Is time travel really possible? uk only

Horizon
Is time travel really possible? Thursday 18 December, 9pm, BBC Two.

I will let you know yesterday!

NOOOOO!!!!! I must have BBC two!!!! Nooo!!!

I must fix my mistakes!!!

They had a program about time travel on here in the US. Not sure if it the same one, featured a time travel museum. They talked about HG Wells and a proffesor Mallet I think.

(BTW my first post here at the forums, finally made up my mind to register)

Traveling back in time is impossible.

This is simply because, if in any time of unknown length of our future, we found a way to travel back in time, we would have infinite oppurtunities to travel back in time to now or in the past, and we would have heard about it.

Traveling foward in time however likely possible

thanks se7en I'll have to make a note in my diary to watch that

Originally posted by eagle
NOOOOO!!!!! I must have BBC two!!!! Nooo!!!

I must fix my mistakes!!!

The BBC (being the gods that they are) will probably stream it then afterwards, put it on their site so everyone can watch in full, if they don't and you have a highspeed connection, then u2u and i'll hook you up with a location to download from.

yeah time traveling back is probably impossible, or we would have someone right now walking on the earth that is from the future!

I believe I read somewhere that time slows down the faster you go.

If this is so then if you were to go as fast as time then you would not go anywhere because relative to you time is stopped, for instance if you reached the speed of time at 1.15 you would be traveling along with time at 1.15.

If you were to go faster than time wouldn't a new timeline be created because time is actually still passing but you have passed the "normal timeline".

And if u were able to go back into the past you couldn't get back to the time you started because you cant go slower than time.

I dont know just a few thaughts (if they make any sense)........

I believe I read somewhere that time slows down the faster you go.

Yep, the official reference is Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The more you approach the speed of light, the faster time slows down.

The best bet for time travel seems to be the theoretical existence of wormholes (basically rips in the fabric of the space/time continuum). They form something akin to tunnels, but without length (portals would almost be a better term), as you could go in one side, and then emerge in a different space/time. (this was the basis for the show SLIDERS, and also was featured in Star Trek, Deep Space Nine). However, unlike the DS9 wormhole, theoretical wormholes aren't big enough for ships, or even in fact, matter. Only energy can pass through them.

That's where Einstein and (E=MC^2) comes in. If you take matter, and then accellerate it to the speed of light, you convert it to energy (also, presumably, the basis for transporter technology), and then could thus travel through time/space.

The problem with time travel (as in going back to see grandma as a little girl) is that we don't fully understand wormholes (nor even if they are real, and not flawed physics), as to how they work, how to predict when and where they will be, where they lead to, when they lead to, etc. and they aren't static (thats why the DS9 example was so important, it was a static wormhole, and large, so they used it for transportation).

There are many paranormal investigators who believe that such rips are responsible for many disturbances blamed on ghosts and other entities, that are actually either echoes of the past (such as phantasms), or perhaps even related to reality and afterlife, etc.

[Edited on 17-12-2003 by Gazrok]

i dont believe you can travel into the past, as it doesnt exist, same as the future...altho i believe you can psuedo-time travel into the future by travelling very very fast (light-speed). que eintseins thinkings...

mind you i think some of einsteins ideas are questionable. i think you can travel faster than light.

Originally posted by CyberGhost
yeah time traveling back is probably impossible, or we would have someone right now walking on the earth that is from the future!

Horizon's programme last night interviewed somebody who claimed he *was* Aage Nost

www.daniken.com...

Mind you, in the programme this was shown to be more a "mental" process than "physical "reality" (whatever that is)...

Originally posted by innkue
i think you can travel faster than light.

AH!! But, can you *prove* it?? I can remember "Tachyons" but do they exist outside of a theorist's dream??

What I liked most about the program was the last theory. At the rate in which computers are getting better and faster at processing information, far in the future we'll be able to put ourselves into a computer.
It would be an exact copy, completely undectable from the real thing and they would think they were us.

From here we could travel back and forth through time in our virtual reality world by the information the computer processes, sorry I forget the exact science of it now.

However there are two problems with this. First is the law of probability within the computer. Would the future and past it displays be accurate?
The second and most frightening aspect is that if this were possible then it may have been done already, and we in fact may not exist except in a virtual reality. We are being watched and controlled by "higher beings" (God, or in other words people from reality, if it still exists. Probably the computers themselves). I think the program went as far as to say, and correct me if I'm wrong here, that if this is at all possible in the future then chances are it is almost certain that it has already happened and in fact WE DON'T EXIST!

It was really interesting, certainly gave me something to think about.

i had a conversation with a friend along those lines......computers get so advanced at modelling the world, what if we ourselves are modelled?

of course we have bugs and instances of telepathy ('information wirecross' if you will), deja vu, and george bush. but hey lets just assume a higher civilisation is using microsoft windows too.

i think, therefore i am, i think.

[Edited on 19-12-2003 by innkue]

time travel is impossible. but seeing into the past is possible. we do it everytime we look at the stars, and to a lesser degree, we do it when we look at anything. light travels at a finite speed, so when you are looking, for example, at a star that is 1 light year(which is, of course, the distance that light travels in one years time) away, what you are actually seeing is what that star looked like exactly 1 year prior. looking into the past of earth would be a bit more tricky, as this would require that einstein be wrong in his ascertion that nothing can travel faster than light. so assuming that you could travel faster than light, all you would need to do is take off away from the earth , exceed light speed, and outrun the light traveling away from earth. so if, for yet another example, you were able to reach exactly twice the speed of light instantaneously, and maintain that exact speed for the distance of two light years, then if you looked back at earth with a powerful enough telescope, you would be looking at what was happening at what was happening on earth exactly one year prior to your takeoff.

yes that's true.

everything we see is technically in the past as it takes time for light to travel to our eyes. even standing in front of a mirror you are not seeing yourself in real-time. does real-time exist?

I used to think that too, but physics has introduced some new ideas that have changed my mind. For instance, it is now believed that time is compartmentalized, in that any changes you make in the past would not affect the here and now. So how does that happen? This is just me talking here, so take it for what it is worth, but I believe anyone who goes back in time instantly branches off on a new time-line, and probably a new universe (which BTW, might be just what we are (I hadn't thought of that until now)).

Originally posted by paradoxical
Traveling back in time is impossible.

This is simply because, if in any time of unknown length of our future, we found a way to travel back in time, we would have infinite oppurtunities to travel back in time to now or in the past, and we would have heard about it.

Traveling foward in time however likely possible

what is the 'uk only' about in this thread anyways?

John Titor any1?
he used the word WMD back in the year 2000, b4 the whole fascade was launched yada yada yada...
any1 realizes that this guy might just be from the future?
oh...just me then