I don’t understand why it’s claimed that time dilation would equate to a form of time travel. Time dilation would cause an aging rate differential but that can be achieved without time dilation. A person that ages slower or lives longer than another doesn’t time travel in to the others future. In the “Twins Paradox” the “travelling” twin returns to the “home” twins present time, not future time. That the “travelling” twin is younger or that the other twin may have died of old age doesn’t equate to a form of time travel. Essentially time dilation would have merely “preserved” the travelling twin in a similar way that chilling or freezing preserves food.
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Time Dilation = Time Travel? – I don’t think so.
- Thread starter ynot
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psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
The traveling twin is returning to a place where more time has elapsed than in his own reference frame. Whether this time dilation amounts to time travel or not is just hair-splitting.
Suspended animation might not be time travel in the strictest sense of the word but the end result is identical for the animatee.
Suspended animation might not be time travel in the strictest sense of the word but the end result is identical for the animatee.
steve s
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How would you define traveling into the future? Wouldn't showing up in the year 2100 at, or about, your current age qualify as time travel? That's what time dilation does. How is that not time travel?
Steve S
Caper
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BTW.... can scientists do the math on this?
Can scientists say that if you travel at ..... I guess near the speed of light or as close as we can think we can get..... for a certain distance and then come back to earth... at what ever speed, that you are x amount of time in the future?
Put another way.... I want to go a hundred years in the future... but only be 1 week older.... Can anyone tell me how far and how fast I would need to go?
Do I travel in a circle? A straight line? Does it matter?
Can scientists say that if you travel at ..... I guess near the speed of light or as close as we can think we can get..... for a certain distance and then come back to earth... at what ever speed, that you are x amount of time in the future?
Put another way.... I want to go a hundred years in the future... but only be 1 week older.... Can anyone tell me how far and how fast I would need to go?
Do I travel in a circle? A straight line? Does it matter?
Yep. Scientists can do the math on this and could tell you how fast you need to go to do that. But I am not one of those scientists.
There are some famous atomic clocks on aeroplane experiments where those crazy scientists predicted how much the clocks would change based on relativisitic physics. And the results matched prediction. So the equations for this are sound.
I wouldn’t define time travel into the future any differently than I’d define it into the past. I would define time travel as being able to be present in the past, present and future concurrently. In other words the past and the future would have to be able to become the present for the time traveller. As I don’t accept multiple versions of reality are possible I don’t accept time travel will ever be possible
So if I was cryogenically frozen or had some other method of suspended animation for the period you would say that was time travel?
Time dilation would effectively be a form of preservative, not time travel.
Give me the winning numbers for the next Lotto draw and I might entertain the possibility of time travel.
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To travel to a future time your clock would effectively have to speed up yet time dilation would effectively slow your clock down.
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The traveling twin was never in a time that was a future or past time of the other twins time and she returned to a time that always was the other twins time. Explain how that is time travel.
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Fixed that for me.
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Person A orbits the Earth at a high speed in a spacecraft and experiences time dilated to half of Earth time. A communicates with person B on Earth via a video link. A observes that B ages twice as fast and B observes that A ages half as fast. Neither have traveled to the others past or future.[/FONT]
sol invictus
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No . . . That would be time dilation. You never traveled backward or forward in Earth time.
icerat
Philosopher
Why does Earth get to decide the time?
I am traveling forward in earth time right now. So I am time traveling. But what is ususually meant by forward time travel is moving at a faster than one second per second through earth time. If I go near the speed of light my velocity through earth time will increase so I will time travel by this definition too.
Because that's the time that it's being claimed is being traveled to the future of.
icerat
Philosopher
But you said the following is not time travel, but time dilation -
"No..... If you get in a machine go flying for an hour and come back to Earth and 100 years has passed................ That's time travel."
And the person has travelled, in one hour, to Earth's future.
So how do you define time travel?
Time travel is traveling to a time that's before or after present time. Being "in Earth time" is remaining in present time and isn't time travelling.
Earth time is the standard against which possible time travel is being measured and is the time that it's being claimed is being traveled to the future of. The person travelled for 100 years of Earth time and rejoined Earth time after 100 years of Earth time. The traveller never travelled ahead of Earth time in any time. A period of dilated time suspended animation compared to Earth animation.
Se my previous post.
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