I happen to disagree with anyone that believes time travel to the past is possible. What do you think?

Question

I believe that time is an energy-related function that is asymptotic, that is, it has a limit that does not allow traveling backwards in time. "Time travel" can only occur when you accelerate such that time begins to occur more slowly for you than for everyone else, therefore you are in effect "traveling to the future." This is in agreement with relativity and with what others say. You can accelerate as much as possible, traveling farther into "the future," but NEVER into the past, and when you stop you reach (I wouldn't call it "transport" into) a time in the future relative to the time that elapsed for everyone else. Since you were absent from any period in between (you were "time traveling"), and you arrive at a future endpoint, no paradox can exist. There are NO two of you at any one time. You only exist where you are whenever you are: in the current time, "time traveling" faster relative to everyone else, or at the future endpoint after you finished your "time travel." Opinions?

Answer 1

If only it was true, for I hate time travel.

However if you have a black hole rotating around a point the stressed time space field created does permit time travel, up to any point in the past where the black hole still exists. I don’t pretend to understand the math, for that ask Steven Hawking. Currently, we don’t have ships that can get to a black hole, we don’t have spacecraft that can survive flying that close to a black hole and we don’t know how to get a black hole rotating around a central point. It’s called a thought experiment, and that was how Einstein and Hawking deduced the presence of black holes.

Personally I think that the universe won’t tolerate a time traveler. That if he goes back in time and effects something, which his mere presence will, then he will have created a either a paradox that would cause a time quake whipping everything out up to the point of the paradox, OR the time traveler will have created an alternate time stream in which he can exist. That would be a better solution than trying to resolve the paradox. I have seen one two many science fiction story with time travel involved and everything works out happily in the end. THAT just isn’t going to happen.

Einstein hated quantum mechanics because they dealt with so much probability; you never know the exact position of an electron and measuring it causes a change in the electron. He said, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” But, for once, he was wrong. Not only does God play dice with the universe, but sometimes he hides the results in black holes. The universe isn’t the way we want it to be it just is.

Einstein considered time and space to be the fabric of the universe and so time was not a dimension. That meant you couldn’t travel back and forth in time only across space. I think that the universe only has room for the NOW and that there is no such thing as the past, it is gone, that was replaced by the NOW, but with Relativity that concept is wrong since you can have two different time rates and everything has a relative rate of time flow; which can coexist (Oh, my aching head). That means that time must be a dimension and that travel in it is possible, just highly unlikely.

There is also the possibility that the universe is self correcting enough to not allow time travel. The theory and the thought experiment might be valid, but in the actual case something would happen that would change the outcome so that time travel wasn’t possible. The machine would blow a fuse; the electric power plant would choose that time to fail, millions of other minor changes that would make it impossible to travel back in time. This is as much a possibility as all the other suggestions and until we find a real way to travel back in time or at least attempt the experiment we will never know for sure.

The error in your thought plan is that time isn’t energy, just like length and width aren’t energy. If it was then it would have a factor in all of our energy equations adding its own energy into it. So E=mc^2 would be E=mc^2 (+/-) time. We know that an explosion or energy activity conducted over a larger period of time reduces the amount of energy created so time has a limiting factor. You can also argue that E=mc^2 has the speed of light in it so that accounts for time, but if you change the time factor and leave everything constant the energy output is decreased.

When it comes down to it we really don’t know what time actually is. We can measure it be we have trouble quantifying it beyond that point. I am pretty sure that the mythical particle chronoton doesn’t exist. Time doesn’t need a particle to carry itself like an electron does. This makes it harder to manipulate time. The stress of the space frame itself is what allows time travel. Frankly, I wish the idea didn’t exist and until I read some higher physics books I didn’t believe in it either. I don’t pretend to understand the math involved, I take it on faith that those that do have got it right. At this point it is all a moot point; we can’t do it and we may never be able to do it. In that case it truly is impossible.

Answer 2

The light reflecting off of earth from hundreds of years ago is just now reaching distant places. If we could travel far enough away and look back with a powerful enough microscope, we could actually see scenes from the neolithic period, not quite time travel but a reality. . . oh yeah and we would have to travel faster than the speed of light to 'beat' the reflected images by a substantial distance.

Answer 3

wow deep question, read the book pshchic warrior it is about mind control that was used by the military in the 60's and 70's it is great....after reading it i think it is possible to travel back or into the future.... it does exist...there are also a few people who teach it so you can do it yourself

Answer 4

I agree with you. If I could go back in time, I wouldn't return to this God forsaken, almost destroyed planet and all the inhumanities occuring these days.

Answer 5

hmmmm....I'll ask Robert Zemeckis the next time he comes into my store.

this is a heavy question, heavier than I thought when I opened the post.