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Time Travel, is it possible?

I think that you just described most of the users of this forum, including myself... :)

I used to love driving my professors crazy with impossible questions (for us at our current stage anyway), it would be great to watch them squirm and think, then try to answer...(great way to kill time if you get bored when they start repeating themselves :P)


thanks
brtaman
 





Yeah I am the same, I have this geeky friend that I talk to about things like this all the time, no one else understands us, because no one else thinks like us, we think exactly the same. We actually just finished an in depth discussion about the properties of time, wether its written or not, how time actually works, is it random, is it pre written etc.

Diachi
 
My opinion is really cynical and a little unorganized.

Time travel? I don't think so. Viewing the past? Yes. Just look at the stars at night. What you see is likely hundreds of years in the past.
Everyone seems to think traveling faster than the speed of light will let you "travel" through time. I think it will just get you where you're going faster. Time can't bend, it's time. It is an infinitely progressing, intangible, thing. Time is not relative. Perception of time is not relative. I think that sounds stupid, really. Time progresses as it normally does, without making exception to anything traveling at the speed of light, and cannot be reversed or negative. Just like distance, you can't have a negative value (negative 2 inches??? I don't think so).
Let's say you managed to reverse time... You come back and say "I spent 2 hours going backwards in time." Hold on... 2 hours progressed while you were going into the past? Doesn't that mean you actually went further into the present (I don't say future, because it doesn't exist yet)? So how do you travel into the past when time still moves forward? There is no way that can make sense. And if you could travel into the past, doesn't that mean you can "un-age?" That can't be possible. Humans can't get younger. Time will always move forward.
And one problem with traveling at the speed of light... friction.
Yeah, you think that a shuttle can handle that type of heat when a meteor is easily obliterated by friction in air? No way.
And if you do travel faster than the speed of light, you won't be able to see anything. And what happens when you stop? What would it take to reduce the acceleration and momentum of an object traveling at 2c?
Even if you aren't disintegrated by friction and manage to find a way to brake your "time machine," after one second you'll have traveled a distance of 186,282.397 miles. The circumference of the earth is only about 24,880miles. So what then?

It just doesn't seem logical.
 
some people say the future will be this, will be that, to bad we will never be in the future :( we will always be in the present
 
Diachi said:
I love physics, it makes me think a lot, thats why I want to do a degree in physics or laser physics, or both. I am interested in how everything works, from the universe, to the CD player, to the keyboard I am typing on now, I always want to know how things work, and find a reason for things. I am also quite big headed, I love proving people wrong, I dont mind being wrong myself, I learn from my mistakes, but I constantly want more knowlege than everone around me.

Diachi
Click to expand...

Diachi said:
Yeah I am the same, I have this geeky friend that I talk to about things like this all the time, no one else understands us, because no one else thinks like us, we think exactly the same. We actually just finished an in depth discussion about the properties of time, wether its written or not, how time actually works, is it random, is it pre written etc.

Diachi
Click to expand...


dude wth! are you my lost brother?

i have a geeky friend just like me.
 
RA_pierce said:
My opinion is really cynical and a little unorganized.

Time travel? I don't think so. Viewing the past? Yes. Just look at the stars at night. What you see is likely hundreds of years in the past.
Everyone seems to think traveling faster than the speed of light will let you "travel" through time. I think it will just get you where you're going faster. Time can't bend, it's time. It is an infinitely progressing, intangible, thing. Time is not relative. Perception of time is not relative. I think that sounds stupid, really. Time progresses as it normally does, without making exception to anything traveling at the speed of light, and cannot be reversed or negative. Just like distance, you can't have a negative value (negative 2 inches??? I don't think so).
Let's say you managed to reverse time... You come back and say "I spent 2 hours going backwards in time." Hold on... 2 hours progressed while you were going into the past? Doesn't that mean you actually went further into the present (I don't say future, because it doesn't exist yet)? So how do you travel into the past when time still moves forward? There is no way that can make sense. And if you could travel into the past, doesn't that mean you can "un-age?" That can't be possible. Humans can't get younger. Time will always move forward.
And one problem with traveling at the speed of light... friction.
Yeah, you think that a shuttle can handle that type of heat when a meteor is easily obliterated by friction in air? No way.
And if you do travel faster than the speed of light, you won't be able to see anything. And what happens when you stop? What would it take to reduce the acceleration and momentum of an object traveling at 2c?
Even if you aren't disintegrated by friction and manage to find a way to brake your "time machine," after one second you'll have traveled a distance of 186,282.397 miles. The circumference of the earth is only about 24,880miles. So what then?

It just doesn't seem logical.
Click to expand...

Time is bendable.
You can get negative distances
and there is very little friction in space, because its a near vacuum.

And I said near vacuum because there are particles there, and there is some plasma and stuff floating about there, but its lets say ... sparse.

Diachi
 
@Nikokapo : I always wanted a brother !!

I love having a geeky mate like him, it really pisses people off when we start talking about quantum theory at 8:15 in the morning :D.

Diachi
 
Diachi said:
@Nikokapo : I always wanted a brother !!

I love having a geeky mate like him, it really pisses people off when we start talking about quantum theory at 8:15 in the morning :D.

Diachi
Click to expand...


Hehe, yeah I believe that, its in human nature to get frustrated or to dislike things that are not understandable, and since they can't exactly get mad a science they get mad or frustrated with the people who like/dislike it. I say buck em...if people just cared about their own lives and the problems within them, instead of directing their frustration and attention to they way in which other people live their lives...the world would be a much much better place...utopic in a sense...

Remember..haters are not born...they are raised by society... :-/ ;D

brtaman
 
I've always wondered... If one had a big enough telescope, we're talking lenses probably a lot bigger than the earth itself here, Could one see back to the beginning of the universe?  :-?
 
We already can, using the NASA deep fielld telescope ( i think they use the Hubble ) we can see right to the edge of the universe with it, using stars and galaxies as lenses so we can actually see behind them because they bend the light so much, although I'm not an astronomer I think we have seen pretty near the start of the universe.

Diachi
 
Diachi said:
We already can, using the NASA deep fielld telescope ( i think they use the Hubble ) we can see right to the edge of the universe with it, using stars and galaxies as lenses so we can actually see behind them because they bend the light so much, although I'm not an astronomer I think we have seen pretty near the start of the universe.

Diachi
Click to expand...

So if we turn that baby around and point it at earth could we finally find out what killed the dinosaurs?
 
Well no because it would only see a couple of seconds into the past, when the telescope looks at something as far away as the nearest star, the nearest star is 4 light years away, which means that the light takes 4 years to get from that star to here, so when we look at it we are actually seeing what happened roughly 4 years ago, same as if we look at the sun, when we look at it we are seeing what happened 8 minutes ago, but when we look at the edge of the universe its so far away that we are actually look millions , maybe even billions of years into the past.

Diachi
 
Wait, what? The END of the universe? I heard/read that it was flat....but....an END?
 
Yeah I am also interested, in this, the end? Were they then able to measure a rate of expansion? I remember reading an article in which they were able to conclusivelly age our universe, the actual number has slipped my mind but I believe it was in the area of 14 billion, I forgot how it was achieved, however I beleive that the current accepted shape is a bit of a "lemon" shape? don't know the geometrical term...

Ahh just remembered they used the huble telescope to date it, maybe this is what you were referring to diachi?

brtaman
 
Well yeah there is an edge to the universe, it is expanding, but at the edge it is still being created.

hope this diagram helps

universe_timeline.jpg
 
Here's a gee whizzer for you: If the universe continues its expansion meaning not enough mass to halt the expansion, over the epochs stars will burn out and the universe will go dark. All the matter in local clusters and in galaxies will form immense super black holes as gravitationally bound matters coalesces. If Hawking radiation can ever be observed (although the mathematics certainly suggests it's there) we will know that all the black holes that form will eventually evaporate. Any interstellar gases will reduced to positrons and electrons by proton decay. When all matter is gone and the only thing left is the annihilation processes of positrons and electrons, the end of the universe will be the epoch of light (kind of fitting for laser enthusiasts.) Positron-electron annihilation results in gamma rays which will slowly redshift over the millennia until the universe begins to glow purple as the red shifting energy moves into the visual spectrum. Then it shifts to blue, then green, yellow, orange, and finally red. The universe continues to cool until its end with possibly infinite space devoid of matter.
 
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