Time travel impossibilities

the secret to time travel is to know that Eternity contains all past, present, and future events in a singular moment in time.

All-time.

Originally posted by Lister87
What people are forgetting is that we time travel every day, in a way.

Someone flying in a plane from say London to New York, time is going SLOWER for them than it is a guy sat in his chair doing nothing at home.

What i find interesting is, we can see the stars, which are for all intents and purposes the light from said star millions of years ago.

Now imagine what they can see... are they 'technically' ahead of us in time? Right now, at one of those stars, if they looked back at us, is earth still there? Is it gone? Are they seeing dinosaurs, or us?

Thats pretty interesting, as is the whole thread.

I read years ago, and have been trying to find it for a few weeks now, about the possibility of traveling into the future but not into the past. Had something to do with orbiting earth at a certain speed. I can't remember all the specifics now. Maybe someone else knows what I'm talking about.

reply to post by TiM3LoRd


But if there is multiple universes, wouldn't it be impossible to reach them? Isn't that what caused the big bang? But what proof is there that the time line isn't linear? So even if there is ∞ universes, we're probably on the linear time line one, so traveling in time would confine us to this universe and no other one.

I looked it up, and Stephen Hawking agrees w/ what I said. If that means anything


[edit on 16-10-2009 by afterschoolfun]

OP, you're not including multpiple universes (multiverse) ..multiple timelines.. etc..

you're envisioning this all based on some assumption that 'THIS' is the only playout of possibility.

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reply to post by prevenge


No. Even i there is a multiverse, as I said just one post above yours, you would be traveling through THIS universe not jumping between ours and parallel ones.

I don't understand whats so difficult to grasp. Time is constant, if someone dies, they're dead, you wouldn't expect them to be alive later in time. No matter if you went forwards backwards, dead is dead. If you went to another universe where they didn't die then they're alive there ONLY, not here. Basically what Stephen Hawking said on time travel with a multiverse

And besides that how would one even test for infinite universes? Or even get to another universe?






[edit on 16-10-2009 by afterschoolfun]

This is what I believed for decades. I'm not too sure about it now because I've seen some strange things in my life, but anyway...

Let us, purely for the sake of argument, postulate that in 5 years an affordable method of physical time travel is discovered and marketed. You go to Wallyworld and buy the time machine. You decide to go back and prevent the murder of JFK. You read all the accounts. You visited the grassy knoll and the schoolbook depository. You knew all the ins and outs. You have prepared yourself as much as any human is possible. Then you go back.

And you get hit by a bus on the way to the scene of the crime.

There is no original timeline. There is only the timeline. The murder of JFK is not happening again. It is the same murder that happened the first time. In the scenario that I have postulated, now, five years before time travel is available to you, there is already, in the archives of whatever newspapers Dallas has, in the edition that said "PRESIDENT KENNEDY ASSASSINATED", on the thirty third page, a two inch report of someone with some strange coins in his pocket getting run over by a bus. It always happened and it always will happen. "But where is free will?", some might say.

You decided to get into the time machine. You decided to try to save Kennedy. You crossed the street. You were so excited about what you planned to do that you didn't look both ways. You made all the choices. You exercised your free will. And nature took it's course. No one forced you to do anything.

As long as you don't know what is going to happen, you can do whatever you like. It's only when you know what is going to happen that questions of predestination make sense.

Another example. I know that during the american civil war/war of northern aggression, there was a battle known by one side as Bull Run and the other side as Manassas. I don't know who won. I know nothing about it other than there was one and that it was in Virginia. If I got into the hypothetical time machine and went back there, I could do about anything I pleased except to stop the battle from happening. I could even get killed. And if that were so, now, five years before the date that the hypothetical time machine is marketed, my dry bones are buried somewhere in Virginia. And have been for about 145 years. Do I have free will? As long as no one tells me I -have- to go there, I am making my own (extremely stupid) choice. I am exercising my free will. No one forced me to go visit a scene of destruction and carnage. No one forced me to stick my nose in where it doesn't belong.

If you decide to go back and change something, something will always stop you. Because it always did.

As I said, I'm not too sure about that anymore. I now lean more towards parallel time lines.

[edit on 16/10/2009 by christianpatrick]

reply to post by afterschoolfun


Well for one if this was the only timeline that mean we live in a deterministic timeline. Time that is linear doesnt flow. The flowing is an illusion of your mind experiencing every current (to your perspective) event. In a mutiverse reality we have free will and in a linear time reality we do not. I for one would like to believe in the option of choice. You cant have choice if everything is linear. In linear time all of time exists at the same time. Past present and future.

Originally posted by afterschoolfun
reply to post by prevenge

 

No. Even i there is a multiverse, as I said just one post above yours, you would be traveling through THIS universe not jumping between ours and parallel ones.

ok well what if the closest thing to what you're calling time travel.. is hopping from one multiverse to another one that is 100% identical to your native one...
but it's time is skewed 1 year behind ours...

so if you hopped over to it.. you'd be one year back in time....

I don't understand whats so difficult to grasp. Time is constant, if someone dies, they're dead, you wouldn't expect them to be alive later in time. No matter if you went forwards backwards, dead is dead. If you went to another universe where they didn't die then they're alive there ONLY, not here. Basically what Stephen Hawking said on time travel with a multiverse

well this actually ties in an impossibility I thought of...
read about it here..
A new Time Travel Paradox - Law of Conservation of Energy

but since authoring that post, I've actually loosened my strictness with impossibilities of time travel.. as I learn more and more about the actuality of consciousness BEING the field of existence we are and which we inhabit..

so for chits and giggles.. yeah we can argue about how time travel has all these impossibilities according to our currently limited understanding of the universe, consciousness and everything... great fun.. i guess..

or we can keep an open mind and understand that what we will be learning in the future dwarfs what we already think we know...

and.. we can understand that in the potentially trillions and trillions of years ahead of us of human civilization.. that if just ONE person invents time travel.. say.. in 30 trillion years from now..
then that means that it exists now... because they have hte potential to come here and bring that tech here.

so nanny nanny boo boo

And besides that how would one even test for infinite universes? Or even get to another universe?

um.... CERN? i dunno... we're being hypothetical here I thougtht...

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reply to post by afterschoolfun


Your theory would only hold true if time was separate meaning theres a past present and future. However in physics its beginning to look like that is our perspective of time and in reality time has no past present or future all occur at once.

reply to post by prevenge


haha yeah. I'm just mad that right now it looks like time travel would explode the universe. But if theres a really solid proof out there that somehow explains how time travel would simply create a parallel time line and we could settle every argument ever and see the dinosaurs count me in. Until then I think our current sate of affairs limits us to the present, both physically and philosophically.

Originally posted by afterschoolfun
reply to post by prevenge

 

haha yeah. I'm just mad that right now it looks like time travel would explode the universe. But if theres a really solid proof out there that somehow explains how time travel would simply create a parallel time line and we could settle every argument ever and see the dinosaurs count me in. Until then I think our current sate of affairs limits us to the present, both physically and philosophically.

yeah and if there WERE solid concrete proof.. then blueprints would not be far behind.. followed by trials and then full production of the machine.. and then all chaos would be let loose as commercially available home units roll out...

if the proof exists.. you're not gonna see it any time soon...

but maybe humans could do it using their own bodies.. after metamorphosiing into christlike beings first tho...

gotta be a god to do that first...

... god -body .. check...

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Time is an ensemble of speeds & space is an ensemble of distances. Science can't understand time, but is compelled to use it & to do so, science changes time into space.

An idea is an image, an image is visual & the visual is spatial. The moment we see time, we picture an arrowed line, reversible & infinitely divisible but motionless. In order to consider motion, we have to see it as a succession of points or stops. This makes time & motion the opposite of what they are. Time becomes an immobility & motion a succession of immobilities.

Everything used to measure time really measures space. (clocks, sundials, hourglasses, using the position of the sun) The spatial treatment we force time to undergo, certainly has no practical scientific importance.

Conventional wisdom has H.G.Wells time machine as our 'gold standard'. I don't think so. If time could go backwards, musical notes would pour out of my ears & go back into the piano! I could know less at the end of a sentence than at the beginning! The very images are false & they compare the regression of time to what happens when a film is run backwards. If the time I were in was itself going backwards, I would see the film running the right way, & at once, time would not be going backwards.

Direction is the issue. The direction of time as represented by science & by common sense is the reverse of its real direction! The traditional representation of science is the arrow...past--->present. The present as represented by the head of the arrow(->) is changing position, & when it changes position, it does so in relation to the past...which is regarded as fixed.

The arrow(--->) starts at an instant in past time in relation to which all other instants are located & is thus their point of reference. So...now here we have conventional wisdom as a logical absurdity! A past date can never be a true temporal reference. It has no meaning unless I know what date we are now. This 'now' ...however...doesn't
depend on the past & is consequently the only criterion possible.

The question, "What time IS it"?...calls for an immediate answer. The question,"What time WAS it?...merely calls for another question...WHEN? The answer is meaningless unless it says one hour (or one day) ago from now. The past is defined by the present, not the present by the past...& thus the present is the fixed point.

Furthermore...time doesn't elapse in the direction past-to-present, but in the direction present-to-past, for the simple reason that every event is present before it is past. Thus the "time arrow" is properly drawn..past