The trouble with Time Travel (As I see it)

I've been reading alot about time travel recently, and one thing that's not mentioned much is this :-

Time travel itself may be easy to achieve, but to appear in the past or the future in the same spot you left on Earth, you have to travel in space too.

for example if I transported myself 1 hour into the future, and appeared at the exact same point in the universe i left, the Earth would be just over One Hundred Thousand Kilometers away (67000 miles). I have this image in my head of all these imploded time travellers drifting in the cold emptiness of space.

does this make sense to anyone else ??

It does make sense.

But you would be traveling in the fourth dimension, not the third. I'm making a wild guess, but I think you would 'land' in the same spot from when you left in the past, because you've traveled along another route, not the one that would lead you to nowheresville.

I think, anyway. We're limited to only perceiving a tiny slither of what exists. Until then, I think time travel in a literal sense is largely impossible.

That's a very good point you've brought up. I am in no way an expert in this field but I'll throw in my two cents. I believe that when time traveling, you'll be arriving in the future, or the past, in the same spot you left. You're bending time more than space in my opinion so I don't think you'll necessarily be farther away from earth. You'll just be standing in the same spot except in a different date.

I was thinking the same thing, thats why i thought the only way you can Time travel would be in space.

There is no such thing as time travel because time is not a physical thing. Time has been made up by humans to count the hours/day/etc . We are living in a constant, there is no before or after, just the NOW. Maybe there is EVENT travel, where you want to travel to a certain event which took place is the passed, but remember the passed is only defined as the passed because it was at a certain point in "time" before where we are now. How can you travel to something that has already happened? the universe doesn't record every single event that takes place so how can you travel to there physically. The only form of time travel is what takes place in your mind, and thats REMEMBRANCE.
Now i wait patiently to be shot down in a ball of flames.

If you could lock onto something as a reference point, like perhaps the earth's gravity while time traveling, then it should be doable.

Time travel and FTL speed may use the same mechanism if/when we ever achieve it.

technically speaking you are not moving anywhere but everything around you is moving. so even if we achieved time travel in space everything else would be miles away from where you left, because really we don't know how fast we are moving relative to a fixed position... we could be moving at light speed but just don't know it.

reply to post by Rock Ape

You have to have gates to travel through time whether they're natural or man made.

Those gates are the anchors to the third dimension. As long as those gates exist, you can travel between them. It don't really matter how far the gates are.

Unless you are a creature that can move between dimensions. Then if you can "jump" around in 4th dimension, usually you won't have problem 'jumping' in 3rd dimension.

Originally posted by Shreddy
That's a very good point you've brought up. I am in no way an expert in this field but I'll throw in my two cents. I believe that when time traveling, you'll be arriving in the future, or the past, in the same spot you left. You're bending time more than space in my opinion so I don't think you'll necessarily be farther away from earth. You'll just be standing in the same spot except in a different date.

What he's talking about is the Physical Location, the Point In Space you exist in at this very moment. You are traveling at a very fast rate towards the great attractor not to mention the spin of the earth, solar system, galaxy, and cluster you live in. You are plastered to a ball hurtling through space and if you were to try and appear backwards in time in the same spot you were at now, you might lose that initial inertia you have currently and remain stopped in space, billions of miles away from the earth's eventual position. While it might be interesting to look at the cosmos you know pass you by at alarming speeds I doubt it would be very nice once you hit your own time, as the earth would hit you eventually, and while you might not think of it as something you could be "hit by", I'm sure you'd come to realize it very quickly. Billions of miles an hour is not very fast in space but if you were to add in the various astrological bodies you belong to(galaxy, solar system, etc) the speed at which a planet is rushing to collide with you is very, very fast. You might not even have time to see it coming towards you before it splatters you into nonexistence.

well, nice thoughts but....

I think You should refer to the time properties of the thing and not of the system. It's like when You put a cam to a fruit and You see how the fruit is changing in time on this position. When You move fast forward the time of this video, the "thing" you travel does not change position. So thinking about I sit here and let me see what's in 200 years.... You travel only this position but not relatively to the complete system it is into.
A change of perspective... there are a lots of examples:
- cam on head of skiier
- cam on persons (seen in a few music videos)
- cam on cat
- cam viewing one years' sky
- etc...

Ok well I'm only talking about cams and not mentioning any interaction with future/past...

[edit on 29-2-2008 by zagito]

time as we know it is an illusion. the time we understand is relative to us here on earth. 24 hours for the earth to rotate on its axis, 60 minutes for the earth to move through one hour, etc. we cannot apply our 'time' anywhere else in the universe (unless to a planet with the same mass, same volume, same size sun, same orbital radius, same size moon with the same orbital characteristcs and so on).
in order for us to travel back in time, we must be able manipulate a universal time system, since we exist in this universe not just our own little world. this is otherwise known as the space time continuum. the sapce time continuum is growing along with the universe. the universe is ageing, getting older. so in order to travel back in time we must, somehow, find a way to make the universe younger to locate the point in space time that we are looking for.
as for going forward in time to a point in the space time continuum that we have not yet arrived at to witness events that have not yet happened, we must, somehow, find a way to 'age' the universe to our desired time. this would have a detrimental effect on us all.

my conclusion: time travel cannot happen, it is a nice idea. but i'm afraid its just that!