Time Travel
- Thread starter NWO Sentryman
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What's the problem? Why couldn't they sit side by side? Remember, once you get down to the atomic, or even molecular, level, all similar particles are identical. You can't take two electrons (just for example, it's the same for any other particle) and say that this is one electron and this is a different electron, all you can say is that they're both electrons. In fact, one of Feynman's rather neat ideas is that there is actually only one electron in the entire universe, travelling backwards and forwards in time. Now, that's not a particularly nice theory as far as Occam's razor is concerned, and it was never meant to be anything more than a mathematical abstraction, but the fact remains that we have no way to prove that it's not actually true.
So given that it's possible that every single particle making up that watch could already be sitting next to countless billions of time-travelled versions of itself, it seems a bit silly to complain about the watch as a whole doing the same.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to think time travel probably isn't possible, but personal incredulity at some of the consequences isn't one of them.
Piscivore
Smelling fishy
To have even two atoms of hydrogen, for there to be only one time travelling electron it would have to spend the entire life of the universe in one atom, then at the end travel back all the way to the beginning again and exist simultaneously in the other atom, from beginning to end- wouldn't it?
Where does all the extra energy come from to keep moving this one electron backwards however gawd-awful many billions of times it would have to do so to exist simultaneously- and in multiplicity, for everything except hydrogen- in every single atom that ever existed?
No they didn't say that, they said they wanted to avoid a heated argument. Which isn't happening.
As it happened I didn't see their post, but it really isn't up to you to elect yourself thread monitor.
Yes. Well, probably not the entire lifetime of the universe, since all atoms will interact with something else given an infinite time, and if we're correct that protons can decay then all atoms will eventually decay given enough time. But close enough.
No extra energy is needed. It's not magically jumping from the end of the universe back to the start, the idea is simply that anti-matter is regular matter going back in time. The simplest example is pair production. From our point of view, it appears that you have a photon floating around that causes an electron and positron to appear:
However, this is exactly equivalent to having an electron travelling backwards in time and interacting with a photon, causing it to travel forwards in time:
Both viewpoints obey conservation of both energy and momentum, and are exactly equivalent mathematically.
Blacks constitute 14% of the global population. Despite the high population bloom in Africa, it is the most threatened by disease and famine.
I can't really argue the point about how unique Hitler was, or if his time-traveling killer would have saved the Jews from the attempted genocide.
It does seem that genocide mostly threatens people that are easily identifiable as a particular group.
Piscivore
Smelling fishy
What would cause them to travel backwards in the first place?
The interaction with the photon.
Piscivore
Smelling fishy
The interaction with the photon causes it to travel back in time and interact with the photon?
shadron
Philosopher
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The only current scientific explanation that I've heard is the fact that while we are free in the three spatial dimensions but locked into uniform motion on the time dimension, inside a black hole the reverse is true: the spatial dimensions are constrained to a single point, while the time dimension is navigable. What this might mean for a being crushed into a singularity is difficult to understand, especially since we can't get in touch with him.
JollyRoger
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OK then lets take it one step closer to woohoo and send a radio signal the same way, you could tell your self "hay don't do that" and really screw up the time line
What?
It's really not as complicated as you're making it out to be. First, remember that time and space are not independent things. Just as a particle can bounce off another and travel in a different direction in space, it can do the same and travel in a different direction in time. That's really all there is to it.
What caused the electron to travel backwards in time was an interaction with another particle. What caused it to travel forwards in time again was another interaction with another particle. What caused it to travel backwards in time again was yet another interaction with yet another particle. The problem you seem to have with the cause of it travelling backwards in time is exactly the same as the problem you don't have with the cause of it travelling to the left.
Given that science doesn't say that we are locked in uniform motion in any dimension, that was not a scientific explanation.
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Piscivore
Smelling fishy
I don't have a problem with it, I just want to make sure I understand what you are saying.
I've actually thought long and hard about this and was even going to write a story about it. Time for some outrageous claims that are hard to believe but true.
If time travel is possible, then there are some rules it has to follow.
#1 You can't travel back to the past unless you've already done it.
It's a little mind blowing, but only if you think of yourself as being in a linear existence. If you didn't already exist as yourself from the future some time in the past, then you aren't going to go. Ever. The past can't be changed, because it's already happened.
#2 You can still save someone in the past who died. Whoah, wait a minute. You just said the past can't be changed, so saving someone who is known to be dead is impossible. Not true. You can save them, but after you do you have to make it look like they died the way everyone thinks they do. And guess, what? You're going to get away with it because you've already done it. So, in effect, they never died. Atleast they won't die the way history records it.
#3 You cannot change the future. What? Yeah right. It hasn't happened yet, right? Wrong. The future HAS already happened. Again, linear thinking. The future is a label we put on time ahead of us, which has already happened to someone else, making it their past. Time is set, my friend. Whatever is going to happen is going to and has already happened.
#4 People who travel through time are for a certain period of time indestructable and unkillable. Scenario: Lets say you turn on your machine to travel somewhere and out walks a janitor from the future. You already know that we can't change the future, so no matter what anyone does, at some point in the future they are going to travel back to step out of your machine. Until that time, they cannot be killed or destroyed. You can send them anywhere, to do anything, and though they might not succeed at the mission, you know they will live. They may hate your guts in a great and mighty way, but they will be alive to do so. Such a person would be most dangerous, because they would probably walk through and start shooting and you'd never know why until it was either explained to you, or you'd never know because at that time, you were a causalty.
Thanks for listening kids.
If time travel is possible, then there are some rules it has to follow.
#1 You can't travel back to the past unless you've already done it.
It's a little mind blowing, but only if you think of yourself as being in a linear existence. If you didn't already exist as yourself from the future some time in the past, then you aren't going to go. Ever. The past can't be changed, because it's already happened.
#2 You can still save someone in the past who died. Whoah, wait a minute. You just said the past can't be changed, so saving someone who is known to be dead is impossible. Not true. You can save them, but after you do you have to make it look like they died the way everyone thinks they do. And guess, what? You're going to get away with it because you've already done it. So, in effect, they never died. Atleast they won't die the way history records it.
#3 You cannot change the future. What? Yeah right. It hasn't happened yet, right? Wrong. The future HAS already happened. Again, linear thinking. The future is a label we put on time ahead of us, which has already happened to someone else, making it their past. Time is set, my friend. Whatever is going to happen is going to and has already happened.
#4 People who travel through time are for a certain period of time indestructable and unkillable. Scenario: Lets say you turn on your machine to travel somewhere and out walks a janitor from the future. You already know that we can't change the future, so no matter what anyone does, at some point in the future they are going to travel back to step out of your machine. Until that time, they cannot be killed or destroyed. You can send them anywhere, to do anything, and though they might not succeed at the mission, you know they will live. They may hate your guts in a great and mighty way, but they will be alive to do so. Such a person would be most dangerous, because they would probably walk through and start shooting and you'd never know why until it was either explained to you, or you'd never know because at that time, you were a causalty.
Thanks for listening kids.
This doesn't adress any problems with time travel, you are simply saying if you create a sci-fi story where it all fits together, then it all fits together.
But this tells us nothing about time travel in reality other than a plot device.
But any action you make alters history. If you fake their death that means you had to change other things, no matter how minor.
This affects history. So it falls subject to all the paradoxical issues usually raised.
Again this only works in a sci-fi story or if you are a complete fatalist and assume everything you choose to do is inevitable (which is a seperate conversation).
And it contradicts your second rule (unless you believe the past can be changed yet the future can't - but you already defined the future as someone else's past so that doesn't work either)
Again this means nothing outside of a sci-fi story. And it contradicts your own earlier rules.
I think you may need to make those 4 points 4 seperate sci-fi stories as they won't all work together.
And of course none of them are 'true' outside of a story.
ServiceSoon
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All this talk about hypothetical alternate dimensions and alternate dimensions haven’t even been discovered.
I thought it was a damn good plot device. Oh well.
About the saving people, you wouldn't be changing anything. You might think you are, but you aren't, you're really just doing what's already happened. They are believed to be dead, but possibly alive.
I think that's what could explain so many Elvis sightings. Someone went back in time and molecularly changed a hog into a slobbering humanoid who appeared to od on the crapper. I'm just saying.
More seriously than above, aliens have craft that have been documented to take off at what, about 10,000 miles an hour? In the atmosphere? I wonder how fast they'd be in space. Ofcourse, normal people would probably just spontaneously combust at those speeds unless in some kind of stasis field. Surely that's fast enough to do some time traveling. That would explain why there are craft hovering near major disasters, not because they caused them but because they are documenting them for their alien History Channel documentary "Earth: How Many Times Can One Planet Almost Blow Itself Up?"
About the saving people, you wouldn't be changing anything. You might think you are, but you aren't, you're really just doing what's already happened. They are believed to be dead, but possibly alive.
I think that's what could explain so many Elvis sightings. Someone went back in time and molecularly changed a hog into a slobbering humanoid who appeared to od on the crapper. I'm just saying.
More seriously than above, aliens have craft that have been documented to take off at what, about 10,000 miles an hour? In the atmosphere? I wonder how fast they'd be in space. Ofcourse, normal people would probably just spontaneously combust at those speeds unless in some kind of stasis field. Surely that's fast enough to do some time traveling. That would explain why there are craft hovering near major disasters, not because they caused them but because they are documenting them for their alien History Channel documentary "Earth: How Many Times Can One Planet Almost Blow Itself Up?"
What, you mean faster than the speed of light? That's nearer to 671,000,000 than 10,000 miles per hour. That's 67,100 times faster. They should easily be able to make 88 miles per hour if they have a flux capacitor though.