It is quite possible that it might not be that hard to build a time machine after all.Remember the phelidelpha experiment.That was not really a very advanced experiment for its time.Its just that they thought they were trying to develope a stealth field to hide from radar but instead created something totaly different.Some people believe the phelidelpha experiment was just one big electromagnet that got out of control.So was that,that easy to create.I beleive the phelidelpha experiment was so powerful it connected to a space time vortex and became more powerful.Sometimes some powerful things can be turned on ok but turning them off might be a bit harder than you think.The americans second time at creating a time machine ended in disater again.Instead of opening a time space vortex they accidently opened a gateway to another dimention.Once they connected to this dimention they could not turn off the device.Evil creatures started coming though the dimention vortex and all the americans could do is block the entrence from this end with steel sheets and cement.That vortex has been open for years.Lets hope thoses evil creatures don;t find away to dig them selfs out into our world.Amasing as it seems,there was a tv show on in the 1960;s called the time tunnel.By coincedence the american device is a tunnel device too.Is there somekind of connection there.Some offshoot ideas about the time experiments even turned up on the tv show stargate.

[edit on 9-8-2009 by GORGANTHIUM]

[edit on 9-8-2009 by GORGANTHIUM]

Originally posted by tauristercus

I like that comment of yours ... "what is the harm in contemplating the deeper and more complex areas of the theories" ... myself, I'm just happy to try and get a handle on what little I can comprehend on the weirdness of single time line travel

I don't blame you a bit either. with as complex as the theory of relativity and string theory and M theory all are, I may just find myself doing the same thing soon enough

Anyway, I am off too bed for now. It is late here. Thanks for the great discussion.I have a lot of respect for the person who can discuss such a subject so well in such an intelligent and civil manner. I cannot wait to see what has come of this thread after I wake up!

[edit on 9-8-2009 by gimme_some_truth]

Originally posted by GORGANTHIUM
It is quite possible that it might not be that hard to build a time machine after all.Remember the phelidelpha experiment.That was not really a very advanced experiment for its time.Its just that they thought they were trying to develope a stealth field to hide from radar but instead created something totaly different.Some people believe the phelidelpha experiment was just one big electromagnet that got out of control.So was that,that easy to create.I beleive the phelidelpha experiment was so powerful it connected to a space time vortex and became more powerful.Sometimes some powerful things can be turned on ok but turning them off might be a bit harder than you think.The americans second time at creating a time machine ended in disater again.Instead of opening a time space vortex they accidently opened a gateway to another dimention.Once they connected to this dimention they could not turn off the device.Evil creatures started coming though the dimention vortex and all the americans could do is block the entrence from this end with steel sheets and cement.That vortex has been open for years.Lets hope thoses evil creatures don;t find away to dig them selfs out into our world.

[edit on 9-8-2009 by GORGANTHIUM]

You know it is interesting that you mention electro magnetism. I was look at a website earlier today that talked about research being done into electro magnetism and creating man made worm holes.

I will have to go find that again in the morning.

And yet another "mystery" of time travel to ponder upon ... again, I'm sorry but it's restricted to single time line travel only.

Earlier I used a humourous and tongue in cheek example of getting rich by time travelling and that just brought up yet another "brain strainer" question.

I suggested in that example that starting of with just a single gold bar, that you end up with the original bar plus 5 more by appropriate use of time travel.
It was only afterwards that it occured to me that that surely must be a violation of the conservation of mass ... 1 bar --> 6 bars.

But what if the law of conservation of mass/energy hasn't been properly defined and in fact should be ammended that mass/energy is conserved "ALONG THE ENTIRE SINGLE TIME LINE" ?

In other words, it doesn't matter if you have the same gold bar sitting in a safe Monday thru Saturday ... or whether you use a time machine to visit each of those days and remove the gold bar from the safe, ending up with 6 gold bars. If we assume that it matters not at all whether the mass is dispersed across those 6 days OR whether the mass is collected ... mass has not appeared from nowhere (so to speak) if mass conservation is EXTENDED across the entire timeline.

How many thousands of years would take the acceleration (in the case of traveling into future by going near speed of light)? If it would be too fast, your brains would become a jelly.

[edit on 9-8-2009 by FIFIGI]

Originally posted by FIFIGI
How many thousands of years would take the acceleration (in the case of traveling into future by going near speed of light)? If it would be too fast, your brains would become a jelly.

Surprisingly enough, not as long or as dangerous as you would imagine.
I remember reading somewhere that if you could get a spaceship that was capable of CONTINUOUS acceleration of ONLY 1G, that you would quite quickly (over a time period of months), manage to come very close to the speed of light.

In fact, there was an excellent sci/fi book called "Tau Zero" written by Poul Anderson that covers very well time dilation when approaching light speed.
if you get a chance and can find a copy, you will thoroughly enjoy it ... not to mention learn some interesting relativity physics !

Tau Zero follows the crew of the starship Leonora Christine, a colonization vessel crewed by 25 men and 25 women aiming to reach a distant star system. The ship is powered by a Bussard ramjet, which was proposed shortly before Anderson wrote the book. This engine is not capable of faster-than-light travel, and so the voyage is subject to relativity and time dilation: the crew will spend 5 years on board, but 33 years will pass on the Earth before they arrive at their destination. The ship accelerates during the first half and decelerates during the second. However, it collides with a nebula before the half-way point, damaging the deceleration module. Since the engines must be kept running to provide particle/radiation shielding, and because of the hard radiation produced by the engines, the crew can neither repair the decelerator nor turn off the accelerator.

The text consists of narrative prose interspersed with paragraphs in which Anderson explains the scientific basis of relativity, time dilation, the ship's mechanics and details of the cosmos outside. The novel's title is derived from the value of the time contraction factor Tau (τ), where and v is the velocity as a fraction of the speed of light. At a given velocity, the duration that is experienced on the non-accelerating Earth may be multiplied by tau to yield the duration experienced on board the ship. Therefore, as Anderson writes, "the closer that [the ship's velocity] comes to [the speed of light], the closer tau comes to zero", and the longer the time that passes outside the ship for a duration inside. The ship in the story intended to attain a tau of 0.015, but as they continue to accelerate beyond the original schedule, it decreases.

As there is no hope of completing the original mission, the crew increase acceleration even more in order to leave the Milky Way and allow themselves to repair the decelerator. The ship's ever-increasing velocity brings the time dilation to extreme levels and takes the crew further and further away from any possibility of contact with humanity. The initial plan is to locate and land on a suitable planet in another galaxy. Hundreds of millennia would have passed since their departure, and in any case they would be millions of light years from Earth. However, they find that the vacuum of space insufficient to make repairs, and must continue accelerating indefinitely, approaching the speed of light and decreasing closer and closer to zero.

I won't spoil the ending of the book !!

@OP,

So if you slow yourself down a lot relative to the rotating universe, you travel backwards in time too?

Maybe that's what happens in spontaneous combustions when they can't take the heat.

I guess Superman was right...

Amazing how ideas just seem to come out of nowhere when you get stuck into the possibilities of time travel !

I'm still certain nature forbids it (time travel, that is) but just in case I'm wrong ....

A couple of posts back I conjectured that maybe the laws of conservation of mass & energy may not have been completely defined and that we may have been unintentionally using a "cut down" version without realising it.

I basically wondered if mass/energy conservation should be modified from approximately the following:

"Within a closed system, that the total mass/energy content of the system cannot be created/destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space"

to a slightly modified form as follows:

"Within a closed system, that the total mass/energy of the system cannot be created/destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space and time"

Is there any reason why this "slight modification" couldn't be valid as the underlying law that we're familiar with and were taught in science class would simply become a "subset" of the "modified" version but still be perfectly valid and useable?


So if we cntinue following the line of reasoning here and assume (for the sake of argument) the modified version is valid, that would immediately imply that it would be prohibited to cross over into, or change time lines, as it would violate the above modified conservation law.
Simply by leaving one time line and entering another (whether in the past or future), that you would be causing a DECREASE in the TOTAL mass/energy of the line you're leaving ... and a corresponding INCREASE in the TOTAL mass/energy in the line you're entering.

Hahahaha ... just occured to me that I MAY have just created the 1st EVER law relating to time travel !!!

JUST JOKING !!!!!

Nicely written post. I haven't read all the replies, but it's nice to see so many have commented because it shows (well, one: you've written a good post) that many people have an interest in the oddities of scientific theory.

I'll add this:
Many people use the argument that there are no time travelers from the future among us as evidence that time travelling into the past cannot be achieved. However, it could just as easily be an indication that our civilisation simply doesn't last long enough to develop the means.
Chilling thought, isn't it...

Nice. This stuff is pretty interesting I've never quite looked into time travel theories or whatever til now, now I think I found a new interest!

Anyways thanks again for posting!

Peace

Originally posted by jeasahtheseer
Nice. This stuff is pretty interesting I've never quite looked into time travel theories or whatever til now, now I think I found a new interest!

Anyways thanks again for posting!

Peace

You're welcome .. time travel certainly gets you thinking, if nothing else !

You dont need to reach the speed of light to time travel.

One way it is possible to time travel is to get in a space craft with a lot of fule and fly close to a black hole. Not over the event horizon but as close as possible and then just sit there using up rocket fuel thrusting against the weak pull. Because of the way the massive gravity field created by a black hole slows down time the closer you get to it when you finally decide to fly away back to where you came from you will have moved forwards in time 100's or 1000's of years.


[edit on 9-8-2009 by VitalOverdose]

Originally posted by gimme_some_truth
Time Travel 101
By Scott Lenig
2009-08-08


But is there a way to get back? The short answer is yes. But what is that way? In 1937 a man named W.J van Stockum published a paper in the Scottish scientific journal. Van Stockum used Einstein’s work to figure out what would happen if an object went into orbit around a rotating cylinder. What he learned was that if this cylinder spun fast enough the object could return to the time before it even left. What this means is that a closed loop in space is also a closed loop in time.

When I first heard about this I wondered why no one really knew much about it. It seems like such a revolutionary discovery. Then I realized the flaw in Van Stockums logic. In order for his idea to work, this cylinder would have to be infinitely long.
[edit on 8-8-2009 by gimme_some_truth]

Not a bad idea.
Only thing we have to do is build a workspace where the proposed conditions are met to test the theory with the infinite cylinder and the orbiting object around it and find a way to measure the signs of time dilation.
Also a safe way to reproduce this event every time.

Apart from the theoretical problems we have to solve to accumulate data for time dilation in this way presented above having to experiment with the above paradigm, we are also presented with mechanical problems. How can we create an infinite cylinder?

One solution is to "fool" an area of a non infinite cylinder to behave like it "believes" that is infinite. Also doing the same with the area of the surrounding environment to behave like it "believes" it contains the part of an infinite cylinder inside it.

Originally posted by gimme_some_truth
About 10 years later however, another person found a much more realistic way of traveling into the past. An Austrian logician named Kurt Godel. Godel learned that if the entire universe were rotating, it should be possible to find orbits in space that actually spiral back into the past.

All though his work in this area was meant more as a simple curiosity than a serious look into the matter, his work slowly led scientists to look into something that was coined “Einstein-Rosen Bridges”, better known today as wormholes.

Worm holes open up the possibility of traveling anywhere (or when) in the universe by shortening the distance between point A and point B rather than shortening the amount of time it takes to get there. This works because to open a wormhole is to fold the universe in on itself.

Think of it this way. Imagine the universe as a piece of paper. On one end of the paper is a dot. That dot is earth. On the other end is a planet that we are interested in exploring. Well this planet is millions of light years away so by conventional means going there is out of the question. Fold that piece of paper in half so that one planet is right above or below the other and you have just shortened the distance between the two by a great amount and therefore have made it possible to go there.

Opening a wormhole loops the universe on itself there by shortening the distance between two objects and just as Van Stockum wrote, a loop in space is also a loop in time. To loop time is to be able to go to any time you wish.

What this all means is that with the help of rapid movement and high speed your friend can travel into the future, and with the help of a wormhole your friend can also go into the past.

As you see, scientists have known how to travel through time for many years. The only thing that has kept us from doing so is a lack of technology. The question is will we ever gain this technology and if so how will it affect the universe and our daily lives? Only time will tell.


[edit on 8-8-2009 by gimme_some_truth]

Then take all the mathematics we have discovered and try to identify similar signatures in the physical environment (in our case space/deep space) First we have to develop a technology that can do this for us.

But before all that have a chance to actually begin to happen we have to actually think and agree that time dilation can be possible and is of a good use to us.

Before that we must acquire the means and the will that we can actually pursue technological solutions that can yield practical results from such an undertaking. E.g Move living organisms from point A then through "folded space" to point B safely every time and with little effort and resources.

Before we can do all of this, we have to think about finding a way to effectively cover large distances preferably in deep space and that this is a valid avenue of pursuit for our survival as a species.

None of the above criteria have been met currently.

Time travel back and forth is something that can be achieved at the time span of at least 5 decades, regarding research.

We are just not there mentally and there lays the biggest problem.

[edit on 9-8-2009 by spacebot]

The technical solution is creating environments that can simulate our research.
The mental solution is that we can believe that it is useful.
The PTB would not believe it is useful for such knowledge and technology to be available to the masses.
The masses currently have a short attention span and do not believe in practical thinking to creatively solve their problems.

We would need an earth shattering event for our paradigms, thoughts and ideas, ours society in general to change in order for us to move towards the initial goals we should be aiming for as a species in order for us to achieve a meaningful existence, at least in technological terms. To colonize the Universe.

[edit on 9-8-2009 by spacebot]