ChatterBank0 min ago
Time Travel ......
Just science fiction ?
I can see that you might be able to travel back in time , however I have great difficulty in seeing how you could travel to the future , given that the future has not happened yet .
I can see that you might be able to travel back in time , however I have great difficulty in seeing how you could travel to the future , given that the future has not happened yet .
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It's not exactly that you'd travel into the future, rather that you'd sort of stay where you were in time while the rest of the universe got on along ahead of you. Time stays still. I have never been able to see how you could go backwards in time as I've never been able to work out how the 'backwards' equations would work in terms of relativity physics.
I asked a similar question a while a go Bazile, I'm not sure but maybe there might be something in the answers I got that might be of interest. I'm thinking of wormholes... I think.... if I understood the principal... which I'm not 100% convinced I did... anyway, I'm waffling... hopefully there's something to interest you there.
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Science/Questio n307763.html
(On another note, I agree with you about the future bit as isn't there something else about the decisions we make and how if we do one thing differently then we can change the whole scope of what can/did happen? Or I might well just be very confused).
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Science/Questio n307763.html
(On another note, I agree with you about the future bit as isn't there something else about the decisions we make and how if we do one thing differently then we can change the whole scope of what can/did happen? Or I might well just be very confused).
According to the theory of relativity we all keep are own personal time. if you stay on earth and I fly off in a fast spaceship my time will move slower relative to yours. So when I get back, from my perspective you would have gone forward in time and from your perspective I would have gone back in time.
Wormholes provide a remote possibility of faster than light travel and, much less likely again, time travel:
The faster than light travel means that we would take a shortcut to a distant region of space enabling us to arrive at our destination faster than light travelling in the conventional way.
Time travel would require manipulating the entry and exit points so that they kept different times as per relativity theoretically allowing us to skip back and forward in time. All speculation on usable wormholes is science fiction.
Wormholes provide a remote possibility of faster than light travel and, much less likely again, time travel:
The faster than light travel means that we would take a shortcut to a distant region of space enabling us to arrive at our destination faster than light travelling in the conventional way.
Time travel would require manipulating the entry and exit points so that they kept different times as per relativity theoretically allowing us to skip back and forward in time. All speculation on usable wormholes is science fiction.
The general concept of travelling forward in time with velocities close to the speed of light is well established and we see it in many places if you know where to look.
A good example is muons created high in the atmosphere reach the Earth when they should decay. Their high speed slows time for them.
If you have troble with the travelling forward concept imagine a "sleeping beauty" scenario as the world rushes around you at breakneck speed.
Dogman's objection to travelling backwards in time is a common one. One that is sometimes answered with the suggestion that perhaps it is only possible to travel back to a point in time where the time machine was first created.
So to travel backwards in time you first need to create a receiver and then in a years time could travel back to the point in time to where you created the receiver.
A more common objection is the murdering your grand-parents problem. Obviously doing that stops you from being born which stops you from killing them etc. etc.
However it's not necessarily impossible. Travelling back in time and changing things could be seen as taking a route through an alternative Universe, that by travelling back in time you are effectively travelling through universes.
Other interesting things to play with - perhaps travelling backwards is not possible for a physical entity - Einstein certainly makes it hard. Maybe it's possible to construct a phone and send your past-self a message after - say the lottery results came out.
Of course remember what I said about multiple Universes you might find that all you've done is make one of your possible future self very rich - but that might not be in the same universe that you are currently experiencing!
A good example is muons created high in the atmosphere reach the Earth when they should decay. Their high speed slows time for them.
If you have troble with the travelling forward concept imagine a "sleeping beauty" scenario as the world rushes around you at breakneck speed.
Dogman's objection to travelling backwards in time is a common one. One that is sometimes answered with the suggestion that perhaps it is only possible to travel back to a point in time where the time machine was first created.
So to travel backwards in time you first need to create a receiver and then in a years time could travel back to the point in time to where you created the receiver.
A more common objection is the murdering your grand-parents problem. Obviously doing that stops you from being born which stops you from killing them etc. etc.
However it's not necessarily impossible. Travelling back in time and changing things could be seen as taking a route through an alternative Universe, that by travelling back in time you are effectively travelling through universes.
Other interesting things to play with - perhaps travelling backwards is not possible for a physical entity - Einstein certainly makes it hard. Maybe it's possible to construct a phone and send your past-self a message after - say the lottery results came out.
Of course remember what I said about multiple Universes you might find that all you've done is make one of your possible future self very rich - but that might not be in the same universe that you are currently experiencing!
Cont...
If I wanted to make a phone like this I'd be looking at antimatter. There is a sense that a positron can be seen as an electron going backwards in time. This is normally thought of as being just an aid to calculation rather than a real reflection of the way things are but maybe, just maybe there's something in it
If I wanted to make a phone like this I'd be looking at antimatter. There is a sense that a positron can be seen as an electron going backwards in time. This is normally thought of as being just an aid to calculation rather than a real reflection of the way things are but maybe, just maybe there's something in it
That's slightly different.
Chaos theory (If we call it non-linear dynamics we won't upset all the mathematicians who think "chaos" is a bit pop-science) is to do with certain types of systems that are very sensitive to tiny changes in the starting conditions.
The classic example is the so called butterfly effect where the beat of a butterflys wings in New York might determine whether we have a storm in London.
Imagine the smoke of a cigarette, at first it flows upwards then it becomes "chaotic" billowing this way and that. It is responding to the most minute changes in the atmosphere which cause a billow of smoke in a particular direction.
I suspect the confusion comes from the film "the butterfly" effect which took this analogy that events through time are chaotic and that the smallest things that happen have gigantic changes futher on in time.
It's an old idea, Ray Bradbury wrote a short story "The sound of Thunder" on the idea over 50 years ago but to make "The butterfly effect" work as a film you have to introduce time travel and alternative universes to see the effects.
The "Sound of Thunder" was made into what was apparently a turkey of a film last year. Shame because it's a great short story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunde r
Chaos theory (If we call it non-linear dynamics we won't upset all the mathematicians who think "chaos" is a bit pop-science) is to do with certain types of systems that are very sensitive to tiny changes in the starting conditions.
The classic example is the so called butterfly effect where the beat of a butterflys wings in New York might determine whether we have a storm in London.
Imagine the smoke of a cigarette, at first it flows upwards then it becomes "chaotic" billowing this way and that. It is responding to the most minute changes in the atmosphere which cause a billow of smoke in a particular direction.
I suspect the confusion comes from the film "the butterfly" effect which took this analogy that events through time are chaotic and that the smallest things that happen have gigantic changes futher on in time.
It's an old idea, Ray Bradbury wrote a short story "The sound of Thunder" on the idea over 50 years ago but to make "The butterfly effect" work as a film you have to introduce time travel and alternative universes to see the effects.
The "Sound of Thunder" was made into what was apparently a turkey of a film last year. Shame because it's a great short story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunde r
For a serious answer skip to next post
Travel into the future is unavoidable. It is all a matter of staying alive and being prepared for what you find when you get there so that when you arrive your not wishing you could go back and do it the wrong way all over again, relatively speaking.
Only a fool would �purposefully� accelerate their rate of travel into the future and a fool they would be when they got there and men with straight jackets would rightfully be awaiting their arrival.
If it were possible to traveling back in time to correct some mistakes then God has some splainin� to do come Judgment Day! hmmm perhaps that explains the hold-up?
Travel into the future is unavoidable. It is all a matter of staying alive and being prepared for what you find when you get there so that when you arrive your not wishing you could go back and do it the wrong way all over again, relatively speaking.
Only a fool would �purposefully� accelerate their rate of travel into the future and a fool they would be when they got there and men with straight jackets would rightfully be awaiting their arrival.
If it were possible to traveling back in time to correct some mistakes then God has some splainin� to do come Judgment Day! hmmm perhaps that explains the hold-up?
Thanks China Doll , for advising me of that thread - very interesting posts
DavidUK - How about a god out there who has already created our future , and we simply move forward into it as time passes .
To borrow a quotation -
' There are known knowns . These are things we know that we know .
There are known unknowns . That is to say , there are things we know we dont know .
But there are also unknown unknowns . These are things we dont know we dont know '
Who knows
DavidUK - How about a god out there who has already created our future , and we simply move forward into it as time passes .
To borrow a quotation -
' There are known knowns . These are things we know that we know .
There are known unknowns . That is to say , there are things we know we dont know .
But there are also unknown unknowns . These are things we dont know we dont know '
Who knows
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