Time Travel is Impossible. Fact. Or is it? Speculation. [TJWC]

I used to think time travel was impossible.

I did a lot of reading, researching, and came to the conclusion after collecting many items that may serve as flux capacitors, that lineal time travel is impossible. There is no way with our current technology to build a time machine. It is a product of the future. Maybe. Not likely.

However.

I've had two encounters from my future self that tells me it is real.

That is the basis for this story:

Back in the 90's, when digital was the new thing, we had an answering machine we bought for about twenty USD. It had voice-mail built-in, but with a thirty second limit per massage, and a three by five LCD display. Physical buttons still occupied the displays. It was new, woo-hoo, and we had one.

I worked nine to five back then, and when I got home from work I would listen to the messages.

One day, no different from the rest, I heard a disturbing message on my answering machine. I re-played it. Again. And again.

It was a voice I didn't recognize until the thirtieth or so re-play. It was my own.

I was puzzled. The message was in my own voice, but very cryptic.

To this day, I can remember it verbatim. It said:

"/my real name/, this is Noah. I want you to start building an ark this Saturday. /pause/ I'll be in touch. /click/"

My wife at the time got home from work, and I had her listen to the mysterious message. We hit "replay" fifteen or more times, and she agreed it was my voice on the recorder.

I knew I hadn't yet made any such recording. I had physical evidence that could be analyzed for voice patterns. It WOULD be my voice, and phone records would show where the call was placed from. I had proof of where I was at at the time, and when the call was proven to be from a payphone seven blocks away, the scientific community called fraud. Facts don't lie.

Sometime in the future I travel backwards in time to give myself a cryptic message. I'm still contemplating what it means, twenty years later. I travel back, and place a phone call seven blocks away from where I was living at the time. Voice patterns matched explicitly, but no trace of who placed the call.

The second episode I can relate to concerning the speculative nature of time travel is, one night, years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, and sat up abruptly. The door to the master bathroom was ajar, and there was a figure silhouetted in the dim light between my bedroom and the bathroom. It was me.

I saw myself watching me sleep. My future self was startled, and jumped back a bit. I looked myself in the eye, and for a fleeting moment, I knew that "time travel" was somehow possible, and the other nodded. As I watched, he reached down to his left wrist, and twisted a dial, and future me "faded" away into the shadows.

I've often thought what you'd do if you had infinity in the palm of your hand. Or on your left wrist per this example.

Would you go back to watch yourself, and give yourself a clue? Direct violation of causality would spawn a new multi-verse, forever trapping you from your purpose. How could you help your past self in the future?

You'd have to be VERY careful.

I was going to start this exact thread and here you are before you even wrote it. Its happening




Time travel is possible right now. The only downfall is that you cannot do it 'physically' the upside is that you already do it often and dont even know it.


You can time travel to the past quite easily through your memories. When you think of a memory from your past you are actually connecting to the YOU of the past. With much practice you can relive these memories in real-time. The problem is that when you do travel like this you instantly lose knowledge that you have traveled and will fail to alter the outcome of your past but you can become your inner voice to yourself.

When you time travel you cannot bring your current time locked body. When you travel, it is not really travel at all but a quantum connection you have through the dimensions.

There is an old version right now talking to you about what you should of done differently. Remember, this is you. Listen to you. You have been there. Another way to change the past is to talk to your past self. You will then learn that the voice in your head in the present is you in 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 weeks etc. talking to yourself from different dimensions.

If you pay attention you can feel your future self connecting with you, seeing through your eyes as you are creating the memory that your future self is accessing.

If you do 'time travel' to the past and manage to retain a small memory of previous time the thought would fade away much like how you forget dreams minutes after waking up.

Just know that you are also living in the fifth dimension. We only see the 3d slice

Originally posted by Shadow Herder
I was going to start this exact thread and here you are before you even wrote it. Its happening

edit on 1-2-2012 by Shadow Herder because: (no reason given)

You manifested it before it was created.....

Best accidental Irony ive seen on a message board

But tbh you are pushing the phrase 'short story' a bit far

reply to post by Druid42


You might want to add some commentary, otherwise the thread will fail.

Time travel is not impossible, just improbable, but there are limiting paradoxes and physical laws. Assuming you have a time machine and a method of viewing past events, the only restrictions I see are as follows (and I could be wrong);

1. Due to the paradox and the conservation of energy, you cannot travel from the future to the past or the present to the past. In both cases, mass/energy is transposed from one time to another changing the energy dynamic of a specific time to either a positive or negative value, not loss or net gain. Since the universe has a finite energy value, a change would violate the conservation of energy and/or conservation of mass laws. There's also that nasty. "if you inadvertently did something stupid like accidentally kill your great great grandmother" problem as well.

2. You can view the past, but not the future, again, due to the paradox and conservation of energy. Just because you view the past doesn't change the past or the net energy constant. However, if you view the future and say get the winning lottery number, buy a ticket and win, then the future changes, which means you should not have been able to get the winning lottery number in the first place. Actually, simply buying the ticket and using the new number could change the entire dynamic.

NET result, you can view the past and travel to the future.

Anyway, that's what I think....

Cheers - Dave

reply to post by bobs_uruncle

I've made this mistake twice before so I will just politely ask:
You do see which forum this is posted in, right?

must be one of this split twin universes with such a silent message

reply to post by Shadow Herder


After I posted that second post on this thread, I went to stumbleon and the first page that came up was this TED- STRING THEORY EXPLAINED

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


'___', Shhhh. Let me collect my flags. This is tough business, writing and all.

Flag collecting is even tougher.

However, mate, I do love you. Not in the wierd homo way, but how you are just, honest, and a shining example of how every ATS member should be.

Now let me whore around. /chuckle/

reply to post by Druid42

Sorry dude, its just I made that very mistake in a mod's thread and was trying to save people embarrassment that I experienced. I did it in a mods thread, doubly embarrassing!

I was like:

"OMG Is this for real???"

Mod replied "look at the forum..."
I facepalmed badly!

Feelings of brotherly love are more than reciprocated here. Good luck with the story!
ETA At least I think it's a story! Some of these (like my facepalm example) could go either way. I've seen a lotta movies and some of these storylines are in those, vaguely, but slightly different.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
reply to post by bobs_uruncle

 

I've made this mistake twice before so I will just politely ask:
You do see which forum this is posted in, right?

Yes, I do, short stories, but in any event shouldn't art tend to somewhat follow the lines of reality? It appears that in many science fiction type stories, when science fact is intermingled with stretches of the imagination it tends to be more cohesive and believable. As an example, even though I like Stargate, the movie and some of the series because of the idea of constrained exotic matter used to produce wormholes, they still did not make the wormhole in the correct configuration. It's representation should be at least a sphere. Of course that water looking mediation layer wouldn't play as nicely on the screen as it does as a flat disc, so I guess they dropped the probable realities of physics for effects. Whatever sells I suppose...

Btw, I noticed the OP is now filled with information. It wasn't that way before, good to see ;-) I am going to go back now and read the OP.

Cheers - Dave

WHAT A STUPID, OUT-OF-DATE THREAD!

The University of Connecticut has already designed a time machine AND another research lab (can't remember the name) has ALREADY ACHIEVED PHYSICAL TIME TRAVEL- A photon was fired down a ring laser and they managed to get it to arrivee 1/1000000th of a second BEFORE it was sent.

Given only a short period of time in the future, maybe just months, more substantial wil be possible.

So, "is it possible?" is a dumb-ass question because it HAS already been done.

reply to post by Druid42

This is tough business, writing and all.

Flag it and like it.

reply to post by ballisticmousse


Excuse this moderator note please, but the OP is an entry into a short story writing contest and not to be taken literally (pun intended).

reply to post by diamondsmith


Why thank you maam!

Much appreciated.....I'll be sure to return the favor soon....

reply to post by bobs_uruncle

Personally, I think art is and should be free to do whatever it chooses. I have no access to cheap English books anymore but I was a fan of sci-fi, fantasy and then some Ray Bradbury and similar dystopian future describers.

I'm not much into art proper but Dali and Escher would probably be my favourite two and they didn't seem to follow nature much, or rather, they twisted it around a little. As you can see I'm no expert on either subject and don't seem to have found too much I've liked so far in life but I have this thing with museums, I hate them.

As for the newer sci-fi TV stuff, I can't comment as I have no TV. I tend to watch movies as it's easier for me. If you want what appears to be a B movie but turns into a shining star and does contain the science they knew at the time, try Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964). An oldie but a goodie.

Some realism is a good thing too but sometimes it is a form of escapism I think. I don't concern myself with technicalities too much though and concentrate more on the story and what it is trying to tell us. There is so much we don't know that I would like to think the future holds the opening of many secrets to us. Technological, spiritual and....other things.

reply to post by Druid42

I liked it, especially the glee at being the proud owner of a new-fangled answering machine. That was also the time a lot of people discovered they didn't like talking to a machine and usually it would just record a click from being hung up.

I like the wrist watch detail. I think if such a thing were ever to be made it should be the brand name Timex. Good luck!

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver

I would have to agree with you, in most cases and some of the B movies are actually pretty damn good even if they are considered by the critics as sub-standard. Of course some stretch the limits but I guess it's all in good fun anyway. I like Ray Bradbury as well but I tend to lean more towards Isaac Asimov, especially multiple book series like Foundation that trace the space-time path of the psycho-historians, who manipulate the future using complex algorithms to control large population groups. Oh wait, isn't the CIA and ESF doing that right now? Or Frank Herbert's Dune series which mixes a number of religious ideologies into one rather large and possible credible "pot" potential probable future fantasy. Those pesky Fremen seem to be always stirring up some new Jihad to piss of the Spacing Guild and the Harkonnen. I like a lot of meat and a lot of bread and butter in my reading, so character definition is important but it can be both done and underdone. Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov both tend to do an excellent job in that area. Two other short stories actually by Asimov that are worth reading are Nightfall and the other, The Last Question. Happy hunting ;-)

Cheers - Dave

reply to post by bobs_uruncle


I'll trade a flag from you for the newest entry of mine. How can you resist?

Heck, flag both. Or not. Your choice.

reply to post by Druid42


I gave ya some S&F, call it an advance ;-) I've written as well, about 500 technical manuals, analytical papers, articles, patent papers, etc. and one rather long expose on military and government corruption (published 2006) from a first person, involved perspective. It's labeled as fiction, simply to avoid legal issues, but it is an autobiography that I wrote simply because writing it was cathartic (I had PTSD bad after I returned from Africa and it peaked in 2000). One must excise their own daemons, no one else can do that for you ;-)

It's important to do the writing for yourself as unencumbered expression. I kind of did that, but I also expected to be called into The Hague as a witness to war crimes and other nasty events, so good to have a written history plus some hard evidence eh? However, since the media has elevated usable idiots and terrorists to hero status (in reality that is actually a world-view inversion), I don't expect much to come from my work which is just fine.

I tend to be on the politically incorrect side of life and promoters like O'pariah would never push this book as it runs contrary to her false idolatry. I was initially involved in the production research of an Aircraft Investigation/Mayday episode concerning one of the events in the book, however I dropped out when they didn't want to tell the whole truth, you know, the parts that could have toppled governments and/or caused considerable embarrassment for politicians, weapons dealers and international bankers. Oh, I failed to mention an important piece of history, my government considers me a mercenary because of my past positions in foreign military weapon R&D and deployment. Such is life, I should say hi to Jim F. at CSIS about now ;-)

Regardless, passion, regret and/or guilt, three good reasons to write.

Cheers - Dave

reply to post by bobs_uruncle

Asimov. Thank you. You just named my favourite sci-fi author. He was an intelligent and imaginative scientific man whose books I can never read enough of. Lucky Starr, robots, alien worlds, short stories, humour to the point of ridiculousness and a cerebrality that I can never attain.

Meat and potatoes, bread and butter.

To disagree slightly with you, any Asimov short story was a gem. A Little Lost Robot and Robot Dreams just ripped me a new one. Wit and intelligence wins every time with me. I like to be slam-dunked with stories.

Cheers Dave!