Space Travel IS Time Travel.

I have been on ATS for some time now. And it never ceases to amaze me that conversations concerning the UFO phenomenon and Extra-Terrestrial visitations usually hit a wall when the idea of other worldly visitors is mixed with the idea of time travel.

How can you travel through space without travelling through time?

The closer an observer comes to reaching the speed of light, the slower time is experienced for them in comparrison to someone who is moving far slower. Carl Sagan on his "Cosmos" series explained it as such:

"PARA[HRASING ?? I think, Carl Sagan -

"If a human was to leave Earth travelling at the speed of light to Siruis (4 light years away) when he got there only 25 minutes or so would have passed by on his clock, while hundreds or thousands of years would have passed for people on Earth, but only 4 years would have passed for an observer from the solar system of Siruis."

My point to this thread is there is no differentiation between space travel, and time travel. There is no Space travelling without Time travelling.

Edited to include "PARAPHRASING??" with Carl Sagan's Quote
Thanks to XphilesPhan for pointing out my error.


[edit on 24-8-2006 by Esoteric Teacher]

Well Im no mathematician or scientist but I believe that is incorrect....

how can 2 observers that are at realtively similiar speeds have different time periods pass for them.

for example point A is earth and point b is sirius (btw sirius is a bit further than 4 light years I believe)

point A and point B are at the similiar speeds and observe a distance of, in your case 4 light years between them.

how can thousands of years pass at point A and only 4 at point b? It doesnt make any sense. Now I can believe that the person traveling at light speed on the ship might consider the trip much shorter than observed from points A and B.

But the direction that you are traveling would throw a quark in that theory, would it not?

AAC

XphilesPhan,

The way i understood what was being said by Carl Sagan on a "Cosmos" episode didn't entirely make a lot of sense to me concerning the very point you state. I listened to him make the point a few different times, a few different ways, and perhaps i misheard. I'll edit the above quote to say i was paraphrasing, and perhaps misquoted.


Thanks,
John

I believe you are referring to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.

Einstein's thought was he would wonder what a "beam of light" would look like if you could move very fast.... like v/c = 0.99999

Would the beam appear to be moving away from you "slower."

What he discovered is the beam would appear to move away at an infinite speed only time would slow down.

For example:

If a UFO could move at v/c = 0.999999 then it would take it a mere 12 hrs and 35 minutes to travel 1 light year. This data is taken straight from Paul R Hill's book "Unconventional Flying Objects." If you want to see his qualifications...
en.wikipedia.org...

*note* this would only affect the UFO. On earth more than a year would pass.



-Take Care

Here is the way I understand this situation.

If traveling from Earth on a ship that could travel at near c to a point like Alpha Centauri 4.35 light years away, an observer on Earth that could hypothetically watch the ship travel to it's destination would watch as 4.35 years passed before the ship got to Alpha Centauri. An observer on Alpha Centauri who could hypothetically watch the ship travel from Earth to Alpha Centauri would also watch as it would take 4.35 light years for the ship to get there. On the ship itself however , the trip would be very short , a matter of minutes and hours as opposed to the 4.35 years the observers watched the ship get to its destination.

In other words on a ship you could hypothetically travel to Alpha Centauri and straight back at near c taking only a matter of hours or day's aboard the ship to do so and 8.7 years would pass on Earth before observers on Earth would welcome you back home.






[edit on 24-8-2006 by lost_shaman]

Originally posted by Access Denied

So given this understanding of this common misconception, do you think this refutes the most common argument against the possibility for ET visitation... that an astronaut from let’s say a solar system 100 light years away would be dead before he even got here… even if they had a craft that could travel close to the speed of light?

(That is of course assuming cryogenic sleep isn’t a practical possibility.)

Well if someone was traveling hypothetically near c then the trip would be short in time for that person as the faster you travel the slower time is experienced. In other words if they would be dead it wouldn't be from old age.

Traveling near c means time slows down for you the traveler. If I take off in a hypothetical ship and travel near c , it will not effect time experienced by an observer on Earth. The only person who's clock will be effected will be the person traveling near c as that persons clock will slow down in comparison to the clock of the observer on Earth.

That is why the observer on Earth would be dead when the traveler returns from the 100 light year trip. It's the traveler who returns to find the original observer dead many years ago while the traveler would have only aged slightly during the time of travel near c.

So I think it poses great possibilities for any civilization who is willing to leave home. Might not be the same place if you came back , but it is wonderful news if your goal is to explore new worlds.

Conversely, if we assume for the sake of argument the possibility that UFOs are merely unmanned scientific probes under some form of AI control and that they were sent here from a solar system 100 light years away, would that be a worthy scientific endeavor given it would take at least 200 years to get the data back?

(That is of course assuming real-time quantum communication isn’t a practical possibility.)

I'd think so. I mean you don't want to be sitting around 200 years from now thinking darn we could be getting data today if we'd only done this 200 years ago.

For the rest of us, I think Access's point could be made a little more clear. (I think he's tired.! ) the key to understanding that aspect of relativity was best explained to me by my relativity teacher:

Its all in the acceleration. While static time dilation is correctly predicted by special relativity [Refer to the twin paradox (use a search engine to find examples).] The difference in time even though velocity is symmetric is do to the acceleration of one reference frame with respect to the other, which is covered in general relativity.
Special can only answer so many questions, and your reference frames have to have no aceleration relative to each other (just start with all the velocities, and use instantaneous direction change for convenience.)

Unfortunately, many of the examples of how general relativity affects things are pretty weird and hard to get your head around. A computer simulation (you can find them on the net) is usually the best approach to visualize the time and space effects.

This is despite the fact that the underlying idea of general relativity is exquisitely simple and beautiful.

Accesss Denied understands this stuff too. (Correct me if I am misunderstanding you , Access) He's a little frustrated by the fact that the previous argument does not account for the amount of energy that would be required to accelerate a reasonable mass UFO to near the speed of light in a reasonable amount of time in the reference frame of the family you left behind. Its just a whole lot of energy. As you get to useful speeds, it is basically more energy than you could store on the ship with technology and forces we can conceive. But would also generate enough mass in the UFO and tidal forces to rip star systems apart. YOu can only travel by GR in reasonable tyime if you are willing to kiss your 100,000 year life-on --earth mass extinction cycle familiarity good bye.

It comes down to the way the time dilation works:

I think it is (Access, help!) that the ship takes 5 years to reach Alpha CEntauri, and the crew ages by five years. But when they get there, they find that there clocks were 'slow' compared to the alpha and earth reference frame, and that there journey took hundreds of thousands of years.
From the outside perspective, their ship did not accelerate as fast as they thought it did, because it was gaining mass (from the outside perspective) and accelerated slower over a much longer period of time, as compared to what was felt and observed by the crew.

And so, this goes back to the first point. The massive acceleration that would be required in order for the crew to make it there and back in the lifetime of their families would be so tremendous.

It would take some kind of free energy device that could sustain a nearly infinite load to achieve any meaningful relativistic speed and then develerate into a star system in a reasonable amount of (on board) time. If you don't believe in free energy, and basically power output that can sustain and outdo any load placed upon it, then GR and even SR make this kind of travel practically impossible.

the degree of infinite tremendousness required in energy output being so astronomical that I think it would cause all of the hydrogen in the galaxy to light up in the x-ray spectrum and kill everything in the galaxy. THe crew would arrive at alpha centauri almost instantaneously, and maybe only five years would pass in travel relative to the stars Sol and Alpha CEntauri, but the acceleration and deceleration required would have turned interstellar gas into a deadly plasma. Not to mention the tidal forces of a mass of the UFO moving that quickly causing the galaxy to get all stired up. Ok, now it is getting hard to think aboutl... ouch.

But then again, maybe GR has some 'hook's at the high end we haven't detected yet.

Some of the interseting theories are 6 dimensional H space with electromagnetic relativistic dimensions.

Anyway, I still think it is an interesting topic and so full of intersting physics that it is fun to think about.

If I were to sumarize the title of this thread a little differently, it would be
"Space-time travel IS space-time travel."

[edit on 24-8-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

[edit on 24-8-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

Originally posted by Access Denied

Originally posted by lost_shaman
I'd think so. I mean you don't want to be sitting around 200 years from now thinking darn we could be getting data today if we'd only done this 200 years ago.

LMAO

I agree...

[/rant]

Holy cow. We all agree on something. We should like set this in stone or something.
Although I would like to see us do a better job with our earthly responsibilities, I think the budget is plenty big enough, its just our nature getting in the way.

Anyway, Esoteric, I think the broader point in your argument is still valid. WHich is that we should not really think about space and time when talking about extraterrestrial visitation. We should probably try to think about it as space-time, because to separate the two is to forget the relationship between us and any potential neighbours we have. (and in a very subtle way, even the person standing next to you.)


[edit on 24-8-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

Hey Ectoterrestrial,

Yes its amazing we all agree on something but I'm sure that there is lots more we all have in common that simply hasn't been discussed yet. Just a hunch.

One of the arguments against travel near c was that using rocket technology it would require a nearly infinite amount of fuel just to accelerate a fraction of a near infinite amount of fuel fast enough to accelerate a huge enough amount of fuel just keep accelerating a craft to reach speeds near c.

So basically if rocket technology is the only hope you'll never approach c . ( No rocket could ever be big enough and not enough fuel could be found. )

There are other options. For instance if Gravity could be controlled in some way it would be possible to cancel inertia. Without inertia it would only take a small and reasonable amount of energy to propel an inertia-less body near c.

What I'm talking about is literally the Gravitational equivalent of the magnetic Meissner Effect. As a local field is created that cancels all fields exponentially as those fields enter the local field of the superconductor. So if a Gravitational equivalent exists that is the same as this magnetic effect then a small isolated gravitational field could exist hypothetically where the inertial effect of surrounding fields are canceled to the point that either they amplify the internal field or those waves not exist.












[edit on 24-8-2006 by lost_shaman]

E.t.

Your theory is sound and fact.Time is nothing more than distance between too points which is space.It's a perspective of the minds capacity to grasp super means.Humans tend to exist in between "parables" past, present and future tenses.But the means of "existing" is sustaining in the present moment.Without the present moment there would be no past or future.

Originally posted by lost_shaman
Hey Ectoterrestrial,

Yes its amazing we all agree on something but I'm sure that there is lots more we all have in common that simply hasn't been discussed yet. Just a hunch.

It seems like a rarety when we do all agree on something. I thank everyone for your responses and contributions. I will probably read over a lot of the points you guys make a few times to ponder the ideas.

Thanks again.

Originally posted by Esoteric Teacher
I have been on ATS for some time now. And it never ceases to amaze me that conversations concerning the UFO phenomenon and Extra-Terrestrial visitations usually hit a wall when the idea of other worldly visitors is mixed with the idea of time travel.

How can you travel through space without travelling through time?

The closer an observer comes to reaching the speed of light, the slower time is experienced for them in comparrison to someone who is moving far slower. Carl Sagan on his "Cosmos" series explained it as such:

"PARA[HRASING ?? I think, Carl Sagan -

"If a human was to leave Earth travelling at the speed of light to Siruis (4 light years away) when he got there only 25 minutes or so would have passed by on his clock, while hundreds or thousands of years would have passed for people on Earth, but only 4 years would have passed for an observer from the solar system of Siruis."

My point to this thread is there is no differentiation between space travel, and time travel. There is no Space travelling without Time travelling.

Edited to include "PARAPHRASING??" with Carl Sagan's Quote
Thanks to XphilesPhan for pointing out my error.


[edit on 24-8-2006 by Esoteric Teacher]

One thing however if you were on a vessel that only traveled so far it would in fact take four years to reach a destination it would still be linear. Of course time is a perception but still exists as a mesurement in space. If you left now by the speed of light to a 4 light year away star in all actuallitly 8 years would have past for a single trip. This would occur if your destintaion was to earth. This is talking speed of light though.

Originally posted by Sonata

One thing however if you were on a vessel that only traveled so far it would in fact take four years to reach a destination it would still be linear. Of course time is a perception but still exists as a mesurement in space. If you left now by the speed of light to a 4 light year away star in all actuallitly 8 years would have past for a single trip. This would occur if your destintaion was to earth. This is talking speed of light though.

Yes, but from the perspective of the person doing the travelling it would not have been an 8 years trip for them. Their clocks would have recorded it as only an hour or so. Our clocks may have elapsed 8 years, but they would only remember having spent about an hour travelling, because it is all they experienced.

Sort of puts a damper on the whole SETI program, doesn't it? I mean, how reliable would radio transmissions be if while you were travelling at the speed of light for approximately 1 hour, you recieved 8 years worth of transmissions.

[edit on 25-8-2006 by Esoteric Teacher]

Thats a good point about transmissions. I think the relativistic doppler shift would make that very tricky to time things correctly and with the right energy level on earth.


Ok, so just for fun, some number crunching with special relativity to talk about our Esoteric Teacher's point:

Basically, I think that it comes down to that by special relativity alone (assuming no better technology/science) to get from alpha centauri to earth with instantaneous acceleration deceleration (mass throwing or something) at .99 c you could get from alpha centauri to earth in:

A.C. distance: 3.8 * 10 ^ 16 meters

And because I am on lunch break, some physics musings:


Now, John Lear said he believes there is a micro scale gravity wave holding matter and energy together in mass, and it has an instantaneous property of energy/information transfer just like "spooky action at a distance" from quantum mechanics.

Lets assume in this post that by instantaneous, he means 'it appears to be instantaneous when you take SR into account'. In the next message, I consider what it would mean if he meant that 'it appears to be instantaneous from the human perspective of a single static global reference frame.'

So imagine you had really good eyes. I mean, eyes so huge they were as big as the sun. You stood on earth (somehow) and you watched John Lear throw a switch on an ununpentium device that lensed and amplified a gravity wave 'A" wave. That wave was directed to instantaneously cause a golf ball a martian, on Mars, was hitting to deflect from its obvious path of motion. (The martian is kind of squat and barrel chested, by the way.)

Now, because you eyes are so good, you can see the underground martian playing golf, all the way from earth. The light from mars crosses 35 million miles to reach you, on a good day. So lets say the light from the gold ball event takes 200 seconds to reach you. Then you would watch John throw the switch and 3.3 minutes later you would see the golf ball suddenly deflect from its intended course. The martian throws a fit, and asks his caddie (Bob Lazar) to contact Star Natiions and file a complaint.

Events from Earth; John throws switch. 3.3 minutes later, you see a martian sees his golf ball deflected

Ok, now say you are Bob Lazar (the martian's caddie) on Mars, watching this happen. But you have really big eyes as big as the sun and you can see all the way to earth. You look up an John Lear is smirking and you don't know why. So you focus on your clients golf game. The martian says "This "putting" as you call it, is fun" and then hits the golf ball. The golf ball is headed for the hole but, suddenly, takes a wild bend and turns to the left, up a hill. The martian yells "gravity A wave mischief! Who has done this. Bob! File a complaint with Star Nations immediately." You look up to planet earth and you see John just smirking, but you think you know what is going to happen. You watch bob, and approximately 3.3 minutes later, sure enough, John throws a switch on an ununpentium gravity lensing device aimed at mars.

Events: Golf ball is deflected, 3.3 minutes later, you see John throw a switch on the deflector device.

Now, because you are Bob Lazar, you instantantly determine that, in a static reference frame (which doesn't really exist for the earth and mars) but factoring in 6 digits of correction factors, the events occured at nearl same "time" in the respective reference frame

So you call up John and tell him to cut it out, because he is ruining your Teach Martians Golf business plans, with apparent reverse causality mischief.

Spooky stuff, that action at a distance, when combined with the finite speed of light.

Gravity A waves would be instantaneous, but light phenomena exist as a hypercone in space time, the cross section of which in space at any given 'time' in a static reference frame is a sphere with size increasing over your local time. Now, Here's the crazy part. No matter what reference frame you are in, the light appears to be a a sphere expanding over time. Its that restriction that sort of somes up the relationship between light, perceived casuality, and space-time in Special Relativity. The light may even appear to be different frequencies to different frames (different energy). I don't know if it would have to be of uniform frequency or not, but I doubt it (How does that reconcile with quantum entanglement?)

But what about General Relativity and Lazarian Gravity A Waves:

Currently, physicists are search for gravity waves that are predicted to result from acceleration (rotational or linear) in GR, which distorts space and time to maintain those light spheres despite the fact that gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable phenomena.

Simple light (not directed) should always appear to expand as a sphere over time iin a reference frame, and acceleration and gravity are indisinguishable in a reference frame. Those are the constant. Every thing else warps.

But John Lear describes Gravity A waves an instantaneous. For that to be true, it would require that the same wave act simultaneously at all places 'at the same time',. But because of relativity, we know that 'at the same time' isn't an easy principle. If this holds relativistically, then it means the gravity wave effects all points in universal space at the same time in EVERY reference frame.

No matter what is being accelerated, no matter how fast things are moving relative to one another, everyone, everywhere, would perceive that the gravity a wave effects all of space simultaneouly.

Now what shape is THAT in space-time?

To any reference frame, it would be whatever volume describes the universe existing for an instant in space and time. It would be sort of like THE UNIVERSE at an instant of time in a static reference frame. It might even be THE UNIVERSE, as we know it. It would be linked, extricably, to all other points in THE UNIVERSE and all other gravity A wave events anywhere (as far as I can get my head around it) would all be parts of the same event. But we know from GR that ordering and causality is relative to reference frames, so...

So, in space-time it would be a hyper-shape of the universe such that from all reference frames, it always looks like THE GR UNIVERSE OVER TIME. The laws that described how it could look like a consistant GR universe in all reference frames over all times would define it. Could such a thing exist as a space-time?

Now, if there is no one THE GR UNIVERSE OVER TIME, then that restriction is relaxed, and we are talking about something alice and wonderland to the max, where each frame of reference has its own 'universe', and no two frames are in completely the same causal universe.

oy vey. Lunch break over.

[edit on 25-8-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

Another possibility.

By 'instantaneous', John meant that the A wave is travelling back in time relative to causality from GR.

That is, John throws the switch on earth and at that moment you see the golf ball get deflected on Mars.

From the perspective of light-wave causality, the effect proceeds the cause in "ALL" reference frames, with the amount of backwards time travel being proportional to the distance of the action taken.

So, for example, effect the beginning of time infinitely far away from you, but only effect your immediate past very close to you.

How much you could affect the distant past and distance would depend on how much energy you had to focus an A wave there.

A mass, in this limit, would be an object that instantaneously is both its cause and effect. A gravity A wave loop or bounded energy?

And by 'effect' you might use very very light particles to simply 'measure' the past at remote locations. The farther away the location, the more energy to focus the A wave there, but the further back in 'time' you look.

---------------------------------------

And anyway, just for fun. If you were a GOD and had an infinite amount of energy, could you use an infinitely focused gravity A wave to start a new universe infinitely far away from you. I donno. Lol. Ok, too far out there. hehehe.

On the picoscale, particles would affect other close by particles in reverse temporal causality. We would just see this as the other way around.

The reverse causlity would only be detectable if we could correlate a very small phenomena here with a VERY LARGE phenomena very far away.

-----------------------------------------

To communicate by these A waves to a distant solar system, you would have to specify a time on a universal clock synchronized on both planet earth and the distant planet. The person receiving the message would receive it before you sent it, according to the universal clock. The further away their planet is, the later you have to send the message for them not to receive it too early.

Ofcourse, if they think of 'time' in both reverse and forward causality depending on the force in question, then I donno how they 'arrange' their 'schedules'.

Potentially, they could have CLOCK A for receiving slowpoke messages by SETI, and CLOCK B for receiving instantaneous future messages by gravity A wave.

[edit on 25-8-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

Wow alot of smarts dudes in here.

The crew spends 0.018 years or 1 week in space!

Ectoterrestrial's math looks right on the money. Whether UFOs use free zero point energy is pure speculation but I thought I'd add something..

If they use some sort of repulsive force field to propel their vessel then once they left our solar system and accelerated up to a decent percentage of c, they would need much less power to continue that rate of v. While gravity pervades the universe it is strongest in regions where they would have a mass to "push off of." It is weakest in the regions where the UFO would achieve a sort of "cruising speed."

[edit on 25-8-2006 by dgoodpasture]

Yes it is, I also time travel every single time I take a step forward. Time travel is conceptual.