Time travel is impossible, but can you prove me wrong?

Question

I am interested on what answers I will get. Here are a few ground rules:

1.NO breaking the laws of physics, this includes inventions that can break these laws.
2.NO superpowers, this is closely linked to the first rule.
3.NO insults to other answerers, there is no such thing as a dumb answer here!
4.NO flux capacitors and food-processor fusion reactors (you will understand if you watch "Back to the Future) or any other type of sci-fi technology unless it has a logical explanation.
5.Be creative as you can! Just make sure that you don't conflict with any of the rules or laws of physics.
6.You can side with me too if you want, and prove that it is impossible.
7.Bounus:
If you can imagine a LOGICAL invention, and explain how it works, you may get a bonus.

I will update this later with more bonus opportunities, etc. Have fun!

Well yes, some things were deemed impossible, but they came true, because they were logical. What if we go back in time and alter something that caused time travel to be erased, taking years more to be developed? Future generations may continue on this cycle and since time travel would be erased, we couldn't set regulations on time travel. And don't give me that "you are joining a sad line of nay-sayers" crap either please. I just think that some things, yes were deemed impossible, some of them were possible, others have still been impossible. It's hard to explain what I'm thinking. I'm sure all of you have had one occasion such as this. Thanks for all your answers!

Answer 1

I posted this months ago elsewhere.

The Illusion of Time Travel

Section 1: General Relativity

In the years 1911-1915, Albert Einstein developed general relativity, which all theories of time travel ultimately revolve around. General relativity is a theory which states that matter bends "spacetime", and alters the path of free particles (including the path of light).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Hypercube.png
As seen in this illustration, according to the theory of relativity, this 'spacetime' extends from the three dimensions of the cube into a fourth dimension: Time. Motion of the cube would bend the extra dimension, and therefore alter time. Let us compare time to sound:

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/8760/plane14vx.png
The red dot represents a jet, and the black circle represents the sound waves emitted. As you can see, the jet isn't perfectly situated in the center, as it slightly outruns the waves....

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2757/plane27db.png
...but when it reaches supersonic (faster than sound) speeds, it outruns and bends the waves into a funnel. What if this is possible with time?

Section 2: Time dilation

As an object accelerates, three things happen:

The object shrinks in the direction that it is moving (if it was moving vertically, it would shrink vertically).

The object's mass increases.It's relative time slows down (the most crucial part for time travel).

Of course, none of these effects are noticable at low speeds.... but are very noticable at speeds near the speed of light
(299,792,458 meters per second, referred to as c). Because of this, it is impossible for anything to exceed c, since the object
would have a length smaller than zero, and mass greater than infinity.

Note that the relative time of the object is slowed. At the speed of light, days would pass in seconds (relatively), and a clock would tick extremely slowly. To a person holding the clock, it would seem accurate due to time dilation.

If a twin was to fly to an alien drug store, buy a soda, and fly back at the speed of light, it may seem like a few days (or minutes). But, when he returned, he would realise that his twin brother was much older, while he barely aged. It would seem that he travelled to the future.... a one-way trip.

Conclusion

The illusion of forward time travel is entirely possible, but whether backward travel can be done is yet to be seen.

Answer 2

Current technology cannot prove time travel one way or the other and no theory proves anything at all.

We are however, travelling in time just by existing. There should be no reason to argue that point. We continually travel towards the future. You toss a pebble in the past and it lands in the pond in the future. In that sense 'time travel' has been proven possible, but it has never yet been proven in any other context except for the time dilation effect of relativity - but that's not exactly time travel.

The belief that time travel is possible or not depends entirely on the characteristics of the theory you formulate to get around the logical barriers involved. For this reason, some theories say you can travel in time and others say you cannot.

Mathematical possibility has no mandatory relationship to physical possibility. Mathematics never has, never will, and cannot prove any physical theory whatsoever. It is not a perfect predictor of physical reality and never will be.

Mathematics has often predicted physical realities that subsequent experiments have proven quite wrong when put to the test.

Mathematical proof is NOT equivalent to physical proof, since mathematical reality and mathematical fantasy are composed of exactly the same stuff and there is no dividing line between them. This necessitates scientific experiments to answer the question and our technology is simply not yet sufficiently advanced to resolve the problem.

At this time, nobody can disprove you except in theoretical terms and that would prove nothing at all, since numerous conflicting theories exist and none can prove their case any better than another due to lack of supportive physical evidence in all cases.

By the same rationale, you cannot prove your belief either except in the forward context which as already been proven.

You seem to have already decided that it's impossible. That is not a proper scientific position to take in light of the current uncertainties. You should be ashamed of yourself!

A scientist should not assume anything to be true or false by default. He must only go in the direction the evidence leads and simply accept whatever he discovers. If you are not a scientist, I cannot rightly expect you to meet the same standards as the professionals, but the point should still be made and is no less valid.

Thus, it's a logical stalemate at this time on both sides of the question.

Perhaps one day we will know, but don't hold your breath.

Answer 3

Well, according to Einstein's General Law of Relativity, time travel is possible. As a mass accelerates to a velocity near the speed of light, its time-frame is distorted from that of other objects in the universe. For example, if you took a trip to the nearest star in a space ship that could travel 99% the speed of light using extremely large nuclear fission reactors and ion propulsion (a proven technology, look it up), and then returned to earth immediately thereafter, only about 9 years of time would pass for you, but everyone you knew on Earth would be long dead. Time distortions are possible (which is why Star Trek and Star Wars are nice to dream about, but not very realistic) and are unavoidable at extremely high speeds. This concept was proven a few years ago when two of the most precise clocks on the planet - cesium based atomic clocks, were synchronized... one set of clocks was then loaded onto an airplane and flown around the earth at a very high speed for many days on commercial airline flights. The other set of clocks was left stationary on the earth. When the plane landed, the clocks on the plane, which had previously been set to precisely the same time as those on the earth, were a few nanoseconds behind those that hadn't taken the flight. This wasn't due to a flaw in the clock's design every identical clock on the plane was still synchronized with one another and every identical clock on Earth was still synchronized with each other - it was the ones aboard the plane that were ALL just a few nanoseconds behind those on earth. So while time travel may not be possible on a "grand" scale as in the movies, it is possible, as proven by the experiment I've described. If you could travel fast enough, you could travel into the future, popping out at a time hundreds or thousands of years from now. Time travel in reverse is another story...

Answer 4

One plausible idea for time travel is to find a large stable wormhole and some how move one end of the wormhole close to a massive object, like a black whole, and wait. For the end of the worm whole close to the massive object time will progress more slowly then the other thus going through the other end will allow someone to travel back in time.

There are several problems with this idea. First, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever found a worm hole. Now some theories of physics predict their existence but it has never been proven. Secondly, the laws that do predict wormholes predict them to be microscopic. But if they do exist, then there could be a way to enlarge them. Then comes the problem of how do you move a wormhole??? Finally if we can overcome the first three problems we still will never be able to travel back to a time before the wormhole was discovered.

Answer 5

This is posted more to support the answer provided by ME which LASCAP1978 said was wrong --

"In 1971, a team of scientists who were experts in the use of atomic clocks set out to detect and measure time dilation and other relativistic effects. The research team was able to devise a cheap and effective plan, which received some support from the Office of Naval Research. We are told that the researchers purchased three around-the-world tickets on regularly scheduled commercial airliners-two tickets for the accompanying scientists and one for an array of four atomic clocks. The clock array had its own seat; it sat, belted in for safety, between its two caretakers. Before leaving on the trip, the clocks were synchronized with a master clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory. The four clocks then went around the world, following which they were compared again with their counterpart, which had stayed behind at the Naval Observatory. After correcting for the rotation of the earth and the variation of the force of gravity with altitude, it was found that the clocks that had been in motion in their journey around the earth had in fact slowed as compared with the clock at the Naval Observatory, and by exactly the amount predicted by the theory of relativity. The result was further confirmed in a second around-the-world flight in the opposite direction."
http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2005-03/elasticity.html

Answer 6

If we had the possibility to travel at the speed of light we would be able to travel to the future and never the past. For example, lets say you are watching a war on a distant planet trough your telescope right this second. By the time you get there everything would be destroyed, so its the past you saw you are traveling to, the future.

Answer 7

Time Travel isn't impossible ...

Professor Predicts Human Time Travel This Century
http://physorg.com/news63371210.html
http://www.physics.uconn.edu/~mallett/main/main.htm
http://www.phys.uconn.edu/~mallett/main/time_travel.htm
http://www.walterzeichner.com/thezfiles/timetravel.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20010602181225/http://www.newscientist.com/newsletter/features.jsp?id=ns22911

In 2001, Ability to stop, restart light ...
http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/14/9/8/1
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/01.24/01-stoplight.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/27mar_stoplight.htm

Discovery of faster than light particles?

When we look at stars of the night sky, we are viewing the past. To view the future, the light would need to speed up faster than the speed of light, then slow back down to light speed.

If John Titor was indeed a time traveller from the future, he's possible proof.
http://www.johntitor.com/

Answer 8

I'd agree that traveling backwards in time is impossible. However, altering the rate of forward travel relative to another reference frame is a verified phenomenon. Our communication satellites would fall out of synch with Earth were their clocks not programmed to account for time dilation. As for the reference frames "detaching" from each other, they do "detach" in terms of relativity by traveling at different speeds with respect to light.

Answer 9

Your question is ill-formed.

The only way to *prove* that the statement "X is impossible" is false is to actually *do* X. Even if we specified a blueprint for a time machine that would cost a trillion dollars, if we could not build it, you could correctly say we had not *proved* that time travel is possible. If any of us could actually achieve time travel, do you think we'd be here on Yahoo answers, or picking out our tux for the Nobel prize?

The burden actually falls on you to *prove* that time travel is impossible. For example, imagine in 1900 somebody saying "Flight is impossible, but can you prove me wrong?" There could be no theoretical proof of flight ... the only proof would be to build and test-fly an airplane.

Answer 10

Time travel IT'S POSSIBLE.
Few years back we took an Argentina Airlines plane in Auckalnd, New Zealand. The plane left at 7 am on december 17th. The plane flew south and went over the south pole.it flew for over 15 hours and it landed in Puerto Gallegos , Argentina at arrived 9 am on december 17th. all of us on board lived the day twice.