How will we know if time travel becomes reality?

a reply to: BlackProjects

Let's get the paradox simpler: you travel back in time and meet yourself, placidly sleeping in your crib. You shoot at yourself.

Tell me: who shot who?

a reply to: network dude

There will soon be a one world currency. All both rich and poor will use it. You have to agree with the terms though. All others appear to have crashed at that time, making that new currency desirable. Those who dont accept will be killed.

a reply to: network dude

I've always thought when we come back, meet ourselves and say "See! We made it!"

a reply to: Direne

So a letter with instructions for my younger self could work?
imagine we could send the internet of tomorrow back to someone today...

I totally agree. I didn’t wake up from my bubble until about 10 years ago. It’s amazing how many things there are to keep us distracted from what’s really important. For example, sports and keeping up with the Jones’. And if you have little ones at home and starting a family it’s even worse. You have no time. It feels like it’s almost orchestrated by someone or something to keep you in your place. Kinda like the Matrix. a reply to: Terpene

When time packs it´s suitcases and goes on a trip around the universe for a while, i guess then we can be sure that time travelling is a fact.

Cheers

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: BlackProjects

Let's get the paradox simpler: you travel back in time and meet yourself, placidly sleeping in your crib. You shoot at yourself.

Tell me: who shot who?

You cannot kill your younger self. You would not be alive to do that because you died at a younger age than when you shot your younger self.

a reply to: beyondknowledge

That's why is called a paradox.

a reply to: Terpene

Yes, you can send information to the past. But no need to send instructions on how to build a time machine: suffices for you to tell your younger self to invest in bitcoins a specified amount of money, and collect the profits here in your present. You cannot travel back and forth in time, but the information can.

But I warn you: IRS guys will make you pay all the money you didn't pay all these years in taxes, plus a fine, plus interests, and you still need to justify the origin of the money.

a reply to: network dude

Recursion, infinite inescapable recursion.

But we can change the rate of travel, and even do retrograde travel, without causing the universe to freefall.

originally posted by: wdkirk
It would have already happened.

The future timeline would have already been changed and corn pop would have beaten Joey.

The corn pop story was a lie is what I would take from it.

Nothing for the Dept of time travel to fix.

For us living we would never know the difference.

However, if it’s happening and time travel is used in the future the changes would have already taken place today or in the past.

There is no such thing as deja vu or coincidence.

Also, does a change make a new timeline running parallel to the old one? Meaning no changes were made to this one, however, a splinter timeline takes off where Joe Biden becomes a nobody.

Paradox is the problem as well.

There are no paradox issues if each change creates an entirely new timeline/universe. Thing is, not sure that could happen.

originally posted by: 19Bones79
a reply to: FauxMulder

In an alternate timeline he drinks all the booze himself, does donuts on his lawn, vomits in the fishpond and yells at the moon "ET phone home!".

I can't prove any of this, of course.

That would be, ET Hone Phone now of course.

originally posted by: wdkirk
It would have already happened.

The future timeline would have already been changed and corn pop would have beaten Joey.

The corn pop story was a lie is what I would take from it.

Nothing for the Dept of time travel to fix.

For us living we would never know the difference.

However, if it’s happening and time travel is used in the future the changes would have already taken place today or in the past.

There is no such thing as deja vu or coincidence.

Also, does a change make a new timeline running parallel to the old one? Meaning no changes were made to this one, however, a splinter timeline takes off where Joe Biden becomes a nobody.

Paradox is the problem as well.

what if corn pop hasn't come back to kick his ass yet?

the way i look at time travel is 1. you can't go back further in time than when your time machine was built
2. whether you go back or forward in time you have to take into account the rotation of the Earth and where the Earth is in it's travel around the sun. you do not want to end up in space, the middle of the ocean, inside a mountain or 100s of feet up in the air.

a reply to: Direne

I find it interesting that you said time travel wont work for biological systems
but arent we all made of the same atoms
so if individual atoms can time travel then why not a collection of atoms that form a being
David Bohm implied that the universe is one giant system with no disconnect between what appear to be individual units, we are all essentially a giant soup of atoms that interact with each other.
Arent humans or biological beings information as well?

anyway it would all be theoretical , no one knows what would happen to the body via time travel
we could be host to a whole new bunch of diseases or cognitive issues.

Ive always wondered if there is something unique about earth or the heliosphere
like if humans were to go beyond a certain distance from earth or the sun would our brains
stop working properly because of some unique interaction we aren't aware of.
Or move through time causes your brain to stop working due to a time based local interaction with the atoms and the chemistry.

You said that water is differnt due to its chemical make up and we can measure the age of water, so what if due to the chemical make up of certain things we wouldnt function well in the past or future due to the chemical inbalances
our bodies would struggle perhaps.

a reply to: LA1IMPALA

so do you think that marking the position of the stars and knowing their position at a given time or date would help
sort of like a stone henge or something. you know thanks to precession of the equinoxes and the rotation of earth
that you'd be a certain position and could mark it somehow for moving forward and back

a reply to: sapien82

See, if time is linear, that is, you need to go backwards to reach the past, then there is no possibility for a biological form of life to ever reach the past because essential biological processes are not symmetric (chirality, for instance will be changed rendering biomolecules inoperative and non-functional).

However, if time is circular, then you just need to go forwards to eventually reach your past, as when you walk on the surface of a sphere. In that case biological processes are preserved and you can travel to your past. But the problem here is that the time consumed in the travel equals the time travelled. This i what happens in the close proximity of a black hole: timelike curves get closed, that is, circular (CTC) and hence you can travel to your past, provided you always travel forwards.

If time is non-linear, every possibility is opened, except that you cannot distinguish past from present, present from future, or future from past: you would travel, indeed, without ever knowing where along the world line you are.

This means your only possibility to travel to your past, as a biological life form, is moving forwards as fast as you can, at nearly the speed of light and praying for time to be circular.

A different thing would had been if you were asking whether we can bring the past to the present. In that case you don't move at all: you pull the past towards you. That is, you squeez and stretch the time line until the point in the past touches the point in the present. This the way they do it when they talk about time travel for biological beings. It would be the equivalent to a space warp.

In a distant future you will understand the best way to travel is to not move at all. You move the universe, instead.

a reply to: Direne

the best way to travel is to not move at all. You move the universe, instead.

Isn't that just a question of perspective?

I wonder if we do that already and are just awfully inefficient, because we try to solve the problem from our perspective?

a reply to: Terpene

Indeed, that's the risk of being. You can only interpret the Universe from your own perspective, and make at most weak assumptions about how others interpret it. Whatever you get to know about the universe would always be the knowledge of your species.

I just wanted to call attention on the biological consequences of time travel, something of no interest to physics (physicists only take into consideration objects and not biological life forms, while biologists only care about cells, not atoms.

a reply to: Direne

so technically the best thing to time travel is a self aware AI which we have created, which can alter events in the past

Humans could create a time traveling AI and have it go back and alter past events to make life better now .

It seems as if AI being self aware is probably a good move for us as we can then obtain an alternative perspective of our reality from another sentience.

a reply to: sapien82

That would be a good idea, and it could work. But you are sadly fully aware you would need humans to agree on what to change, and you know they will never agree on what's good and what's bad and what to change and what to leave unchanged.

You have a nice example in the world around you today: people never agree on what's good and what's bad for the societies in which they live. This explain the mess around. Humans do not even agree on what's good for the planet and what's bad. In the end, the good idea could turn into a terminal nightmare.