Time traveling

[Human]

Some scientists think time travels are possible, and that they could be performed with some methods in the future.

If a time travel is performed in the past, do you think humans experience their life again? (To be more concrete; do you think they are conscious again, or that their life just occur again, with no awareness of it?)
Any viewpoints?

[Joseph_Stalin]

They have speculated that creating a huge device near a blackhole could give sufficient pull (or something to that effect) to transport one to the past of future. However such things are not in any near future (2--- or even 3---) and would take tens of generations to construct, not to mention the laws of physics that are against you. It is not that fictional to think of some anti-gravity device that would help you from getting sucked into the hole, but again such things are beyond our reach.

And that's not even saying it will definately work.

[Howie]

There is a theorey that if you could travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, that time would stand still.
It would also take 4 and a half years just to get to the nearest star.
Are galaxy alone, which is relatively small are far as galaxies go, is around 110 light years across and 10-15 light years thick.
They also think that there might be a black whole near the center of our galaxy which in that case it would take around 50 light years or so just to get to it. Basically I think it is safe to say there will never be space exploration outside of a few planets. -Physical space travel. Mental may be another story.

[spicefiend]

Basically I think it is safe to say there will never be space exploration outside of a few planets. -Physical space travel. [/b]

Nah! We'll find a way. Maybe we'll figure out how to fold space, just like a piece of paper. I believe such an idea is more then just fiction. Or... :D We can fold space with the help of a certain cinnamein flavored drug! The spice must flow!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077859

[CT]

Meh, I hope einstein is wrong about the whole the farther you go the more time's messed up stuff, I want interstellar and intergalaxial travel!!! :D

[spicefiend]

We will find a way!

History is replete with conquered impossibilities — flying machines, moon landings, and tapping the power of the atom, to name but a few.[/b]

[Howie]

Some believe that even landing on the moon was all a big hoax during the race to space against Russia. :whyme:

I do not think the Earth will stand long enough to have any space exploration of any significance.

[spicefiend]

Yeah, I heard about the moon landing being a hoax. I certainly hope its not true. Still, we have been up in space. That counts for something. Don't forget about SpaceshipOne which will be making another attempt to fly to the edge of space and back later this month! The geek in me rejoices! :smartie:

[Death-Wuad]

www.freedomofinfo.org thats a government website that talks all about extraterrestrial civilizations, and they theorize how long it would take before we can do such things as stellar travel. its worth taking a look.

and i had a though about traveling back in time:
get a stick about 10000000 miles long, then get a machine to spin it slowly. the end of the stick would have a monkey duct-taped to it, and it would be traveling much faster than the speed of light (hint: think about spinning, the center is barely moving, but the outside is moving a lot faster) of a course an enormous stick like that would require a lot more materials than our solar system has to offer. unless of course we can create some kind of energy beam that holds onto anything with mass, then we'd spin that beam around the universe a few times...

[baconmastermind]

but wouldn't the monkey get lonely at the end of the stick? We should duct tape a girl monkey at the end of it too.

[Death-Wuad]

No no... The space monkey has space hookers.

[Alric]

I heard there are blackholes in the center of every galaxy(even ours), and they think its what created the galaxies. Blackhole just sits there and doesn't really suck much into it anymore. And a quasar is a blackhole which is sucking stuff into it, and since everything spins around it really fast it shoots stuff off into space.

I think if there was ever time travel, it would be impossible to change the past. Kind of like if you went back and did something it wouldn't change anything because it already happened in our time line. I think it would make the most sense because if it changed our past would change and I really doubt we would notice it.

[Joseph_Stalin]

Yeah I was watching something about that. Like the blackholes make the galaxy spin or something. They had a whole debate with scientists and they almost failed to prove it. Although now they have good evidence.

[Ecnahc]

Originally posted by spicefiend

Or... :D We can fold space with the help of a certain cinnamein flavored drug! The spice must flow!

We could always try shooting up on cinnamon :P

I love Dune though

[Demosthenes]

Time travel is very possible, we just haven't found any logical way to do it. Time is the fourth dimension, if you have trouble understanding that think of it like this. Imagine a strip of paper, now take one end to the paper and connect it with the other end so it makes a loop or a belt. Now if you take a pen and start drawing a straight line on the inside of that loop without ever removing the pen from the paper what happens? You continue to draw on the inside of the loop but not the outside. But what if we put the 4th dimension in there, time. Take the strip of paper, twist it, and then connect the two ends, so the loop has a twist in it. Now take you pen, start drawing a straight line on the inside without lifting up your pen and now what happens, you draw on both sides of the loop without ever removing your pen from the paper. I reccomend you try this.

This is an example on how time interacts with the 3 dimensions X, Y, and Z. The inside of the loop represents the 3 dimensions we are in now, not able to touch the other side of the loop. The twist represents time, the 4th dimension, interacting with out 3D world. If we can find a way to put a "twist" into your 3D world, we could draw much closer to time travel. Time is a limit, a border, a boundry. Just like space travel was at one time, but we broke that boundry, that limit, and because we are human beings we are never satisfied with outselves, and we will work and work to break that boundry as well.

[Evanescent]

I hope

[Alric]

Ok lets try something else. Take a peice of paper, draw a person on it, can be a stick figure if your not good at drawing, make it big so it takes up the entire thing. Now fold it in half, hes now in the 3rd dimension. Now lets assume you are right and you can get to the 4th dimension with a twist. Take the paper while still folded and twist it. Oh and don't forget to put it into a loop.

[Joseph_Stalin]

I just noticed something. You never really look at things in 3-dimensions; in other words you don't see every side at the same time. It is physically impossible. The only reason you might think it's in three dimensions are things like lighting and texture, which add depth and feel, but not a full view of the object.

Think of it as a mini-omnipresence. You need this 'mini-omnipresence' in order to see an object from all sides at once.

If the fourth dimension is time, maybe time is this viewing of everything at once in all views......

Or maybe I hurt my head way too much on these things. :?


Oh and don't say "we'll if I had a third eye on my hand or something I could reach over and see it." I'm talking full perception of the object, as if your eyes could 'feel' it. :shock:

[spicefiend]

We could always try shooting up on cinnamon *
[/b]

Now knocking back a nice, cold 'juice of Safu' sounds good also! :wink:

Always pleased to meet another Dune fan!

[Evanescent]

If time travel is possible i can't wait.

[Jalien]

Time travel would be great and I think its possible. However, I do think future time travel would be far easier than developing past time travel.

[sephiroth_the_musha]

haven't you guys ever read any einstein's work he theoretically proved time travel to be impossible becuase it would take a two sided effort and that would create only an effect of foresight not travel

[Taosaur]

From my point of view there is only the present, and "past" and "future" are only ideas about shapes the present has taken or will take; we talk about these ideas in the form of stories, which gives the impression of setting, or place, but the past is no place. At the same time, I think if we try hard enough to look at the past or future, then our attention may create them within the present, like simulations or annex universes to which we may eventually be able to travel. Even though these will be new worlds within the present, once they have taken on enough reality that we can actually reach them, we will be travelling in time for all intents and purposes. I'm a radical Heisenbergian Uncertaintist, I guess: I think the more we examine the laws of the universe, the more we change them, much in the way that focusing our attention in a dream world alters the character of that world. Seriously, how lucid do you think humanity is about the waking world, on average?

[sunjazz_flower]

All in all, I really don't know and maybe even don't care, but with attitude like mine, people will get nowhere. Lol!!

[bradybaker]

Not only is time travel possible, it is happening all around us at all times. In fact, there is one cosmonaut....the name escapes me at this moment....who holds the world record for longest total time in Earth's orbit. He is approximately 1/18 of a second younger than he would be if he had never travelled at those fantastic speeds around the hunk of iron we call home.

Many other independent studies have shown that objects moving at high speeds experience "time dilation". This basically means that the relative time for that object in motion is slower in comparison to an identical object that is stationary. This was confirmed by two indentical cesium atomic clocks, one which was placed on a Concorde jet and one which remained in a lab. They were sychronyed to extreme accuracy and the clock on the jet was flown at Mach speeds. After the flight, the clocks were again compared and it was found that the clock which had experienced motion was a fraction of a second behind the clock that had remained stationary.

Cool stuff eh.

Recommended reading:
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
The Universe in a Nut Shell by Dr. Stephen Hawking

These two books explain some of the complexities of time travel in layman's terms much better than I ever could.

Enjoy!

[LewisM]

bradybaker mentions some interesting points, 'proven' by Einstein. He proves that time is relative (time passes slower when you move quickly, such as in a concord jet(it also passes slower when youre being affected by high levels of gravity, which is essentialy the same as moving fast)) meaning time passes slowly or quickly under different circumstances. This is the Theory of RELATIVITY. I think...

Anyway, Taosaur makes an interesting point about time just being a concept, I believe this (that time is linear, cannot be travelled through). I don't know what I would ever say to Einstein if I met him, to tell the truth, I don't think many of us have very educated opinions that could stand up to Einstein's or any other physicists scrutiny. I suppose, though, Einstein's 'proof' could be 'proven' wrong any day now. You can never be certain.

[Joseph_Stalin]

Yes, just because an intelligent man says something does not make it absolutely correct. Einstein's theory is no more right than the speculations of an 8-year-old.

I have already made a theory on time travel, or time in general to be precise. I call it the "Frame Theory" (probably been said by someone smarter than me anyway, but...). With this I try to explain consciousness on all points of time, and perception in general, and why time travel would not make "you" experience the same things over and over again.

Time does not exist in the manner that we think; it is just a concept created by humans to comprehend certain things, and to make dates and such. I believe time is just like a camera strip of film. Each frame is continously happening in a loop, we just \"move\" down. The frame still exists--our selves of the 1 second ago loop exist too. They noted that that was a second of time. The frame is infinite, but we don't realize it because we're viewing the strip like a moving film.

__________

that is exactly the reason I believe that time is split into frames (who knows the exact length of them; maybe a measurement we can't comprehend). Different perceptions make you think your moving in time, but your probably just going from one frame to the next.

__________

Perhaps we all exist in different planes of time; each second of living is a plane I suppose. All together there are maybe 10 to the 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000..... power of planes. We perceive each one as time, but in reality each second or plane exists in a infinite amount. Not like rewinding and playing the same frame over and over, but really the same thing is constantly existing. Words could not describe it. Maybe it's like always being on the same plane of existance, for ever, but your 'moment self' thinks that it is on the correct plane, but in reality 'all' of you are. This would probably mean that you are one in everything, not omnipresent or anything (since you could not live forever), but close.[/b]


This boils down to perception and consciousness, because each "frame" thinks it is moving forward in time, and the next "frame" thinks it has just moved from the past to present and is going to move foward. The frames as seperate don't seem to make sense, but if you run them through a "projector" AKA perception, everything makes sense to you. A false conscious, maybe, but one all the same.


P.S. Thanks LewisM, for adopting my quote! It makes me appear like an aged philosopher sitting down having tea with another. Hehe... :D

[bradybaker]

Ok, ok. Let's not disrespect Albert Einstein here. His theories and postulations were so advanced for his time that we are just now gaining the technology needed to confirm many of his predictions. I suggest you do some research before proclaiming that:

Einstein's theory is no more right than the speculations of an 8-year-old.[/b]

[LewisM]

Joseph and I weren't criticising Einstein's theory here... Just commenting on the nature of 'truth' and how it can change any old day. To another 8 year old, 8yearoldNo.1's idea might seem to be the absolute truth, until he meets a ten year old that tells him the 'REAL' truth.

Joseph your quote is awesome :D don't worry, you ARE a super-dope philosopher.

[Joseph_Stalin]

Yes, I meant no disrespect to Einstein. But you have to see that every so often, within a few generations, there will be a new Einstein, and he'll be "Smart Sterotype" for another few decades, and so on. Truth is a very...interesting thing. Because one day the truth will become false--there is no real truth but what we choose to believe.


An eight-year-old might think "Of course aliens are real!"
But his brother, who is 13, might say "Don't be stupid. Aliens are made up."
But their 30-year-old father, who has all sorts of degrees and such, might say "Well, you know, we can never be to certain. However, there is a better chance there is some form of life, be it microscopic or otherwise."


Who is right? Well the average person, when asked to pick out a choice of answers from these three, will more than likely choose the 30-year-old father, because he is older, and has degrees, and graduated from MIT or some school of similiar standing (owch, say that 5 times fast :D). The person's choice is based on a false interpretation that because the man is older and wiser, and overall "smarter" (think an alternate world where science is frowned upon as a fools talk, and fairy tales are truth, such as sun demons and such--all of that is considered "Smart"), he will indefinately always hold the correct and 'logical' choice. Though his choice is roughly the same as his 8-year-old son, the person will examine his exclamation of "Aliens are real!" as statement made out of saturation by movies and television. Even if this is true, it is still basically the same as his father's. Yet once again, because of the "Seniority" and "Authority" of his father and what he says, he is trusted and accepted more.

This is a common mistake among many, that because of papers and medals, one is more than another person, and his philosophies and ideas mean more than another's. Because this man has absorbed knowledge and ideas all his life that constitute his "intelligence" (such ideas and facts that might not even be real or the truth), and has been awarded with documents that proclaim this, he is thought to have more say over another person.

What we see is a contradiction in itself--logic has become ignorance.

Of course, I myself step into a boundary I cannot explain. Perhaps, in truth, I am the ignorant one, and that what I say is not the truth. It is an unexplained and uncomphrehendable paradox:

I say such things condemming ignorance, yet I myself may be ignorant. And because I say such things out of ignorance, then in fact the things I am condemming are right, but if they are correct, and are logical, than what of men like me? Do we fight a giant contradiction everyday, that can only be answered with a contradiction? Or is it a simple answer than we cannot discover, only to be answered with "logic"? What is logic? What is ignorance? Perhaps these are words with false meanings, because they do not describe facts, but more likely, opinions.

_____________________________-

Thanks for the comments LewisM...from now on I will become:

JOSEPH STALIN: SUPER DOPE PHILOSHOPER