What are your theories on time travel?

Question

I am interested to know, your collective thoughts on whether you believe time travel to be even remotely possible, please ellaborate on your ideas, for example how do you believe it would be achieved, such as, folding the fabric of time back on itself in order to bring present and past back together. I look forward to your Answers!

Answer 1

I often throw in my 2 cents about questions on time travel and its amazing how much gibberish some people come out with - like time travel will always be impossible because if not where are they. As if the first thing someone from the future would do is report to the global media and say HERE I AM, PRIMITIVE PEOPLE OF THE ANCIENT PAST - WE HAVE INVENTED TIME TRAVEL!

I was talking about the recent film 'deja vu' today and the time travel in it along with the pseudo-scientific descriptions are pure nonsense because they haven't thought out their ideas properly. The argument from paradoxity says that time travel is impossible because if you could go back in time and murder your grandfather before he had children then you wouldn't exist, but then you couldn't have killed him... so you would exist - but then if you did and killed him... and so on and so forth. Quantum mechanics and the underrated 'many worlds' interpretation (though insultingly called an interpretation it was only posited as an explanation for what physicists observe in actual experiments!) neatly cleans up this little puzzle - If you go back in time and change the past - you've created an alternate time line. You can go kill your grandfather but you won't vanish in a puff of paradox. You'll get thrown in jail. While there you'll have time to think about how there's no going home because in that new timeline your father will never exist - you'll still be there languishing in jail because you're from the other time line - you'll have disappeared from that Universe the second you went back in time.

The only way to return to the future, even in theory would be to keep the timeline you were visiting the same as the one in which you came from - quantum mechanics actually gives logical ways in which this could be done.

One problem with time machines (really a time 'machine' would be a place or a path more than some sort of device) is that they wouldn't be able to send someone further in to the past than the point they were created. I'll use an example which our best theories of physics tell us is completely plausible. Imagine an Einstein-Rosen bridge or wormhole. One end is stationary and the other is moving at very close to the speed of light. If you wait a few centuries it might be possible to enter the stationary end and emerge from the other one only a couple of years after it had begun moving because of time dilation effects.

Regards

Answer 2

Goldwater's answer is one I always used to offer as an argument against time travel because, well, if folk could time travel then they'd be doing it right up until the end of, er, time - that'd mean a hell of a lot of travellers, er, travelling, and I figured somewhere along the path well, er, travelled, there'd be evidence [take Fermi's Paradox, bake for 15 minutes then serve].

However [consign Fermi's Paradox to the bin and second-guess outselves]... If that evidence became public knowledge (either by accident or intent) then our time travelling, er, travellers, could simply go back in time and, well, just undo whatever event lead to the discovery of the evidence in the first place. Evidently.

So it's a mindfsk.

Personally, I don't feel that it is possible - or probable, at least - but our friends Einstein and Rosen may disagree. In theory. And to be honest with you, I'm not entirely convinced that time, itself, actually exists as anything other than a convenient abstract concept that we can use to make measurements on some anthropic level. Ahem. After all, there's not even a hint of a suggestion of a notion anywhere that time has physical properties - and if it doesn't 'exist' then it how can we hope to manipulated it?

Anyway, I figure you'll get a few decidedly interesting answers to this question, but they are all ultimately based on one theory or another that has no grounding in practical science without a major shift in how we interpret reality. And for that point alone they'll have the rational merit of "pub science". However, just imagine if...

Answer 3

You probably already know that forward time travel is possible although the time it takes is still in its infancy.
It does take a day (around 24 hrs) to arrive at the same time tomorrow, not necessarily in the same place, but that can be worked on.

Travel backwards is so far only able in the mind (thought-projectory time travel) As you are only an observant to the past you are unable to make any changes, but can travel at great speeds. It may even be a bit shaky/sensitive and you may not always arrive where you intended to be in the first place, but it is the past (or atleast your interpretation / experience of it) - this may also be distorted by imaginary projections: being it visionary, sounds, smells and-non existing time line experiences, but it will be easy to spot these as you alone will know when it is the actual past that you are observing.

Now there are theories explaining about time-space-dimension curves and space-time folds - all that is still up in the air.
also the 'rips in time' theory doesn't have much hold (yet)

I like the school of thought that we are existing in past present and future at exactly the same time.. it is only WHEN we are that shapes our perception and our thoughts.

Answer 4

I have some say that gravity and time have some tenious relationship, and the theory is that if you could stand on the surface of a black hole you would see it all... The begining to the end of the universe, there is only the slight problem of getting off. I think that the back to the future movies show the problem clearly. And I thing that if anyone did actually figured it out, it would problely cause a big enough bang to end the entire universe. Don't try it at home.... or work, or at school!

Answer 5

Before your people will ever understand time travel and be able to accomplish it you must first rewrite the language of mathematics. The way it exists now you can't even prove the existence of Naked singularities, or the string theory.
The number line like the time line should be circular not linear. Zero should be replaced by a double infinity representing an event horizon with a negative zero on one side and a positive zero on the other. this will allow for a true transition to infinity and back on doth the positive and negative side thus allowing for the inclusion of the force of gravity in the unified field theory. Only when this is accomplish will your kind be able to understand the complexities required to create in a cyclotron the proper hypothetical situation to propel a living organism into the plasma stream and initiate time flux.

Answer 6

I think it is possible but I am not sure since we have not seen any people infiltrating from the future maby they are incogneato. Hummm. I think anything you can concieve in your mind can be possible I am not sure how to go about actulally doing it. It's like a word search. The answer is there but it is jumbled in with a bunch of other knowledge. I think time travel to the future is eaiser than the past. Watching a video is like rudimentary time travel into the past. hummm. wierd huh.

Answer 7

This has been demostrated to be true. Some scientists have moved a "molecule" of light back in time for a very short period, an atto second or pico second or some very short period like that. It seems as if time travel is one way though, it can go back but not into the future.

Answer 8

Two points confuse me:
1) If travelling back through time will be possible in the future ...why have we not met any time travellers from the future?
2) If someone went back in time a few years before he was born and killed his own father.....he would nt have been born so could n't have gone back in time..........

Answer 9

it is not at all possible to go back or front in time but u can see the past if u travel faster with the speed of light(if possible) Stars u see in the night sky are what they were 4000 years ago or something like that.same concept we use it here .that is if u want to see how earth 100 years ago hop in to a space ship that travels faster that the speed of light ,(earth image will be 100 light years far frm earth)u can catch it somewhre in space .see u saw the past .

Answer 10

In order to time travel you would need to be not subject to time, mass, gravity etc.
You would have to be a spirit being like God who created time.
I believe that we will never be able to travel in time such that we would be in 2 places at one time. It would require breaking the laws of physics.