If time travel to the past cannot be done does that make the future fixed?

a reply to: datasdream

The truth is we don't know whether the universe is deterministic or not.

Even though quantum mechanics involves probabilities it is still a deterministic theory. Assuming you knew the wave function of the whole universe you could calculate how it will evolve. But there is the uncertainty principle preventing you from knowing it though.

a reply to: moebius

to talk about deterministic one assumes everything is knowable. I don't think so. Far more likely that reality is a subset of the whole. this also means present day QM only predicts within that subset. QM predictions are accurate...

But how many accurate theories are there for the same phenomena.Also too many parameters and constants are part of the theory. And noone ever explained why exactly constants are in there... Seems a lot like tweaking to me. Science tweaks a lot nowadays. Maybe time for a paradigm shift , (doubt if scientist master that trick) ...

You may not be able to travel backwards in time (which probably is impossible) but it is probably more realistic to attempt to predict the future. If you could accurately predict the future, you would probably have a reasonable shot at predicting which things would be the wrong things and therefore, plan to not do them. In that way, the future could be altered by someone in the past who knew what the future would hold.

a reply to: frenchfries

As I stated in my post the uncertainty principle prevents us from knowing everything.

The constants in physics are measured not tweaked. So no idea what you mean here.

Also if you think you can do better, you are free to try. Just be aware that whatever theory you come up with will have to match all the experimental results we have gathered so far.

Time is relative to the observer, and it isn't fixed.

We've neither the knowledge or the technology to travel space or time.

Can't doesn't mean anything in the year 2019.

originally posted by: neo96

Can't doesn't mean anything in the year 2019.

Just because we're not sure what it means doesn't mean that it doesn't mean anything. And 2019 isn't real.

a reply to: datasdream

No. We have today, now to design the future....but fixed? No.

The past has passed as it was...tomorrow will be affected by what we do today and tomorrow

a reply to: mysterioustranger

Gallop makes some great points. I don't want to believe that the future is "fixed", but all of our choices are determined by our Limbic System. We think we are doing something because we "want to", but in actuality everything we do is driven by what we "must do". When we are born the Limbic System takes control of every action we perform including making "choices". Since "free will" is a result of brain function what we do as individuals is controlled by physics and chemistry.
That doesn't necessarily believe that there couldn't be multiple outcomes for future events due to tiny "random" fluctuations of certain variables- but, can anything TRULY be random?

Various aspects of personality, memory, attention, perception, emotion, the body image, and consciousness may be variably compromised with damage to different regions of the forebrain (Joseph 1982; 1986a,b; 1988a, 1992, 1994, 1998, 1999a,b, 2001, 2003, 2009), e.g. amygdala (emotion), hippocampus (memory), temporal lobe (memory, language, personality), parietal lobe (body image, hand-in-space). Certainly damage to these and other brain areas may limit and restrict what we call "free will". However, insofar as "free will" is defined as the ability to make plans, consider alternatives, and chose among and act upon them, if the frontal lobes remain intact and consciousness and movement are preserved, patients can still make choices and act on them, and they do not lose their free will.

For example, in most humans, severe injury to the left frontal lobe can abolish the ability to speak words or intelligible sentences, a condition classically referred to as Broca's expressive aphasia (Joseph 1982, 1996, 1999b). Although the "Will" to speak remains intact, those afflicted may be capable only of expressing their frustrations by cursing which is mediated by the right frontal lobe, as is the ability to sing (Joseph 1982, 1988a, 1996, 1999b). Hence, patients can curse and may be able to sing words they can't say.

If, however, the damage to the left frontal lobe is widespread and extremely deep, penetrating into the medial (middle) portions of the anterior cerebral hemispheres, not just the "will to speak", but "free will" may be abolished and those afflicted may be forced to act "against their will" (Joseph 1986, 1988a, 1999b). What we call "free will" appears to be localized to the frontal lobes, the medial most portions in particular.

However if the arcuate fasciculus is damaged such as due to stroke, those afflicted will know what they want to say, but will be unable to say it and will suffer severe word finding difficulty (Joseph 1982). Temporary functional disconnections occur even in the normal brain, where the missing word is known but can't be found, and this condition is experienced as "tip of the tongue" phenomenon. Thus one part of the mind is disconnected from another (Geschwind 1981; Joseph 1982, 2009). The "will to speak" remains intact (due to preservation of the frontal language areas), whereas the missing words are locked away in the posterior regions of the forebrain.

SOURCE

originally posted by: gallop

originally posted by: rickymouse
There are many realities possible, we are only following the path we choose to follow, jumping between realities would be more possible than jumping time. If we die in this reality we have followed, does it mean we die in every possible scenario from every decision we could have made? This would be more like going to parallel universes I am talking about I suppose, not actually the same time line.

But we are not choosing to follow anything, we have no choice because we are not given a choice. We are simply following what was already destined to be.

How so? I can choose to buy myself a tasty treat tomorrow, or I might decide not to. It's my choice, it's not predetermined for me. Same goes for a gazzilion spontaneous, "on-the-go" choices we make in our lives. Same goes for natural processes. Weather is chaotic, we can predict it to some degree, but it's just impossible to pin down.

a reply to: datasdream

A fixed future would make life meaningless just a TV show .

Just because you can't get there doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.


If I had a random number generator - and with that, I perform one action based on the number that comes up, was that number destined to come up and the action I performed? What if I decided to not perform that action? Is that too predetermined?

It could be a yes or no answer but you'd never know unless you stepped into the future and already see what the reality of the choice was.

If you were able to get to the future, I would say only then are our actions predetermined. Since we can't... It's more or less Pavlov's Cat. You just don't know.

I would say that it's a universal butterfly effect with an unlimited amount of butterflies reacting all at the same time, from here on earth to the endless expanse of the universe. That's a whole lot of fluttering wings.

So in the end, if the future WAS or WAS NOT predetermined, it really wouldn't matter. You wouldn't know either way.

a reply to: gallop

We are simply following what was already destined to be.

Sad view of life.
Why get up in the morning?

a reply to: datasdream

From nothing came something explosive.
if time travel was not possible then why do we distinguish it with past present and future?




eta
en.m.wikipedia.org...

Much like with the invention of flight, and indeed, most inventions, we look to emulate nature. We studied the curvature of birds' wings to understand the dynamics of lift, thrust, drag, etc. With the possibility of the modulation of time we may find it useful to study phenomena in nature that approaches the modulation of time.

en.wikipedia.org...

"White dwarfs get fainter and redder as they cool, which leads to a predictable distribution of white dwarfs in a plot of brightness versus color. The astronomers identified a pile-up in this plot, an excess in the number of stars at specific colors and luminosities. When compared with evolutionary models of white dwarfs, the pile-up strongly coincides with the phase in their development in which latent heat is predicted to be released in large amounts, resulting in a slowdown of their cooling process. It is estimated that in some cases these stars have slowed their aging by as much as 2 billion years."

physics.unc.edu...

scienceblogs.com...

www.sciencenewsforstudents.org...

www.independent.co.uk...

It is possible to imagine something akin to a "save state." A record of all the particle interactions in a given point of spacetime. Such gateways would thus allow travel to only when the device was manufactured, or replicating its creation when tied together through entanglement. One useful use would be "teleportation." I wouldn't doubt if our break away civilization has found ancient or non-human technology that allows such a gateway. I would imagine replicating the microcosm of quantum interactions onto the macrocosm would be the key.


phys.org...

Finding what circumstances that occur naturally the above scenario is commonplace would be key.

fas.org...

Such technology would most likely attract intergalactic attention, it was strange Roswell occurred 2 years after the detonation of nuclear weapons, no? Such technology should never be misused, and saved for situations where it is in the best interest of the protection of the planet, say perhaps, earth killing event mitigation.

Aliens probably leave us alone because we end up solving some of their problems they have at their own home worlds.

originally posted by: ginseng23
Such technology would most likely attract intergalactic attention, it was strange Roswell occurred 2 years after the detonation of nuclear weapons, no?

So the EMP wouldn't have even made it halfway to our nearest neighboring star. Unless you hypothesize that it created a ripple or something in an alternate dimension. But if that was the case, then I guess the sun is causing the same kind of ripples only about a billion times stronger. So our detonations?... Talk about a fart in a whirlwind.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Think of remote interferometry etc.

"In July, Stevens, Forgan, and James published a paper that asked what a distant, “self-destructive civilization” might look like through the business end of a telescope. To do so, they gamed out several dystopian science fiction scenarios in great detail. They calculated the brightness of the gamma rays that would flash out from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons. They asked themselves what would happen if an engineered pathogen ripped through a large population of human-sized animals. What gases would fill a planet’s atmosphere, if its surface were strewn with rotting corpses? And would those gases be detectable across interstellar distances?"

www.theatlantic.com...

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: ginseng23
Such technology would most likely attract intergalactic attention, it was strange Roswell occurred 2 years after the detonation of nuclear weapons, no?

So the EMP wouldn't have even made it halfway to our nearest neighboring star. Unless you hypothesize that it created a ripple or something in an alternate dimension. But if that was the case, then I guess the sun is causing the same kind of ripples only about a billion times stronger. So our detonations?... Talk about a fart in a whirlwind.

I disagree but VERY GOOD point the sun is using Fusion process during which it fused element's into heavier and heavier form's creating new element's from base one's as it goes on doing so and discharging the excess energy in the form of radiation right across the spectra, heat light and radio waves while conversely a nuclear detonation is based around the opposite process called as you surely know Fission, while there may be some fission alongside the fusion process within a star it would be deeply buried and likely it's unique signature would not reach out from the heart of the star while on a planet with a shallow atmosphere atomic fission may actually create very reasonably recognizable signatures since it's profile is actually quite different to that of fusion.

The difficulty then becomes does that fission signature have enough force to be detectable over the signature of the planet' nearby star's signature?.

Now you know all about attenuation over distance but of course you mention other reality's which is a rather coarse analogy but I get were you are coming from on that one while I would have personally opted for the potential that atomic fission may create exotic quantum wave form's or even particles of which we currently have no scientific model for and that a sufficiently advanced civilisation that could detect these may then recognize them as a potential signature of another civilisation - but here is the worrying part, such a civilization then has shown itself to be using technology that may be destructive and may then initiate a response from that more advanced civilisation which may range from initiating close observation up to and including destruction of that war like civilization if it does not evolve out of it's dangerous phase and if it can then be regarded as a threat to themselves, however distant a threat a threat is still a threat and they may not be the type to take chanced based on charitable attitudes toward delinquent younger species.

It may indeed be a fart in a whirlwind but if you imagine the two process as creating two different types of smoke with different colour's it may be possible that however small that the fission signature can still be detectable above the fusion signature especially as it is not coming from within the star but from a nearby location probably orbiting it?.

Also remember someone may very well have used this very technology to destroy a previous solar system civilisation unless of course it was a war between factions of a former civilization native to our own solar system.
www.marspapers.org...
www.hou.usra.edu...
It is possible that they reached a level were this predator civilization saw them as a threat so then either destroyed them utterly or left a few like zoo animal's living like animal's, some ran to the caves to hide from the terror that came form above and became hump backed twisted short lived but powerfully bodied people while other's hid in the dense jungles and became less intelligent but remained more dynamic and eventually succeeded there stoop backed brothers to reclaim there world - earth - in time with only legend's of a war between the god's and a fear and deference to the force that was so beyond there ability to understand that was above them - but still remembering a mythical golden age.
Or perhaps they had nothing to do with us at all.


(actually I believe in God as you know so this is purely speculative, still Jesus did say there is nothing new under the sun).

en.wikipedia.org...(arrow_of_time)#Correlations

See experiment C: ^

Here is something that may aid in the creation of a "save state," and also to "dial in" the requisite frequency that one wishes to phase into.

en.wikipedia.org...