29 replies to this topic

[MysticFalcon182]

Time... A very weird and confusing matter. I'm not even going to get further into it...

...Because our "hijacked" topic was stopped, this'll be here.

First off, is time travel possible? If it is, then why aren't we overrun by time travelers from the future? Two possibilities (I forgot the third)...
1. They're hiding among us
2. Time travel just isn't possible

Feel free to discuss... Hm, I should stop playing so much Diablo II and start studying these things.

~Mystic~

[Ice Nine]

Ever read Wired Magazine?

For the then year issue, they did a little section on time travel. Four different ways of doing it, how to do it, and the flaws of each one.

One that stands out in my mind was taking about large amounts (I mean, like, tons upon tons upon tons.) of material and putting it into a compresser suffciently powerful. One it gets down to a certain density, it'll turn into a black hole, and work as a portal to another time.

There were a few others, but I'm not sure what they are. I'll have to go check.

<later...> After much searching/cruising of their website, I found the article.

[merlinski]

One that stands out in my mind was taking about large amounts (I mean, like, tons upon tons upon tons.) of material and putting it into a compresser suffciently powerful. One it gets down to a certain density, it'll turn into a black hole, and work as a portal to another time.

... umm... does that seem utterly ridiculous to anyone else? If it even approached black hole density, it would suck in the entire compressor machine, wouldn't it? Not to mention that black holes just crush things, they don't transport them to other times... Oh god they really have no respect for science.

[ompa]

Merlinski is right, unless you have something that could actually contain the black hole, you're pretty much screwed. Or, something to prevent you from ripping to shreads when you try to go into it.

~ompa

[Ice Nine]

If it even approached black hole density, it would suck in the entire compressor machine, wouldn't it?

Not if there were other black hoes pulling on the machines, negating the force of the one being created!!!!1!!11!one!1!

</kidding> Yeah. I see what you're getting at, but I think that they're just looking at ways that it MAY be possible. It's not like "We said so, we're right, fuck off."

<edit>

When Karl Schwarzschild solved Einstein's equations in 1917, he found that stars can collapse into infinitesimally small points in space - what we now call black holes. Four decades later, physicist Roy Kerr discovered that some stars are saved from total collapse and become rotating rings. Kerr didn't regard these rings as time machines. However, because their intense gravity distorts space-time, and because they permit large objects to enter on one side and exit on the other in one piece, Kerr-type black holes can serve as portals to the past or the future. If finding one with the proper dimensions is too much trouble, you can always build one yourself:


•Gather enough matter to equal Jupiter's mass.
•Compress it into a ring about 5 feet in diameter. This can put a lot of stress on mechanical tools, so a high-energy electromagnetic field is recommended.
•As you compress the ring, set it spinning. Increase its velocity to nearly the speed of light. A black hole will form at its center.
•Step through the hole and you'll be transported instantly to another time (and, possibly, place), potentially as far back as the big bang or as far forward as the end of the universe as we know it. Bon voyage!


Fine print: The Kerr ring is a one-way ticket. The black hole's gravity is so great that, once you step through it, you won't be able to return.

Okay, I stated it wrong in an earlier post. Sorry 'bout that. </edit>

Edited by Ice Nine, 10 May 2004 - 07:07 PM.

[merlinski]

When Karl Schwarzschild solved Einstein's equations in 1917, he found that stars can collapse into infinitesimally small points in space - what we now call black holes. Four decades later, physicist Roy Kerr discovered that some stars are saved from total collapse and become rotating rings. Kerr didn't regard these rings as time machines. However, because their intense gravity distorts space-time, and because they permit large objects to enter on one side and exit on the other in one piece, Kerr-type black holes can serve as portals to the past or the future. If finding one with the proper dimensions is too much trouble, you can always build one yourself:


•Gather enough matter to equal Jupiter's mass.
•Compress it into a ring about 5 feet in diameter. This can put a lot of stress on mechanical tools, so a high-energy electromagnetic field is recommended.
•As you compress the ring, set it spinning. Increase its velocity to nearly the speed of light. A black hole will form at its center.
•Step through the hole and you'll be transported instantly to another time (and, possibly, place), potentially as far back as the big bang or as far forward as the end of the universe as we know it. Bon voyage!


Fine print: The Kerr ring is a one-way ticket. The black hole's gravity is so great that, once you step through it, you won't be able to return.

I don't know, I just don't have much confidence in the human body's ability to be compressed into an infinitessimally small space and then expanded back into normal form intact... just a hunch...

I'm sort of a skeptic about purely theoretical things like this, so any theory would be hard-pressed to convince me. Whatever, that guy's about 10,000 times smarter than I am, so maybe there really is something to that.

[MysticFalcon182]

[Delete]

Edited by MysticFalcon182, 10 May 2004 - 09:08 PM.

[MysticFalcon182]

Not if there were other black hoes pulling on the machines, negating the force of the one being created!!!!1!!11!one!1!

Yummy...

Makes me think of things

Like my last name


~Mystic~

[MysticFalcon182]

Also, when going back in time, do not - repeat - do not kill your parents before you are born. Wired takes no responsibility for parallel universes in which you find yourself trapped for eternity.

Hahaha... Best.article.evar!

Sorry.

~Mystic~

Edit: Nothing productive to say at the moment... Perhaps sleep will help. G'night all.

Edited by MysticFalcon182, 10 May 2004 - 09:18 PM.

[Vintage]

...hmmm...maybe we just need to find that Stargate somewhere in the arctic...then step through right when the sun has a solar flare...

Alright, back on the topic. The mass of Jupiter?!?!? That's insane. That amount of mass alone would create enough gravity to pull the earth out of orbit. Once its packed down to a five foot ring, there is no way you could get near it without your body sucked and splattered across the ring's surface. (by "near" I mean within a couple million miles)

Then you would have to try to get that thing spinning. Imagine how difficult it is to alter the spin of Earth. Now try to fathom rotating the mass of Jupiter.

I am just having fun with that one... I don't think time travel is possible, because you cannot exist in two places at once. That means you could never go to a time where you exist.

Also, if you go back in time to change something, once it's changed, your younger self will grow up without the need to go back and change it. You will get to the point where you had to go back in time to change the past, and you won't, because it's already changed. But now, since you didn't go back to change it, it never was changed. Hence, the cycle repeats infinitely.

~Vintage

Edit: Mystic with a triple post in 8 minutes. Disappointing.

Edited by Vintage, 11 May 2004 - 07:24 AM.

[MysticFalcon182]

I forgot about editing

Anyways... Obviously these methods of time travel are impossible, at least for now... How do you know that sometime in the future, we'd be able to assemble things that are equal to the mass of Juipiter?

~Mystic~

[Vintage]

How do you know that sometime in the future, we'd be able to assemble things that are equal to the mass of Juipiter?

You would also need a gravity eliminating suit so that you won't get sucked to the ring.

One of my hobbies is researching stuff such as time travel and teleportation and all kinds of sci-fi stuff. I learned that a photon of light has successfully been teleported over a distance, it disappeared from one point, and reappeared at another. The same thing has been accomplished with electrons.

This also helps to disprove the idea of time travel, because it's like teleportation through time, not space. The original object (photon/electron) disappeared to reappear in another place.

Therefore if you tried to travel to a time where you existed one of your two selves would have to dissappear. Either your older self would have to disappear (meaning you would have essentially died at the moment you stepped into the machine) or your younger self will dissappear making it so you never existed past that date.

More thoughts you can muddle your way through.

~Vintage

[GeneralPrimevil]

So either way, you're screwed if you enter this thing?

If my "beliefs" on time travel are true though, then teleportation would be how to travel in time. I think that there is this exact same galaxy/solar system/planet/thingy somewhere else in the universe, maybe hundreds of them, but at different time stages. For instance, there could be one with this esarth only 3 million years in the past. Or future for that matter. And if we could teleport, then we could go to that different timed planet. But since we can't get back, we'd need one large cell phone coverage plan in order to relay our findings. That's just what I think, I also think someone covered this earlier in this thread. This whole post is kinda stupid on my part, but oh well. Great thread though! Very interesting.

[AirApache]

Like time related stuff? Read Timeline by Michael Crichton. You may have seen the movie, but the movie sucks. Read the book.

[Vintage]

I think that there is this exact same galaxy/solar system/planet/thingy somewhere else in the universe, maybe hundreds of them, but at different time stages.

So we all exist on multiple worlds in multiple galaxies? Or we have identical counterparts that do exactly the same thing as us?

I have always seen time as linear, and it's really hard to think of it otherwise. There are so many problems that would need solving. Maybe you can time travel to the future, by putting your body in some sort of antimatter/decomposed state and programming it to reform at a given date.

To yours and everyone else's perspective, you would have just leapt forward in time.

~Vintage

[ompa]

True, but in that case you really aren't traveling to the future, but rather waiting for it to come in a different state. I think the best definition for time travel here would be traveling to a different time in a shorter time than it would normally take to get there. I realize it's pretty broad, but that's just my 2 cents.

Vintage, you're right. you can't exist in two places at once, one of you would have to die. But I would think it would be the older, since without the younger, the older could not exist. Also on the subject of teleportation, just how exactly would you teleport to different dimensions? It's simply not possible, since humans cannot travel to different dimensions. From what I've read, only Gravitrons can do that, and idk how you would deconstruct yourself into gravitrons, then somehow reconstruct yourself in the other dimension without a machine.

~ompa

[Vintage]

I had no knowledge of any dimensions other than the 4 we exist in (X,Y,Z,Time). I don't know what people keep talking about when they refer to existing in different dimensions.

We, as humans exist in all the dimensions known presently. It would only seem likely that any new dimensions found, we exist in as well. All dimensions really do is confine our universe. We are therefore confined by dimensions. I don't know, maybe things really do exist in our universe that are not confined by space/time.

But then, how can it be assumed that the dimensions they exist in are similar to the ones we abide in, making it possible to travel between the two?

There are no two X dimensions. Why should there be two time dimensions?

~Vintage

[VACC]

Having missed the beginning of this conversation I am choosing just to ignore that it exists. Anyway, the idea of extra, unseen, yet similar, dimensions is generally referred to as parallel dimensions. A set of 4 dimensions (X,Y,Z,Time) running in the same direction as the ones we know, yet somehow removed from ours. In this way we cannot observe them. The question is then: removed how? Well that, of course, is the mystery. That is where, theoretically, the undefined dimension appears. The idea is that we cannot define it because we do not exist in it except for at one single point. We have no W (our new dimension's variable) width, so technically one could say we are not able to observe it in anyway. We exist in it without knowing we exist in it. We can only see the one point we occur at, and other parallel dimensions would have the same point of view, yet slightly removed along the W axis. Though it might seem a bit remedial, Flatland is an excellent book in this regard. It is theoretically very simple, but exemplary when it comes to ....well examples. I hope that made some kind of sense.

VACC

[Ice Nine]

The way that Hawkings envisioned the universe is the same way the Earth looks. The Big Bang was the beginning, or the equivilent of the south pole, and the universe expanded/is expanding until it couldn't/can't expand anymore, which is the equivilent of the equator. Then, The universe will contract, all the way to the point where it's the same size as the thing that caused the Big Bang. Then, this will probably explode, causing what I just described to repeat itself.

It probably won't mean that everything that's going on now will also be going on at the time equivilent to now, but something very close to it. Lets just hope that Hasbro will still make easily-moddified toy guns.

Note: The first paragraph is my interpritation of the only thing that I remember from Hawking's book, which name escapes me. I only skimmed through it, looking at some of the pages, and this was the only part which I actually read.

Don't be suprised if I got something wrong/missed some points.

<edit> The reason that I think this fit in with the current conversation was because the theory is saying that we will exist on an alternate Earth, hundreds of millions of billions of trillions, etc., away from now. I personally don't believe in alternate Earths, in different dimensions or parts of the universe, but it is cool to think about. </edit>

Edited by Ice Nine, 13 May 2004 - 08:13 AM.

[merlinski]

The leading metaphysical theories currently state the existence of 10 dimensions, possibly 11. Popular Science had a great article on it a few months ago. There is X,Y,Z,Time, and 6 other ones in a different category.

[MysticFalcon182]

*Needs to stop playing Diablo*

There are numerous movies that touch upon such a subject, including The One (Jet Li)... I won't bring this stuff up right now,

~Mystic~

[Vintage]

The whole theory of dimensions is that each one is the square of the previous one.

You have a line (one dimension)
Square the line for a square (two dimensions)
Square the square for a cube (three dimensions)
Square the cube for the tessaract (four dimensions)

Some think that time is a dimension, but not a physical one. A dimension that affects all physical dimensions.

So, theoretically, the tessaract (4th dimension) actually has many properties that involve the bending and looping of time.

Have any of you seen "Cube 2"? That was a great time movie. I think if time travel is possible, it is only through a tessaract. Or maybe the dimension after the tessaract.

~Vintage

Edited by Vintage, 14 May 2004 - 10:22 AM.

[LDM]

Before 1905 there wasn't much to say about time. In the 17th century Newton defined time as something that continues, no matter what, without any link with reality and according to its own nature. Everybody believed that time had its influence on the environment, but if you believed that the environment had its influence on time, you really had to be mad! That changed in 1905 with Einstein's special relativity theory, in which he showed that time can be influenced. But this doesn't mean time can be changed in such a way that you can travel to the future or the past. That's what it's all about on this pages: Is it possible to travel through time, and if possible, under which circumstances?

It will become very clear that the speed of light has got a major influence on the possibility of time travelling. An object should move faster than light speed to travel through time. Therefore we use the tunnel effect, an effect in the quantum mechanics. That means that a ray of light or a bundle of electrons that is sent through a certain barrier arrives sooner at the other side of the barrier than if there wasn't a barrier.

If time travelling is possible according to the relativity theory, there will be a lot of other problems. I'm not talking about the technical problems, 'cause that's not what this is about, but I mean the paradoxes. For these problems there is no such thing as a logical explanation, no matter how long you'll search.

I quote that from this page.

At a university they shot the faster-than-light thing through a "certain barrier." It actually went through, came back and went back through the "certain barrier."

[NinjZ]

cube 1 + 2 are awsome movies! im glad someone brought those up before i did heh.

an interesting thing my friend learned in physics class was if we had some way to travel faster than the speed of light, and traveled 3 million light years away, then took a very powerfull telescope and looked back at the earth, we would see the earth as it was 3 million years ago. If you think about it, everything we see is just a reflection of light, so if you could travel fast enough and far enough way, you could see those beams of light. get what im saying?

personally, im not sure if i beleave in time travel or other dimensions or not because its all just theory. however, i wont say people are crazey for trying to figure it all out. personally its easier for me to beleave in aliens and time travel than it is to beleave in some all knowing all powerfull God.

ice nines expanding than shrinking universe thing would make a REALLY cool sci-fi movie wouldnt it?

[AirApache]

For those of you who haven't read Timeline, here is Crichton's theory:
New universes are constantly being split, and each 'slice' of universe is a part in time. We are the only ones moving, Time is constantly still. The idea for time paradoxes is that it's impossible. Because the event has already happened, if you end up back in time, say...you kill your father. Will you not be alive? Yes, but only in the universe that ends up splitting off from the one that you just killed your father in. Because the universes keep splitting, you are unaffected because YOUR universe has already taken place, and you are already born. Oof...I hope that's not too confusing.
-AirApache