What is time? Is time travel possible?

[ugh]

Time.. I have some questions.. Is ALL time in the universe moving at the same ratio? I think i read somewhere that in some parts of the universe, 10 minutes is equal to 10 seconds on earth?? Im not very educated in this area but it is very interesting so maybe someone can shed some light?

Is there such thing as an place outside of time? If there is a god, did he create time or has it simply always existed? There has to be a begining to the universe, but where did it all begin?

Post your thoughts.....

 

[Blinkz]

....can open......worms everywhere.....

good questions, don't really know the answers

 

[VaderDSL]

Time is invented by humans, in the universal scale time does not exit

I dunno, I think time-travel is possible with manipulation of different dimensions etc.

 

[Tweek_1984]

Originally posted by ugh
Time.. I have some questions.. Is ALL time in the universe moving at the same ratio? I think i read somewhere that in some parts of the universe, 10 minutes is equal to 10 seconds on earth?? Im not very educated in this area but it is very interesting so maybe someone can shed some light?

Is there such thing as an place outside of time? If there is a god, did he create time or has it simply always existed? There has to be a begining to the universe, but where did it all begin?

Post your thoughts.....

I see time as something solid. The idea that 10 seconds is equal to 10 minutes, I dont think thats possible. Time is a measure which cannot be altered. You can have time on a bigger or smaller scale, but i dont see how it could increase or decrease.

Personally, I am baffled about 'time'. I mean, we use time as an abstract measure of past, present, future. But, its not concrete, and theoretically, it doesnt have to exist. I mean, scientists say time started when the big band happened. What if the big bang happened in an even bigger universe where worlds existed just like our own universe, surely time would have existed before the big bang. If Humans were able to penetrate the universe and survive, would that cripple ever law of physics and would mean that time is just an idea.

 

[ugh]

Originally posted by Trebor95
Time is invented by humans, in the universal scale time does not exit

Interesting point.


Would be interesting to find out when/where the person who decided 60 seconds would be 1 minute etc

We could all have our own little time scales then.

Saying your 21 yrs old, when your really 31 could be reality, with alittle alreation to how long an hour lasts etc

 

[Tweek_1984]

Originally posted by Trebor95
Time is invented by humans, in the universal scale time does not exit

I dunno, I think time-travel is possible with manipulation of different dimensions etc.

You beat me to it. Thats what i wanted to say really.

 

[Pj·uK]

I could go on for hours about absolute-time and referenced-spacetime...have a look here for a nice illustrated guide to GR.

Pj

 

[Tweek_1984]

I dont believe in Einsteins Theory of Relativity. How can time go slower if your travelling faster than a slower object. I dont understand that one fully.

if you go fast enough, you start to slow right down and then once you reach the speed of light, time stops and you start to catch up wth the past. If thats right, that'd prove that time doesnt exist and its just an abstract idea, surely?

 

[DOOM]

Time measured by humans dont count.

You have to realise your common sense view of time is that of newton:ABSOLUTE.

This is wrong,einstien proved time is not absolute and the same for everyone in the universe,its relative.

If i were to go out in space for say a couple of years towards the speed of light,relative to me time would have passed as expected i.e 2 years,
however when i get back to earth,the earth will have aged maybe 20 years,from there point of view ive been gone 20 years.

Now this has been proven and time travel has already been done,first proof of time travel was in 1971,they put highly accurate atomic clocks in two planes,had them fly around the world in opposite directions at the same speed and compared them to atomic clocks that were originally set the same in the lab,the clocks on the planes were 59 nanoseconds slow,they lost time due to moving above ground at speed.

Time is elastic,it can be stretched,and my time is not the same as your time even if our clocks agree.

Time travel is possible due to the fact that previous events are stretched out of NOW and future events are what now is going to be.

What i suggested once is that the past is like the future,you can enter it cos your stretched backwards from now in relative position,anything you change will strech back to how it was,preventing paradox,or its like they say about parallel universes(looking increasingly more likely) that in fact all events actually exist all at once but you only see what you see,but that if events are changed it doesnt matter cos the original events still occur but no longer from your perspective.

 

[MindYerBeak]

Einstein said that everything happens in the Now, or the Present Moment. There is no yesterday or tomorrow, just the Now. Everything that has ever existed, everything that will ever exist is in the Now.

The faster you go the heavier you get. When you reach the speed of light you're too heavy to go any faster. The faster you go, the quicker time passes.

 

[NickK]

Welcome to the wonderful world of big arguements and Superstring theory

For superstring theory I'd have a read of "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory" by Brian Greene.

There are many papers published on the web about subjects such as Manufolds etc. Most of the papers are really pretty generic set theory and is easy to follow. The hard point comes when they reference some other work or known equation that means a further hunt..

 

[Blinkz]

i don't believe that time travel it self is possible, however i do agree that time is relative and that it is plausible (not necessaryily possible) for a human to fly off at the speed of light then come back having aged only his relative time and the earth to have ageed quicker etc etc.

 

[DOOM]

Applied quantum mechanics will one day prove time travel is possible,rather than quantum theory.

We can definatly time travel into the future,theres no debate about that,theres many theoretical and correct ways to do this,going into a coma for 10 years is time travel except your body has aged,but your mind perspective would be "oh my god im 10 years in the future!"

Going into the future is not dangerous,whats technically dangerous is if you could come back to now with the information you learned in the future.

I think paradoxes are all like the chicken and the egg,they seem un fixable till you know the whole story.

With chicken and the egg its only a paradox cos your not looking at evolution in the question,so i say "which came first?"
and there can be no answer to the question itself.

I think the paradoxes of time travel are the same,even if we could time travel the paradox wont happen,they dont happen in real life and cannot exist even if time travel is possible.

 

[Davey_Pitch]

Of course time travel is possible, just watch Back To The Future!

Seriously though, it's a subject I'd like to learn more about, as the whole idea of time travel fascinates me. I'll have to read one or two of those books I think

 

[DOOM]

See thing is,it does not have to be physical time travel,it could be quantum mental/memory.

Suppose you could send your current mind state backwards in time.

So there i sit at school in 1989 of 9 years and suddenly all these memorys go into my brain of the next 14 years of my life.

So youll probably say "whats the problem with that if possible?"
problem is i now know events in the future,which means if im to avoid certain things it means they wont happen,so how do i get them memorys?

The whole picture at this point would be to say that the instant the memorys are sent back you end up with a two timeline cut off,one does the original thing while the other version of me is gonna do something different due to the new memorys.

As far as i can tell if time travel is possible it would be pointless to all but the person doing it,the world around them changes,but from everyone elses point of view it either didnt happen or you dissapeared.

 

[Tweek_1984]

The atomic clocks on planes thing doesnt make sense.

With atomic clocks, or basically clock, time is a solid thing. It is measured.

How can mechanical instruments that measure time be different when one is slower and one is faster?

Thats like saying I went on a plane with a litre of water and came off with slightly less than the litre I left on the ground. Time on clocks is solid, it doesnt change if you go faster. Clocks are merely machines. How can they be altered by speed? The clocks dont know they are on planes? They should operate as normal.

 

[DOOM]

The clocks are operating as normal,yes,but the clock is slowing down and so is everything else,your body,your mass,engines
THE LOT,the clock is not the experiment.

See the clock is measuring the passing of motion,the clocks on the ground are doing the same,they are all correct,but the clocks on the plane measured a different passing of time to those on the ground.

All the clocks were the same,EXACTLY,till the planes went up and moved,when the got back the clocks were different,whats difficult to understand?

 

[Garp]

Originally posted by ugh
Time.. I have some questions.. Is ALL time in the universe moving at the same ratio? I think i read somewhere that in some parts of the universe, 10 minutes is equal to 10 seconds on earth?? Im not very educated in this area but it is very interesting so maybe someone can shed some light?

Time is merely another dimension. Just like how length, bredth and depth are the first three. We can freely move along those three dimensions. We're stuck moving in the fourth dimension (time) in a single direction at a constant speed. Our perception of it can change though. Kinda like how in a boring lesson back at school an hour would seem like an eternity; or how time flies when you're having fun.
Theoretically, because time is merely another dimension, there may be some way of moving through it at will, just like we move through the first three at will.
However there is a lot of dangers inherent in time travel; killing your parents before you're born, paradoxes and the like. For example, it should be theoretically impossible for you to go back through time and warn yourself not to do something you did that was disastrous. If the younger you didn't do it, the version of you that experienced it would never have existed, and thus couldn't have gone back in time to warn your past self.. hence you would do it, which would mean you could go back in time... etc..etc. You get a paradox.
Some scientists argue that you can't travel through time specifically because it would all too easily lead to paradoxes. Another argument is the parallel universes theory, like in Sliders. The proposition there is that for every decision made a quantum parrallel was made where a different decision was made. Some scientists argue that time travel would actually be travel into another parrallel universe instead of our one, and they also suggest that you wouldn't be able to necessarily travel back to the time/dimension you came from!

Is there such thing as an place outside of time? If there is a god, did he create time or has it simply always existed? There has to be a begining to the universe, but where did it all begin?

Post your thoughts.....

Theologically speaking God exists out side of time. Everlasting life does not refer to living forever, but to life outside of time.
As God lives outside of time he sees everything at every time as it happens. Hence we have free will, yet God knows exactly what we're going to do.
How's that for hard to get your brain around completely (If you believe in God that is)

 

[DOOM]

I dont directly believe god exists,im agnostic,however the idea of god being outside time is correct,it fits perfectly with big bang theory,space-time is what the universe is,the combination of 3 dimensions and time,we are 3 dimensional under control of the 4th.

If you were a 4th dimensional being(as opposed to 3 which you and i are) then youd actually see everything at once,youd remember yesterday and tommorow,youll not need to look round a corner to see whats there as youll already know.

God could be very multidimensional as hed be OUTSIDE his creation of space time.

If god does exist then he can certainly prevent a time paradox,like hawkings cosmic time sensor hypothesis.

Example:
you go back in time to shoot yourself,trying to kill your past self,but the bullet hits your earlier selfs shoulder,reason is because you have a bad shoulder cos of that bullet hitting you all them years ago and cant hold the gun properly.

I dissagree with hawking,i also dissagree with einstien on some things,remember einstien didnt like quantum theorys,
when he was shown how uncertain the quantum world was he made his famous quote:
"god does not play dice"

Yes he does,the universe on a quantum scale seems to be uncertain,yet in the classical world certain,how can this be?

Why is it you cannot measure both the speed and location of a particle at the same time?
theres nothing wrong with equipment,its the principle of nature,it does not allow both at the same time which in the classical world(seeing as quantum physics makes the classical world) seem obsurd and UNABSOLUTE to common sense.

Why is it that in the 2 slit experiment when its allowed two options theres an interference suggesting that it knows about both options but takes a particular route when you are looking,it does it with electrons,photons etc.

Basically in the quantum world it behaves as if:

a)none of anything we see is real

b)everythings real but has multiple possibilitys,in other words in the quantum world it makes all choices somehow somewhere(parallel worlds,many world lines,multiverse etc).

Now i choose to believe B,due to the fact im level headed and logical.Also cos im only really given them options,give me more and maybe id choose something else,you have to prove it though through thought experimentation or practical application.

If you choose A it means you believe your house does not exist untill someone looks at it to confirm its there,the house,the universe only exists cos someones looking at it,
OH DEAR this means there has to be a god,it also means that if god ceases to exist so do we,and who observes the observers?

 

[Glass]

time is part of human reality, in theory there may be a way to perceive it differently, or not at all, we just don't have the brains