Time Travel - should we?
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4564477.stm

Saw this today - if it ever became a reality, do you think we should actually use it? Think how messed up civilisation could be. Imagine someone came back from 100 years in the future and gave us information on something that will happen (such as a major plane crash) and them someone proactively prevented that from happening, how will that fare? What will that do for the future person's history? If someone stopped Lee Harvey Oswald from pulling the trigger (assuming it was he who did it) how would that change history? What is the end result of changing history? Would JFK's possible future children suddenly appear?

Would the Moors Murderers' victims suddenly appear if someone prevented Brady from ever meeting Hindley?

All too confusing for me :spin:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

No, no, no! Bad idea!

Besides, you'd need to reach 88mph and one point twenty-one JIGGAWATTS! ;)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Don't forget that flux capacitor :)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

I seem to recall this same question being asked here next month!
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Sorry, last month :D

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Bad idea!! Just think of all the damage that could be done!

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Time travel ... pah. Sometimes I think theoretical physicists approach papers on this subject in much the same way a 13-year-old does ahis favourite old edition of Penthouse. :D It's plaininly impossible, otherwise we would have some evidence of it. If time travel were to become possible at any stage of the existence of the human race, I think we know enough about human nature to conclude that history would be destroyed by tourists, prospectors and treasure hunters.

As a concept, it has no application beyond the telling of ripping yarns on BBC1 each Saturday night. ;)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Time travel? Well there's surely a few of you out there desperate to join us in the 21st century, caught as you are in the Heartbeat time-warp when you could leave your back door unlocked, beat up - sorry clip around the ear - the 'scrotes' and there was no violent crime, unless it was those lovable old rogues, the Krays ;)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

If it is possible and happening there would be no way of telling as we are living entirely in the changed history, not the new but with memories of the old.

Personally, I'm opting for heading a long time ago in a galaxy far away :)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

If there was time travel, we would know about it now. Someone would have already come back. Really, time travel would have to have existed at the start of the universe.
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Exactly! Maybe Oswald was meant to shoot kennedy.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

:notopic:

We have often left our doors unlocked (by accident, admittedly). Out here in the country the largely urban blight of crime bothers us but occasionally, basically in the summer when there are more visitors around. In fact, we had a crime prevention letter from the community constable last December in which he warned that crime in our area is largely caused by 'people from the Glasgow area, who arrive by motor vehicle.' :rofl: I'd be more than happy to see them get a clip round the ear by the local bobby. Although, they usually seem to manage to land their chavved-up motors in the nearest ditch before they can cause any serious trouble to local residents. It's quite amusing to see the outcome when some wee ned in his mum's Corsa, who fancies himself as a bit of a rally driver, finds out the hard way that he isn't.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Looks like someone here needs a time travel ability :disturbd:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

But how can someone come back in time and change it? They would remove their reason for coming back in the first place ... :spin:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Think about it you could have a never ending pint :D

Suits me.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Also they would have taken the tech back with them so time travel would have already have been invented.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Sorry! If only I could go back in time and not post that.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

I think if it is ever invented the first persons head will explode due to the sheer impossibility of what just happened. Its like trying to think of whats at the other side of the end of the galaxy. Its just not possible

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Weren't there various theories out a while ago - one being that only time travel forwards is possible?
Also wasn't there one that said they'd only be able to travel back as far as when the time machine was created?

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Ok. Just to get a few things straight.

Time travel is not impossible, but it is impossible to go back in time and do any damage.

Let's take the Back to the Future example.

Marty goes back in time, stops his parents falling in love, stops them having him, and therefore stops himself being born.

Not possible.

If he had never been born he couldn't go back in time, therfore his parents would still have met, therefore he would have been born.

So, what can we sumise? Well.....

If someone goes back in time to 1950 and changes something it won't alter anything in their current (future) timeline. Why not? Easy, in their original (future) time 1950 has already happened, along with all of the things that they supposedly went back and changed. The version of time they are living in in the future has already been affected by the consequences of their time travel.
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So, what about time travel into the future then?

Again, a fairly easy thing to work out.

Travel into the future is possible. The problem is that the future you arrive in will only be the future as it would have been at the time you set off.

Every decision we make, every action we take, directly influences our future (and, to a limited degree, the future of the world generally). The second you come back to your own time you have already begun to change the future that you saw.

Unlike travel into the past, the future has not happened yet (duh) and is therefore flexible.

It should be possible to craft your future in any way that you see fit. Unfortunately you cannot rely on any knowledge you gain from travelling into the future time to be accurate as it will begin changing the moment you arrive back in your own timeline.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

That makes a bit more sense. The second it happens though time becomes totally different. At the moment time is an absolute. It is so solid. If that becomes changeable then all sort of wacky fun-filled mis-adventures could take place.

It means any time can be accessed up to the end of the world, also all tech will be the same across the time zones (tech from the future brought back). Same with everything else. Time will simply become an extension of area instead of a measurement of movement. People could move back and forth at will, you could get a job in 2967 and come back home to 2309. No difference. History (or the future) will become absolute as it will already be known about. People born in 3000 could marry someone from 2045. And they would have lived the same amount of years.

You wouldnt have a birthday as you could happy work before the date of you birth and after the date of your death. So time as a measurement will become useless. The only thing it would be used for is a extension of area and to measure the age of someone. So the fabric of time as a forward moving object would be over, and millions of years will act as one single moment. Not actually possible as the end of the world will have to happen (time will still work in the fact that the sun will age) so the secound you make time that single moment the world ends.

Invent time travel = instant death

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

The danger with travelling into the future is that it doesn't actually exist.

From a purely technical point of view, the only time that actually exists is here and now. Anything else is simply speculation. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that there is no future - only a passing of time. If this speculation was to be born out you could easily find yourself travelling forward (or so you think) when in fact you simply cease to exist.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Think of time like a switch... If we take your original example of a person discovering that a plane crash was about to happen and tries to prevent it.

Well, the more that person tries to prevent the plane from crashing the more he affects the future time line, in which case the person who came back to prevent the plane crash never came in the first place and thefore the crash happened anyway bacuase he was unable to prevent it.

Why? What actually happens is that the person who comes back to try to prevent the crash from happening starts to forget about the crash the more he tries to prevent it form happening and therefore the crash still happens but the traveller is none the wiser as he has already forgot all about it.

Which probably means he's standing around somewhere right now wondering what the hell he's doing.

You do get that feeling too sometimes dont you - you know - what he hell did i come in this room for etc...

Thats because you were going to prevent something from happenign that you had been warned about - but forgot all about it and it happened anyway.

Tara!

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

but then you remember. DaJa vu is the only thing that suits that idea

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

I adjusted my method of travel for clarity... :D, but your right though - Deja Vu is simply when the plane crashes twice but even though you forgot about it happening the first time you kind off remember somewhere in the back of your mind but it dosent fit because you went back to stop it happening.

Where this really gets screwed up is when, ignoring DeJa Vu the traveller goes back for a second time to try to stop the plane crashing and forgets again - this is known as the Theory of the Mobius - a twist in the fabric of space - where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop... :p:


(I've always wanted to be able to do that!)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

but then you remember. DaJa vu is the only thing that suits that idea
but then you remember. DaJa vu is the only thing that suits that idea
but then you remember. DaJa vu is the only thing that suits that idea

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Haven't we discussed this before?

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

I knew you were going to say that.....

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Is that why chavs have such a vacant look on their faces ?

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

That would mean that Chavs are time travellers.

As time travel won't be possible until the future, that would suggest that Chavs are the next evolutionary stage of the human race.....


Oh dear God, Noooooooooooooo!!

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

BTW Raistlin, slightly OT, but did you at any stage in the last week raise your right hand? Because i've been trying all week and i think if you did ever raise your right hand it was probably me that did it.

I just wanted to know if i managed to get you to do it...

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Not last week, sorry.

If it helps at all, you do manage to get me to raise my right hand next week. ;)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Time travel is undoubtedly impossible!

However what is possible is that you can slow down time relative to you, according to Einstein anyway, and the theory of relativity. (I think) :spin:

According to Einstein's theories then anyone who is moving is actually in their own mini time warp - the time relative to them is actually slowed down, but at the speeds with which we are fimiliar the difference is negligible. When it does get noticed is at the speed of light where time slows down to such a level that if you took a ten year trip at the speed of light then returned to Earth, you will find that in Earth time you have been away for hundreds of years.

Or something like that anyway...

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Do i? Damn - i must have forgot again.
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Time is relative to the person who is observing it - one theory is the grandfather clock theory in which a person standing next to a huge grandfather clock travels for one second at the speed of light away from the clock at precicely 12:00:00 he then is able to turn and observe the clock at the same time as he stops and it still shows 12:00:00 despite the fact he has been travelling for a second.

Also the closer you get to the speed of light the slower time becomes, this has actually been proven by using two atomic clocks, one on the ground and one on a plane. The one on the ground stays relative to the earths surface whilst the plane flies off for a while, when it returns there is a difference in the times displayed because the plane has been travelling closer to the speed of light than the clock on the ground.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Technically, If yo go really really fast to america you can actually go back in time a few hours!

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Not only that, objects moving at relatavistic speeds appear smaller, it's called the Lorentz Contraction. :cool:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

They said flying was impossible.

They said going to the moon was impossible

People believed this, until it was done.

;)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Yeah, but there's no way they'd have worked out how to get that shuttle off the ground if I hadn't gone back and................

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Forgot all about it?

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

More to the point, would you really want go back in time ?
Dial up Internet connections ????

Noooooooooooooo !!!

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Maybe we could go forward in time to 1gb wireless connections with no contention & no bandwidth restrictions.
wahayyyy!

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

If it were possible, I'd love to go and see what it was like for my parents to live like when they were kids and also see great moments in history.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Okay let me start by saying that I'm no scientist, not even sure I spelt it right :) but let me say once and for all, time travel is impossible and that's the bottom line 'cos stone cold said so :D Subject closed :D

This idea about one clock in space and one on the ground sounds good in theory but all it shows is that some other force affected the clock. The only time you could ever come close to thinking time travel is possible would be if you were to fall into a coma and then wake up 5/10/20 years later. To you it would seem like a second but whilst you're asleep, the world has aged by 5/10/20 years instead of you jumping into the future. It's very similar when you're in a deep sleep, you fall asleep and the next time you wake up 12 hours have passed, you haven't travelled into the future, you've just been lying around whilst the earth rotates and ages by 12 hours.

Anyone know where I can get my hands on some plutonium because I've already seen a Delorean for sale :p:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

There is also the problem that say you got hold of a time machine and went back in time, would you go back to what you were doing at that point in time if you were alive then, or become a new person there.
Plus what would happen to the time machine ? Would it stay with you ?
Becuase lets say I bought one tommorow and then went back to 1981, I would not own it and would therfore be stuck in that year.
Scary.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

The version of you that was already in that time wouldn't own one, however you (as in the version of you that travelled back in time) would own one. It would go back with you, it would stay with you.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

time travel is not possible.....if it was then there would be people coming back and warning us of future catastrophic events or even change the course of history and effect civilisation on a dramatic scale.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

We are made up of atoms so do you think it is possible for the same two atoms to co-exist in the same dimension :shrug: Where's Stephen Hawkin when you need him :D
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Who's to say that Hitler did not travel back from the future to start the first world war so that the world could be ruled by the Nazi's :shrug:

We could go on forever :D

So can you smell what the rock's cooking, time travel is impossible :p:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

iron25 if someone had the capability of it then they would know how to rule the entire world, or start wars and conflicts and win them, becuase if things were pre-determined then he or she could travel back make changes, fast forward to see what happened and so forth.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Ahhh.... But there you have stumbled across the greatest myth of time travel.

Atoms age, right?

So, if you travel back in time the atoms that make up you (the time traveller) will be older (and therefore different) to those atoms currently making up the you in the past.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Okay Earth and our entire galaxy is moving through the universe at some unknown high speed, if we went back in time how would we know we are gonna land in the correct space on Earth if its moved.

However if we are going back in time are we going back in time through the universe as we shall see the universe as it was say 40years ago?

Going on them lines the power required to create such a rift would likely be enough to make man able to travel to the stars, as if you can rip the space/time continuem apart to go back in time then likely you can rip it to move through it forward to a distance keeping the time/space similar, because as Einstien said so I believe ( need to research this bit ) That at the speed of light time stands still so it would bring a new era of space travel and time travel.

Sorry for mindless drivel space travel is something I am getting big on :)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

I have a headache :dozey:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

*laughs*

It gets a headache with the discussion of energy drives for a space ship to be propelled at speed of light year after year.

Long running thread on another forum to end all threads where I visit.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Apparently, some scientists now think that time travel is possible, but you would not be able to do anything to change the future:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4097258.stm

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Ahem...

These scientists dont know squat - TheBlueRaja beat them too it.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Yes, but these scientists used the laws of quantum mechanics to explain it. You merely likened it to a switch...

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Simply trying to make it easier for you to understand.

They relate the switch to the peaks and troughs of quatum waves back and forth through time - which do you think is easier to get your head round.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

I think time travel might be possible through time manipulation, where by you cheat time in some way making it move faster in some way. For example putting yourself in a deep freeze where a computer takes you out the coma after specified time and you wake up the moment you goto sleep gives you feeling you skipped time, on this theory only going forward would be possible.

If someone went back in time to change something, eg. to stop hitler make the mistakes that lost him WW2, then I believe we would see something like whats explained in back to the future 2, multiple time lines. People in the current would carry on living their lives as normal in their timeline, the person changing history then changes the timeline hes in, so effectively going back creates a new timeline. However I would say that only works when going forward in time and not backwards, reffering to back to the future 2 again, when marty goes back in time he sees himself from when he first went back in time and he sees the grandpa guy from when he went back in time, when really he should be going back in time on his current timeline, when the grandpa guy went back in time he would have created an alternate timeline on my thoery so marty would never have seen him and only his other self so when going to the future again things would still be normal. So my thoery to summarise if going back in time was possible, people would never see anything change in the current as the result because when going back in time a new time line is created, and the results of a new time line will only be seen from then onwards going forwards not back.

Also a weird question to ask, if the universe is infinite wouldnt the concept of a wormhole be impossible as you cannot fold a infinite peice of paper.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Didn't we do this thread next August...?! :spin:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

and it gets another visit in june 2007

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

I think i`ve seen this post before somewhere a long time ago!:disturbd: :disturbd: :disturbd:
:D :D :D Lol! :D

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

:notopic:

I think you need to watch BTTF again ;)

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Like all things, time-travel has its positive side and its negative side.Here are some examples, not in any paticular order.

Some of the positives are:-

a) printing of a list of the UK lottery draw results and going back a week at a time to buy a winning ticket...ditto for horse-racing/shares/other forms of gambling
b) rescuing species that have become extinct and getting their DNA samples
c) helping to prevent personal & public disasters of the past and the future
d) getting copies of all the freeware that's disappeared off the net
e) recording copies of rare or popular TV programmes for DVD issue today
f) saving public records and famous artefacts which were lost or destroyed in the past
g) saving people's lives by taking modern medical techniques, equipment, knowledge, drugs back into the past
h) helping the people of Africa to develop an infrastructure which keeps them from poverty,famine, disease and ignorance
i) recording the lifestyles of the past for historical preservation
j) becoming a time-travel agent organising trips to the past

And on the negative side:-

a) repairing one incident which has a negative knock-on effect on others
b) generating new timelines worse than the one you have "repaired"
c) erasing people in the present and future by altering a fact in the past
d) altering the past in such a way that the future technology which helped you to get there isn't invented, effectively trapping yourself in the past

No doubt, other forum members can up with lots of other positive and negative uses of time travel.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

I'm all for time traveling, as scientists have found out that even going into the past, stopping your parents from meeting and causing your birth to never exist - doesn't effect you in YOUR time line. It will only stop your birth in the timeline that you changed it in, so people won't be able to go into the past and do drastic things.

EDIT: Mistake - It's a theory.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Can you post a link that states that scientists have travelled into the past and tried this please.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Well they can't have tested it, it's a theory at the moment. Trying to find the link about it any way :erm:

Still, I would love to go into the future to see what's going on :D
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Here we go: http://www.teampicard.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5748

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Ahhh so it's a THEORY..... So in fact they haven't found out anything. Just a theory.

What I'm saying is you/they CAN'T say what will happen.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Does make sense in my eyes though :scratch:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

It may make sense in your eyes - but you still can't say what will happen untill you try it.

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

Why do you think I just edited my first post? :rolleyes:

Re: Time Travel - should we?
 

because you made a mistake?
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Another common misconception is that time travel is currently impossible.

There are time travellers. They have not travel much in time mind you. But it has happened.

Long term astranauts/cosmanauts - due to the constant high speed they travel suffer ever so slighty from reletivity.

Many of the cosmanauts that spend the greatest length of time in the mir space station therefore travelled 1/50th second into the future.

Not a lot I know, but at least it proves it's possible :)