Time Traveling

Hey there Kazza, Have you ever given any thought to the theory of time travel.

Hey....Didn't you ask that tomorrow?

Old Timer wrote:Hey there Kazza, Have you ever given any thought to the theory of time travel.

No more than most people I don't think, it's certainly not something we deal with in most of physics. The physicists that deal with time travel are the really, really, super intelligent ones working in pure theoretical fields. I know as much about it as you do.

There's no evidence that time travel is possible (which doesn't mean it isn't) so there's not really much for us to go on. Sometimes weird things about time come up in general relativity, but we tend to brush over them. No one's sure whether or not they are possible, or whether they're just something that comes up as a quirk of the mathematics.

DM007 wrote:Hey....Didn't you ask that tomorrow?

Lol.

As our whole time system is based on the planet's rotation, what about flying aroundthe planet in the opposite direction at the speed of sound or faster and maybe the speed of light one day. Would it be possible to go back in time like that? I know what you have said but what do you think????

Old Timer wrote:As our whole time system is based on the planet's rotation, what about flying aroundthe planet in the opposite direction at the speed of sound or faster and maybe the speed of light one day. Would it be possible to go back in time like that? I know what you have said but what do you think????

I dunno. You could ask the pilots that have done it, though . (Well, faster than the speed of sound, not faster than light).

Travelling faster than light might get you backwards in time, but it's got nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth. I say "might" because you can't just get to light speed then step on the accelerator and go a bit faster. It's not as simple as that. I guess no one's really sure what would happen because according to everything we know it's not possible.

That'd be one heck of a suit to keep the bones and the rest of your inards intact though.

Kazza wrote:

Old Timer wrote:As our whole time system is based on the planet's rotation, what about flying aroundthe planet in the opposite direction at the speed of sound or faster and maybe the speed of light one day. Would it be possible to go back in time like that? I know what you have said but what do you think????

I dunno. You could ask the pilots that have done it, though . (Well, faster than the speed of sound, not faster than light).

Travelling faster than light might get you backwards in time, but it's got nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth. I say "might" because you can't just get to light speed then step on the accelerator and go a bit faster. It's not as simple as that. I guess no one's really sure what would happen because according to everything we know it's not possible.

Are you saying that it is not possible period, or that it is just not possible at this time and that we dn't have the knowledge as of yet.

Old Timer wrote:

Kazza wrote:

Old Timer wrote:As our whole time system is based on the planet's rotation, what about flying aroundthe planet in the opposite direction at the speed of sound or faster and maybe the speed of light one day. Would it be possible to go back in time like that? I know what you have said but what do you think????

I dunno. You could ask the pilots that have done it, though . (Well, faster than the speed of sound, not faster than light).

Travelling faster than light might get you backwards in time, but it's got nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth. I say "might" because you can't just get to light speed then step on the accelerator and go a bit faster. It's not as simple as that. I guess no one's really sure what would happen because according to everything we know it's not possible.

Are you saying that it is not possible period, or that it is just not possible at this time and that we dn't have the knowledge as of yet.

We don't really know. Essentially, what we know is that if you travel faster than the speed of light you can violate causality. So, for example, after a plane has crashed someone travelling faster than light (under certain conditions) could send a message that would arrive before the plane left.

We also have no way of getting faster than the speed of light. We can't just build bigger rockets, we'd need something drastically new - like something that cuts through other dimensions or some other sci-fi type thing.

If we can take two nine volt batteries and use them to produce a 200,000 volt shock with a stun gun to disable an attacker, and some go to 975,000 volts and all are small handheld devices, why can't they come up with something that uses that same principle to move an object such as a space ship for example to warp speed or somthing similar. Could it have somethinhg to do with the time and space continium? ( I think that is right )

Einstein said the closer you get to the speed of light the harder is to accelerate that object because of the infinately increasing friction, which means you would need an infinate source of energy. He said the speed of light could never be reached.

Have you ever heard about John Titor? He claimed to be a time traveler from 2036. It sounds so wildly rediculous but I guess stranger things have happened.

http://www.johntitor.com/

Well I can't say he is a time travelor and I can't say he isn't.

But it seems like folks seem to forget that einstein was talking about all things as we know them to be. Hasn't the progress that we have made through history with our ever progressive tehnology taught us anything at all? Take one of the most famous for example, " Man will never fly " Or how about driving at 250 mph which we can do now. Just because we cannot do it today does not mean that we cannot do it tomorrow does it?

Big Slick wrote:Einstein said the closer you get to the speed of light the harder is to accelerate that object because of the infinately increasing friction, which means you would need an infinate source of energy. He said the speed of light could never be reached.

Have you ever heard about John Titor? He claimed to be a time traveler from 2036. It sounds so wildly rediculous but I guess stranger things have happened.

http://www.johntitor.com/

I've looked into the john titor story. It is fun to look into. The picture of the car with the time machine in it is cool.

Big Slick wrote:Einstein said the closer you get to the speed of light the harder is to accelerate that object because of the infinately increasing friction, which means you would need an infinate source of energy. He said the speed of light could never be reached.

Have you ever heard about John Titor? He claimed to be a time traveler from 2036. It sounds so wildly rediculous but I guess stranger things have happened.

http://www.johntitor.com/

This guy is an absolute fraud. A "nutter", for lack of a better description. His "time machine" is nothing more than a fancy toaster. And it probably won't even make toast. Nowhere in his drawings, descriptions and photographs do I find the Flux Capacitor. Everyone in the scientific community knows time travel is not possible without a Flux Capacitor. And, nowhere do I find his documentation in The National Inquirer! Geez! Some people!

DM007 wrote:

Big Slick wrote:Einstein said the closer you get to the speed of light the harder is to accelerate that object because of the infinately increasing friction, which means you would need an infinate source of energy. He said the speed of light could never be reached.

Have you ever heard about John Titor? He claimed to be a time traveler from 2036. It sounds so wildly rediculous but I guess stranger things have happened.

http://www.johntitor.com/

This guy is an absolute fraud. A "nutter", for lack of a better description. His "time machine" is nothing more than a fancy toaster. And it probably won't even make toast. Nowhere in his drawings, descriptions and photographs do I find the Flux Capacitor. Everyone in the scientific community knows time travel is not possible without a Flux Capacitor. And, nowhere do I find his documentation in The National Inquirer! Geez! Some people!

I myself was not implying I believe the story. Though you got to give the guy an "A" for effort. I do like some of the blog posts on that site.
Fun stuff to look at.

Well according to the time travelors site, civil war broke out here in the good old USA in 2005. Well it is now 2009 and I have yet to see any civil war here so I guess I will have to say it is a fake. JMHO

Old Timer wrote:Well according to the time travelors site, civil war broke out here in the good old USA in 2005. Well it is now 2009 and I have yet to see any civil war here so I guess I will have to say it is a fake. JMHO

Well unless you believe everything that is possible happens at the same time. Meaning no paradox problem.

hehe.

The Civil War never ended. We only stopped the militarized fighting. Not unlike what's happened, is happening, and will happen in the Middle East. We can pause the killing (then call it something else), but the war and hatred lives on, only to continue at a later time. Stop the hatred, and we stop the war, which is out of reach of any diplomacy. Not that it isn't gallant and honorable to make the attempts.

Well said.

Old Timer wrote:If we can take two nine volt batteries and use them to produce a 200,000 volt shock with a stun gun to disable an attacker, and some go to 975,000 volts and all are small handheld devices, why can't they come up with something that uses that same principle to move an object such as a space ship for example to warp speed or somthing similar. Could it have somethinhg to do with the time and space continium? ( I think that is right )

But we need to get back to the above.

Big Slick wrote:Einstein said the closer you get to the speed of light the harder is to accelerate that object because of the infinately increasing friction, which means you would need an infinate source of energy. He said the speed of light could never be reached.

That's not quite what he said.

It's not so much that the closer you get to light speed, the harder it is to accelerate, but... well... this gets kind of complicated.

Think about it like this:

I build a big spaceship, one that can keep accelerating forever because it has a neverending fuel supply. I set out from one side of the galaxy, and step on the accelerator. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not moving, but rather the rest of the galaxy is moving towards me. As I keep my foot on the accelerator, I never see things moving towards me any faster than light speed, but what I do see is that the universe starts to get smaller and smaller.

Eventually, even though things are still only travelling towards me at 99.99% the speed of light, the universe has become so small that I can travel from one side of it to the other in a single day. For me, it seems as if the universe got so small that I could cross it in a day without ever needing to break light speed. In that sense, I can travel as fast as I like - in this example I travelled 100,000 light years in a single day.

Now we need to consider what someone on Earth sees. For an observer on Earth, the rocket never passed light speed. It took 100,000 years for it to travel from side of the galaxy to the other. What happened was that time slowed down for the person in the rocket, so to them it only seemed like a day. If they were to turn around and come back to Earth 200,000 years would have passed, even though they are convinced the trip only took 2 days.


So that's why we can't travel faster than light. It's not because it's too difficult - it's because time and space interact in such a way that it's just not possible. You can travel as far as you like in your own lifetime, because time slows down, but you'll never see your loved ones again.

I'd think it would be impossable because you wouldn't get but so far before you'd smash into something. Even if you did the all the math and ploting, which would be a nightmare in itself, you can't go around an object but so fast. And I know from my own experiance with a T-bird I once had. If you're going at 100 mph (I was) and try to turn onto another street (I did) without slowing down conciderably (I didn't), the enertia you've been creating will continue to push you forward even while you turn (It did). And bad things happen in that situation.

I've heard of the idea to actualy fold space or create a wormhole would be more plausable.. though how baffles me.

CarolinaHound wrote:I'd think it would be impossable because you wouldn't get but so far before you'd smash into something. Even if you did the all the math and ploting, which would be a nightmare in itself, you can't go around an object but so fast. And I know from my own experiance with a T-bird I once had. If you're going at 100 mph (I was) and try to turn onto another street (I did) without slowing down conciderably (I didn't), the enertia you've been creating will continue to push you forward even while you turn (It did). And bad things happen in that situation.

I've heard of the idea to actualy fold space or create a wormhole would be more plausable.. though how baffles me.

Not sure whether or not this will be a problem. The universe is almost entirely empty space. You could point your spaceship at the star you want to get to and be pretty confident you're not going to hit something.

On the other hand, at very high speeds even a single atom can become like a bomb. You would need some good shielding to protect against the interstellar gas that you would be tunnelling through.

Would something along the lines of an electro magnetic force field have any effect??

Old Timer wrote:Would something along the lines of an electro magnetic force field have any effect??

Perhaps.

From memory, most of the gas between galaxies is ionised (which means it carries either a positive or negative charge), so you could use a magnetic field to deflect it. Within the galaxy, so travelling between stars, most of the gas is neutral I think, so you would probably need something else. Or maybe you could use a really strong electric field to polarise it, and then use your magnetic shield.

Kazza wrote:

Old Timer wrote:Would something along the lines of an electro magnetic force field have any effect??

Perhaps.

From memory, most of the gas between galaxies is ionised (which means it carries either a positive or negative charge), so you could use a magnetic field to deflect it. Within the galaxy, so travelling between stars, most of the gas is neutral I think, so you would probably need something else. Or maybe you could use a really strong electric field to polarise it, and then use your magnetic shield.

If we can take two nine volt batteries and use them to produce a 200,000 volt shock with a stun gun to disable an attacker, and some go to 975,000 volts and all are small handheld devices, why can't they come up with something that uses that same principle to move an object such as a space ship for example to warp speed or somthing similar. Could it have somethinhg to do with the time and space continium? ( I think that is right ) Or could that same kind of power amplifier be used to make such a force field.[b]

Old Timer wrote:

Kazza wrote:

Old Timer wrote:Would something along the lines of an electro magnetic force field have any effect??

Perhaps.

From memory, most of the gas between galaxies is ionised (which means it carries either a positive or negative charge), so you could use a magnetic field to deflect it. Within the galaxy, so travelling between stars, most of the gas is neutral I think, so you would probably need something else. Or maybe you could use a really strong electric field to polarise it, and then use your magnetic shield.

If we can take two nine volt batteries and use them to produce a 200,000 volt shock with a stun gun to disable an attacker, and some go to 975,000 volts and all are small handheld devices, why can't they come up with something that uses that same principle to move an object such as a space ship for example to warp speed or somthing similar. Could it have somethinhg to do with the time and space continium? ( I think that is right ) Or could that same kind of power amplifier be used to make such a force field.[b]

The difference is that there is no physical law that prevents us from producing a 975,000 volt shock, but there is a physical law that stops us from travelling faster than light.

When it comes down to it, there are two possibilities:

- Faster than light travel is possible, in which case maybe we will be able to come up with some new technology that lets us do it.

- Faster than light travel is not possible. The laws of the universe simply don't allow us to do it. If this is the case, and all the evidence so far suggests it is, then no amount of trying on our behalf will change it. It's simply the way the universe works.



When I have some time I might start a thread explaining special relativity, like the one on the scam.com about quantum mechanics. It should help clear up some of the ideas about faster than light travel.

Well I am betting on the fact that man really does like to break the laws and will one day find a way to travel in space with ease. And without it taking a lifetime to get from here to there. Your new thread should prove interesting.

Old Timer wrote:Well I am betting on the fact that man really does like to break the laws and will one day find a way to travel in space with ease. And without it taking a lifetime to get from here to there. Your new thread should prove interesting.

I guess we can hope. Though from what KAZZA is saying we don't know how to get around the time issue. Though this makes me wonder. We may in the next 50 to 100 years have the ability to travel to mars.

If we did travel to mars, and back would time come into play. I mean not the time away, but how a trip like that would effect time. Maybe seconds, maybe minutes, maybe nothing.

Though how cool would it be to have humans go to mars.

howdy wrote:

Old Timer wrote:Well I am betting on the fact that man really does like to break the laws and will one day find a way to travel in space with ease. And without it taking a lifetime to get from here to there. Your new thread should prove interesting.

I guess we can hope. Though from what KAZZA is saying we don't know how to get around the time issue. Though this makes me wonder. We may in the next 50 to 100 years have the ability to travel to mars.

If we did travel to mars, and back would time come into play. I mean not the time away, but how a trip like that would effect time. Maybe seconds, maybe minutes, maybe nothing.

Though how cool would it be to have humans go to mars.

Special relativity effects wouldn't really come into effect on a trip to Mars. We wouldn't be getting up to anywhere near the right sort of speeds. It would take a journey of months, if not years, to travel to Mars, and for time dilation to come into effect we would need to do it in hours.

What would affect it, however, and what does affect the rover missions, is that it takes 1.5 hours for a signal to get to Mars, so you could never have a conversation with someone in real time. If you send them a message, it will take at least 3 hours before you get a reply. That makes driving a remote control car like the rovers a real pain in the ass.

Hi, KAZZA. I can't even begin to tell you how much fun it is learn. You have awakened something long lost within me. Curiosity. Not only that, but a desire to learn. I seem to have a real interest in the nature of gravity. I don't know why really. Here is how much I don't know. I thought that if a black hole was created. Then said black hole would just start sucking up everything nearby. Though you said the gravity does not change. So to the people viewing the event it only seems to get dark. That makes perfect sense. Of course the gravity would not change. To a layman, you would think a black hole would just suck up everything nearby. Though how could it. The gravity remains the same. I guess this is how some of us laymen would think. I guess sometimes you see those TV shows of black hole gobbling up everything, and you get that belief. A belief without understanding the facts. The fact that gravity does not change, even with a black hole. Without something to feed that gravity and make it stronger.

howdy wrote:Hi, KAZZA. I can't even begin to tell you how much fun it is learn. You have awakened something long lost within me. Curiosity. Not only that, but a desire to learn. I seem to have a real interest in the nature of gravity. I don't know why really. Here is how much I don't know. I thought that if a black hole was created. Then said black hole would just start sucking up everything nearby. Though you said the gravity does not change. So to the people viewing the event it only seems to get dark. That makes perfect sense. Of course the gravity would not change. To a layman, you would think a black hole would just suck up everything nearby. Though how could it. The gravity remains the same. I guess this is how some of us laymen would think. I guess sometimes you see those TV shows of black hole gobbling up everything, and you get that belief. A belief without understanding the facts. The fact that gravity does not change, even with a black hole. Without something to feed that gravity and make it stronger.

Gravity does remain constant. However, the matter needed to sustain a black hole is massive. Gravitational attraction is atom for atom. A black hole contains a LOT of matter, therefore, a lot of attraction. Any amount of gravity will attract light (photons), but under normal circumstances, it is so little, it goes unnoticed. A star collapsing upon itself (black hole) will compress all its matter, and all the matter it can attract into it. Consider the "power" of a common magnet. One magnet (for example) may suspend 1 pound. 10 of the same magnets will suspend 10 pounds. A billion, a billion pounds, etc. Get enough magnets together, and you can drag a planet, star, solar system, and perhaps, even a galaxy, into your trap.

HI Kazza, you have also intrigued me with wanting to learn more. Your opinion please on this.

If in theory you were to travel faster than light, you would be in effect traveling into the future. Now assuming that that is correct, how would you be able to travel back in time, in theory of course.

Old Timer wrote:HI Kazza, you have also intrigued me with wanting to learn more. Your opinion please on this.

If in theory you were to travel faster than light, you would be in effect traveling into the future. Now assuming that that is correct, how would you be able to travel back in time, in theory of course.

Travelling faster than the speed of light takes you into the past, not the future.

I'd need to go over it a bit in my head to be sure, but I don't think you ever get back to your own past. What I mean is that the further you want to go in to the past, the further away from this place you have to go, so you would end up somewhere else in the universe.

A better way to think of it is not so much that you would end up in the past, but more that you would end up violating causality.

Again though, I really need a pen and paper and some time to rethink this, or I need a book to look it up in. It's been a little while since I gave it real consideration.

I found this to be very interesting. Any thoughts?

Science-fiction stories about space travel have already inspired humans to travel to the moon. Similarly, will time-travel stories inspire us to create real time-travel mechanisms? Will we ever find a way to overcome the Einstein speed limit and make all of spacetime home?

I wonder what humanity will discover about spacetime in the next century. Around four billion years ago, living creatures were nothing more than biochemical machines capable of self-reproduction. In a mere fraction of this time, humans evolved from creatures like Australopithecus. Today humans have wandered the moon and have studied ideas ranging from general relativity to quantum cosmology. Who knows into what beings we will evolve? Who knows what intelligent machines we will create that will be our ultimate heirs? These creatures might survive virtually forever, with our ideas, hopes, and dreams carried with them.

There is a strangeness to the cosmic symphony that may encompass time travel, higher dimensions, quantum superspace, and parallel universes—worlds that resemble our own and perhaps even occupy the same space as our own in some ghostly manner. Stephen Hawking has even proposed using wormholes to connect our universe with an infinite number of parallel universes. Edward Witten is working hard on superstring theory, which has already created a sensation in the world of physics because it can explain the nature of both matter and spacetime. By realizing that the fundamental laws of physics appear simpler in higher dimensions, string theory can unite Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum theory in ten dimensions. Our heirs, whatever or whoever they may be, will explore space and time to degrees we cannot currently fathom. They will create new melodies in the music of time. There are infinite harmonies to be explored.


Clifford Pickover is a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He is the lead writer for Discover Magazine's brain-boggler column and the author of Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide, among many other books. This article was adapted from: Time: A Traveler's Guide, by Clifford A. Pickover. Copyright 1998 by Clifford Pickover. Used by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.

Well this says our time is up. any comments?