Time travellers from the future 'could be here in weeks'.

heh, hmmm... While it's one thing to say we're not sure... when I say Im not sure, Im only saying it... if you get what I mean. Oo Im pretty sure about that too..

Still, if I met myself from the future Id tell the future me to give me all my future money and posessions, or I'l do something that would cause me to cease to exist as I would in the future.

Ahha! But, now that I know that is what I would do, I will make sure I end up destitute so that when I get there, I can point and laugh at myself. That will teach me to extort myself like that. err..


Ouch, this thread is getting my head goofy, this all reminds me of the movie Frequency...

Would knocking itselt thus preventing it from entering the wormhole, only affect the universe it was in, or would it affect all possibilities of the pool cue entering the wormhole?

Thats the problem. If we assume 1 strict universe, then it does become a paradox which causes severe logic problems.

But if we entertain that anything that can happen, does, and happens simulatniously in an infinite number of possible universes, then it becomes just one possibility out of an infinite number.

So, there would be a possibility that it would prevent itself from entering the wormhole, but that would only affect its own universe where it had never entered.

The infinite number of other universes where it does enter, have an infinite number of outcomes each, all with an infinite number of effects. Knocking itself can cause an infinite number of ways that it can still enter the wormhole, but with an infinite number of differences that again cause an infinite number of different outcomes.

Lets all just pray to god for an answer, who in his infinite wisdom refuses to prove to us that he exists, thus paradoxically proving that he does exist.

Where is the emoticon for head exploding from insanity?

oo

[edit on 8/22/2008 by bloodcircle]

I think you've miss-understood this. Their talking about closed loop time travel. Visitors from the future would only be able to Reach as far back as the machine first becoming a time distortion device. And in the case of CERN, the time travelers would be particles, not people.
That's all assuming that the theory is plausible, which I'm certainly not qualified to determine.
Wouldn't it be really neat though, if time travelers from the future really were secretly amoung us. Maybe they are, but it wouldn't be due to the type of time distortion being theorised about in the article.

You're looking at time in a fundermentally different way than how some physicists (both the qualified and the arm chair types) view it.

For example, remember that time progresses at different rates in different environments. And it does so enough to be messurable (like shuttle missions for example).
So, with that in mind, woudn't you agree that there's more to time than it at first seems?

reply to post by Recouper

---

An encoded particle send from a future could be used to indicate a certain action to be taken so as to change that future.

It is Likely it will start out small, like a codexed particle to tell us to bury an object somewhere which will be followed by a confirmation particle if that object is unburied in the future in the location specified in the codex

They have a copy of the book (codex) in the future, it is sort of like using a matching pair of dictionaries to communicate specific words in secret over the telephone.

Except in this case, it is not just through space that you are communicating - but instead it is through time.

Remember the experiment where the particle arrived before it had even left?

Imagine if there were two such machines set to fire when an intended particle was detected by either. You would be able to send data back to the point in time where the two machines were first configured in such an array.

As for communicating with the future - accurate record keeping would suffice, as would a time capsule built and intended for use in such an experiment.





[edit on 22-8-2008 by TruthTellist]

reply to post by TruthTellist

---

That would be a very practical way to use such technology... If it could be used in such a way, it would be an extraordinarilly powerful tool in many scenarios. But you know, good or bad, or both.
It sort of gives ya cold shivers, doesn't it? I mean, it's spooky really.
Even just entertaining the posibilty of inter-time communication give's me a sense of vertigo... in a good way

[edit on 22/8/2008 by Recouper]

[edit on 22/8/2008 by Recouper]
I had to keep editing to correct my spelling... I'm a little tired.

[edit on 22/8/2008 by Recouper]

reply to post by Recouper

---

Maybe, Greys are from our future. That being they are indeed evolved from Humans and have developed a level of technology that allows them to travel back through time to ensure their own survival.

That would be where the Novelty comes in, and the Universe is a novelty-conserving engine. Therefore should we assume that intergalactic travels is possible, we must also then presuppose that time travel is also possible as both are ideas so far removed from Levels of Novelty currently allowed withing the limitations of our Space/Time.

We currently do not know whether or not Artificial intelligence is possible, but surely when it comes into existence a New period of novelty will have been entered. We could then rightly assume that both the problems of time and space travel will be solved with the aid of this new Entity.

The AI will then create advanced simulations of the Universe and Calculate that 'Human' Time travelers are indeed responsible for the inexplicable changes in the Humanoids on this planet over the past 500 000 years - changes pointing towards an unavoidable conclusion.... That Mankind is a Genetic Experiment perpetually conducting itself as a Direct Result of the Laws of the Inverse Square and the Conservation of novelty.

...Sort of like a chicken going back in time and laying itself as an egg, or unintentionally setting the preconditions for it's own existence (Like Star Trek: First Contact) or some other cultural/technological development in chicken society (Ie. Warp Flight=Meeting Vulcans) where they then evolve and do everything the Greys from the First paragraphs just did

Edit: And we all know we can't go back in time to our own universe. It will be a different universe, one of the multiverse infinitatum wherein we exist, and it is the future of that universe which will be altered.

The same will probably happen to the universe you originated in, as a YOU from yet another Universe travels to the Past in your Universe of origin. And so on and so on - to infinity and beyond...

Well, In skimming through this entire thread, I've come up with a thought:

IF this time travel were indeed possible, it would immediately make interstellar space travel possible, I'd think. Imagine. Upon inventing wormhole technology (ie. Stargate SG-1 type travel), they could immediately send that gate back to the point when the first time machine was initiated for the first time, and immediately send it out into deep space at their current (future) method of propulsion. Leaving one 'gate' on earth. Using the same 'codex' method as mentioned before, in the time machine, all of these 'gate addresses' could be 'time-mailed' back, and an infinite number of these gates could be sent out, and reported back... Effectively meaning that even right now, the travel in 'Stargate' could be a possibility, and, based on the show's concepts, We would, in fact, be 'the ancients'?

I also love how all these factors have something to do with 'Alice in Wonderland'. Could this book actually be the codex used for relaying these time-messages back, using the time-theory listed earlier in the thread (sending particles back for use in a codex to decode the message)? I wonder if that 'Rabbit Hole' exists... and if so... Just how deep IS it?

[/randomthoughts]

We measure time by the motion of earth through the solar system. However this same solar system is moving thru the Milky way galaxy, which is also moving thru the universe.

Time is motion, and without motion time stops. Time began with the creation of the Universe, big bang or otherwise, and will stop when the Universe ceases to be in Motion.

If time travel were possible, you would need to know exactly where your exit point is in relation to your entry point. Otherwise you end up inside a mountain, or within the cement of a building or materialize floating in the vacuum of space . The earth did not cease to remain in motion while you were attempting time travel, it continued to move thru the 3 ( or more, we dont know yet) axis of the solar, galaxy and universe systems.

How do we measure the motion of earth thru the 3 axis we know about....we cannot. So i dont see how Time travel is a possibility. The time traveller is moving thru time AND space. If there is no avenue to measure both precisely, there is no method to travel thru them.

No, i don't believe i've misunderstood.
Think of it this way

If this machine works - and you can do particles through time
then its only a matter of time until you can do larger things - say a spoon or a piece of paper

and more times and you can do human beings.

its how technology grows.

Are there physical limits on what can be sent through time? I would argue no. If time travel is possible - then its only a degree of which you bend and warp time to allow certain mass to skip through it.

So

That general procedural notion of how time effects the quality of technology in mind - you can deduce that if time travel is possible - then at some point in time, between right now, and 500,000 years from now - an invention is made that can be traced back to THIS machine in the OP, which would allow a human being to travel through time.

Then

500,000 years from then (1 million years from now) someone figures out how that machine works- and recreates it.... 'falls into the wrong hands' and now we're all screwed.

If time travel does exist, in any way shape or form - then everything from this point onward up to 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 billion years from now has already happened.

I say - given what Human nature is - that its impossible for time travel to exist, because we still exist...

reply to post by Hallberg Rassy

---

This is quite strange when you think about it,
We - humans - invented 'time' as we know it.
Our ancestors watched the moon and the sun, then watched the 'seasons', for planting and harvesting, then eventually 'broke it down' to time as we now know it!

If someone on the moon was, for a stretch of the imagination, watching 'earth' rotate around it (the moon) - remember the moons 'face' always points to earth, would their concept of 'time' be the same.
I mean, when we fly around the world we can 'lose' or 'gain' a day - 24 hours - by crossing a man-made time line.

Other star systems or galaxy outreaches will have their own interpretation of time, just as a dragonfly does!

H

Its the old Planet of the Apes Situation, in a way, it can be said that a worn hole, or Einstien Rosen Bridge, if travel through can bring you to an alternate time, just like the space crew in the original Plant of the Apes film.

There are some great points being made... but on the wrong assumption of Time. Any interval in the man-made measure of time is simply that - an interval; we have no mechanism for quantifying time as a static entity.

When we talk of "losing a day" because of the international date line, we have no more travelled back in time than enjoyed the meal we had on board the plane that took us across it - Unless you like pre-packaged synthetic food?

The point is, we must differentiate time as an abstract concept from the simple measuring devices we use to record intervals. Time exists regardless of the fact that clocks exist or not. The length of a "year" is not a universal constant, it is simply contextual to the Earth's rotation about the Sun. Other planets have a longer "year" but that is simply relative to Earth's motion - a measure of relative magnitude that is confused by the use of the same terminology.

Time is a not an attribute of motion, rather, the other way around, motion is allowed by the presence of time - otherwise coincidence of particles occurs which kind of screws up a physical universe. Time is a fundamental necessity of our universe to allow it to exist as it does, but that is not to say that it has to be constant or that localised changes in its vector attributes can not be effected.

If some of the theories of the creation of the universe are correct, it means that time can be created and destroyed, it can be warped and changed. This would mean that with the correct mechanisms in place, time travel could be effected. Whether or not man has the capacity to create such devices is another questions, but, if you can build the pyramids with little more than a whip and plenty of slaves then you can do anything ;-P

(The last statement was facetious... Deny Ignorance!)

There really is no such thing as time as we understand it to be. It's all about interaction and constant change. If a person could go back in time, he would have to follow the change path to a certain point. So, if that person went back to a point we would call 100 years ago, he would enter the change events of that time, but then split off into a paralell dimension and any new changes would happen in his dimension.

Another hypothesis would be that once he entered into a change point we would call 100 years ago, the change would cause a cascade effect on any future change. He could never return to the life he once knew.

reply to post by Andrew E. Wiggin

---

Because space is accelerating apart, the universe will only exist for another 80 billion years or so before "the big rip" as they are calling it, where everything in the universe will literally be ripped apart as it approaches the speed of light. So your number was a little too big for how much time we have left to work with .

And as for time being reliant on speed in order for time to exist, as another poster said, this is false. If one was to come to a complete stop in space, and end all of his/her motion, they would still experience time. Time slows the faster you go, which is I think where the confusion entered.

So, for example, if you were able to travel around the earth's orbit at say 99% the speed of light for 10 years, and then landed on earth, you would have barely aged, while everyone else would be 10 years more worn down. If you were to come to a complete stop for 10 years and came back to earth, you would have in fact aged more rapidly than those who had been whizzing through space for that length of time. However, this likely would be negligible, as the speed/time thing is only truly noticable (by our human perceptions) on scales using significant fractions of the speed of light.

We know for a fact that time travel is possible and completely within the bounds of physics. Will it ever be acheived? Given that we currently still have 20,000 active nuclear weapons on Earth, the majority of which are vastly more powerful than those dropped in WW2, I'd say the odds are very high that a megalomaniac will rise to power and manage to set off a mutually assured destruction scenario in the next 1000 years or so, before we can acheive human time travel.

Our missle defense shields can only stop about 90% of the nukes on a best-case scenario, and only 1000 nukes is enough to wipe out most if not all of the world's major cities, creating a nuclear winter that would likely end humanity, game over. And believe me, in a nuclear exchange, they will all go flying in order to maximize the number of weapons that will pass through.

Hitler's last order to his troops in France? Burn Paris down and everything from Paris to his bunker. Good thing the troops either didn't listen or didn't get the message. But this just shows how one man in power is capable of making drastic decisions that could literally obliterate mankind, or in this case, the majority of a country.

IMO, is time travel possible? Without a doubt it is possible within our current models of the universe/multiverse. Is it acheivable? Not unless we change things on this planet quickly. Sagan said it best, the inhabitants of this planet were paying a million, million dollars a year for armaments back in the 80s. A million, million dollars a year to create war machines, to create weapons capable of destroying humanity, a huge portion of our world's resources going to ensuring our destruction. Imagine what we could do with the money/resources, if we spent it on something other than our destruction. With a million, million dollars a year we could have full-blown civilizations on asteroids, the moon, mars, and maybe even some of the moons of saturn/jupiter verrrry quickly. In fact, we could also solve the world's energy problem with fusion BEFORE 2050 (currently $10 billion is going to this in France, where in 2020 the first fusion reactor should be created that gives out more energy than it takes in, slap $1 til at this and I bet it gets done on a global scale rather quickly - michio kaku ats mix pt. 2!!). We could solve much of the world's problems with even half of this money, and instead we are still gearing up for war around the world. And people wonder why aliens don't make a whitehouse landing.

And yes, sorry for the humanity is stupid rant...

Yes but if someone was to actually go back and change the smallest thing then we would have a paradox, and life as we know it would end, that could be the way the world would end, if someone ever found a way to go back.

I'm glad you brought this up, I always ponder the "time travel is not space travel" issue whenever threads like this come up. You saved me much typing.

I rarely hear this issue brought up in the time travel discussions, and to me, this is the real sticking point.

Time travel, although it may be possible, may not be practical due to this...

what i said was time requires motion to exist, and stand by this. The example i used was of the Universe, not a single person deciding to crash on a lazyboy watching a ballgame.

regarding theory of relativity and time travel, Time is relative to the person travelling at speed against people travelling at the baseline. It is still measuring motion of one object against another. You didnt time travel, you travelled at a slower rate measured against the baseline.

Without the motion of the universe, there is no existance of Time. When the Universe ceases moving, Time will cease along with it.

Hi all,

long time creeper, first time replier...

This story actually has me anxious to see what happens, however, I am a bit terrified if it does turn out to be the first time travel machine.

But one would think that if it were classified as a machine that allows time travel, that no one except VIP's would even know about it. Either that or the consequences of it would be so large that it couldn't be kept under their hats.

That is what terrifies me. What is really going to happen? No one really knows... 18 days and counting...