see a second marble appear at 10:00 - then you are committed to sending the marble back in time at 10:01, and nothing you can do could change that. Time is fixed, even if it contains loops. The only way to preserve free will in this situation is if someone else jumps in and performs the act for you. If you decide not to send the marble back in time, then some bystander or other is destined to take over and send the marble back for you. Maybe they send the marble back to 10:00 from a different time, but whatever the situation, the course of events is fixed and cannot be changed, no matter how many times you try to change it.
----
On the other hand, in a universe where parallel timelines are possible then you can change your mind as many times as you like, but you yourself can only ever experience one timeline at once. If you send yourself back instead of a marble, then you can change events as often as you like, but you will be stuck in the new timeline - unless you go back to before you change events, and even then there is no guarantee that you will experience your original timeline again.

Indeed, time travel in a many-worlds scenario almost guarantees that you are travelling to a parallel universe every time you go backwards in time, so you can never go home again. There will always be a universe with two of you, and one with none.

 

[charliebrown]

Time travel seems impossible because the earth is moving, the sun is moving, the universe is moving so humans are traveling 1.6 million miles a day or 2.6 million km.

There is no way to return to a specific point in time.

As you see time travel is non existent.

 

[Ascalon]

I feel this is relevant to this discussion.

 

[eburacum]

Time travel seems impossible because the earth is moving, the sun is moving, the universe is moving so humans are traveling 1.6 million miles a day or 2.6 million km.
There is no way to return to a specific point in time.

I should (once again) remind people that temporally-displaced wormholes can be transported to specific and precise locations in space and time, so you always know where you are going (in space-time) when you use that method.

 

[charliebrown]

Just as a side note in that the fact we change our position every day 2.6 million km or 1.6 million miles just shows how big the universe is.

I find this unbelievable.

 

[Analogue Boy]

So can we say Time Travel’s not what it used to be?