If I, or anyone I know, come onto contact with a Time Machine of any sort, I will, totally and completely, travel back in time to Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 8:00 PM at **** **** Ave. ***** Oregon.

But time travel, by its very nature, is discovered simultaneously at all points in time. So we're never going to have time travel.

Even if I wrote the note, I wouldn't go through. Wretched stuff that time travel. Why don't we just sit down and enjoy the bread when it's ready?

Even if I wrote the note, I wouldn't go through. Wretched stuff that time travel. Why don't we just sit down and enjoy the bread when it's ready?

Is that even Nukora talking? I doubt it. Sounds too, um, feminine if you ask me. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO NUKORA?

As a general response to everyone else, in theory, time travel as we see it on TV (with portals and the such) is impossible. However, it has been proven that the faster you travel, the slower time goes for you. Take, for example, a satellite in geosynchronous orbit around a specific point on Earth. An atomic clock on the satellite and an atomic clock beneath the satellite, on Earth's surface, are perfectly synchronized. The satellite in orbit, however is moving faster than than the clock on the surface of Earth. After a given amount of time, both clocks are checked, and it is found that the clock on the satellite in orbit is 5 minutes behind the clock on Earth. Now, that doesn't mean that the clock is slow, but it rather means that the satellite literally experienced 5 minutes less of time than anything on Earth. When that satellite is brought back down to Earth, it can be said that the satellite traveled 5 minutes into the future. Have any of you seen Flight of the Navigator? In it, a boy is taken from Earth (in 1978) by an alien intelligence and travels at about the speed of light for a few hours. He is returned to Earth (having no knowledge of the event) and finds that the year is now 1986. He experienced a few hours of time, and the rest of the universe experienced 8 years.

Argy

Nuts. I never come across time travel technologies in the future.

Either that, or I lose and forget the note.

Nuts. I never come across time travel technologies in the future.

 

Either that, or I lose and forget the note.

Or, it's illegal to use time travel for personal purposes, and the government keeps such a watchful eye on it that any attempt to use it illegally will be met with your immediate destruction. Maybe.

Argy

Or, it's likely that that could happen anyway. (Irregular) Time travel/teleportation in general just isn't a good idea, IMO, because of the impact it could have. Anything could change, and it'd make genocide extremely, extremely easy. That's why I would try not to teleport back to this moment just because I wrote the note.

It'd take a lot of willpower not to do so, though. Or not even for events that far back. "Oh come on, Gingerbread, it was only a few minutes ago, you could only impact a few things."

Well, it's actually safe to go to the future and only the future; otherwise, if you go at all in the past, you'll get stuck in an endless loop. But you can meet your future self and hopefully work things out before killing yourself accidentally through the shock of seeing yourself tap you on the shoulder.

Nukora is quite correct in his statements. Also, something that I failed to mention (on purpose). As of now, time travel to the past is impossible. Period. The speed theories and black hole theories, etc., only allow time travel into the future, and I believe a great many of those theories to be correct. Unfortunately, I think that none of us will ever live to see backwards time travel, if it ever even comes to exist.

Argy

Ah, the sweet smell of temporal mechanics in the afternoon!

Look up the "Grandfather Paradox" for why time travel is, at best, impossible.

*ANNOYING BUZZER OF WRONGNESS*

Wrong. There is no such thing as a "paradox" there (in fact, there is no such thing as a true paradox). If you think that, you clearly do not know about alternate timelines.

Instead, what would happen is, as soon as you go back in time, you create a new branching timeline from that point. Then you kill your gramps (you evil time traveler you! ), and in that timeline the future you ceases to exist. But you didn't come from that timeline, so you don't cease to exist. See? Simple.

"Paradox" is just a copout for people who don't understand basic physics IMO.

Even if I wrote the note, I wouldn't go through. Wretched stuff that time travel. Why don't we just sit down and enjoy the bread when it's ready?

Is that even Nukora talking? I doubt it. Sounds too, um, feminine if you ask me. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO NUKORA?

 

As a general response to everyone else, in theory, time travel as we see it on TV (with portals and the such) is impossible. However, it has been proven that the faster you travel, the slower time goes for you. Take, for example, a satellite in geosynchronous orbit around a specific point on Earth. An atomic clock on the satellite and an atomic clock beneath the satellite, on Earth's surface, are perfectly synchronized. The satellite in orbit, however is moving faster than than the clock on the surface of Earth. After a given amount of time, both clocks are checked, and it is found that the clock on the satellite in orbit is 5 minutes behind the clock on Earth. Now, that doesn't mean that the clock is slow, but it rather means that the satellite literally experienced 5 minutes less of time than anything on Earth. When that satellite is brought back down to Earth, it can be said that the satellite traveled 5 minutes into the future. Have any of you seen Flight of the Navigator? In it, a boy is taken from Earth (in 1978) by an alien intelligence and travels at about the speed of light for a few hours. He is returned to Earth (having no knowledge of the event) and finds that the year is now 1986. He experienced a few hours of time, and the rest of the universe experienced 8 years.

 

Argy

Well now slow down. Never declare something impossible. It's so hard to prove a negative. There are usually ways to do just about anything in physics, it's just a matter of getting the technology for it. So I'm curious which examples you're saying are impossible.

Also, I wouldn't say it "traveled five minutes into the future." Everything is always traveling into the future. It just means that time flowed more slowly for the satellite. It never "jumped" into the future; it was in the same present time as everybody else at the same time.

And yes, I own FotN, and it's a great movie.

Nukora is quite correct in his statements. Also, something that I failed to mention (on purpose). As of now, time travel to the past is impossible. Period. The speed theories and black hole theories, etc., only allow time travel into the future, and I believe a great many of those theories to be correct. Unfortunately, I think that none of us will ever live to see backwards time travel, if it ever even comes to exist.

 

Argy

I'm not sure what you mean. Neither theory actually enables "forward" time travel, as I nitpicked above, but both technically allow travel to the past. If you travel faster than the speed of light, you go back in time. Which, BTW, was used at the end of FotN, if you recall, to send the kid back to the past.

That one is currently impossible, because as far as we know, traveling faster than the speed of light is not attainable (but never say never ).

However, if you go into a black hole, past the event horizon, you are already traveling back in time. If somehow you could survive that (which is pretty unlikely, but still), and come out of the event horizon again, you would have traveled into the past.

One of my main ideas for backwards time travel is fairly simple. Artificially hold a field of non-moving gravitons in high concentration in an area, mimicking extreme high gravity like that inside the event horizon of a black hole, but without the crushing or even pulling force, and anything inside (which should include the generator or this could be deadly) would go back in time. This would explain several TV/etc. style time travel machines.

Now having a machine that "sends" you back in time without actually going back itself, that's a tad bit trickier, but it's possible too. Basically, make a temporal version of a wormhole and you could go anywhere, even visiting other timelines, if you could control the temporospatial pathway of the wormhole with no limits, and voila.

Even if I wrote the note, I wouldn't go through. Wretched stuff that time travel. Why don't we just sit down and enjoy the bread when it's ready?

Is that even Nukora talking? I doubt it. Sounds too, um, feminine if you ask me. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO NUKORA?

 

As a general response to everyone else, in theory, time travel as we see it on TV (with portals and the such) is impossible. However, it has been proven that the faster you travel, the slower time goes for you. Take, for example, a satellite in geosynchronous orbit around a specific point on Earth. An atomic clock on the satellite and an atomic clock beneath the satellite, on Earth's surface, are perfectly synchronized. The satellite in orbit, however is moving faster than than the clock on the surface of Earth. After a given amount of time, both clocks are checked, and it is found that the clock on the satellite in orbit is 5 minutes behind the clock on Earth. Now, that doesn't mean that the clock is slow, but it rather means that the satellite literally experienced 5 minutes less of time than anything on Earth. When that satellite is brought back down to Earth, it can be said that the satellite traveled 5 minutes into the future. Have any of you seen Flight of the Navigator? In it, a boy is taken from Earth (in 1978) by an alien intelligence and travels at about the speed of light for a few hours. He is returned to Earth (having no knowledge of the event) and finds that the year is now 1986. He experienced a few hours of time, and the rest of the universe experienced 8 years.

 

Argy

Well now slow down. Never declare something impossible. It's so hard to prove a negative. There are usually ways to do just about anything in physics, it's just a matter of getting the technology for it. So I'm curious which examples you're saying are impossible.

 

Also, I wouldn't say it "traveled five minutes into the future." Everything is always traveling into the future. It just means that time flowed more slowly for the satellite. It never "jumped" into the future; it was in the same present time as everybody else at the same time.

 

And yes, I own FotN, and it's a great movie.

What I was saying is impossible is the TV version of time travel; walking into gate-like structure with a portal in it and emerging in a different time. If you don't like the word impossible, then perhaps I should say "immensely improbable".

Time itself is merely a perception. Let's take my example further; lets say that the satellite experienced 1 year less time than Earth, and not just 5 minutes. You are right in saying that time flowed more slowly for the satellite, and that it doesn't "jump" into the future, but time was perceived in two different ways on Earth and in the satellite, and thus, when the satellite is brought to Earth, in our perception, it travels 1 year into the future.

FotN is indeed a great movie.

Nukora is quite correct in his statements. Also, something that I failed to mention (on purpose). As of now, time travel to the past is impossible. Period. The speed theories and black hole theories, etc., only allow time travel into the future, and I believe a great many of those theories to be correct. Unfortunately, I think that none of us will ever live to see backwards time travel, if it ever even comes to exist.

 

Argy

I'm not sure what you mean. Neither theory actually enables "forward" time travel, as I nitpicked above, but both technically allow travel to the past. If you travel faster than the speed of light, you go back in time. Which, BTW, was used at the end of FotN, if you recall, to send the kid back to the past.

 

That one is currently impossible, because as far as we know, traveling faster than the speed of light is not attainable (but never say never ).

 

However, if you go into a black hole, past the event horizon, you are already traveling back in time. If somehow you could survive that (which is pretty unlikely, but still), and come out of the event horizon again, you would have traveled into the past.

 

One of my main ideas for backwards time travel is fairly simple. Artificially hold a field of non-moving gravitons in high concentration in an area, mimicking extreme high gravity like that inside the event horizon of a black hole, but without the crushing or even pulling force, and anything inside (which should include the generator or this could be deadly) would go back in time. This would explain several TV/etc. style time travel machines.

 

Now having a machine that "sends" you back in time without actually going back itself, that's a tad bit trickier, but it's possible too. Basically, make a temporal version of a wormhole and you could go anywhere, even visiting other timelines, if you could control the temporospatial pathway of the wormhole with no limits, and voila.

If you travel at and/or past the speed of light, time passes more slowly for you, but time everywhere else remains unaffected. That means that after 1 minute (traveling past the speed of light) for you, say, 1 year passed for the rest of the universe. When you emerge from your state of extreme speed, you (by the perception of time) traveled one year (minus a minute) into the future. Traveling past the speed of light does nothing to affect the flow of time on everything else. As you move faster and faster, time eventually slows to a stop (but just for you). Past that, theory says that time might go backwards, but only for you, and not for the rest of the universe. Finally, as you said, traveling the speed of light turns you into energy, and it is doubtful that we will find a way to protect ourselves from that.

I believe that you are mistaking a black hole with something else. In a quote from an extremely reliable source (which I cannot mention because it's site contains forums), "Matter falling onto a black hole's event horizon appears to slow down and "freeze" to an observer outside the event horizon. If you dropped a coin at an event horizon, you would have to wait until the end of time to see it pass beyond the horizon." This is because as you approach the singularity of a black hole, time inside of the event horizon slows to a stop. Once time reaches that stop, that's it. Time inside of a black hole does not reverse. Also, the properties of time in a black hole do not affect the outside universe. In other words, if you entered a black hole at any given time, it doesn't matter one bit what happens to time inside of the event horizon, because time outside of it is unaffected and you will always, always emerge from the black hole after you entered it. Thus, forward black hole time travel is possible, and backward black hole time travel is not.

Argy