A heated Debate: Time Travel

[Negative]

I can't grasp the universe being infinite, just like I can't grasp the universe being limited...
You say it has to have an end, High2Risk, but there must be something behind that end, too... I've always imagined the universe to be some kind of Moebius ring to settle my doubts: a Moebius ring is in a way endless, yet it definitely is limited...

[bballad]

Originally posted here by High2Risk
Thats another thing, how can the universe be unlimited?

it HAS to have an end... i just dont see how something can go on forever?

Read a breif history of tie it explanes things better then I can...but basicly insted of imagining the univers as a bubble with every thing on the inside think of every thing on the surface of that buble, much like we are on earth. earth is definatly finite but with no definite begining or end of its area.

[fourdc]

The NY Times this week in it's article about the universe being shaped as a soccer ball shows an example of a space traveller who travels throught the universe when reaching and passing through the side he reenters on the opposite side.

Just like the early video game "Spacewar"

I prefer the Mobius strip example myself

[Striek]

The only one argument I've ever thought of against time travel is the fact that we have not been visited by the future. This alone would suggest to me that at least humans will never travel through time.

And forget about Einstein. He's already been proved wrong. His theories simply explain a certain set of phenomena and fail to apply when used for more exotic scenarios. This is much the same way as Newton's laws appear to break down near the spped of light. They were never broken in the first place, but the margin of error was too small to notice. The same is true for Einstein's laws. They are not correct, however they are accurate enough to operate a nuclear reactor.

Einstein's laws were never meant to explain the possibility of time travel. People simply saw a law they could not understand and assumed that they did, much like people fail to understand the nature of self-awareness and therefore attribute it to God.

Also, when stating that something is travelling at or near the speed of light, what is it travelling relative to? The entire founding principle of Einstein's theories is that there is no absolute frame of refernce in the universe. Nothing can simply be travelling at the speed of light (or any other speed) without anything to compare it to. Nothing moves relative to the rest of the universe. It moves relative to the objects in it.

Objects also compress as they approach the speed of light. If we were moving towards each other near the speed of light, each would appear to the other to be compressed. However, if we were moving across the ground at the same speed, we would only appear compressed to an observer on the ground. We would not be moving relative to each other, and therefore would not appear compressed.

The belief that mass increases as one approaches the speed of light is incorrect. Density does. As an object is compressed near the speec of light, it's relative density must therefore increase. Theoretically, if we extrapolate this observation and apply it to objects travelling at the speed of light, they would compress to the point where they have no width in thier direction of travel, however thier mass would remain constant. They would therefore have an infinite density. In most cases, an infinite density would also mean an infinite mass, however this is not the case with zero volume.

Einstein did not define the laws of the universe. He simply made a set of laws to explain a finite set of conditions. Two common misconceptions are that Einsteins laws apply to a)Travel at or beyond the speed of light, and b)Time travel.

Einstein disagreed with the Uncertainty Principle, stating that "God does not play dice with the universe". This had nothing to do with his personal beliefs; he found a way to fit God into everything. He simply knew that this law and his laws of relativity cannot both be correct. They contradict each other. However, each are used to explain different phenomena. Quantum mechanics are used in the production of Microprocessors, and Einstein's laws in Nuclear reactors. If we tried to govern a nuclear reactor by the laws of quantum mechanics, we would all be dead by now thanks to nuckear winter. However these laws work fine for the production of microprocessors, because in that case they are accurate enough. If we tried to prodce microprocessors by the laws of relativity, we would still be counting on abaci. However, these laws work fine to run a nuclear reactor, but still break down at the speed of light. Each set of laws describes a different finite set of phenomena, however, they cannot both be correct. There is no scientific law that proves or disproves the possibility of time travel, or even produces a theory either way, as we have not yet made any observations with which to make such a law.

Einstein may have said that superluminous travel is impossible. He also said that the Uncertainty Principle is impossible, which we now know to be false.

When people speak of time travel, they assume that only one point in time exists for a given time and date. What if everthing that can happen does happen, and we are only experiencing one of an infinite number of possibilities? (Steven Hawkings belives this fiercely)

[nihil]

Duh mi brane 'urts


I frequently say to my wife that it is time I travelled to the pub/bar.....................does that count


Cheers

[Striek]

This is the cosmos forum. It's supposed to make your brain hurt.

Relative to a time when your brain was not producing a headache, it is currently in a greater state of pain. However, if your brain was travelling near the speed of light, the pain produced would increase logarithimacally to a point of infinite pain at the speed of light. This is what is known as a brain fart, or a blonde moment.

[Zonewalker]

because you are instantly destroyed for ripping across the delicate fabric of earths 4 dimension.

assuming there are only 4 dimensions to reality - there are suggestions that there are considerably more dimensions than 4. also some of you may wish to look into the many worlds theory which I'm sure you've all heard of (briefly everytime any kind of situation where there is more than one outcome another universe is created - this idea is touched on in the film Sliding Doors if any of you have seen it). Using the many worlds theory it would actually be possible for you to kill you granparents etc because at some point in the 'multiverse' they would still exist but in your personal universe you would have killed them.

Personally I always found Kaluza-klein theory quite interesting - brief description available here -

http://www-th.phys.rug.nl/~schaar/ht...rt/node12.html

it touches on xmaddness' bit about gravitatinal time dilation (I'm inclined to understand that gravitation is part of the key to time travel etc, but I think there is something missing from the equation - not sure what yet)

Z

PS yes I do think time travel is possible - the fact that none of us has met anyone from the future doesn't disproove it doesn't happen - how many people have seen a two headed snake? Not many I'll bet but one was borm a few months ago, just because you don't know about something doesn't mean to say it doesn't exist. Questioning and research until you find a definitive answer is what you need to do rather than accept or deny anything which seems to be impossible. Maybe some of the UFO phenomenon are results by time travel for example

oh yeah... further to High2Risk (hiya Trust - nice to see the walking floppy again )theoretically there are particles called tachyons which actually do go faster than light - but before you get excite. it's a bit more complicated than that.

these places briefly give good description of why its more complicated

http://www.itsf.org/resources/factsheet.php?fsID=238

http://www.morleysoft.freeserve.co.u.../tachyons.html

z

[redhawk14506]

True, there probably are more than four dimensions, there could be a billion. The fact is we don't have the intelligence or ability to find every single dimension. Just my thoughts!

[RoadClosed]

PS yes I do think time travel is possible - the fact that none of us has met anyone from the future doesn't disprove it doesn't happen -

Personally that is pretty strong evidence. I think it would be impossible to keep a vehicle or event that would disrupt time, secret. It would be extremely noticeable; it would basically "**** **** up". Look at any of the theory's they all involve dilating or distorting reality in normal space time. "Hey Bob, what the hell was that huge distorted track of gravity that just circled the earth." And do you think a worm hole could just open and close without someone noticing? The fact that there is no evidence of time travel from the future is very strong evidence that it does not exist. Even if they choose to bypass our time reference, they have to travel through. You could also point out that they haven't traveled past us yet. Well, what sense would it make to the future time travelers to only travel to a specific period in reference to ours? And even if they don't travel - say to pre year 3k. They still have to travel the same space and would be detected. So it either does not exist or they did it once and destroyed the universe and BAM here we all are. lol, thought I would throw that in as some freaky way of looking at the big bang. It's Friday - happy hour is near (in my reference of time)

In understanding of general responses to the cosmos and its physical makeup: An item with mass cannot be accelerated to the speed of light. Because, as stated here by others; as an object increases in speed, its mass increases - and the energy needed to maintain an increase in speed also increases. Which increases mass of the object even more, which increases the energy needed to continue accelerations and on and on until the mass of the object becomes greater than energy available to accelerate it. That's my non-advanced mathematics example. So most of us hold true to E=MC (squared) which is the formula behind my understanding above.

But just accelerating an object to the speed of light doesn't cut it. Just to go back a second or 2 you would have to accelerate many many many many many many times the speed of light. Now go back 1 million or 1 billion years. I don't know the math but I would guess something like 1 x 10 followed by about a zillion gazillion million zeros would be the acceleration factor. Oh and add that speed times the speed of light, of course.

I did vote undecided to allow for the unknown. But where are those extreme distortions in gravity, light patterns, etc.?

[breakology]

Originally posted here by High2Risk
Thats another thing, how can the universe be unlimited?

it HAS to have an end... i just dont see how something can go on forever?

the human mind cannot grasp the concept of infiniti. Because of this short coming we typically call what we cannot understand "god". Man has a habit of explaining the unexplainable with metaphysics.
And what do you mean by "the universe", are you refering to everything that exists in space, or space itself? Our known universe is all of the matter that we suspect was created by the big bang theory. Space is just nothing...0...the absence of ANYTHING...it's just space, appropriate name, ah? Thats infiniti, it's not really a concept we as humans can get. Simply put, it is nothing, but at the same time we see that as "something". See how it cancels itself out? No end, no beginning, like a circle.

If you really wanna put your brain in a twist think about the universe having an end, for something to end it has to have a beginning, but it has no beginning, it does'nt really exist so how can something that does'nt exist have an ending? or a beginning for that matter. haha....trip on that for a while.
Anyway, like I said, the christians call it "god", buddhists call it "nirvana", and taoists call it the "tao".

Ok, anyway, back to this timetravel thing. Try to picture this... you are passing the sun, traveling faster than light speed, the light that you pass will be seen by earth in a few hours, you arrive on earth before the light you passed that left the sun the same time you did, you in turn are on earth to see that light when it gets there. That's time travel.

Now consider this... assuming the bigbang is what what caused the formation of our universe, galaxy, solor system etc. what caused it? lets assume the big bang was not a one time thing, instead it happens over and over. what if the cause of the "big bang" in the universe, the thing that resets time and the universe, is man's (or wahtever the dominat intelligent race in the universe may happen to be at any given time) is the first successful attempt at time travel by an intelligent race. Picture that, we invent time travel, we succeed, BANG, it's a huge paradox and the universe resets itself. HHHmmm, am I reaching here? Most likely, but it makes a good story...... Time Travel..... the Ctrl+Alt+Delete of the universe. Think about it for a while.