Thread: Why time Travel has/has not been invented

I have only joined this forum to throw out an idea - I probably do not have much personality wise or knowledge wise to impart of make this forum a better place.

Several models suggest that time travel into the past could be possible.

In consideration of the various information available as to how this would be accomplished a thought crossed my mind as to why we have not seen evidence of time travel.

It is possible that if time travel has been invented in the future, then the reason why we have not seen visitors (assuming they desire to visit) is not because they can not travel back in time, but because they are unable to. Let me explain.

We assume that if time travel is made possible that it will be possible to travel back in time to time/space as we know it, but what if conditions need to exist for the trip to be made? Assume for a moment that in the future if we figure out time travel that we realize that we need to travel back to a point in the past that contains perhaps say 1 trillion 1/2 electrons, or perhaps a space that has a vacuum with a certain energy being radiated through it.

In other words, what I am saying is we may need to invent the receiver before we invent the sender. Imagine if you will we knew or assumed 200 years ago that radio waves were being sent to us, but we had not yet invented the radio, but in order to receive the signal we had to invent the receiver, FIRST.

In the future, the only reaosn or thing that may prevent time travel is the fact that certain conditions may have to exist in the past at a certain decisive point in order to make the jump.

I will assume also that perhaps we can only send a radio wave or digital signal, therefore perhaps no life could be sent through the porthole.

the only reason we may not have visitors is not because they do not have time travel, it is because they require us to have a space with certain conditions that are prevalent in order to send the signal to that point.

Let us take a hypothetical, let us assume that in the future we invent time travel, let us assume we can warp time/space but we can only connect to using or manipulating say a ball of matter that has been subjected to certain conditions - let us say for example the connection can be made if we have a vacuum, devoid of all interference with the exception of protons housed at near freezing...this is just an example.

Great. From THAT moment on we can have time travel - but what about now?

My suggestion is to theorize how the time travel may take place and for us to in the right here and now establish certain conditions that would be successful to RECEIVING THE SIGNAL. We would know of course within minutes if it was right or wrong, thus allowing us to play around with hypothetical conditions until we got it right.

Of course, the down-side to doing this is on a wild note is that let us say that the reason no person/intelligent life has visited us is because the conditions in a certain space point are not right, and it is true that if we build the receiver we will get a signal, there is of course the risk that the received signal could be covertly hostile.

I'm asking us to rethink time travel and reverse thinking on it. Build a receiver for a signal we assume may be required so that decades/thousands of years from now when we have the power or technology to SEND the signal, we have a place for it to be received. Imagine in the future someone who invents it slaps their hand on their forehead saying "If only they had this 10cm x 10cm x 10cm space filled with this or that, we could make the jump/send the signal".

I openly recommend ridicule, contempt and critics, it is just a thought and an idea.

Aaron Ender Saxton

The idea that you need at least a part of the time machine "circuit" to exist before you can travel in time is not new. The idea always brings a certain scenario to my mind. The instant your "receiver" is built, you likely will be greeted by a stream of people pouring out of it. Just think how many people would want to travel back to the earliest point in time that they could even if just for curiosities sake? And remember the pool of people from which these curiosity seekers will be drawn is the entirety of humanity that lives after the transmitter is invented.

My thought on the manner is this: If time travel were ever to become possible, I think you have to have the entire time machine/mechanism in place first. And you would only be able to travel between points in time separated by a duration where the device is in continuous operation. So for instance, if you activated the machine on at 12:00, you would be able enter the machine, travel forward 3 1/2 hours, and return to the time you left by re-entering the machine. If however, for some reason while in the "future" the machine quit working, the connection with your past would be broken. If you turn the machine back on you could only travel back as far as the interruption of power.

But this is just mere speculation on my part, as no one knows if time travel is a real possibility or how it would be achieved.

Wouldn't you age as you travel into the future? What is preventing you from aging if you could ever travel through time?

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

Wouldn't you age as you travel into the future? What is preventing you from aging if you could ever travel through time?

Roughly: because you're not directly experiencing the flow of time from A to B.
You don't live through the intervening years, you skip them.

One idea I saw used a wormhole, put one end on a ship traveling near the speed of light, then setting that end down when it returned to Earth. That would allow you to travel from one place and time to another set place and time.
Not sure how it would effect causality, though.

Aaron Ender Saxton, are you, writing a book ?

I'm not an expert on this topic but,
1. It has been postulated(I think) about the fact that a light beam would travel faster than c then will "travel back in time" not sooner then it's initial frame of reference. So not really, travel back in time.
2. One view on time travel is that if you attempt this you would land in alternate Reality than the one you left. So even you want to view it as a time travel, ie 2013-1800, in your idea of "time communication", the communication would be with an alternate Reality and not with your own past.

I think is important when we theorize about a phenomena that violates the current laws of physic to give an explanation how a such a time travel would be possible in current laws (or envision other laws). Other wise will cause paradoxes, like when you want to understand how causality principle is affected.
I'm I wrong?

If the amount of mass/energy in the Universe is finite, then that would mean at using time travel, the total amount of mass/energy in the Universe at moment X will be different to the total amount at moment Y, as some of it has been sent back in time.

From the Universe's perspective, a whole load of mass and energy has just appeared out of thin vacuum, far more than random quantum foam should permit.

Also, what about entropy?

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

Wouldn't you age as you travel into the future? What is preventing you from aging if you could ever travel through time?

Roughly: because you're not directly experiencing the flow of time from A to B.
You don't live through the intervening years, you skip them.

Sir Duck....I am not sure this belongs in this particular topic, but, I found it quite funny, and hoped you might interpret it as possible a source of space orbit or possibly humor?

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1382864398592932

Originally Posted by Daecon

If the amount of mass/energy in the Universe is finite, then that would mean at using time travel, the total amount of mass/energy in the Universe at moment X will be different to the total amount at moment Y, as some of it has been sent back in time.

Is there anything that says that matters?

From the Universe's perspective, a whole load of mass and energy has just appeared out of thin vacuum, far more than random quantum foam should permit.

"Permit"?
The only "permission" is the available energy at any particular location.
A time-travelling object has its energy supplied from a non-local source - i.e. it's not tied in to, or dependant upon, any factor in the "target" time.


@ Babe: amusing but the pedant side of me screams "Noooo, wrong!".
And the semi-pedant side (the part that says okay, just go with it) says "The Earth should have moved when the jump took place, not the impact of everyone landing".

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Originally Posted by Daecon

If the amount of mass/energy in the Universe is finite, then that would mean at using time travel, the total amount of mass/energy in the Universe at moment X will be different to the total amount at moment Y, as some of it has been sent back in time.

Is there anything that says that matters?

From the Universe's perspective, a whole load of mass and energy has just appeared out of thin vacuum, far more than random quantum foam should permit.

"Permit"?
The only "permission" is the available energy at any particular location.
A time-travelling object has its energy supplied from a non-local source - i.e. it's not tied in to, or dependant upon, any factor in the "target" time.


@ Babe: amusing but the pedant side of me screams "Noooo, wrong!".
And the semi-pedant side (the part that says okay, just go with it) says "The Earth should have moved when the jump took place, not the impact of everyone landing".

I knew that you'd have a problem with it!!

But it was only for your amusement! I figured at least EVEN YOU, Sir Duckness, would see the silly and fun part. Mea Culpa if I offended you. It was not my intent.

You can't send a message to the future of this universe because the time and date to is 9th of August whatever... I personally think that for creation to have happened to us then the exact same thing must have happened in the future and it was created by us like the Large Hadron Collider but rather than being limited by the extremely strong metal donut surrounding it. Imagine humanity with the potential of unlimited power to create something that creates time which obviously wouldn't be affected by time it is in when doing so. Then after that the human soul, which i think may also be down to this technology as it's something as seemless as a thought, is also then infinite so heaven would really exist to be infinite in every sense. If anyone believes in parallel universes and understands that the size of them could be of an infinite scale then surely everything consists of particles of which an infinite amount exist and is what everything we se consists of.

So basically the same thing that is happening in a second after you reading this is happening an infinite amount of times throughout infinity. Just my thoughts. I think that everyone has to go through this so that at some point in time everything is infinite to you, heaven basically. Just because we haven't experienced it doesn't mean that it hasn't happened and isn't the reason that everything exists. C M Smith

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

You can't send a message to the future of this universe because the time and date to is 9th of August whatever.

Er, ANY message written down NOW is effectively a "message to the future".

I personally think that for creation to have happened to us then the exact same thing must have happened in the future and it was created by us like the Large Hadron Collider but rather than being limited by the extremely strong metal donut surrounding it.

What?

Imagine humanity with the potential of unlimited power to create something that creates time which obviously wouldn't be affected by time it is in when doing so.

Yeah, imagination... (it's not reality. Just a pointer there for you).

Then after that the human soul

What's a "soul"?

which i think may also be down to this technology as it's something as seemless as a thought, is also then infinite so heaven would really exist to be infinite in every sense. If anyone believes in parallel universes and understands that the size of them could be of an infinite scale then surely everything consists of particles of which an infinite amount exist and is what everything we se consists of.

What?

So basically the same thing that is happening in a second after you reading this is happening an infinite amount of times throughout infinity.

What?

Just my thoughts. C M Smith

Quite.

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

You can't send a message to the future

Sure you can. It's called mail.

Put a letter addressed to yourself in a mailbox and two-days-from-now-you will get it.

Originally Posted by callummsmith

you can't send a message to the future of this universe because the time and date to is 9th of august whatever... I personally think that for creation to have happened to us then the exact same thing must have happened in the future and it was created by us like the large hadron collider but rather than being limited by the extremely strong metal donut surrounding it. Imagine humanity with the potential of unlimited power to create something that creates time which obviously wouldn't be affected by time it is in when doing so. Then after that the human soul, which i think may also be down to this technology as it's something as seemless as a thought, is also then infinite so heaven would really exist to be infinite in every sense. If anyone believes in parallel universes and understands that the size of them could be of an infinite scale then surely everything consists of particles of which an infinite amount exist and is what everything we se consists of.


So basically the same thing that is happening in a second after you reading this is happening an infinite amount of times throughout infinity. Just my thoughts. I think that everyone has to go through this so that at some point in time everything is infinite to you, heaven basically. Just because we haven't experienced it doesn't mean that it hasn't happened and isn't the reason that everything exists. C m smith

think fed ex, ups, usps, dps......

Originally Posted by Flick Montana

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

You can't send a message to the future

Sure you can. It's called mail.

Put a letter addressed to yourself in a mailbox and two-days-from-now-you will get it.

Great minds.....

ok.....yours is more scientific than mine.....by far

Haha. You might see what i mean better than the Genius Duck. If you believe that other dimensions exist which are only different by time and the size from the effect of the big bang, then surely it is all the same universe that is only limited by our minds currently not really understanding that limits don't exist so time could of been created in the future of this universe because the same happens in every other universe because that's how it has to happen and that's how incredibly powerful our technology gets along with the understanding of life and being able to bend time so to speak in our own minds.

Thought: is disciplined thinking more or less effective than undiscplined thinking.

Originally Posted by babe

think fed ex, ups, usps, dps......

Or Western Union in Back to the Future II.

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Haha. You might see what i mean better than the Genius Duck. If you believe that other dimensions exist which are only different by time and the size from the effect of the big bang, then surely it is all the same universe that is only limited by our minds currently not really understanding that limits don't exist so time could of been created in the future of this universe because the same happens in every other universe because that's how it has to happen and that's how incredibly powerful our technology gets along with the understanding of life and being able to bend time so to speak in our own minds.

If it isn't too rude, I would like to suggest that you spend a little bit more time organising your thoughts and writing them down in a series of short, logically connected sentence rather than one long rambling sentence that is almost impossible to follow the logic of, and appears, at first glance at least, to have no logic, which makes it very difficult to discern any serious point you may be making and, indeed, to separate out the different ideas it may contain.

Or:

Please try and present you ideas in a more coherent way. It will make them much easier to understand. Your current sentences are too long to extract any meaning from. It gives the impression of random ideas rather than logical thought.

Thank you.

Use your imagination and try to picture myself speaking it to you with proper use of commas and full stops.

Originally Posted by John Galt

Thought: is disciplined thinking more or less effective than undiscplined thinking.

Effective for doing what? What are you trying to achieve when using discipline to punish your own mind for having your own natural thoughts and thinking as you do. What is the reason for being so against yourself when trying to improve. It applies to everything, the less you worry about anything the better it will tend to go, unless you're a soldier or something then it is always necessary. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad thought rather just a misunderstood emotion or a stubborn ego behind it.

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Use your imagination and try to picture myself speaking it to you with proper use of commas and full stops.

I think it is more the responsibility of the speaker to try to be clear than for the listener to try to understand. Why should we bother?

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Originally Posted by John Galt

Thought: is disciplined thinking more or less effective than undiscplined thinking.

Effective for doing what? What are you trying to achieve when using discipline to punish your own mind for having your own natural thoughts and thinking as you do. What is the reason for being so against yourself when trying to improve. It applies to everything, the less you worry about anything the better it will tend to go, unless you're a soldier or something then it is always necessary. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad thought rather just a misunderstood emotion or a stubborn ego behind it.

Physical reality imposes restrictions on what is possible, and having the discipline to work within those restrictions can help prevent one from making possibly serious mistakes.

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Use your imagination and try to picture myself speaking it to you with proper use of commas and full stops.

Why?

Originally Posted by Strange

Originally Posted by babe

think fed ex, ups, usps, dps......

Or Western Union in Back to the Future II.

Oh DREK!

I am imperfect!!

*L*

I love back to the Future....and what was the other one..the OLD one The Time Machine?

fascinating!

Originally Posted by KJW

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Use your imagination and try to picture myself speaking it to you with proper use of commas and full stops.

I think it is more the responsibility of the speaker to try to be clear than for the listener to try to understand. Why should we bother?

Sorry but my strong interest in this subject seems to be much stronger than my ability to spell and use grammar like all you folks, rather than writing that then a small effort could have been made to simply read over what i typed once again instead of writing another blunt and numbing comment like the rest of your mates that live on this website.

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Originally Posted by John Galt

Thought: is disciplined thinking more or less effective than undiscplined thinking.

Effective for doing what? What are you trying to achieve when using discipline to punish your own mind for having your own natural thoughts and thinking as you do. What is the reason for being so against yourself when trying to improve. It applies to everything, the less you worry about anything the better it will tend to go, unless you're a soldier or something then it is always necessary. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad thought rather just a misunderstood emotion or a stubborn ego behind it.

Ok, this I like....has substance...

One however doesn't use discipline to punish one's mind, but rather, to expand it, in my head of unscientific thoughts. I have to use discipline as an actor/singer in my job. That isn't punishing me and acting/singing is very very very much part of using your mind and putting it into another person's "body" so to speak.

No, you can't fret about it......and usually if you become the character, there is nothing to worry about.

Bad thoughts? It's human.

Now ego.

Please put it in the mud, before you walk in the door.

it doesn't belong here.

A serious mistake like what? Making a false claim on a website because you're trying to show others your way of thinking in clearly false hope of any of you really being bothered by what i'm saying and simply obsessed with doing the usual of questioning everyone new that comes on here with fresh thinking. If you accept that mistakes are going to be made on the way to success then i think you will find success and therefore happiness will come a lot sooner without wasting your effort on typing absolute nothingness to people who didn't even care in the first place. This is stuff i learnt applies to everything in life from the age of 17 and by putting it into practise from then on in i believe might actually have something to do with everything including your puny brittle minds existing in the first place. Luckily i have a Mac otherwise i think my spelling would probably have me being physically assaulted by the moderators by now.

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Sorry but my strong interest in this subject seems to be much stronger than my ability to think, spell and use grammar like all you folks

Corrected that for you.

I meant ego a cause of close mindedness and therefore a more strenuous journey towards the feeling of happiness, self satisfaction and success, which could be it a certain amount of money in your bank, a wife, children and aiding them in doing the same as yourself but only without making the mistakes that you have made(sorry to ramble). I play drums myself and discovered that by not even picking up the book, but by sweating and pushing myself to play even harder when doing so, i have become faster and being able to use less energy when playing from doing this. If you apply this positive attitude to everything you do in life especially what you take serious interest in then i think it does pay off for everyone. I personally think that life cannot come from something and the big bang contained a particle or something that contained a bit of everything, otherwise how the hell would it have come around. I honestly believe that we do this because the rest of the universe is just as natural as our existence and if you seriously think it doesn't matter, life already exists therefore i can just relax and don't have to do anything about it then you are a lazy mind who is simply there to be proven wrong.

A bit like back to the future but only different in that we don't travel back and forth on the same line of time and experience of our existence, but at some point in the future we make the big bang happen and create universes just like our own, which are going to down the same so that all time can exist in the first place. It's really not a hard concept to deal with it's just a bit hard for you old fogeys to come to terms with because it's never really been said like this before.

If one doesn't use their mind, in any capacity....in my humble opinion they are wasting their life.

Life comes to you, when you seek out your passion and fulfill it.

Life is work.

It isn't meant for pansies.

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Originally Posted by KJW

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Use your imagination and try to picture myself speaking it to you with proper use of commas and full stops.

I think it is more the responsibility of the speaker to try to be clear than for the listener to try to understand. Why should we bother?

Sorry but my strong interest in this subject seems to be much stronger than my ability to spell and use grammar like all you folks, rather than writing that then a small effort could have been made to simply read over what i typed once again instead of writing another blunt and numbing comment like the rest of your mates that live on this website.

Callum, you are asking many of us to put in the effort to extract meaning from your ramblings. That adds up to a lot of total effort. If you were to put a fraction of that effort into writing clearly in the first place all that effort on our part would be unecessary.

In my role as a moderator I issued a warning to a respected and valued member of this forum because I believe he had been rude to you. Your unwillingness to put in a little effort to be better understood is rude and it is lazy. Is that the impression you wish to create?

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Originally Posted by John Galt
Thought: is disciplined thinking more or less effective than undiscplined thinking.

Effective for doing what? What are you trying to achieve when using discipline to punish your own mind for having your own natural thoughts and thinking as you do. What is the reason for being so against yourself when trying to improve. It applies to everything, the less you worry about anything the better it will tend to go, unless you're a soldier or something then it is always necessary. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad thought rather just a misunderstood emotion or a stubborn ego behind it.

You ask effective doing what. Effective at arriving at useful conclusions, effective at communicating ones thoughts to others, effective at solving problems, etc.

In what way - I mean, really, in what frigging way is disciplined thinking a punishment? In what way is using ones powers of logic and reason being against yourself? Why would thinking in a random, waffling, arm-waving kind of a way contribute to self improvement?

Callum, you are very welcome on the forum. I imagine when you hang out with friends you have an unwritten code of conduct you pretty much all adhere to. (If you think not, then you just aren't oaying attention.) This is true of any community and this forum is a community. Do you want to fit in and thereby maximise your enjoyment, enhance your learning and gain respect, or do you want to be the young rebel who thumbs his nose at the conservative farts? So far I think you're making the wrong choice. But that's up to you.

Cheers,
JG

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

A serious mistake like what? Making a false claim on a website...

Actually, I was speaking in general terms, re: disciplined vs undisciplined thinking.

Ok i didn't mean to go into so much unnecessary detail about the obvious, all i meant is that when you come to these useful conclusions you feel a sense of self happiness and accomplishment that is why you started off with these thoughts in the first place yes?

Originally Posted by John Galt

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Originally Posted by KJW

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Use your imagination and try to picture myself speaking it to you with proper use of commas and full stops.

I think it is more the responsibility of the speaker to try to be clear than for the listener to try to understand. Why should we bother?

Sorry but my strong interest in this subject seems to be much stronger than my ability to spell and use grammar like all you folks, rather than writing that then a small effort could have been made to simply read over what i typed once again instead of writing another blunt and numbing comment like the rest of your mates that live on this website.

Callum, you are asking many of us to put in the effort to extract meaning from your ramblings. That adds up to a lot of total effort. If you were to put a fraction of that effort into writing clearly in the first place all that effort on our part would be unecessary.

In my role as a moderator I issued a warning to a respected and valued member of this forum because I believe he had been rude to you. Your unwillingness to put in a little effort to be better understood is rude and it is lazy. Is that the impression you wish to create?

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Originally Posted by John Galt
Thought: is disciplined thinking more or less effective than undiscplined thinking.

Effective for doing what? What are you trying to achieve when using discipline to punish your own mind for having your own natural thoughts and thinking as you do. What is the reason for being so against yourself when trying to improve. It applies to everything, the less you worry about anything the better it will tend to go, unless you're a soldier or something then it is always necessary. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad thought rather just a misunderstood emotion or a stubborn ego behind it.

You ask effective doing what. Effective at arriving at useful conclusions, effective at communicating ones thoughts to others, effective at solving problems, etc.

In what way - I mean, really, in what frigging way is disciplined thinking a punishment? In what way is using ones powers of logic and reason being against yourself? Why would thinking in a random, waffling, arm-waving kind of a way contribute to self improvement?

Callum, you are very welcome on the forum. I imagine when you hang out with friends you have an unwritten code of conduct you pretty much all adhere to. (If you think not, then you just aren't oaying attention.) This is true of any community and this forum is a community. Do you want to fit in and thereby maximise your enjoyment, enhance your learning and gain respect, or do you want to be the young rebel who thumbs his nose at the conservative farts? So far I think you're making the wrong choice. But that's up to you.

Cheers,
JG

dang if I am not starting to like you John Galt!

Even if I saw your name written on a bathroom wall in Willets, California!!! *ducking*

Originally Posted by CallumMSmith

Ok i didn't mean to go into so much unnecessary detail about the obvious, all i meant is that when you come to these useful conclusions you feel a sense of self happiness and accomplishment that is why you started off with these thoughts in the first place yes?

I am not a scientist, however..that being said. ..

No matter how excited you are, about something you feel you have discovered and accomplished, one needs to express that in a manner that others can understand.

I think people would respond to you in a clearer way if they could read you in a clear way.

Sorry John Galt!!

That should have read:

I think I am beginning to LIKE you!!

YIKES!

mea culpa

dang if I am not starting to like you John Galt!

This is natural. I am a lovable character. When I walk flowers bloom and birds burst into song. Troubled waters become still and public transport arrives on time.

Even if I saw your name written on a bathroom wall in Willets, California!!! *ducking*

I have many followers and all of them defecate.

Originally Posted by John Galt

dang if I am not starting to like you John Galt!

This is natural. I am a lovable character. When I walk flowers bloom and birds burst into song. Troubled waters become still and public transport arrives on time.

Even if I saw your name written on a bathroom wall in Willets, California!!! *ducking*

I have many followers and all of them defecate.

You are so loveable....going to name a flower pot after you.

Please feel honored.

You are the first recipient and I might even water the plants ...so I can glow in your wonderous burst of blooms..........hail thee John Galt....

so

An effect cannot occur before its' cause--- The end to time travel- sorry

Originally Posted by aaronsaxton

Let us take a hypothetical, let us assume that in the future we invent time travel, let us assume we can warp time/space but we can only connect to using or manipulating say a ball of matter that has been subjected to certain conditions - let us say for example the connection can be made if we have a vacuum, devoid of all interference with the exception of protons housed at near freezing...this is just an example.

If you looked long and hard, you might be able to find a place where such condition had been present naturally.

Sort of like if human beings were to invent sonar, and then later on we realize whales had been using it already. (That's just a hypothetical. I'm pretty sure it was the other way around in actual history - realizing whales had it, and then copying them.)

Great. From THAT moment on we can have time travel - but what about now?

My suggestion is to theorize how the time travel may take place and for us to in the right here and now establish certain conditions that would be successful to RECEIVING THE SIGNAL. We would know of course within minutes if it was right or wrong, thus allowing us to play around with hypothetical conditions until we got it right.

Of course, the down-side to doing this is on a wild note is that let us say that the reason no person/intelligent life has visited us is because the conditions in a certain space point are not right, and it is true that if we build the receiver we will get a signal, there is of course the risk that the received signal could be covertly hostile.

I'm asking us to rethink time travel and reverse thinking on it. Build a receiver for a signal we assume may be required so that decades/thousands of years from now when we have the power or technology to SEND the signal, we have a place for it to be received. Imagine in the future someone who invents it slaps their hand on their forehead saying "If only they had this 10cm x 10cm x 10cm space filled with this or that, we could make the jump/send the signal".

I openly recommend ridicule, contempt and critics, it is just a thought and an idea.

Aaron Ender Saxton

I'm glad to see you asking questions that hardly ever gets asked. Most fictional "time travel" devices are really time teleportation devices. You push a button, and in the blink of an eye, you suddenly materialize on Earth in 1952. Not only that, but you materialize exactly where the surface of planet Earth was in 1952. (The Earth has been spinning, and revolving around the Sun for 61 years, but your machine managed to work out exactly where it would have been.)


So really we're talking two inventions. 1) - Backwards movement in time. 2) - Teleportation.

Teleporting through time is not any different from teleporting through space, really. We're talking about a situation where you traverse a distance in the 3 spatial dimensions without ever actually occupying the locations between them. That's teleportation. Staying in the same spot, and moving to a different time without occupying all the times in between should be just as difficult to achieve.


A "realistic" time machine would then be more likely a capsule or something, that actually occupies all the time in between. It takes the slow boat back to 1952, by simply sitting in a storage shed somewhere for 61 years. If the person inside isn't cryogenicly frozen, then they'll be very old when they get there. (Or it might be easier to send a radio signal or a robot or something...)

I never thought of it in terms of teleportion. I'm imagining now how all those time travel movies would have been so much different if our 'hero' had arrived in the same spot in space and not where he'd been expecting on earth!

I still stick with "SCOTTY< BEAM ME UP!!"

Time travel is science fiction. We can't travel backwards in time because we don't travel forwards in time. Ever heard of a stasis box? That's science fiction too, but it's useful to point out the obvious: get in the box, and the "stasis field" prevents all motion, even at the atomic level. So you can't move, your heart doesn't beat, and you can't even think. So when I open the box five years later, to you it's like I opened the box as soon as you got in. You "travelled" to the future by not moving at all. Instead everything else did.

Note that the stasis box is just an idealised freezer, and we can freeze embryos now. An embryo that's been frozen for a couple of years hasn't literally travelled forwards through time. If we could do the same for an adult, he wouldn't either. Ditto if you sent him on a fast out-and-back trip through space, and subjected him to time dilation. He'd have fewer grey hairs than you might expect, but when he comes back he isn't living in the middle of last week. And note that if you could send him out and back at the speed of light, all you're doing is emulating the stasis box. His spaceship would be a stasis box, because the maximum rate of motion is c, and because he's moving through space at c, there can be no local motion inside his box. Because then the macroscopic motion plus the local motion would add up to motion faster than light, which you just can't do.

Time travel, to the past, implies it exists in physical reality. It doesn't.
This is because it cannot be uniquely defined due to its incompleteness in the present.

Originally Posted by Kerling

Time travel, to the past, implies it exists in physical reality. It doesn't.
This is because it cannot be uniquely defined due to its incompleteness in the present.

for us morons....could you please explain in terms that us theatre folk can understand......upstage left by spot #2 please.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Originally Posted by Daecon

If the amount of mass/energy in the Universe is finite, then that would mean at using time travel, the total amount of mass/energy in the Universe at moment X will be different to the total amount at moment Y, as some of it has been sent back in time.

Is there anything that says that matters?

From the Universe's perspective, a whole load of mass and energy has just appeared out of thin vacuum, far more than random quantum foam should permit.

"Permit"?
The only "permission" is the available energy at any particular location.
A time-travelling object has its energy supplied from a non-local source - i.e. it's not tied in to, or dependant upon, any factor in the "target" time.

If the Universe is a closed system, wouldn't time travel violate the 2nd Law of the rmodynamics?

Originally Posted by Daecon

If the Universe is a closed system, wouldn't time travel violate the 2nd Law of the rmodynamics?

That depends exactly what you mean by "time travel". The only topological structure in space-time that we know of that might ( note how I do not say "does" !!! ) permit some form of time travel are closed time-like curves. To the best of my knowledge the 2nd law is not violated in these scenarios.

Originally Posted by Markus Hanke

The only topological structure in space-time that we know of that might ( note how I do not say "does" !!! ) permit some form of time travel are closed time-like curves. To the best of my knowledge the 2nd law is not violated in these scenarios.

I would suggest that the second law of thermodynamics would prevent the existence of closed time-like curves. Just because one can construct a metric that has particular properties does not mean that such a metric is physically possible (allowed by the complete laws of physics).

Originally Posted by KJW

I would suggest that the second law of thermodynamics would prevent the existence of closed time-like curves. Just because one can construct a metric that has particular properties does not mean that such a metric is physically possible (allowed by the complete laws of physics).

Yes, I agree. Even if CTCs do exist, chances are they are hidden behind event horizons, so the 2nd law never becomes an issue in the first place.

Originally Posted by Daecon

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Originally Posted by Daecon

If the amount of mass/energy in the Universe is finite, then that would mean at using time travel, the total amount of mass/energy in the Universe at moment X will be different to the total amount at moment Y, as some of it has been sent back in time.

Is there anything that says that matters?

From the Universe's perspective, a whole load of mass and energy has just appeared out of thin vacuum, far more than random quantum foam should permit.

"Permit"?
The only "permission" is the available energy at any particular location.
A time-travelling object has its energy supplied from a non-local source - i.e. it's not tied in to, or dependant upon, any factor in the "target" time.

If the Universe is a closed system, wouldn't time travel violate the 2nd Law of the rmodynamics?

You can always violate the 2nd law in one area of a system, just so long as you obey it twice as much in another part of the system.

Life on Earth is a violation of the 2nd law. However plants grow. They do it by sapping he organization out of sunlight. The sunlight gets more disorganized (higher entropy), so the plant can get less disorganized (lower entropy).

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by Daecon

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Originally Posted by Daecon

If the amount of mass/energy in the Universe is finite, then that would mean at using time travel, the total amount of mass/energy in the Universe at moment X will be different to the total amount at moment Y, as some of it has been sent back in time.

Is there anything that says that matters?

From the Universe's perspective, a whole load of mass and energy has just appeared out of thin vacuum, far more than random quantum foam should permit.

"Permit"?
The only "permission" is the available energy at any particular location.
A time-travelling object has its energy supplied from a non-local source - i.e. it's not tied in to, or dependant upon, any factor in the "target" time.

If the Universe is a closed system, wouldn't time travel violate the 2nd Law of the rmodynamics?

You can always violate the 2nd law in one area of a system, just so long as you obey it twice as much in another part of the system.

Life on Earth is a violation of the 2nd law. However plants grow. They do it by sapping he organization out of sunlight. The sunlight gets more disorganized (higher entropy), so the plant can get less disorganized (lower entropy).

Doesn't that just mean "Earth" isn't a closed system, or am I misunderstanding something?

Originally Posted by Daecon

Doesn't that just mean "Earth" isn't a closed system, or am I misunderstanding something?

I hope that's what he meant otherwise I'm taking my "like" back.

Sorry, I should have clarified.

The Earth isn't a closed system because it uses the entropy of an outside source (the Sun) to take advantage of. But the Universe doesn't have an outside source of entropy to take advantage of, so the Universe as a whole would be considered a closed system.

Wouldn't time travel disrupt the progression of total overall entropy throughout the entire Universe, somehow?

Originally Posted by Daecon

Wouldn't time travel disrupt the progression of total overall entropy throughout the entire Universe, somehow?

Only if you try to make the whole system go backwards. If you make one part of the system go backwards, but allow the rest of the system to go forward by a little bit extra, you should be able to break even. IE. you could send one person/object back in time (if it's as simple as reversing entropy.)

Think of it like Newton's Third law of motion - only it's applied to time. For every object that loses entropy, there must be an equal and opposite amount of entropy gained elsewhere by another object.

If time travel were possible, entropy would only be reversed for the object doing the traveling, which would only amount to a small local reversal, which happens all the time.

Originally Posted by John Galt

Thought: is disciplined thinking more or less effective than undiscplined thinking.

Depends on the profession/hobby.

Originally Posted by shlunka

Originally Posted by John Galt

Thought: is disciplined thinking more or less effective than undiscplined thinking.

Depends on the profession/hobby.

I agree, in my field.