Scientists Claim to 'Prove' Time Travel is Possible to the Past.

The conundrum posed by Einstein's Theory of Relativity that allows space-time to loop back on itself, theoretically allowing time-travel to the past, has been resolved, according to two physicists writing in New Scientist.

Quantum theory, which describes small particles as both waves and matter, yields probabilities on the location of these particles, the particles appearing - in layman's terms - where the waves interfere with each other constructively.
Daniel Greenberger, of New York, and Karl Svozil, of Vienna, solved the equations for waves going backwards in time and found they always interfered destructively.

This means the particles do not appear and the conundrum does not arise.

"If you go back quantum mechanically, you would only see alternatives consistent with the world you left behind," Greenberger said.

news.com.au

Interesting concept. But even if you could travel back in time, there would be no way to get back to the present.

Sanc'.

Ring ring john titor.I wonder what these scientist have to say about john titor?

I don't see how this would work.

If a person goes back in time and tells them about 911 and all that, or invents computers and TV back in 1800, then will the current state we're in now suddenly change right before our eyes?

I don't see how this would work. == Nventual

Its quite simple.

Assumption: Whatever is true today is true tomorrow.

Lets say that today there is no time travel. Tomorrow there is.

Assumption invalidated.

Conclusion: Time travel is an inherent paradox.

Originally posted by Nventual
I don't see how this would work.

If a person goes back in time and tells them about 911 and all that, or invents computers and TV back in 1800, then will the current state we're in now suddenly change right before our eyes?

Note they are saying you would only end up in an alternative yesterday...which means you couldn't effect today here...you could only effect today on the alternative timeline. Like what Titor said.

Originally posted by Valhall

Originally posted by Nventual
I don't see how this would work.

If a person goes back in time and tells them about 911 and all that, or invents computers and TV back in 1800, then will the current state we're in now suddenly change right before our eyes?

Note they are saying you would only end up in an alternative yesterday...which means you couldn't effect today here...you could only effect today on the alternative timeline. Like what Titor said.

In other words parallel universes.

"solved the equations for waves going backwards in time and found they always interfered destructively.

This means the particles do not appear and the conundrum does not arise."

Did i miss read this or did they hust say this is impossible because the waves are destructive?

If they can only tavel 'back' in time, how is the claim it's proven justified? As whomever goes back in time, can not come forward to say it worked. Yet they say that it is proven.

Ugh. Sometimes I swear scientists are on '___', and are in fact just a figment of their own imagination !

Misfit

Originally posted by Misfit
If they can only tavel 'back' in time, how is the claim it's proven justified? As whomever goes back in time, can not come forward to say it worked. Yet they say that it is proven.

Ugh. Sometimes I swear scientists are on '___', and are in fact just a figment of their own imagination !

Misfit

The scientists didn't use the word "prove" they stated they had resolved the issue of time looping back on itself by showing that the particles would appear in an alternate of the past - not the past on this timeline. So they haven't claimed to have "proven" it - just resolved a barrier to it.

p.s. - the article headline is wrong - but that's not the scientists' fault.

p.s.s. - but sanctum's is much more correct.

[edit on 7-12-2005 by Valhall]

[edit on 7-12-2005 by Valhall]

This is old news. People have claimed you can go forward, backward, every which way our 3-d minds can imagine. They never claimed they could build a machine that could harness this ability, which I highly doubt they can...

I found this...

Date (revised v2): Tue, 21 Jun 2005

Quantum Physics, abstract
quant-ph/0506027

Quantum Theory Looks at Time Travel

Authors: Daniel M. Greenberger, Karl Svozil

Comments: This paper contains minor changes to our paper published as Chapter 4 of Quo Vadis Quantum Mechanics?, ed. by A. Elitzur, S. Dolev and N. Kolenda, Springer Verlag, Berlin (2005). It is an expanded version of D.M. Greenberger and K. Svozil, in: Between Chance and Choice, ed. by H. Atmanspacher and R. Bishop, Imprint Academic, Thorverton England (2002), pp. 293-308. Two references added
We introduce a quantum mechanical model of time travel which includes two figurative beam splitters in order to induce feedback to earlier times. This leads to a unique solution to the paradox where one could kill one's grandfather in that once the future has unfolded, it cannot change the past, and so the past becomes deterministic. On the other hand, looking forwards towards the future is completely probabilistic. This resolves the classical paradox in a philosophically satisfying manner.

Link

arxiv.org

Sanc'.

Anybody have a link to the actuall calculations or is this another "OMG look Bob, particles have wave patterns which may allow for time travel to the past" crap? Honestly, what does this mean? A few calculations doesn't convince me.

Guys,

If time travel to the past is possible, how come we are not the alternative universe that time travellers chose to come to in order to prevent 9/11?

Time travel is also a paradox even in multiple universes. Here is why:

1) How do we know that time travel is possible if time travellers never travel to the same timeline?

2) How do we know that time travel inside the same timeline is not possible?

Let me give you some examples.

Let's say we have a time traveller (let's call him Titor, for obvious reasons) that starts from timeline A and ends up in timeline B.

Let's suppose that timeline B is 99.99% similar to timeline A: the event of Titor leaving timeline A and reaching timeline B is recorded in both timelines A and B, but for a different Titor.

How does timeline B know that the Titor it received is not from timeline B? there is no possibility to know that. Therefore, timeline B can not prove that time travel in the same timeline is possible or not possible.

Let's see things from timeline A: any timeline that sends a time traveller would get back a time traveller from another timeline which would be indistinguishable from the time travel it originally sent. So timeline A can not prove that time travel in the same timeline is possible or not possible.

So in either case, no timeline can safely reach the conclusion that time travel is possible or not.

There are many things possible on the quantum scale that are simply impossible on the macroscopic scale. The fact of the matter is that time travel is most likely possible - but to get a human to do it is nearly impossible.

Time travel, is not possible as we are discussing it.

There is No mechanical device that can rewind the motion of the stars, or the orbit of the earth. It does not exist. Which in truth, is being discussed here. Time is not "selective". The earth cannot repeat yesterday without the universe doing the same.

If you wish to repeat events in your life, it would be far easier to convert the hamburger in your intestine back into the cow than to live last week over again.

There is no such thing as 'time.' It's just a fantasy that makes cool sci-fi stories. There is no time travel and never will be, at least in real life. It would require time.

Interesting, but think about this:Suppose time travel was developed in the future.Could it be that all these visitors we see (aliens) are actually from our future?Are they maybe changing their past to improve our future,change it to there benefit?Could many of yesterdays inventions and theories actually have come from our great-great grandkids?

this is interesting... with my limited knowledge in this field, suggesting that time travel can only possibly be done toward the future...

eventhough the real experiment still cannot be reached, the concept of Einstein's relativity may seems to be in senses... the time dilution phenomena, when people travel in speed of light, the time slows down for the traveler. and yet, traveling at the speed of light is also seemed to be impossible or far in the future.

while travleing back to the past, i only agree it must swicth to another timeline. by switching to another timeline, this cannot be considered as time traveling. despite that, this may be named as dimention travelling. Eventhough, i agree about this concept, the parrallel world is still unproven, and the mistery of balck hole is still far from obvious..

Originally posted by masterp
Guys,

If time travel to the past is possible, how come we are not the alternative universe that time travellers chose to come to in order to prevent 9/11

Why would you want to prevent it? Perhaps that event set forth changes that stopped a much worse disaster.

To add to this:


If you could perceive for a second that time is something in our heads and does not exist then it is possible to believe in time travel. We have no perception of the vast amount of time that past before our birth for instance. Perhaps in death 9999etc years will pass and we are reborn without any recolection of the time. my point is this: Time is simply not comprehendable to


[edit on 13-7-2005 by IXRAZORXI321]

Maybe this can be used a la Sliders to allow us to travel to an alternate where lunatics like Bush are not president and people aren't mostly ignorant, cattle.

That would blow my mind!

Anyone else here sometimes feel that they got born into bizzaro world by accident??