Problems with Time Travel

I've been meaning to write sometihng about this for some time, but have never really got round to it!
I can see one major flaw with attempting time travel -
As everything in the universe is moving so fast, nothing is in the same place for any really measurable amount of time.
I.e. the Earth is not in the same relative place in the universe it was 1.2.3. Seconds ago, let alone days/weeks/months or even years!
I don't know what the actual figures are, but the Earth is probably at least 100,000s if not millions or billions of miles from where it was 1 year ago.

So the problem is this - if you made a time machine and transported to 1 year in the past or 1 year in the future to the exact same place in space, then you would materialise in emptiness (or maybe even another star or planet!), an immense distance away from Earth.
I think that making the portal to travel through time would be the very easy part, in comparison to making it also reappear in the equivilent location in space.
You would have to bear in mind the spin of the Earth, it's orbit around the Sun, the Solar systems position within the Galaxy, the Galaxy's position in the Universe, and that's simple and within our current boundaries of knowledge (or rather my primative knowledge!
It doesn't bear in mind any time/space disturbances caused by black holes, or other theoretical anomolies.

Just wondered what everyone else thinks really.

P.S. I don't think this is really good enough to start it's own thread, but have you ever thought about this:

It takes 1.2 seconds for light to reach the moon and 1.2 back - RTT 2.4 seconds.
So..... If you could get a big enough mirror on the moon and a big enough telescope on the Earth, if you walked over to the telescope and looked through it, 2.4 seconds later you would see yourself walk over to the telescope and look through it....
Yeah, I know it's stupid (that's why it doesn't deserve a thread!) but I always think it's pretty neat. It confuses some people I know!
Sound more interesting then bouncing a laser off the moon into your eye or something....

I've been thinking about the exact same thing really.
You would need to have an incredibly vast knowledge in the movements of all of the solar system and galaxy to be able to callculate your exact place in space time to end up where you want to be.

Or, you would have to be able to lock into a specific energy patern of the location you wish to go to and open a gate to that specific point.

Imho technology needs to go way way way waaaaaay forward before any of the capabilities needed for time travel are available.
In theory they might be available and posible, in practice they are far from.

I totally agree, it sounds sort of easy at first, but as soon as you start thinking about all the variables (and that's with no real knowledge or qualification to!) it becomes a nightmare. The computing power alone would have to be immense I would think. Even if it took 1/2 second to make the calculations they would immediatly become redundant.
It's pretty amazing then you try and think about it.
I think it can easily throw things like Titor out the window by itself!

In reltive terms that is right but rember if your on a planet (earth ) and start a time mechine you and the mechine are a Part of earth in so much that everthing on earth is . In other words you are already traveling IN SPACE ship earth so you have the nessers speed and dircetion to travel in time without lousing your place in space.

I've never believed in Time Travel. Time truely is relative. You can slow it down, or speed it up in relation to other things, but you can't just jump out of it and jump back into it sometime else.

Everything we know about the universe indicates that it is pretty much a cause and effect situation, and while it makes for some decent sci-fi, timetravel just doesn't fit into the picture.

Another problem with it I can see is that assuming theories are correct that the amount of energy in the universe stays the same, only being converted but not destroyed, is that is you left one time you would effectively be removing energy from the universe.
If you went forward, you could say that the energy never really leaves I suppose and is just converted and time perception changed or something. However if you went back, the universe at the time you went back would have too much energy. Do you see what I mean?

And if you did manage to land back on earth in a different time you run the risk of creating far too many pardox's as your existing outside of your own time.

Not to mention the effect your actions will cause, this could lead to similar paralel words being formed with these new changes accounted for.

You may not even be able to return to your own time as you may end up either in the future of the world ur in now or in one of the paralel worlds you have created by your actions.

Confused, i no i am?
any thoughts???

I have wondered if time even is a dimension, even if it does have a direction, which it apparently does.

If you imagine to be a 2D object capable of conscious thought and thinking, and know that there is a 3D universe in where there is an infinite depth (infinite space) in that dimension.. Well, how could it be possible for you to find that direction if you want to go there? You can't sense it, you can't imagine it but yet there it is.

In 3D world, ours, there in my opinion is a fourth dimension just to allow infinity. Time is one, but if we think definition of time to be cause and effect there really is no going into any other direction, but one. It also means that there is no infinity. We could image there to be some other dimension while definition of time remains the same, although it wouldn't be space anymore.

If you take surface of a ball, and use some math to calculate shortest distance on 2D surface, path is not a straigth line IF and only if you observe 2D surface in 3D.

Because of that, to go into a dimension freely, all directions allowed, you must not try to find some straigth path. Instead, you should be running in a park in zig-zags, cosinis, tangets, sins and whatever, hopefully finally figuring out a pattern to walk into 4th dimension.

But nevermind...

reply to post by AgentSmith


Interesting but this can easily be (sorry for my lack of better words, i'm dutch) explained by the following theory:

When you travel in time, in the same universe that is (not an alternate one), you convert your matter to energy in the present time and convert energy from the past into matter (your body and atttributes that are now in the past). That way, the amount of energy stays the same.

reply to post by rawsom


I really dont think that your approach on dimensions applies to time travel. Travel in between dimensions is a whole other subject. Time is not to be considered a dimension that is beyond our understanding. The whole 2D/3D issue is a little farfetched.

if time can be traveled could'nt it also be paused leaving one to freely move forward an backwards and restart it at any desired point ?

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


I know what your getting at but actually no. Most Time travel theories have to do with worm holes which will take you directly to a point in time. You cant pause or rewind it like a movie..

hmmm interesting question...

Can time be manipulated. It stands to reason to think space can be but can time?

There are two possibilities to help explain time travel and location.

1. By using a device - You can only travel to a time in which you exist; you are the anchor, you are tethered to yourself. As such, you can never escape yourself.

2. By using mental projection - When traveling time, there must be a clear and concise target that needs to be used as your focal point. Without having a destination in mind, you will become lost.

Now, both of these points, as well as all the points brought up in this thread, can be completely ignored.

Why?

You are treating space and time as two separate entities. They aren't separated. Everything exists in 4 dimensions. You cannot take one away and still expect that object to exists.

Example: XYZ cordinates PLUS time... "Meet me at the corner of Fifth and Elm, three stories up, at 7 o clock". I will not exist in that location until all the requirements are met.

Another more tangible example would be black holes. Here we have an object that is solid and real enough, that can distort time. It warps the fabric of spacetime around itself.

How does this affect time travel?

When you are traveling through time, you are not traveling through space. Physically, you are still where you were. You are not traveling through X Y Z. Everything involved depends on your perspective of things... you are physically grounded to that one spot. The only thing that is "moving" is your perception.

Yay time travel...there is so much stuff on this site that references it, so little time, so many posts....
I don't imagane it to be impossible, but as has been pointed out, it will require being VERY careful, and since were dumb and greedy, inevetibaly the machinery will be missused, and that is the end of this world as we know it. The multiverse seems to hard to make happen, I used to love watching "Sliders", but there is only so much dark energy and dark matter in this unervise, its very hard to comprehend an infinity of possibilities being played out over an almost infinate about of time. NOT THAT ITS IMPOSSIBLE....I'm just not well endowed enough mentally to comprehend it. Paradox indicates that when it becomes possible, the end of everything we know will come quite quickly after that. (that is in the respect that you cannot travel farther backwards then the creation of the machine that made it possible) alternate to that, if time travel before the creation of the machine were possible, then everything that will be changed, has been changed and we live as a result of those changes....not likely, either there are an infinate alternate realites or timetravel before the creating of the machine is improbable.
So I don't get stuck in a loop here...NO! time travel bad! It hasn't happened, if when it does, then our universe will explode! 1. Because of all the energy used 2.Because if there was not a mutlivers, then one will try to be made, and then another, and then another, the past happened...it won't be changed in this universe....and multivers's are silly!!!!!!!!!!!

Cool though. The determination of an exact space would be hard as hell. The planets, sun, galaxy, oh geez, all rotate. A certain universal spacial grid would have to figured out to define an exact spot in the universe(think GPS) but figuring it out would be, good God, near impossible! Unless there is a central, never moving, ever, point in the universe in which one could figure out the distance to and thus determine a location. But where is that point in the expanse? Heaven? Hell?

Since earth is your reference point it's not that big of a problem. You won't find yourself in space or anything, but the ground might be a bit higher or lower in places.

As long as you stick to relativity, it's theoretically possible, but massively problematical. (That's a word play, if anyone noticed)
If you go beyond 4 dimensions, as many are now with the advent of string theory, time travel, as well as galactic space travel becomes not only possible, but highly probable.
With the discovery of quantum entanglement----effecting a change in "particle A" has an concurrent and simultaneous opposite effect in "particle B"---and photonic teleportation ----transferring a photon from "point A" to "point B" without occupying the space between, I postulate we are just beginning to formulate the properties of another physical dimension.
A dimension we probably will never be able to visualize with our 4 dimension minds, but only infer by observed effects to our viewpoint.
Call it "Subfloor" or "Framework" or whatever scientific nomenclature you wish, but I visualize it as the old name "Ether".
Not some gaseous form that pervades all empty space, but a property that pervades all space and time, in all 4 dimensions, but is outside and unaffected by most of the properties of the dimensions overlaying it.
I think about it as being the same in all space and all time, a single entity or property that is everywhere, and everywhen constantly and concurrently.
We are just beginning to fiddle with methods that can access this property of the universe.


I wish I would have taken some upper physics courses.