Time Travel Possible

hamd01 · 21-07-2008, 01:38 PM

There's a lot of interesting chatter online at the moment, what with the CERN lab about to go live with a particle accelerator in Geneva.

My question.....will time travel ever be possible, and if so...how come we havent yet met a time traveller?

usxhe190 · 21-07-2008, 01:41 PM

can only travel forward in time and not backward in time...

pollaxe · 21-07-2008, 01:50 PM

I thought someone had theorised that it would be possible to travel back in time but only to the point where time travel had been developed/created.

All too much for my little brain, I'm afraid.

TAKTAK · 21-07-2008, 01:52 PM

well time travel is not/is possible....

but there are 4 elements to it...

viewing the past
participatieng in the past
viewing the future
participating in the future

so, in theory, with viewing the past, if you could travel fast enough, and somehow manage to collect all of the light rays that have diffracted, then yes... you could view the past...

but you could NOT participate in the past, the past has allready happened... traveling faster than light would not allow you to participate in it...

viewing the future... not possible as the light hasn't reached the point to be reflected from therefore you wouldn't see the future....

participating in the future is an interesting situation... as you cannot make time "faster" without it affecting your body... however... if suspended animation came into play.... and a solution such as cryogenics that could preserve the mental state and suspend atomic activity and be able to be revived... would, technically allow you to travel into the future.. obviously the time travel part would take as long as the time you travel forward (i.e. to travel 5 days into the future... would take 5 days....) but then once you are in the future, you cannot get back to the past... as the past has allready happened.

so it is escentially like Phillip J. Fry in futurama...

uni · 21-07-2008, 02:00 PM

hi, i am from your earth in the year 2525, and i have just travelled back in time to post this. in the year 2523 the hexus forums eventually take over the running of the world and the humans create robots to battle the forum moderators

i've got to go now, neighbours is about to come on cable, and kylie is our new god...

usxhe190 · 21-07-2008, 02:02 PM

Originally Posted by pollaxe

I thought someone had theorised that it would be possible to travel back in time but only to the point where time travel had been developed/created.

All too much for my little brain, I'm afraid.

Yes, if we have multiple universes...

hamd01 · 21-07-2008, 02:05 PM

Scientists have said that it would be possible to travel forward in time (and partisipate), and Einie's theory of reletivity doesnt actually rule out the possibility of backwards time travel...and according to the laws of physics all things which havent been proven impossible are possible.

The cern research would seem to involve the manipulations of wormholes.....which is amazing considering the idea of wormholes for timetravel was an idea of sci-fi 30 years ago.

If it is generally considered that backward time travel wont be possible, does that mean if someone goes forward they have to accept the fact that they won be comming back!?

usxhe190 · 21-07-2008, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by hamd01

Scientists have said that it would be possible to travel forward in time (and partisipate), and Einie's theory of reletivity doesnt actually rule out the possibility of backwards time travel...and according to the laws of physics all things which havent been proven impossible are possible.

quantum is even better, nothing is impossible. everything can be given a probability.

Originally Posted by hamd01

The cern research would seem to involve the manipulations of wormholes.....which is amazing considering the idea of wormholes for timetravel was an idea of sci-fi 30 years ago.

really depends on if wormholes exist...

Originally Posted by hamd01

If it is generally considered that backward time travel wont be possible, does that mean if someone goes forward they have to accept the fact that they won be comming back!?

yep

**Nick** · 21-07-2008, 02:23 PM

TAKTAK is basing his theory on being able to travel faster than the speed of light, in essence overtaking light emitted from your point of departure and then looking back to observe that light... in which, he's entirely correct that we cannot travel into the future or interacte with what we see...

In fact, we look back in time all the time, every time we look at the Sun as what we see is actually the Sun eight minutes ago, that ebing the time it takes light from the Sun to reach Earth.

The real question about time travel is if it is physically possible to transport material through time as we see in the movies.

Regardless of the myriad paradoxes this would throw up, it's not inconceivable that true time travel, such as we see on Doctor Who etc is possible, but it would take enormous resources to make even the simplest of 'time machines' work.

One good one is the wormhole time machine, which basically takes a wormhole and moves it to an appropriate place in space, so when you enter the other end at the right moment, you emerge in the time and space you wanted. The theroy is that wormholes emerge at a set time in the past, or perhaps generated their output at a point in time and are now moving forwards through time in pace with their surroundings... all you need to do is then move the end of the wormhole to where you want it to be when you emerge... a bit like moving the end of a hosepipe to fill a watering can.

But the resources needed to find and then move a wormhole would be enormous beyond belief... that's if we could even find one outside of theoretical physics, let alone manipulate one.

There's always the other option of harnessing tachyons and using or coupling them to have them drag us back through time... but seeing as these are again theoretical particles, it's improbable that we'll ever be able to build such a machine.

So, the answer is maybe... but not in our lifetime for sure.

But then again, maybe we have, in the future, been able to create a time machine and are right now tinkering with our own past?

It might explain why my cars keys keep moving... perhaps a benevolent relative a thousand years from now is delaying my getting in the car to avoid having a fatal crash? (Now there's a thought to really mess with your head!)

And as a final thought, why I think we'll never see it in our lifetime? Cos we still can't agree what happens to a plane on a treadmill...

pollaxe · 21-07-2008, 02:26 PM

www.johntitor.com

Clunk · 21-07-2008, 04:05 PM

Just get a Tardis and the job's a good un.

IBM · 21-07-2008, 04:27 PM

Or one of these

That's just a model, but the full size one really works.

Whatever you do, don't lose the crystal handle!

Zhaoman · 21-07-2008, 04:49 PM

An article in New Scientist around the time of Christmas discussed this exact topic. The new LHC has enough power to create wormholes when 2 particles collide, something which hasn't been achievable until now. One explanation for why travellers from the future haven't visited us yet is because we have not had the capability to create wormholes in our past, and that 2008 may be "Year Zero" for time travel. Since we will have records of when we created the first wormhole, the article joked about how we will see a visiter from the future step out of the LHC when it fires up for the first time. Get your "I'm your grandaddy" t-shirts ready guys!

badass · 21-07-2008, 05:01 PM

Travelling forwards in time relative to those around you is not just possible but relatively easy. In fact we have all done it already today.

By simply moving relative to another person at any speed, we are travelling through time at a different rate to them. Its called time dilation and it was part of einstein's special theory of relitivaty. As you approach the speed of light, the effect becomes more pronounced.
This effect has been measured and confirmed by experimentation.
The problem with this is that as your speed tends towards the speed of light, your mass approaches infinity. I have teh equations somewhere and they are pretty simple. I suspect a quick wikipedia hunt will find them.

Fraz · 21-07-2008, 05:18 PM

Originally Posted by hamd01

The cern research would seem to involve the manipulations of wormholes.....

Originally Posted by Zhaoman

An article in New Scientist around the time of Christmas discussed this exact topic. The new LHC has enough power to create wormholes when 2 particles collide, something which hasn't been achievable until now.

It looks like the LHC really is going to exceed its design specification quite dramatically

Even if this was true, it would be completely useless to us. You'd need to be able to:

a) Fit through the wormhole.
b) Move one of the wormhole exits at close to the speed of light somewhere.

Gerrard · 21-07-2008, 05:49 PM

Originally Posted by Fraz

It looks like the LHC really is going to exceed its design specification quite dramatically

Even if this was true, it would be completely useless to us. You'd need to be able to:

a) Fit through the wormhole.
b) Move one of the wormhole exits at close to the speed of light somewhere.

But how big would the wormhole have to be to transmit and receive radio waves through it? That is assuming they could propagate through it in the first place (ST: DSN comes to mind).

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