Physicist Says Time Travel Is Possible, and Likely

[4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran]

No it will be thanks to you,because you are the one who hates Microsoft.

Thanks james your so intelligent,if you get annoyed when you see me,then let's socialize it with a mod,what do you think?

Now come one, you know I'm joking, mate. The fact is, I think you're great. Neowin would be a lesser place without your presence, that is true. Seriously :D

I gave your profile five stars!!!

[MrA]

Law of Conservation of Matter

Law of Conservation of Energy

Traveling Faster than the Speed of Light

Hey, you forgot angular momentum.

Computer Science NP problems. Impossible.

What do you mean by impossible? NP problems can be solved, they just take a long time. Oh, and there's no proof than NP != P. If you can find one, you could win $1 million.

[Minifig]

Mmm boy .. don't get me started on this.

Time travel is possible, because if you go away for a number of years in your time, the place you return to will of aged the number of years to you that you were gone, but to everyone else it just went by slower.

As far as going backwards at time, I've written a little paper about how if you go fast enough to the point where light slows down and eventually stops, shouldn't it bounce backwards like throwing a ball at a wall? It'll rebound at some point, and come bouncing back at you.

[EduardValencia]

Now come one, you know I'm joking, mate. The fact is, I think you're great. Neowin would be a lesser place without your presence, that is true. Seriously :D

I gave your profile five stars!!!

If you want to tell me something tell me in a direct manner

Hipocrite

[4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran]

If you want to tell me something tell me in a direct manner

Hipocrite

I was joking.

I think you are great.

I like the fact you are here.

Seriously.

[DrunkenMaster]

No it will be thanks to you,because you are the one who hates Microsoft.

Thanks james your so intelligent,if you get annoyed when you see me,then let's socialize it with a mod,what do you think?

We cannot account for the fact someone has already Time-Travelled.

Bill Gates, afterall, "foresaw" the future of the PC industry hedging his bets against Apple and some industry giants like IBM. I leave the idea in the air on this one.

[shihchiun]

Mmm boy .. don't get me started on this.

Time travel is possible, because if you go away for a number of years in your time, the place you return to will of aged the number of years to you that you were gone, but to everyone else it just went by slower.

Mmm... I wouldn't say that's time travel really. When I think time travel, I think Back to the Future. Going away in a really fast spaceship vs. staying on Earth is just experiencing the same actual amount of time at a different relative rate.

As far as going backwards at time, I've written a little paper about how if you go fast enough to the point where light slows down and eventually stops, shouldn't it bounce backwards like throwing a ball at a wall? It'll rebound at some point, and come bouncing back at you.

But light != time. Besides, even if you did go the speed of light (or faster), once you stopped you'd just see that light coming at you... kind of like passing a car on the highway and then slowing down. Compared to you, the light stops, but it's still moving, so I don't see why it would "bounce back."

[4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran]

We cannot account for the fact someone has already Time-Travelled.

Bill Gates, afterall, "foresaw" the future of the PC industry hedging his bets against Apple and some industry giants like IBM. I leave the idea in the air on this one.

Actually this makes a lot of sense. Gates time travelled from 2006 or so, back to 1980, knowing everything to do to ensure Microsoft's success. But Microsoft have been faltering lately because they don't have any advance warning. That's why the whole Yahoo thing crumbled. :yes:

[Matrix XII]

Time travel is possible, its happening right now. Just forward and at a steady pace, but we're travelling!

lol, that was good :D

[Minifig]

But light != time. Besides, even if you did go the speed of light (or faster), once you stopped you'd just see that light coming at you... kind of like passing a car on the highway and then slowing down. Compared to you, the light stops, but it's still moving, so I don't see why it would "bounce back."

I suppose your right, but you have to understand, at one point at least visually, the light in your craft, would stop, and go backwards.

If you go fast enough, hypothetically, to make time stop, there has to be a moment when it'll go backwards. You can't make it go forwards any longer, if it's stopped.

There's no reaction to cause it to go forward any longer, so it's got to have an oposite reaction at some point in time according to Newton's third law. IF it doesn't go backwards at any certain time, that pretty much destroys 321 years of science that we've considered "law".

[Laurë Veteran]

I remember reading in New Scientist recently (I think it was the Jan/Feb issue that if time travel was possible, the furthest we can go back would be to 2008, as it would apparently be year Zero.

Wouldn't that depend on the method used though? Like, if that method required a machine to be available in the time-place that you're going back to ..

If its possible then why hasn't someone from the future come back yet.

Maybe they aren't allowed to. Imagine the issues it would cause. Or if they are, it could be hidden..

[Mordkanin]

I saw this in High School.

:shifty:

[shihchiun]

Let's assume that light moves infinitely fast. Suppose you're looking at the Earth from your spaceship. The faster you go, the longer it takes (according to the subjective ship time you would be experiencing) for the Earth to turn around. If you went fast enough, then I guess it would look like the Earth stopped turning... but you wouldn't see it turning backward, ever. It's kind of like the idea of mathematical limits. The faster you go, the slower the Earth appears to spin. It would get closer and closer to zero, but it wouldn't ever actually stop. Because you can't get to zero, you can't cross over to the negative side, and you can't see time going backward.

The problem would be that you could never go fast enough (or do anything else, for that matter) to make time stop. Time is just something we've made up, and according to humans it moves always moves forward in a single direction (toward the future). If you could get time to stop, then that would mean the idea of "time" is broken... and then this entire post is irrelevant, because it would be based on an incorrect assumption.

[Medking]

Hey everyone,

In theory, time travel is most certainly possible.

However, the time travel which would be seen would not be the traditional Donnie Darko style, and it would have to be based on the assumption that time itself is linear.

Firstly, in order to time travel, you would quite literally need either a wormhole in time, apparent on two different planes, simultaneously occurring, in order to "jump" between time spans. An actual machine which time travels is IMPOSSIBLE, because of the simple notion that if you go back in time using this machine, you would have gone back to a time in which the machine itself was not in existence, therefore, as soon as you went back, you'd be stranded. So this "machine" or whatever, would need to be something biological, preferrably.

However, that being said, travelling forward in time is, to our knowledge, far more complicated. The only reason we will be able to travel back in time is because we would have known what happened, and would have a pre-concieved image of what/when and where we were headed. However, the future is a completely different story, because quite literally, each individual writes their own futures. Therefore, instead of "time-travelling" forward in time, we would in essence merely be accelerating the continous flow of events, which is the definition of time.

The notion of time itself, being man-made, can also be bent, because in theory, time only exists whilst there are humans to record it, and so therefore if we were to travel back to a period in which humans were not around, or so far forward to a time in which, god forbid, humans cease to exist, then it is possible that the notion of time itself dissappears, in which case one would most certainly go crazy, almost instantaneously, although it would be hard to measure because of the lack thereof of time.

I'm a bit of a Philosopher, and since I'm taking Theory of Knowledge =)...well, there's my two cents worth.

Oh and also I mentioned that time has to be linear for time travel to occurr. Since we unfortunately cant prove that time is linear, and we might only have yet to wait for a massive repitition of the last several millennia of human history, (circular) then time travel is highly circumstantial. However. Plausible.

Bottom line, its plausible. The only limitation so far is we just havent figured out how to do it. Yet.

Medking

[Minifig]

Let's assume that light moves infinitely fast. Suppose you're looking at the Earth from your spaceship. The faster you go, the longer it takes (according to ship time) for the Earth to turn around. If you went fast enough, then I guess it would look like the Earth stopped turning... but you wouldn't see it turning backward, ever. It's kind of like the idea of mathematical limits. The faster you go, the slower the Earth appears to spin. It would get closer and closer to zero, but it wouldn't ever actually stop. Because you can't get to zero, you can't cross over to the negative side, and you can't see time going

Ooooh. I like the idea of comparing light to a mathematical limit ..

That's a fantastic analogy.

[PermaSt0ne]

Ehh, It's not like we'll suddenly realise the math was wrong one day, It might not be entirely accurate (it probably is though), but it's not wrong.

"Guys, I worked out that 1/2 = 3, This changes everything!"

actually, that's exactly what can, and DOES happen in science all the time

what we dedicated as a law vs theory is completely 100% dependent on our current knowledge and, more importantly, on our current technology

and it is plausible to travel faster than the speed of light but it would require way way too much energy atm

[Neo003]

You can barely travel 10 miles without clearly up your bank account at today's prices, goodluck traveling time :rolleyes: .

[Digitalx]

sounds like a nut job with little experience or knowledge of what he's talking about and just trying to cash on pre-existing technology by re explaining them and make predicaments that not even science can judge is right or wrong. never mind the ethics or morals, they are least of the things to worry about.

[Thrawn]

Well, I've said it before - this guy and other like him are just tring to sell books and get paid to lecture. He says it's possible. Others say that practically, it isn't. Go figure about the science, but I just can't respect this guy.

[PermaSt0ne]

sounds like a nut job with little experience or knowledge of what he's talking about and just trying to cash on pre-existing technology by re explaining them and make predicaments that not even science can judge is right or wrong. never mind the ethics or morals, they are least of the things to worry about.

are you f'ing serious? this guy is a genius and very famous in the physics world. you obviously know jack **** about him or physics

the reason why he publishes stuff like this is because he's a futurist. his job is to look into the future and figure this stuff out (when he's not enforcing string theory)

and there is no right / wrong or ethics / morals in science

[Thrawn]

and there is no right / wrong or ethics / morals in science

I think that there ought to be. Causing laymen to believe that some things are "possible" when the best fact is that thay are "extremely improbable" is, it seems to me, cheating and misleading the human mind. Making people discuss fruitless - I say again fruitless subjects is also cheating. All so you can sell some books.

The mind is not stimulated by topics like this, it is just driven to pointless fantasy as most of the recent "debate" above will show. It is better to ask the public to consider the philosophical consequences of modern physics, but few physicists have the guts to present this info. A few are starting to try that now, we'll see if they become famous for it.

But the public (media) prefers meaningless fancy over philosophy.

Edited May 6, 2008 by Thrawn

[JonathanVP]

YEAH..right and pigs can fly! Hell, I'll write a book on why All physicists are idiots and let's see how that sells...

[Thrawn]

YEAH..right and pigs can fly! Hell, I'll write a book on why All physicists are idiots and let's see how that sells...

I would buy a copy... but I bet you're just mouthing off. It's true what you're saying, but well... you've got to be a physicist too to understand why.

[JonathanVP]

I would buy a copy... but I bet you're just mouthing off. It's true what you're saying, but well... you've got to be a physicist too to understand why.

damn! Does that mean I gotta dig out my ol' Differential Equations, Complex Variables, and Quantum Theory Textbooks to understand this crap?

[PermaSt0ne]

I think that there ought to be. Causing laymen to believe that some things are "possible" when the best fact is that thay are "extremely improbable" is, it seems to me, cheating and misleading the human mind. Making people discuss fruitless - I say again fruitless subjects is also cheating. All so you can sell some books.

The mind is not stimulated by topics like this, it is just driven to pointless fantasy as most of the recent "debate" above will show. It is better to ask the public to consider the philosophical consequences of modern physics, but few physicists have the guts to present this info. A few are starting to try that now, we'll see if they become famous for it.

But the public (media) prefers meaningless fancy over philosophy.

"laymen" should be aware that they are "laymen" and that they know absolutely nothing about the subject, so they shouldn't even begin to try to comprehend whether it's possible or not. and if they don't understand words like "improbable" then they can easily look it up

"The mind is not stimulated by topics like this"...wait, are you serious? they are absolutely stimulated by topics like this. wondering how and why stuff works the way it does is exactly what scientists do. and it's why we've come so far in such a short amount of time

there are no philosophical consequences unless you involve religion, which is the opposite of science. so that would be pointless anyways

"But the public (media) prefers meaningless fancy over philosophy" i think you ment to type "fantasy" instead of fancy but either way, that's not what it is. it's theorizing, and it's very important