Brainiac question: According to physicists, is it possible to travel into the future instantaneously?

Question

I can understand possibly traveling back in time, because those events already happened, but in order to go to the future don't you have to "wait" for the future to happen? For example, if you travel at light speed for 1000 years, it will seem like you traveled into the future, because time stops for you when you are going light speed, but your spaceship still takes 1000 years to make the journey. Do some people believe you can just instantly "jump" into the future, and how?

This question is for brainiacs only. Thank you.

I know you can slow your own time, but can you actually jump to a different point in the future without "waiting" on a spaceship? Kind of like jumping to a different point in space through a wormhole, accept through time?

Answer 1

TIME = PAST PRESENT FUTURE

we have absolutely, positively, no control over any of these qualities. we can NEVER change time.

especially notice how speed has absolutely nothing to do with the time formula......

The only formula containing time is
distance / time = speed
notice in this formula we do not calculate ALL of time, we only calculate the amount of time it takes for something to travel the amount of distance, therefore: we can only change the amount of passing of time required to achieve a certain distance, so, in simple, if you travel faster, you get there faster. no time travel. ever.

Some things can be figured out and some things will just never happen

Answer 2

Saying "if you travel at the speed of light, then time will appear to stop" is not a good way to answer this question, as the only things which may travel at the speed of light are massless particles (like photons). So, it is never a possibility to travel at the speed of light for something massive such as you and me... unless you have an infinite amount of energy lying around. You could accelerate to very close to the speed of light... but given propulsion technologies that we have the acceleration and deceleration processes would take so long as to not make it a viable solution. Anyway, the question is specifically asking if there is an 'instantaneous' means of traveling into the future.

Time is roughly analogous to space as a fourth dimension, but a critical difference is that while there are obvious ways of influencing an object's position in the three spatial dimensions, there is no known way to similarly influence an object's position in time. It is possible that travel through a wormhole could entail a travel in time as well as space... but at least today, such things exist more in the science fiction realm than actual science.

Answer 3

I do not know what a Braniac is. I know that an Eniac was an old vacuum-tube computer. I did have a good night's sleep last night, though.

Time compression is described in Einstein's general laws of relativity. This is used to explain the fact that a traveler on a very fast spacecraft would age at a perceptbly different rate from a person of the same initial age who remained on Earth during the voyage. This effect would not be instaneous. It would take a long elapsed time to observe it. I believe that it is called the "Twin Paradox."

An answer to the question, as stated, depends on the definition of "instantaneous." I belive that the question would lead to division by zero or a singualrity or an undefined state if the asker means "zero time or an infinately short period of time."

Perhaps the word "instantaneous" might relate to an unspecified short length of time such as is meant by the words "moment" or "instant." It might also relate to a time unit as small as a second, I believe that most of us are travelling one second into our respective futures one second at a time. I thought that this was normal.

"Honey, wait a moment! I'll be with you in an instant!. Don't blast off without me. I am trying to answer an interesting question about time travel."

Enjoy!

Answer 4

The writer Michael Moorcock speaks of a "Multiverse" where infinite possible realities, time-lines intersect on a treelike structure. If TIME TRAVEL were possible I posit it would create such a structure where every possibility is played out and if one were to alter ones time-line the original time-line would still exist and continue to it's logical end. So like all philosophical pursuits time travel is probably just a way to create more questions than answers and is equally dangerous either direction. I once dreamt of jackboots from the future creating a jump-window from the year 2329 to the year 1997 where I was and kidnapping me for genetic research. In my dream I recall years of time yet only an hour had passed when I awoke sweaty and parched to get a glass of water. The dream ended when I jumped from a penthouse apartment of the chief government science officer where I was being kept as a pet of sorts. Was this just a dream or did I supersede scientific law by pure force of will not to be a tool of a fascist regime? If you jackboots are watching, I am still waiting for a rematch. Life is but a dream.....

Answer 5

Time travel, as you mean it, in either direction is not possible. We cannot go into the past, but we can see into the past. We do this all the time when we observe things a great distance away. Because light speed is limited, things a great distance away cannot be seen instantaneously. We have to wait until the light reaches us. For example, the Sun you see now is actually the Sun as it existed several minutes earlier in the past.

We cannot go into the future, but we can postulate some physics that would allow people to ride into the future. This stems from the well-known and experimentally verified dilation of time effect when approaching the speed of light. Understand,the passengers do not see the dilation, but outside observers do. Thus, as you approach the speed of light we on the outside see time dilating (slowing down) on board the spacecraft. But as far as you were concerned time (and everything else on board) are normal.

So if you reach a speed where time appears to slow to half the pace of the outside observers, after two years of Earth travel, only one year on the spacecraft will have passed. So, you the passenger, would land a year in the future as far as you were concerned. As far as the outside observers on Earth, you landed two years, not one year, later.

Answer 6

Technically, I believe physics allows this if you have a buddy to help you out. You also need to find and take control of a wormhole (which are theoretical possibilities). Have your friend take one end of the wormhole and have him travel near the speed of light for some amount of time, placing him in "the future" as you have outlined in you question, while you maintain control of the other end of the wormhole at your position (in spacetime if you will). From what I understand, if the wormhole doesn't kill you, you could step through it into the future, while you buddy can actually step into the past! Though this scenario may someday prove to be impossible, it one of the outstanding possibilities yet to be proven possible or impossible!

Answer 7

Traveling fast means you get to earth's future in a short time in your own reference frame. It's only the folks on earth that will have to wait a thousand years for you to show up. But, that's going to be the case regardless of how fast (in your own frame) it takes to get there. Incidentally, you cannot travel exactly at the speed of light, only arbitrarily close to it given and arbitrary large amount of energy. So you can make *your* travel time arbitrarily short, but not instantaneous, in principle.

Answer 8

According to the many worlds theory, you might end up in another universe if you traveled into the future. People from your past might not catch up to you, they might go in another direction (upon another offshoot of your earlier shared time line) and pass you up completely. With future time travel there is the possibility of getting lost. Traveling into a past that you yourself experienced, or one that has elasped, is absolutely impossible. That is because your energy itself figures into the equation. When you touchdown in a past that has already occured on Earth's timeline you create a ripple effect that traverses the entire alternate universe. Your arrival makes a difference. You can land in an era that is SIMILAR to your youth, for example, but there would always be differences, even if minute. The road backwards requires no deviation in the flight path. By simply existing, your create that/those deviation(s)

Some have speculated that there is a certain amount of energy present in our universe at any given moment. If you arrived in an alternate universe, you would have to push out some of that energy to maintain the fixed balance. Sort of like a time traveler exchange program: you arrive as someone else (or another energy) leaves.

I like the Slider's (sci fi TV show from the mid 90's) model. It theorizes that there are an infinite number of worlds, each slightly different from one another. If you traveled a 1000 years into A future, which alternate world would you inhabit? Could you influence the outcome of events (in real time) and bring the reality that you lived in closer to you? That was the premise of the show: they were lost and were trying to get back home, which proved difficult.

If there is only one future, then of course you could wait and allow the past to catch up with you. You would be on a simple line, one reality, one world, no other options. But with uncertainty, there seems to be probabilities of possible futures, reality tends to split into different dimensions, many worlds.

If you were time travelling, your perception is king. What you believed while in transit would have an impact on where you ended up. Your life essence would be a part of the matrix of the machine/method by which you travel through time. Your time travel experience would be an odyssey of the mind. And since time is in the mind, once you were traveling at a certain relativistic speed or engaging exotic energies as propulsions your own involvement in the equation would become quite apparent. If you were unable to imagine a world with people in it 1000 years into the future then your journey would take you there. If you imagined a world poised on the tattered edge of oblivion, you would travel there. If you imagined a utopia where women in black bandanas ruled the world you would travel there. Time travel would be a profoundly shocking psychological experience for these reasons for the first timenauts. What you know or imagine woud definitely have an enormous impact on where you end up.

After all, what does 12000 (or 1000) years mean to an individual anyhow? Can we comprehend it? Have you ever had the experience, when the end of the year is nigh, that your entire year seems to collapse and compress? Was it a few seconds, a minute, or indeed a year? Can anybody really tell, from a human perspective? We like to believe that clocks inform us, but even they seem to fade into the haze when our perceptions are evaluated.

Where would you end up in a thousand years in the future? Up to you. Other people might have decided to take a slower path than you, the rabbit, all due to their perception. While you may have experienced a few minutes in transit, they experienced thousands of years. Again, your perception aboard that spacecraft takes precedence: what do you experience when time stops? Do you simply stop aging? If so, then the damage to your body is minimal. However, if you imagine that you are aging a thousand years, would you?

I don't believe that time can STOP, but can only grind along slowly. The effects of aging can be minimized, however. Aging is damage to the body, and when the body is held in suspension by balanced forces (a light speed spacecraft) the imbalance that is inside the body would manifest, also according the the perception of the traveler. For example, a 1000 years might be experienced as 2 weeks time in terms of aging depending on how physically fit an individual was. On the other hand, if an individual BELIEVES that 1000 years will pass for him as well, it might. The first time travellers might be killed by their own minds. Knowing what a 1000 years represents could destroy you. Then, if Monkeys were sent, it would be realized that the travel travel paradox is about perception. Those monkeys would survive due to their own ignorance of what a 1000 years is!

Time is a perception. It is of the mind. That would become quite evident when one time traveled. Upon reaching certain speeds or energy levels, these things would begin to be manifested quite definitively.

Answer 9

Yes, it is possible to travel to the future in an instant. The prime reason for this is the fact that time is relative. My perception of time may not be the same as yours. For instance, I take a day to be of 24 hours but it may not be the same when I am on Pluto. In this case, my reference point is the Earth. But in space, every point is a reference point. So, when I am in a space craft moving at the speed of light, my reference point becomes the craft and hence my perception of time changes. So, at that speed, 1000 years of earth time may be equal to an instant of my time on that craft.

Answer 10

Normal travel at light speed would achieve the same results you seek. Though your space ship takes 1000 years, you will NOT realize 1000 years has passed. It will look instantaneous to those inside the space ship.