Now if i may be so bold as to "imagine" a different scenario. Light travels at a certain speed. Time, as we know it, is a HUMAN concept. So who says if we travel at the speed of light time will slow down? Time is what we know it to be. Earth time may slow down, but why? Because we "catch up" to what has already passed? Is this light we are chasing? So if we switch a flashlight on and then off again and then climb in our "faster than light speed" craft and chase after the light, eventually we will reach our beam of light but it will still be moving at 299,792,458m/s. AHHHH, what do we see there, PER SECOND. So, while we are moving along WITH our beam of light we are also moving along at 299,792,458m/s. That does not mean time has stopped! We are just moving a hell of a lot faster than if we were walking but we will just cover more distance in less time, but time as WE know it will still be moving along. Travel from Washington DC to LA by foot and then again by plane - we get there faster by plane LESS TIME but time still passed at the same rate. SO, that brings me to another point; how do we go back in time if we go faster than 299,792,458m/s?? I would assume we would only catch up to "light" that was there in the past to be able to SEE what passed but we would not physically go back in time to be able to FEEL or EXPERIENCE.

Perhaps we do not yet have a way of knowing at what speed, IF speed is a factor, we need to be traveling to "physically" go back in time to, for example, see our birth etc. Perhaps we don't need to travel at any speed at all or spend any time at all going back in time. Perhaps we can actually experience time travel without spending 1 second of time from our present traveling but we could spend years in the past. I still see travelling at the speed of light only effective in SEEING the past, not living in the past or being able to change anything. The people that we knew that maybe passed on, we would see them but we would not be "with" them.

Let's go back to the flashlight. You point it at the wall and switch it on and then off again in 5 seconds - then off you go at the speed of light - you will NEVER see it again, unless you travel at more than 5x the speed of light, to reach it's "front", OR you would be traveling with the present that passed when you left and so time would stand still, right - yeah theoretically. NOW think of it this way, switch it on and travel with the light; time didn't stop just because you were traveling at the speed of light towards the wall, it continued to move forward OR the light would stop dead and never reach the wall - and you wouldn't go splat!

weird? hmmmm... imagine a fly stopping a train!! OK - the fly moving east and the train moving west. The fly hits the front of the train and then starts moving west WITH the train. Now an object needs to stop moving, IF on a specific path, to go in the opposite direction along the same path. That says that the moment the fly stops to change direction it is against the train and then gathers momentum in the opposite direction. At the very time the fly is stationery SO IS the train - it has to be - think about it or the fly would never change direction if it didn't have to stop. I can't explain it any better - Now i know there will be hundreds of proven facts about why the train didn't stop etc etc etc, but that's a human way of thinking but if you really close your eyes and imagine the scenario, for a billionth (not accurate) of a second both the train and the fly are stationery OR the fly would have never stopped.

Like i said, IMAGINE. Did I make sense? We are thinking of time travel based on what Einstein theorized. I don't believe it is possible in the physical sense in terms of interacting with the past.

Originally posted by Thorfinn Skullsplitter
The thing that kills this story for me is the clock changing. Clocks aren't affected by time, they just function with or without time...

Actually this is wrong. Clocks like anything else are affected by time. As stated above, if you were to make a clock travel really fast its time would slow down. From the clocks perspective nothing abnormal is happening but when it arrives back more time will have past than it has recorded.

Airline pilots actually live a few parts of a second longer than almost everyone else because they travel at significantly higher speeds through out their lives. So if you are talking time travel it IS possible but only forwards (just like what everybody is doing now, moving forward through time). So some obects can travel faster forward through time than others.

Originally posted by shearder
Now if i may be so bold as to "imagine" a different scenario. Light travels at a certain speed. Time, as we know it, is a HUMAN concept. So who says if we travel at the speed of light time will slow down? Time is what we know it to be. Earth time may slow down, but why? Because we "catch up" to what has already passed? Is this light we are chasing? So if we switch a flashlight on and then off again and then climb in our "faster than light speed" craft and chase after the light, eventually we will reach our beam of light but it will still be moving at 299,792,458m/s. AHHHH, what do we see there, PER SECOND. So, while we are moving along WITH our beam of light we are also moving along at 299,792,458m/s. That does not mean time has stopped! We are just moving a hell of a lot faster than if we were walking but we will just cover more distance in less time, but time as WE know it will still be moving along. Travel from Washington DC to LA by foot and then again by plane - we get there faster by plane LESS TIME but time still passed at the same rate. SO, that brings me to another point; how do we go back in time if we go faster than 299,792,458m/s?? I would assume we would only catch up to "light" that was there in the past to be able to SEE what passed but we would not physically go back in time to be able to FEEL or EXPERIENCE.

I know you said imagine however the problem you are dealing with is that when you increase an object's speed you also increase it's mass. That is why nothing but certain particles can travel at the speed of light. So if the mass of an object increases with it's speed, it will require more energy to propell it faster along and eventually you will run out of energy.

You can't "catch up" to light, this would imply that you have a higher acceleration than light which you simply can't because it doesn't have one, ,it starts off travelling at 3X10^8 m/s and thats that. No catching up.

You are dealing with some quite complex areas of physics which can be confusing and to many people and go against "common sense" such as people thinking that 20 light years is a time reference when it is a distance.

Stephen Hawksins "A brief history of time" does give some good examples if you wish to read up on it a bit.

Trust me, I want to believe in decently fast space travel but going the speed of light isn't it, it's going to be more like wormhole technology or something similar. Remember the nearest star (other than the Sun) to earth is Proxima Centauri and it is 4.2 light years away. That is, light from that star takes 4.2 years to reach us. Even sunlight takes 8 minutes to reach earth. Which on a cosmic scale is really slow if you want to travel anywhere decent.

Time gate found in Black hole, any willing participants have to sign up at NASA.com, they take you, put you in a rocket and blast you to the nearest black hole they can find, from there they assume you have managed to travel through time since all signals are often lost.

another 'Time Gate'? There is a topic chewing on some sort of a 'dimensional gate', or 'Star Gate', proof found in a desert of Egypt, ran by some very advance woman..so, I'd say, you gain access to that topic and contribute new evidence to her story. All the belivers would jump high in joy learning of your findings.
May be, (I simply can't even hold my breath) you, guys, find a way to transport yoursselves our of this planet!

I have to admit if suddenly a time portal opened up anywhere near me and a weather balloon on a tether came through, I would mess with it. I would change the time, write something on the balloon, tie my underwear to the tether and then laugh the rest of my life imagining what the look on whoever sent it s face looked like when they got it back. Maybe it did get through to the future and someone just has an evil sense of humor??

A little more info on the clock idea.

From what I understand the atomic clocks in GPS satellites experience clock drift when their orbits are adjusted and have to be corrected.

Currently it is said that the only way to travel back in time is to build a time machine (we will say today) as a reference point. then anytime in the future you could travel back only to the time that the machine was created. So that being said...

Lets just say they found away to make this time portal back in 1965. The balloon was sent into the portal today. with the date and time set for today. the people in the past set the time and date to 1965. and there is a possibility on how that could happen.

Pretty crazy but not impossible. The problem i see with that whole scenario is that if you could go back to only the time that it was turned on or activated, how would you deal with the endless bombardment of items or anything else sent through it.

Example- person in 1965 is at a set time and place. the next 100 years 1000 things are sent through the portal. So would the receiver in 1965 get bombarded all at once with all 1000 items . or would he get them 1 at a time But never remembering the last thing that came. His time never moves forward. So how do you deal with this paradox. Any good ideas on that one.

I dont believe for 1 second that there is a worm hole in the antartic. And another point. What if the person in 1965 went through the portal and someone else went through from the present. Would the person from 1965 exist in two time zones or would he be missing from the past. Very complicated but i would like to know what possibilities that would create.

Oh yea, What about that point, the guy in 1965 couldnt travel into the future that didnt exist yet either. Or would he? lol.

That just shows that time is irrelevant. So maybe it is possible there is a worm hole there That should get your minds thinking.

Originally posted by russ1969
That should get your minds thinking.

My mind just caught on fire. Help me...

Originally posted by carnival_of_souls2047

Originally posted by russ1969
That should get your minds thinking.

My mind just caught on fire. Help me...

Ouch! Didnt seem that complicated when i thunk it. But you can borrow my fire extinguisher.

Any how, Didn't einstein Say something about time moving backwards when you went through a black hole? And i never heard anything about the time moving forward if you came back through it. I would think once you went through, that when you tried to come back it would have the same affect.just a thought. The only answer i could give is that if you went through this time portal back to 1965 and then destroyed it, you would then live in an alternate time in space. Because you couldnt start changing things that would change our current time. You might even just vanish as soon as you pulled the plug on it. Way to many possibilities an variables to imagine. I believe once we figure out gravity and have a full understanding of it. then and only then we will advance forward to be able to accomplish such things.

Cool idea but posters do have it right.Clocks wouldn't change.Why would this have to be in a cold area of the world?

Bah...

It's the Russian version of the "National Enquirer"

However, I find it interesting that a new huge-ass "telescope" is being built there, along with an entirely new South Pole base-camp. HMMMM?

If the clock changed when it went, why didn't it change back when it returned? Bad SciFi for the purpose of illustrating the nature of the fiction.

Originally posted by tututkamen
I read a similar story some time ago, can't remember where! But it also described a vortex of grey swirling upwards and items disappearing into it. I don't know what to think now upon second confirmation.

TUT

i remember that one, the little girl then tapped her red ruby slippers and came home

Pravada..

Say no more...

Bah...

It's the Russian version of the "National Enquirer"

However, I find it interesting that a new huge-ass "telescope" is being built there, along with an entirely new South Pole base-camp. HMMMM?

First off, anything is possible. Humans may not have discovered time travel yet, but they have created so many other amazing inventions! Like the phone, or the lightbulb, and even ipods. There are still so many things humans have not discovered yet. Someday, there will be time travel, and we will be able to travel to distant galaxies and maybe even other universes! The possibilities are endless! Just because you can't see or do something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist!
Someday, humans will be walking along the Gates of Time. Humans have so much to learn about the universe. Humans haven't even stepped beyond the moon.
Imagine, the huge, expanding universe, with so many civilizations and planets just waiting to be discovered! And humans are just staying on Earth, not even wondering about the other world out there! Humans don't believe something unless they see it with their eyes.
Alien life forms have visited Earth, whether you believe it or not. Just remember you can't always trust the people who run the space program on Earth.
Also remember, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

Originally posted by ashley
Two clocks set at the same time and then seperated, one in space the other on earth, will show different times when checked at a later date.
Gravity affects time. The clock in space has less drag ,it will run more freely.
The only thing i can think of right now about the pole thing is there must be a lot of force or gravity or? changing the clock. You can't really change time,especially by changing a clock.
Oh yeah,regarding the 'universe in a nutshell' time change. That is because as a plane flys with the earth there is less drag than if it was flying against the earths rotation,therefore resulting in a change in the times.
The 35 year difference is interesting though,like world watcher i would like to know if the time change was consistent.

This is VERY WRONG. Go back and get your facts straight. The FASTER you go, the slower time goes. Time and velocity are related, although we don't see the relationship because we need to travel at incredible speeds for a long time to see any difference. Einstein discovered this with his theory of relativity. This is pretty basic stuff now. How old are you? I'm being serious. Read up about it. Don't be so wrong and then write something as if you know what you're talking about.
BTW, the article is a big pile of crap. Governments don't usually put out stuff with GRAMMAR MISTAKES. And it sounds like it's written by some high school kid. B+ for effort though.