quantum physics?

Question

is it theoredicly possible to time travel or is it just a hollywood myth?Please give the reasons why it is or why its not..thanks in advance

Answer 1

Time travel, according to everything we know today, is impossible. Here are some reasons and arguments.

One question that is relevant here is whether time travel is permitted by the prevailing laws of nature. This is presumably a matter of empirical science (or perhaps the correct philosophical interpretation of our best theories from the empirical sciences). But a further question, and one that falls squarely under the heading of philosophy, is whether time travel is permitted by the laws of logic and metaphysics. For it has been argued that various absurdities follow from the supposition that time travel is (logically and metaphysically) possible. Here is an example of such an argument.

(1) If you could travel back in time, then you could kill your grandfather before your father was ever conceived. (For what's to stop you from bringing a gun with you and simply shooting him?)
(2) It's not the case that you could kill your grandfather before your father was ever conceived. (Because if you did, then you would ensure that you never existed, and that is not something that you could ensure.)
(3) You cannot travel back in time.

Another argument that might be raised against the possibility of time travel depends on the claim that Presentism is true.

According to The B Theory, time is very much like the dimensions of space. Just as there are no genuine spatial properties (like being north), but, rather, only two-place, spatial relations (like north of), so too, according to the B Theorist, there are no genuine A properties. According to The A Theory, on the other hand, time is very different from the dimensions of space. For even though there are no genuine spatial properties like being north, there are, according to the A Theorist, genuine A properties; and time, unlike space, can truly be said to pass, according to The A Theory.
There is another important respect in which some (but not all) A Theorists believe time to be unlike the dimensions of space. Some A Theorists believe that there are crucial ontological differences between time and the dimensions of space. For some A Theorists also endorse a view known as “Presentism,” and others endorse a view that we will call “The Growing Universe Theory.”
Presentism is the view that only present objects exist. More precisely, it is the view that, necessarily, it is always true that only present objects exist. (At least, that is how the name ‘Presentism’ will be used here. Some writers have used the name differently. Note that, unless otherwise indicated, what is meant here by ‘present’ is temporally present, as opposed to spatially present.) According to Presentism, if we were to make an accurate list of all the things that exist -- i.e., a list of all the things that our most unrestricted quantifiers range over -- there would be not a single non-present object on the list. Thus, you and the Taj Mahal would be on the list, but neither Socrates nor any future Martian outposts would be included. (Assuming, that is, both (i) that each person is identical to his or her body, and (ii) that Socrates's body ceased to be present -- thereby going out of existence, according to Presentism -- shortly after he died. Those who reject the first of these assumptions should simply replace the examples in this article involving allegedly non-present people with appropriate examples involving the non-present bodies of those people.) And it's not just Socrates and future Martian outposts, either -- the same goes for any other putative object that lacks the property of being present. All such objects are unreal, according to Presentism.
Presentism is opposed by Non-presentism, which is the view that there are some non-present objects. More precisely, Non-presentism is the view that, possibly, it is sometimes true that there are some non-present objects.
‘Non-presentism’ is an umbrella term that covers several different, more specific versions of the view. One version of Non-presentism is Eternalism, which says that objects from both the past and the future exist just as much as present objects. According to Eternalism, non-present objects like Socrates and future Martian outposts exist right now, even though they are not currently present. We may not be able to see them at the moment, on this view, and they may not be in the same space-time vicinity that we find ourselves in right now, but they should nevertheless be on the list of all existing things.
It might be objected that there is something odd about attributing to a Non-presentist the claim that Socrates exists right now, since there is a sense in which that claim is clearly false. In order to forestall this objection, let us distinguish between two senses of ‘x exists now’. In one sense, which we can call the temporal location sense, this expression is synonymous with ‘x is present’. The Non-presentist will admit that, in the temporal location sense of ‘x exists nowd’’, it is true that no non-present objects exist right now. But in the other sense of ‘x exists now’, which we can call the ontological sense, to say that x exists now is just to say that x is now in the domain of our most unrestricted quantifiers, whether x happens to be present, like you and me, or non-present, like Socrates. When we attribute to Non-presentists the claim that non-present objects like Socrates exist right now, we commit the Non-presentist only to the claim that these non-present objects exist now in the ontological sense (the one involving the most unrestricted quantifiers).
According to the Eternalist, temporal location matters not at all when it comes to ontology. But according to a somewhat less popular version of Non-presentism, temporal location does matter when it comes to ontology, because only objects that are either past or present -- but not objects that are future -- exist. On this view, which we can call “The Growing Universe Theory,” the universe is always growing, as more and more things are added on to the front end (temporally speaking).
Despite the claim by some Presentists that theirs is the common sense view, it is pretty clear that there are some major problems facing Presentism (and, to a lesser extent, The Growing Universe Theory; but in what follows we will focus on the problems facing Presentism). One problem has to do with what appears to be perfectly meaningful talk about non-present objects, such as Socrates and the year 3000. If there really are no non-present objects, then it is hard to see what we are referring to when we use expressions such as ‘Socrates’ and ‘the year 3000’.
Another problem for the Presentist has to do with relations involving non-present objects. It is natural to say, for example, that Abraham Lincoln was taller than Napoleon Bonaparte, and that World War II was a cause of the end of The Depression. But how can we make sense of such talk, if there really are no non-present objects?
A third problem for the Presentist has to do with the very plausible principle that for every truth, there is a truth-maker. The problem is that it is hard to see what the truth-makers could be for such truths as that there were dinosaurs and that there will be Martian outposts.
Finally, the Presentist, in virtue of being an A Theorist, must deal with the arguments against The A Theory that were discussed above.

If Presentism is true, then neither past nor future objects exist. And in that case, it is hard to see how anyone could travel to the past or the future.
Despite the existence of these and other arguments against the possibility of time travel, there may also be problems associated with the claim that time travel is not possible. For one thing, many scientists and philosophers believe that the actual laws of physics are in fact compatible with time travel. And for another thing, as I mentioned at the beginning of this section, we often think about time travel stories; but it is very plausible to think that a story cannot depict things that are downright impossible. For example, it is natural to think that there could not be a story in which two plus two are five, or in which there is a sphere that both is and is not red all over. (This seems especially true if the story is told pictorially, as in the case of a movie.) Hence, if time travel is impossible, then we should not even be able to consider any story in which time travel occurs. And yet we do so all the time! One task facing the philosopher who claims that time travel is impossible, then, is to explain the existence of a huge number of well-known stories that appear to be specifically about time travel.

Answer 2

The only thing that can travel faster than light (i.e. go backwards in time) is a tachyon, a theoretical particle that can never go as SLOW as the speed of light.

If you feed the speed of a tachyon into the Lorentz equations, you get a reversal of the time flow, as the tachyon can arrive before it is actually created...

So it is theoretically possible for SOMETHING to go back in time. As for a human, or a man-made machine, no. It's Sci-Fi.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Hollywood myth. It's too complicated for here, but if you apply the thought of things going back in time to quantum physics, particles are not stable and we cease to exist.

Answer 4

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/time/through.html

see if this helps you, good luck. I wish it could be possible, i would go back and try to warn about 9/11 and try to help save lives.

Answer 5

No its not impossimble. I actually didn't want to tell anyone this, but its not like you know me so whatever. Here i go.... i am from the year 2409.

Of course nobody can timetravel.