Traveling forward in time (a theory and question)

reply to post by QBSneak000


What if you time traveled to the past and met your 'younger self' and gave him/her a time machine. Now your 'younger self' can travel to the future to meet your older self, but only to the point before you traveled to the past, obviously.

In back to the future, maybe the old Doc from the future travelled to the '80's and left vital clues for building a time machine for younger Doc to find...

IMHO, I think it's possible to travel in time at varies rates, but in one direction only, to the future....
Also, I don't buy into 'time branching' or infinite parallel universes either, but I accept the possibility of a multiverse.

Originally posted by Cyberbian
I do not see the need to complicate the transition from now to then with some slipstream HooDoo. It is merely a literary device to avoid the obvious negative outcome of real time travel.

What is the nature of this "slipstream", just a literary construct.

Like I said in an earlier post, I am no scientist so it makes sense that I would not have the proper scientific lingo nor the scientific laws down to a fine art.

I guess my use of "slipstream" was just my feeble, unscientific mind trying to describe the moment of traveling forward in time outside of the normal time line. You will have to excuse my lack of knowledge to put down the "proper" terms.

The problem that i see with alternate timelines is the amount of timeline splits that occur each second. The number of alternate timelines created in one day on this planet alone must be insane. Think about it, you decided to have eggs instead of cereal this morning. You took an alternate route to work. Then you have to add up everyone elses choices around the globe and you got a number already too high to count. SO the question is, do alternate timelines and splits even exist? I think perhaps that they do not but rather the timeline is forged by everything we do.

As for going forward in time i agree with the OP i have always thought of the same thing. As for going back ive heard something along the lines of if you kill yourself or your parents in the past you will still exist because you exist at whatever point in time you are at. When you go backwards and meet yourself, your younger self is physically and mentally different than you. Basically your present state is the result of choices made in your timeline. However the problem with this is that if you went back in time to meet youself would you not remember that you met yourself when you were young? And if you killed youself would you remember getting killed? The answer is no because you have altered the timeline. You still exist in this new timeline but you cannot go back to your own present because it does not exist anymore.

The final problem i see with time travel is the butterfly effect. If you were to go backwards you will bring with you bacteria that will begin to multiply in the new environment upon arriving in the past and eventually when these bacteria spread and grow would probably alter the timeline in some sort of way for example you bring back some sort of influenza like norwalk to the 1800's. Even if only one person gets sick you have done enough damage. Another damaging effect is if you even slightly delay or interfere with someone or something doing everyday stuff. This could severly alter the timeline, say you bumped into someone who was about to get smoked by a bus 10 minutes later but because you did it didnt happen and the person came after the bus passed.

I dont think time is something we should mess with and honestly as cool as it sounds i dont think its possible to go backwards. I do believe we can travel forwards more quickly or slow down our perception of time but not go back and alter it.

That theory would make sense if for some reason you (or in your theory Marty) did not come back to his current time see in the future that old marty already had that experience were he left but came back at or about the same time he left.

The only way he would not be in the future is if some accident were to happen to him on the way back and he died or dissapeared into another dimension on his way back. He lived his life and actually didnt leave his current reality for that long as the date to come back was a few moments from the time they left.

And I believe someone said he left to another Universe?? I think he meant dimension because another universe would mean like an earth lightyears away just like ours and i dont think thats the case... or maybe he did mean that but this is what i got from the movie....

Thanks....

It makes sense to me! I never really thought about it, but now that you said it, it makes sense! I can believe seeing you in the past, but not in the future

I beleive it is possible to sense when a time shift or change occurs. I beleive it's called dejavu. However I don't think time flows like a stream or splits into infinite streams either.

We already travel through time. We travel towards the future at an incredible speed. You try and view the present and quick as a flash, it’s gone! However, this is simply a result of how we perceive time – past, present and future. We use this perception to survive in our physical world.

For example, a frog will lash out it’s tongue towards certain co-ordinates in space so that it meets a fly at a specific time in the future.

In reality, the past, present (doesn’t really exist) and future stay as they are. It is us (or any other matter) that changes it’s co-ordinates (or position) through space-time. As we grow older, the atomic and sub-atomic particles of our body are gathering and moving to different locations (very simplified).

Effectively, you could ‘travel forward’ in time simply by slowing down the movement of your body relative to everything else. It would have to be something like cryogenic suspension or digitital analysis of the body for exact reproduction (human faxing – current black R&D). Delay the fax copy by 1,000 years and you have instantly travelled forward in time.

Meeting yourself in the future is entirely illogical because you left your current time to go travelling.

Space-time and gravity are effects of matter. If there were no matter, there would be no space or time – and matter is simply a concentrated localisation of energy. A single lump of matter will cause a space-time field around itself that alters the nearer it is to the centre of mass. Time slows as it gets further away and space distorts to form a steep gravity ‘well’ that increases in intensity as it gets closer.

Travelling towards the ‘past’ is an entirely different thing. However, who is to say which is the past and which is the future. We could be moving towards events that have already occurred and we just don’t know it yet.


[edit on 5/3/08 by Myrdyn]

If you traveled to the future then and never came back then you would not be there in the future since you left the past behind. If you travel back to when you left the past the first time then you would be there for you to meet yourself in the future.

If you travel back and kill your dad before you are born then return to your departure date, your past will not have happened to anyone else but you. No one will know who you are when you return to the future. You could effectively erase your past and still exist.

reply to post by QBSneak000


you and me both.

I felt the same way for a while now,

I even mentioned it in my thread a while a back:
Thread

Hey that is a great question. But the thing is, it IS possible.


You actually NEVER LEAVE the time line. Time seems like a crazy thing but I can give you proof through a logic experiment. Think about how can they possibly be a future if it hasn't already happend? Get what I mean, you can't. So it has to be that every infinitesimally small moment of time has already happened.

This is completly possible becuase time is something our universe is not made of, but immersed in. Our universe has to exist in unison with the ballance between time and a most basic photon.

Although my favorite movie is Back To The Future.

Here's an interesting experiment that seems well designed and seems to show we have a 'sixth sense', i.e. we can predict a future unpleasant event.

Sixth Sense?

The subject seemed to show via galvanic skin response that she was about to be shown an upsetting image before the image was presented.

Originally posted by Xeven
If you traveled to the future then and never came back then you would not be there in the future since you left the past behind. If you travel back to when you left the past the first time then you would be there for you to meet yourself in the future.

If you travel back and kill your dad before you are born then return to your departure date, your past will not have happened to anyone else but you. No one will know who you are when you return to the future. You could effectively erase your past and still exist.

I think i have a different point.Yes,you may travel back and intend to murder your father before you are born,but I trust you will never succeed(May be there is always a cop or someone who would stop you).No contradictory is allowed to exist in the timeline.


[edit on 5-3-2008 by nanoha]

Originally posted by nanoha

Originally posted by Xeven
If you traveled to the future then and never came back then you would not be there in the future since you left the past behind. If you travel back to when you left the past the first time then you would be there for you to meet yourself in the future.

If you travel back and kill your dad before you are born then return to your departure date, your past will not have happened to anyone else but you. No one will know who you are when you return to the future. You could effectively erase your past and still exist.

I think i have a different point.Yes,you may travel back and intend to murder your father before you are born,but I trust you will never succeed(May be there is always a cop or someone who would stop you).No contradictory is allowed to exist in the timeline.


[edit on 5-3-2008 by nanoha]

This is called the time paradox...

You cant go back in time and kill your father because in doing so you would have never existed and therefore never would have had the chance in the future (present) to go back in time to commit the crime in the first place...understand??

Originally posted by Myrdyn
We already travel through time. We travel towards the future at an incredible speed. You try and view the present and quick as a flash, it’s gone! However, this is simply a result of how we perceive time – past, present and future. We use this perception to survive in our physical world.

For example, a frog will lash out it’s tongue towards certain co-ordinates in space so that it meets a fly at a specific time in the future.

In reality, the past, present (doesn’t really exist) and future stay as they are. It is us (or any other matter) that changes it’s co-ordinates (or position) through space-time. As we grow older, the atomic and sub-atomic particles of our body are gathering and moving to different locations (very simplified).

Effectively, you could ‘travel forward’ in time simply by slowing down the movement of your body relative to everything else. It would have to be something like cryogenic suspension or digitital analysis of the body for exact reproduction (human faxing – current black R&D). Delay the fax copy by 1,000 years and you have instantly travelled forward in time.

Meeting yourself in the future is entirely illogical because you left your current time to go travelling.

Space-time and gravity are effects of matter. If there were no matter, there would be no space or time – and matter is simply a concentrated localisation of energy. A single lump of matter will cause a space-time field around itself that alters the nearer it is to the centre of mass. Time slows as it gets further away and space distorts to form a steep gravity ‘well’ that increases in intensity as it gets closer.

Travelling towards the ‘past’ is an entirely different thing. However, who is to say which is the past and which is the future. We could be moving towards events that have already occurred and we just don’t know it yet.


[edit on 5/3/08 by Myrdyn]

The past and present do exist, they are only time slices of a past occurance.
Time throughout space is symmetrical. Every region of space ticks off the same amount of time...how is this so?

Well after the big bang the universe expanded outwards, all planets and galaxies included. Now it is important to not here on wards that these planets/galaxies moved WITH space and not through it.

Moving with space you have a uniform set of physical conditions meaning the whole universe remained ticking at the same Big Bang clock...this is how scientist measure the age of the universe.

However an individual being is free to jump into a rocket and whiz THROUGH space at his/her leisure undergoing motion significantly in excess of the cosmic time flow from spatial expansion. If you do this, your clock will tick at a different rate and you will find a different length of elapsed time since the big bang. This is a valid POV but is completely individualistic. The elapsed time measured is tied to the history of your particular whereabouts and states of motion

Great post, Myrdyn.

I agree with you completely on this one.

there is another thread that is quite similar to this that i have posted a reply on. it is called, 'the problem with time travel (as i see it)'

i hope this may help some of you.

now, i'm a little bit of a scientist (and i mean a little bit). but my offering to why time travel simply isn't possible, i believe has a certain validity.

as for multi verses. well, i dont buy it for a second.
to suggest that splits happen all the time, and new universe is created to accomodate it is a hard pill to swallow.and here's why
1. for a new 'universe' to be born, it would have to go through a big bang, and then rapidly age to our current 'time', then slow its growth rate down to match ours.
2. if for every split a different descision/outcome is accomodated, is it possible that dinosaurs didnt die out, and are actually roaming free in another universe somewhere, or did this splitting only occur when we humans thought of it?
3.a. where are these multiverses? the visible universe is about 13 billion lightyears from us, so they must be really far away, with zero chance of being able to explore them
3.b. if you argue that they coexist with us, here, then surely space can only accomodate so much matter. hence, for what appears to be an infinite amount of time splits, unmovable objects such as houses would surely have an infinte mass by now, and what effect would that have on our universe?

so in conclusion. i think it would be wiser to try and understand this universe, without wondering about the improbability of multiverses.

Originally posted by ayame2008
there is another thread that is quite similar to this that i have posted a reply on. it is called, 'the problem with time travel (as i see it)'

i hope this may help some of you.

now, i'm a little bit of a scientist (and i mean a little bit). but my offering to why time travel simply isn't possible, i believe has a certain validity.

as for multi verses. well, i dont buy it for a second.
to suggest that splits happen all the time, and new universe is created to accomodate it is a hard pill to swallow.and here's why
1. for a new 'universe' to be born, it would have to go through a big bang, and then rapidly age to our current 'time', then slow its growth rate down to match ours.
2. if for every split a different descision/outcome is accomodated, is it possible that dinosaurs didnt die out, and are actually roaming free in another universe somewhere, or did this splitting only occur when we humans thought of it?
3.a. where are these multiverses? the visible universe is about 13 billion lightyears from us, so they must be really far away, with zero chance of being able to explore them
3.b. if you argue that they coexist with us, here, then surely space can only accomodate so much matter. hence, for what appears to be an infinite amount of time splits, unmovable objects such as houses would surely have an infinte mass by now, and what effect would that have on our universe?

so in conclusion. i think it would be wiser to try and understand this universe, without wondering about the improbability of multiverses.

The points you bring up are all relating to the Macroscopic world....Physically, we would laugh at the idea of a house disappearing suddenly or the air we breath being teleported to the other side of the moon leaving us gasping for air... This however is a trait of the Microscopic world.

At the subatomic level such things occur, the reasons are not yet known to scientists...but in a game where a pool ball is hit towards the left suddenly veers to the right in some instances sub atomically...therefore causing 2 possible outcomes.
In one world the ball veers to the left and in the second world the ball veers to the right...this can be tested with the right equipment.
So in sense multiple universes do exist, its just that physically, the impact is so small that it is not noticeable by humans.

They say blackholes are the gateway to other dimensions (physically)...they contain so much dark matter that light cannot even pass through them...

reply to post by AlphaWeltall


is there any hard physical evidence that this 'disappearing' actually happens? if there is then i would very much like to see it. until then i will remain extremely sceptical about the whole thing.

as for the pool ball analogy, well your right. the ball may veer in the other direction from which it was intended, but this may just be an issue with the slate. meaning there may just be a bad roll on the table, or the cue tip may have slipped from the ball causing a 'misscue'. this is actually a term used in the game.
either way, just because there are two or more possible outcomes, it doesnt mean that all the possible outcomes actually occur,here or elsewhere, only one does. and that is the one that we witness.

Suggested reading, "Fabric of the cosmos" by Brian Greene, it will elaborate further on what i have said, off the top of my head i think it was chapter 2.

reply to post by QBSneak000


Here's a sample computation of traveling to the future:

How fast must an “unknown entity” be traveling if it travels in space for a day, but relative to Earth, 1,000 years has passed?

The observer on Earth will watch the “unknown entity’s” time to be going slower and slower approaching the speed of light until time stands still.

Note the speed of light accurately: 299,792,458 m/s.

Solution:

Δt = t_0 / root(1 - v^2 / c^2)
1000 years = 1 day / root(1 - v^2/299,792,458^2)
365250 days * root(1 - v^2/299,792,458^2) = 1 day
133407562500 * (1-v^2/89875517873681764) = 1
133407562500 - 133407562500v^2 / 89875517873681764 = 1
- 133407562500v^2 / 89875517873681764 = -133407562499
- 133407562500v^2 = -11990073767863191518066568236
v^2 = 89875517873008072.672541095531972
v = 299792457.99887640380956453724992

The answer is 299,792,457.99887640380956453724992 m/s.
Speed of Light is 299,792,458 m/s.

Kindly note that at the speed of light, time simply stands still at 0. If you are able to go at the speed of light you have to make a slight allowance to travel slower than light so that time will move, otherwise it will stand still.

So, if you are in space for 1 day and you are traveling near the speed of light, 1 day for you will be 1,000 years on Earth. Going even faster than that,
your day for you will be a million years on Earth. As long as "time" registers, you are effectively moving time. Once you go at the speed of light, time will simply stand still.

However, another problem arises. At such speeds, you need to be able to harness an enormous amount of energy.

Accelerating any object with any mass approaching the speed of light would require an infinite amount of energy. So as v goes to c we are tragically approaching infinite mass which means it takes an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an infinite amount of matter. It would require omnipotency to achieve such enormous unimaginable amount of energy to achieve that.

With our current technology, you can only but travel a few seconds towards the future.