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Time travel? Teleportation? No problem, says renowned physicist Michio Kaku.
Originally posted by Freeborn
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If it's possible to travel through time, wouldn't it then be possible to know the future?
Am I missing something here?
Originally posted by Unit541
If time travel is possible in both directions (past and future), then time becomes non-linear. No past, no present, no future, only an infinite number of points in time. Past, present and future would then continuously change relative to the unique position in time of the observer.
For example, If you and I both leave this point in time simultaneously, you going forward and me going back, the "present", or the time we left, is in your past and my future. The problem is that the term "future", but it's current definition, relies on the point of reference to be linearly in front of the observer. If you can go back and forth, time is non-linear, more accurately described as a volume of existence with points scattered three dimensionally throughout the volume. You could no longer simply say "go back" or "go forward" when giving directions. At least that's my take on it.
Originally posted by Freeborn
Yeah, I kind of get that, you are saying that if time travel is possible then timeisn't "linear" but just different events in space??
(Sounds like something Geordi or Data would say)
If someone travelled back in time from the future then that event would always have happened and will have no effect on the "now", but the person would have knowledge of the future.
Don't know if that makes any sense to anyone, hell even I'm struggling to understand it on re-reading.
Originally posted by thought
Hm. I'm gonna have to look at his book. Kaku is a smart cookie but I doubt he's talking about what we traditionally consider time travel...this concept violates causality and presumes determinism (i.e. that the future is set in stone), so few serious scientists consider it to be possible.
Originally posted by robertfenix
1. Time does not exist
2. It is conceivably possible to "travel" to an event that has already passed, or to travel to an unknown event that "possibly" can happen in the future.
3. Any action by a "traveller" has no affect on the previous or future "timeline" from where the traveller originated from.
4. Any event in the future has no past to affect it only has the next progression of events to unfold from that point.
5. Anything that "will" happen, already has happened somewhere.
example, what would have been my grandfather died when my mother was 7 years old. It is possible that a separate timeline exists where he did not die and in fact lived an additional 30 or 40 years. This world is independently unique from the world here and now that I know to be true. If I was able to travel a point in time say 10 years after what I know to be his death to observer that world, even if I could physically be manifested into that world any alteration in the events in that world would not change the fact that here on my base timeline that he died when my mother was 7 years old.