Time Travel Possible?

[Archmonarch]

According to a new article on the BBC website, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4097258.stm, time travel may be possible under a new model proposed by US and Austrian scientists. Based on quantum mechanics, this theory eliminates the Grandfather Paradox by introducing a feedback loop whereby traveling to the past would only complement the present. In other words, you cant change history at any level by going into the past. Some force would prevent your actions.

 

Of course, they fail to mention forward time travel in this brief article. I wonder if the same rules would apply.

[Drakron]

Translation:

 

BBC just published another useless article of baseless expeculation.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Time travel is only mathematicly possible, if at all.

[Archmonarch]

Translation:

 

BBC just published another useless article of baseless expeculation.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You had to ruin my little experiment, didnt you? :angry:

[cewekeds]

When it comes to time travel I always think of the futurama where Fry goes back in time and knocks up his grand ma. :D

 

 

Clearly, the present never is changed by mischievous time-travellers: people don't suddenly fade into the ether because a rerun of events has prevented their births - that much is obvious.

 

But how would you know? If you go back in time and kill your father then you would never be born. Then you wouldn't be able to kill your father.

Maybe this just repeat itself over and over until you decide let the old man live. Then you only remember that route in time travel.

 

But how about buying stock so when your return your rich? I can still do that right.

[Cantousent]

Time travel forwards is not only possible, we're doing it right now.

[11XHooah]

Time travel forwards is not only possible, we're doing it right now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

We are? So we can go into the way future. Or are you just saying we're going into the future because time is passing <_< Because I want to go into the distant future and see what it's like.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Surely if you 'go' back into the past, your presence there will have an enormous impact beyond your control (like the butterfly effect). In theory, it might be possible to gather information directly from the past, by sending some kind of 'probe' that can only observe, not do anything. Although, my very limited understanding of quantum theory is that even the act of observing changes the thing observed. In any case, these poor scientists were probably phoned at 3am by some BBC writer who wanted a time-travel story for the same day as the finale of Doctor Who, so let's not read too much into what they said.

 

Travelling into the future doesn't present any paradoxes, so long as you don't mind staying there. It's a one-way ticket.

[11XHooah]

Travelling into the future doesn't present any paradoxes, so long as you don't mind staying there.  It's a one-way ticket.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I wouldn't mind. Unless the future is crappy. But I would be interested to see what kinds of advancements we have made, particularly militarily. I wonder what kinds of weapons we will use. Perhaps blaster rifles :cool:

[SteveThaiBinh]

But I would be interested to see what kinds of advancements we have made, particularly militarily. I wonder what kinds of weapons we will use. Perhaps blaster rifles :cool:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why isn't there a 'weeps with frustration' smilie? I really need one of those now.

[metadigital]

Clearly, the present never is changed by mischievous time-travellers: people don't suddenly fade into the ether because a rerun of events has prevented their births - that much is obvious.

 

But how would you know? If you go back in time and kill your father then you would never be born. Then you wouldn't be able to kill your father.

Maybe this just repeat itself over and over until you decide let the old man live. Then you only remember that route in time travel.

 

But how about buying stock so when your return your rich? I can still do that right.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You are not considering the multiverse.

 

It is quite feasible that any past a time traveller visits will be another timestream, identical to our past, except that the traveller has visited. Think of the Terminator.

 

At some point, Kyle Reece was sent back by John Connor to 1984. Before he was first sent back, who knows what 1984 looked like? Now, our universe has a time traveller from the future arriving and copulating with Sarah Conner in 1984, to give birth to John Conner, the general and saviour of mankind in the war against Skynet. Our universe is different to the original.

 

Another example.

 

If Archmonarch goes back in time to meet an ancestor, the timestream is not in our universe -- because our universe has had no such event. Ergo, ipso facto, it must be a different (parallel) universe, and Archmonarch is free to kill / copulate with any ancestor with impugnity.

 

See? No possible paradox.

[cewekeds]

That makes sense however what if Archmonarch needs to go back in time to meet himself to explain how to time travel to himself?

[><FISH'>]

stfu. time travel will never be possible.

 

whenever you read an article like that they always say that something is possible (in this case time travel) but then they add something that completely contradicts their previous statement, effectively wasting your precious time.

[Darth Flatus]

SO what exactly prevents you from altering anything? Big dragon monster thingies coming down and mashing up the place?

[Kaftan Barlast]

Once you understand what time is, you realise that it is an impossibility to travel forwards or backwards in it. Traveling in time is a ludicrous as driving your car using an opinion as a physical road.

 

 

You can make time go faster or slower if you can alter gravity in the area you wish to speed up/slow. Think of it as having an apple either in the fridge or outside in the sun, it will deteriorate no matter what you do but you can alter the rate of decay.

[11XHooah]

But I would be interested to see what kinds of advancements we have made, particularly militarily. I wonder what kinds of weapons we will use. Perhaps blaster rifles :cool:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why isn't there a 'weeps with frustration' smilie? I really need one of those now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

:D

[metadigital]

SO what exactly prevents you from altering anything? Big dragon monster thingies coming down and mashing up the place?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nothing; you are just in an adjacent reality -- the universe that you have travelled back in time to visit is not your own, original universe: it is a parallel one. So you can kill your mother or tell your father which lottery numbers will come up next week. (Interestingly, it is also possible that both your father will win the jackpot, and he won't! Two different time-speace streams, bifurcating at the lottery draw.)

 

[11XHooah]

What would really be interesting is if you went back in time and brought someone back with you. I wonder what kinds of effects that would have.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Surely the alternate realities thing has the same one-way ticket problem. With an infinite number of realities to jump to, how can you ever return to the one you started out from?

[11XHooah]

Surely the alternate realities thing has the same one-way ticket problem.  With an infinite number of realities to jump to, how can you ever return to the one you started out from?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Perhaps we could map out the different realities and create "coordinates".

[metadigital]

Surely the alternate realities thing has the same one-way ticket problem.  With an infinite number of realities to jump to, how can you ever return to the one you started out from?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Making a hypothetical prediction about a theoretical scenario is quite ludicrous, but ( :D ) I would say yes, the return journey would be to a different reality.

 

Not that the traveller would be able to tell. Just like every event that has happened to you in your life seems permanent, any alternative universe where any one of those events happened differently would seem equally unchangeable. Theoretically.

[EnderAndrew]

[Archmonarch]

Surely the alternate realities thing has the same one-way ticket problem.  With an infinite number of realities to jump to, how can you ever return to the one you started out from?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That was the entire premise of the show "Sliders."

[EnderAndrew]

Stephen Hawking said there are countless realities, constantly folding out of existance, and branching into new ones all the time.

[Archmonarch]

Im aware of the conjecture and projections behind the "Multiverse Theory." I make use of it in my writing.

 

I also remember a certain test (I forget the exact name) in which light is shot through a board with two slits in it. Theoretically, the light could go through either hole and this dichotomy creates alternate universes in which the beam goes through either hole. As this makes no real difference on reality, the two universes condense back into one. It is thereby (if I remember correctly) impossible to tell through which hole the light traveled.

 

So as to connect to my earlier post, "Sliders" was a '90's sci-fi show starring Jerry O'Connell (currently in Crossing Jordan) as a physics student named Quinn who was working on solving a certain equation proposed by his professor, a noted expert in the field. His intent is to create an anti-gravity device with it. He comes close, but is finally unable to solve it. Suddenly, a wormhole opens and out pops another Quinn. This version solved the equation and his device became a wormhole generator through a technique he calls sliding, thus the name. After warning the "original" Quinn of the multitude of realities and the difficulty in returning to your home, etc., blah, blah, blah, he leaves.

 

Original Quinn decides to test the machine anyway. He invites his professor (portrayed by John Rhys-Davies) and a co-worker to the demonstration. Naturally, something goes wrong and the three along with a washed-up soul singer driving by the house are sucked into the vortex and end up in an alternate world in nuclear winter.

 

And so they travel from world to world, trying to find their way home and meeting their alternate selves, while battling injustice and the evil Kromaggs (aliens who posses a variant sliding technology). Over time, every original member of the team dies or is subsumed into a double (the term for the identical people from different universes) of themselves (Quinn is eventually used to 'repair' a version of him that looks completely different and has a broken back).

 

A fairly cheesy show, but it entertained me as a child.