Time travel.. if its possible why havent we seen it.

Soldato
Joined
17 Jul 2008
Posts
7,367
if I were to throw you 100 years into the past, you would be deep in space since..

1) the earths goign round the sun,
2) the sun is going roudn the milkey way
3) the milkey way is moving

not only would you have to travel in time but you would at the very least need to be in a space ship...

all of the above ignores the debate as to weather its even possible...

** edit - ok im a bit late to the party...
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Apr 2003
Posts
7,964
Right, this is my opinion.

In essense this means that if we travelled faster than the speed of light you could travel away from something and see something which happened previously. And if essense you are seeing something from the past, hence you could travel away from something faster than the speed of light and then watch as the light. For example if something happened yesterday on earth you could travel away from the earth for 1 day at twice the speed of light, then look at the light from the earth you would see what happened yesterday now. ie. Time travel.

However what you cannot do is travel faster than the speed of light to interact with the past. As it's already happened.

these were my thoughts too, the issue being is the means to jump ahead to view the signal in any meaningful way. this lends itself to the traditional modelling of the wormhole which shortcuts accross the galaxy/universe so back to square 1.
 
Associate
Joined
11 Jan 2003
Posts
844
Location
Loughborough
Right, this is my opinion.

We were led to believe that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light! However their are now claims that particles have been proven to travel faster than this.

In essense this means that if we travelled faster than the speed of light you could travel away from something and see something which happened previously. And if essense you are seeing something from the past, hence you could travel away from something faster than the speed of light and then watch as the light. For example if something happened yesterday on earth you could travel away from the earth for 1 day at twice the speed of light, then look at the light from the earth you would see what happened yesterday now. ie. Time travel.

However what you cannot do is travel faster than the speed of light to interact with the past. As it's already happened.

You can actually interact with the past if you travel faster than the speed of light, and more importantly you can violate causality (i.e. you could receive a message before you even sent it).

It's a fairly straightforward proof that this is the case, but if you didn't do undergrad physics or maths it might be lost on you (no offence). I believe I posted this on another similar thread, but here is a wordy explanation of how it's possible:

http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html
 
Caporegime
Joined
28 Jun 2005
Posts
48,104
Location
On the hoods
It’s not a thin argument it’s a massive problem most people overlook when talking about time travail. I don’t think you understand the sheer size or speeds we are talking about here. What is a thin argument is you saying but we could just compensate for this very real problem in some unknown way. You would have no point of reference, no idea where Earth had moved to and even if you did if you are just 1/10000 of a degree out and you still miss Earth by a long shot. It’s a massive problem.

Right, so we can hypothetically surmount the challenges of time travel, but we can't get around the spatial challenges involved. Hmmm. Never mind the fact that we can and routinely do plot the movements of numerous stellar bodies.

Honestly. It's a simple relative movement problem. It's hitting a moving target - something we do all the time. Hell, people have been doing this sort of thing with bows and arrows for thousands of years. All we're doing is adding a dimension and increasing the precision needed. It's really not a big deal.

Without giving it too much thought, it may not even be necessary over small periods of time. When you set off to time travel you are already moving with the earth, so when you travel across the period of time you will continue to move with the earth, relative to everything else. This is similar to the way in which you can throw a ball in the air and it doesn't instantly fly off at hundreds of thousands of miles an hour in the opposite direction to that in which the earth is moving.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
17 Jun 2007
Posts
9,273
Bit late to the party BUT.

Just because its not common knowledge doesn't mean its not happened.

How does the avg joe know that we haven't been visited form the future. Surely some rules would have been written about changing history etc. maybe the powers in charge do know something and they are working to sort out some major issues.

How do we know that the powers at be weren't told that in the future Saddam hussein makes a nuclear bomb and destroys the US or UK or both. And that we had to make up some crappy excuse to go to war in order to stop future events.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jan 2005
Posts
3,633
Location
Cambridge
How do we know that the powers at be weren't told that in the future Saddam hussein makes a nuclear bomb and destroys the US or UK or both. And that we had to make up some crappy excuse to go to war in order to stop future events.

I haven't heard that one before. Nice.
 

mrk

mrk

Man of Honour
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
99,995
Location
South Coast
Maybe the future knows that if they came back and gave us time travel we would probably **** it up.

Unless someone turned on a time machine or created a wormhole or something ages ago then that's not going to ever happen because there'd be no way for anyone to travel back :p
 
Associate
Joined
11 Aug 2009
Posts
211
1) Go back in time 1 hour.
2) Realise you are where the earth was 1 hour ago in it's orbit.
3) Asphyxiate in the cold hard vacuum of space.
4) ???
5) Profit.
 
Caporegime
Joined
28 Jun 2005
Posts
48,104
Location
On the hoods
1) Go back in time 1 hour.
2) Realise you are where the earth was 1 hour ago in it's orbit.
3) Asphyxiate in the cold hard vacuum of space.
4) ???
5) Profit.

Step 4) is that you quickly travel back in time to 1)a) and compensate for the relative motion of the universe, which is a trivial problem, and something that we are already good at calculating.
 
Soldato
Joined
29 May 2006
Posts
5,347
Right, so we can hypothetically surmount the challenges of time travel, but we can't get around the spatial challenges involved. Hmmm. Never mind the fact that we can and routinely do plot the movements of numerous stellar bodies.

Honestly. It's a simple relative movement problem. It's hitting a moving target - something we do all the time. Hell, people have been doing this sort of thing with bows and arrows for thousands of years. All we're doing is adding a dimension and increasing the precision needed. It's really not a big deal......
In many ways the changes of time travel are easy compared to the spatial challenges involved. It’s perfectly reasonable to think time travel can get invented but the spatial challenges not be solved.

As for bown and arrow it’s more like hitting a moving target that is inside another moving target which itself is in another moving target. All that from a position outside our ability to see the target due to distance. Do you understand the scale of distance and speed we are talking about? How can you relate it to simple bow and arrows and hitting a moving target? It’s not like that.

As for plot the movements of numerous stellar bodies wow I don’t even know where to begin to explain the problems we face. We are not even able to clearly see our movement in relation to anything else due to lack of faster than light sensors. There is no way to plot what we need to plot.

As for the like a ball thrown on earth I am not even going to go there as it’s so silly and wrong.
 
Soldato
Joined
29 May 2006
Posts
5,347
Step 4) is that you quickly travel back in time to 1)a) and compensate for the relative motion of the universe, which is a trivial problem, and something that we are already good at calculating.
It’s not a travel problem it’s currently impossible. How do we work out our movement in relation to the universe? Even on the smaller and easier scale but still impossible today how do we work out our movement in relation to other galaxy’s? Scale it down more how do we work out our movement in relation to nearby solar systems?

After all that you also have to take into effect how much space has expanded and contracted in time frame covered which is also impossible to work out currently. EDIT:Just to be clear even if nothing moved the space/distance between solar systems would change over the course of time travail. Which is an added big problem.

EDIT: How can anyone say the relative motion of the universe is a trivial problem? Am I the only one that things thats crasy talk?
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
17 Jun 2007
Posts
9,273
Less than 60 years between the wright bros first flight and yuri Gagarin orbiting the earth. What we can achieve in the next 60 years is mind boggling.
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Apr 2003
Posts
7,964
You can actually interact with the past if you travel faster than the speed of light, and more importantly you can violate causality (i.e. you could receive a message before you even sent it).

It's a fairly straightforward proof that this is the case, but if you didn't do undergrad physics or maths it might be lost on you (no offence). I believe I posted this on another similar thread, but here is a wordy explanation of how it's possible:

http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html

reading the article and the comments, it doesn't prove anything like you are suggesting. well, the theory does indeed backup the theory but that doesn't prove the reality.


link above said:
A brief note to my recent visitors: If you’ve arrived here from sites with highly misleading blurbs and expect to find a discussion of how faster-than-light travel is possible, I’m afraid you will be disappointed. This article outlines an argument commonly accepted by physicists which demonstrates that in special relativity faster-than-light travel is not possible
 
Associate
Joined
11 Jan 2003
Posts
844
Location
Loughborough
Because it's all theory, there are very little practical applications for most theoretical physics.

Please tell me you're joking...

reading the article and the comments, it doesn't prove anything like you are suggesting. well, the theory does indeed backup the theory but that doesn't prove the reality.

How so? :confused: The article clearly shows how FTL travel would violate causality, as I said.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom