How many of you think time travel is actually possible?

[the Princess]

And if you do - explain how.

I don't. I think it's a ludicrous idea. JMO

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. I think we'd know already, wouldn't you?

[jjmalonejr]

9. Exactly

I hate to rain on people's parade, but were it technically feasible at some point in the future, wouldn't we be witnessing its impact?

I mean, where are the Terminators?

[commander bunnypants]

2. sure

We just have not discovered it yet.

I love sci-fi

CB

[MuseRider]

3. Seems to me

that we are traveling backward in time pretty quickly right now. LOL, sort of.

[DrWeird]

4. You can always travel into the future.

Take a spin around the solar system at close to the speed of light. Come back and the rest of the Earth will have aged faster than you have.

But you can't go back.

[DS1]

5. Of course it is. How else do you explain the fact that

we're living in the cultural 50's and surfing the internet at the same time?

[Lavender Brown]

6. I was just thinking about this

when looking at the Howard Dean circa 1965 thread. :D

[rogerashton]

7. We can never know.

Suppose we could travel to the past and change it. But then we would remember only the changed past, not the one that had existed before it was changed. So we would know that the experiment was a failure even though it was a suc

[Downtown Hound]

8. Going forward in the future?

Maybe. Going backwards, probably not, unless it's to an alternate reality. I don't believe it's possible to go back and alter events in the same timeline. But maybe an identical one.

[jeff30997]

10. In theory it's possible but...

If time travel can be achieved then it already exist.Lets say that in the year 2504 someone invent a time machine,then the inventor can go back to 2004.But since nobody ever saw a time-traveler(except for Marty McFly),then we can assume that time travel is impossible.

[Dudley_DUright]

27. Not necessarily

Physicists have been investigating the possibility of time travel using "wormholes" in space (think Star Trek DS9). Of course we don't know if a stable wormhole exists, but if one did, we could move one end at relativistic speeds (close to the speed of light). If you then stepped through the end you moved, you could travel back in time (but only back to the time that you started the end moving, so it is a sort of "restricted" time travel. Kip Thorne (http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~kip/ ) has written several physics papers (including S.-W. Kim and K.S. Thorne, "Do vacuum fluctuations prevent the creation of closed timelike curves?", Physical Review, 43, 3929-3949 (1991)) on this topic, inspired by a question from Carl Sagan when researching his book "Contact". For more info see:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0004A1CD-BAEA-1D52-90FB809EC5880000

[Champ]

46. My dad thinks UFO's are Time Traveling Ships

:silly:

[Twillig]

72. Is your dad a fan of the movie Repo Man?

Or was he the inspiration for it?

:)

[bluetrain]

80. I think so, too. I enjoy thinking that the aliens are us evolved and

that maybe they're coming back around to take a look at the place the way we take kids to The Natural History Museum now. And, maybe all the anal probing is like science class, you know, disecting frogs and stuff.

[Maple]

11. If you had told someone

in the Victorian age about TVs, the net, and aircraft...they'd have said it was ALL ludicrous.

As to time travellers being here now, from the future...how do you know they aren't?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

33. Perhaps this is what UFOs are

Visitors from the future looking around the past to see what it was like but nervous and scared that if they interact with us they will be returning to a vastly different future.

Btw, I don't really believe this. Just positing a theory. I don't think it's really possible to know one way or the other.

[Maple]

37. Or maybe they know

from their 'history' that this isn't a good time to approach anyone in this era.

They will be put down as lunatics, or shot at.

[Midlodemocrat]

12. I think it would be great

...but I don't think it is possible. Yet.

[eataTREE]

13. My Vast Knowledge of Physics

is truly formidable, being based on not only having read A Brief History of Time, but also Einstein for Beginners and the first three chapters of the Feynmann lectures. Thus, from my Ivory Tower of Wisdom, I state that it is possible to 'travel' into the future. All you need is to travel very close to the speed of light. As you approach the speed of light, time for everyone else will appear to speed up (from their point of view, time will slow down for you). You can thus spend a relatively short time travelling at speeds close to c and return to find thousands of years have passed on Earth.

The amount for which time will 'slow down' is called the Lorentz gamma factor and is given by the formula g = 1/sqrt(1 - v^2), where v is your velocity expressed in terms of the speed of light.

Now doesn't that just explain everything? :P

[the Princess]

16. Um thanks...........

You gave me a headache.

[eataTREE]

20. If you'd like a bigger headache, see here.

This site explains Special Relativity and time dilation far better than I did. It's got lots of cute diagrams too.

[the Princess]

21. Are you insinuating

I'm a girl so I need cute pictures?????????????

LOLOL

[eataTREE]

22. No, not at all. But the diagrams really are cute.

Most of them involve two smiling red and blue dots named Vermillion and Cerulean, respectively.

ON EDIT: The really helpful bits (and the bits with Vermillion and Cerulean) start here.

[ThoughtCriminal]

66. Formula seems to be incorrect

Correct formula:

td = 1/sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2))

http://www.1728.com/reltivty.htm

We all travel into the future.

[ldf]

70. that is similar to the plot of "The Troika Incident"

by james cooke brown.

we invented a space engine that went at the speed of light. it was programed to stop when a little under half of the fuel was used. the remainder was for stopping and returning. when it arrived back at earth 100 years had passed and we had solved all of our problems. it studies some of the solutions we came up with.

an interesting read.

edit for spelling

[ohiosmith]

14. I've been traveling through time for 57 years.

[Squatch]

15. At the speed of 1 second per second...

[randyman]

18. Anyone seen the doctor around?

[DuaneBidoux]

17. The latest string theory says it is possible

In fact, the latest theories coming from physicists (11 dimensions) are sounding so whacked out that even they don't want to believe it, even as the equations all add up.

[tigereye]

65. that string theory stuff is fascinating

thank God for PBS' explanations. It always sounds so cool, although I can't say (as a humanities person) that I really grasp it.

[DuaneBidoux]

71. Don't feel bad they readily admit that THEY can't grasp it--

it just works in mathematical equations. Some of these guys are saying "It all makes sense, it unifies everything, but it..it..it, it's just too weird to be right."

Pretty cool.

[tigereye]

73. that's why I love physics

although my math skills are very far in the past. I love how things do, but don't make sense in that field. There's something very "zen" or counterintuitive about it.

[Taverner]

19. Theoretically, Theory of Relativity proves its possible

to go forward in time...backwards I'm not so sure of.

But forward, all you gotta do is break the speed of light and then, whammo!

Back to the future....

[kranich]

28. True

however as the object approached the SOL its relative mass would become infinite. Thus time travel to the past is impossible, at least operating under the known laws of physics.

[gerrilea]

23. Actually is looking very possible or so say theoretical physicists....that

I've read up on...the current theory goes like this...if it is possible at all it will depend on controlling and/or manipulating light itself...

To make it actually happen you would have to have lasers moving around or about a magnetic circle...going very very very fast...almost at the speed of light fast...then you would have to "turn them on"...but the only problem is that you could only go back in time to the point the device was turned on...dimensional shifts are more promising though...

Brian Greene has a wonderful DVD that just came out...you can get the DVD Set at Barnes and Noble...it's called "The Elegant Universe"...it was a special on PBS last year...basically it's the "Theory of Everything" for idiots...and that would be me...

I read Stephen Hawkins 3 times and he didn't make any sense and just this past year he finally admitted he was wrong...go figure...thought it was me..

[coloradodem2005]

24. Maybe.

We might not know about time travellers from the future because they are secretive. But who knows.

[Maple]

26. Well if you were one

what would likely happen to you if you announced it?

[coloradodem2005]

52. You'd be committed.

That is why they never would.

[kranich]

25. Time travel

is absolutely possible (into the future) but the same laws that predict travel to the past also disqualify it on the grounds that it would take infinite energy to achieve the velocity required to fold time.

[gerrilea]

30. Question?! Question?! Question?! If I could make a space ship...

that can travel at the SOL...and...since nothing can supposedly go faster than that...

my only assumption here is that matter as we know it still exists at that speed...and my spaceship is say...235 feet long and I'm sitting in the back...

AND...I decide to get up and walk to the front of the spaceship at a leasurely pace of..ummm...5 mph...

Am I now going at the SOL plus 5 mph? or okay...say I can't move my body too much at the SOL but decided to bring a flashlight with me and turn it on while going at the SOL...What happens to the light coming out of the flashlight? Does anyone see the light from the flashlight?

Did I just prove (or disprove) Eistein wrong? Or can't you add the velocities together?

[Dudley_DUright]

69. You have to add the velocities relativistically

All observers will agree that light travels at the same constant speed c. See the following link:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ/einvel.html

[AngryAmish]

83. Or get spaceship up to SOL and turn on the lights?

[Socialist Dem]

29. I like to think

it's all relative.

:)

[Arkana]

31. I don't know

If you could get your body's rest mass down to absolute zero, you could then exceed light speed. I'd go back to July of 2004 and warn John Kerry.

[Unstuck In Time]

32. Oh, it is, it is.

:)

[SnowGoose]

34. If so, I hope we don't figure it out until

the likes of Bush & Co. are a memory as distant as dinosaurs. Right now, we can't even be trusted with the science we have.

I used to be such an optimist about humanity. Live and learn.

[Jose Diablo]

35. Time travel on the same timeline is impossible of course but

http://johntitor.strategicbrains.com/Archive.cfm

The Story of John Titor

[hunter]

36. Been there, done that, barfed my guts out and retired.

As Dr. Who says, "I'm a very dangerous fellow when I don't know what I'm doing."

He most certainly is.

[Taverner]

42. Hmmmm I never did Peyote

How was it ;)

[the Princess]

49. The Native people

use Payote to open their minds to different dimensions and realities. So if it was Peyote he may have in fact traveled through time. :)

[GreenPartyVoter]

38. Er, I do. but have no clue how to go about it

-----------------------------------
Would Jesus love a liberal? You bet!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

39. Don't know about time travel, but I went through a wormhole once

I was taking some computer classes at a local college. At that time of day and in the traffic that was present, I knew my travelling time to be almost exactly 30 minutes (I'd been going to these classes for months). One afternoon I was following the usual route, and happened to be a little over half way to school when a cop passed me in the left lane. I watched him go by, then looked up. I was in front of the school, almost too far past to get into the turn lane.

I lost a full ten minutes in the blink of an eye. I know this to be something that happened in real time because I knew exactly when I left my house, and I looked at my watch after I parked at the school. I'd made the trip to the school in twenty minutes.

True story!

[the Princess]

44. I've lost time too

from time to time - and it is weird and I still have no idea what it is.

[bluetrain]

78. I lost 15 minutes at White Sands

[ProfessorGAC]

40. It's Barely Possible In Theory

It assumes a great many things. If indeed, time is not a dimension in and of itself but is inextricably wound in quantum space (assuming space is granular, as described in string theory) around, within and through each dimension (all 27, assuming there are 27 dimensions), then there is nothing really separating any time from any other time except space itself.

In order to travel through time, even with all those assumptions, however, one would need to be able to follow a quantum thread on just one dimensional plane at a time, using the intersections of the dimensions to change points in space & time.

So, there is some theoretical basis, given LOTS of assumptions that may or may not be true. And, all we need to do is to figure out how to travel in only one dimensional plane at a time, even though we're living in three dimensions. Given the permutations of the planes are 27!/2!, i think we might have some significant limitations in actually finding our way to and from any other point in time.

I'll bet you're really glad you asked this question now!
The Professor

[the Princess]

47. *OUCH*

Brain hurt. :)

[slutticus]

55. Time dilation is an observable phenominon....so technically....

...time travel to the future is possible.

And string theory is so yesterday. M-theory is the theory of the strings themselves.




:P

[the Princess]

41. I do sometimes wonder

If time travel research is what is going on at NORAD in the mountain.
I don't think all the *rumors* are false.

[trogdor]

43. You need a flux capacitor.

Powered by plutonium. Version 2.0 will be powered by household garbage.

[procrastinator]

74. Not to mention a DeLoreon....

[Taverner]

45. And one more note...Terrence McKenna beleives

time travel is possible with the use of certain hallucinogens. Says he has done it with the Wahate (sp?) mushroom found in the amazon.

But then again, the man is the only psychobotanist who ever used himself as a guinea pig. He was kind of the inspiration for Altered States.

[the Princess]

50. That movie totally freaked me out!!!!!!!

:)

[Heyo]

82. DMT..

DMT was his big thing. It certainly does defy description.

It will definitely open up other spacial dimentions besides the 3 we are used to, and does completely warp the experience of time.

It certainly feels like there is "more to it" than just an internal physchadelic experience. Ya never know.. ya just never know.

(you can always ask the elves) :party:

Terrence McKenna ruled!!

Heyo

[HEyHEY]

48. No

Let's be realistic here. Time is an idea made up by humans.

[the Princess]

51. I agree with that

That's why I find *time travel* so unlikely - Time itself doesn't exist.

[Lerkfish]

53. Wrote a poem bout it...here it go:

This was published online in a scifi ezine:

Time Travel Is Impossible

Sure, it'd be nice to boldy sit
on liveried steed of Lancelot
or pinch the bottom of fair Juliet
and see what made Romeo hot

To buckle swash with Pirates dead
or huddle under tall Collosus
to kick the Fuhrer in the head
Smack Mussolini with galoshes

But think on this before you sleep
a Gordian knot is set in your path
a spatial hurdle you cannot leap
Under deadly weight of hidden math

For stars expanding outward flung
at speeds extreme and quite annoying
from points unknown to spots unsung
the measurements are not for toying

For even if enigma cured
of temporal manipulation
In years you'd hop, but here's absurd...
you'd land at what location?

For where we find New Hampshire now
a million years ago was different
And where was once a silly cow
a trillion light years distant

"Just do the math!" you may exclaim
But beg to differ, here I ask you
Tho you at axis x take aim
There's z and y and maybe double-u

And if space folds in upon itself
a pretzel dipped in stellar salt
Things don't stay neatly placed on shelf
nor stay when simply ordered "halt!"

So even if you wrestle WHEN
and cause it singular distress
the WHERE will sneak around you then
and strand you, "lost in space" address

and the saddest realization rhymes
while drifting past the stars in fear
Oh, you can get there anytime
you just cant get there from here.

[MissMarple]

54. I just found out airplanes have flux capaciters.

So all we need now is Doc Brown.

[SarahB]

56. I believe there's been some experimentation done.

I remember watching a science documentary type of show in the past couple of years where there was a lab that created some very narrow (we're talking like a nanometer wide thing or something) wormhole where they actually did something with this for very brief periods of time. I think stuff like this is all about the math, physics, and cracking the right thing to do it.

I don't believe that our minds have probably evolved to that level because (and here's where I'm going to get deep here) to have this type of ability with the massive simplicity and selfishness that we as homo sapiens have, would have already likely destroyed ourselves and wouldn't even be here if this could happen.

[Dudley_DUright]

67. Not to my knowledge, and as a physicist I keep pretty close track

of this kind of stuff. Wormholes are still strictly in the realm of theoretical speculation.

[SarahB]

68. You're probably right.

It's far removed from my field of expertise. It was one of those things I vaguely remembered. Maybe the whole thing was some type of experimentation where they were trying to do this. I wish I remembered what is was. I tend to watch so many of the Nova/Discovery Channel/Learning Channel stuff that it seems to all blend together after a while. :crazy:

[msanthrope]

57. Yes..time tracks in space, as Einstien described...

the trick is finding the tracks...

[bluetrain]

81. There's this really nice book called Einstein's Dreams

by Alan Lightman which puts his theories into action in these short-short stories. Very poetic. Quite Lovely.

[liontamer]

58. I think very few things are impossible

So i believe that time travel is possible. Just because I don't understand it doesn't mean it's not a natural part of the universe

[Jack Schitt]

59. Well...here's a number of things...

philosophically, there is no past or future. What exists now is this exact moment and that's it.

Scientifically, there may be a way for time travel. We'll definitely have to go faster than the speed of light (we'll never be able to achieve that because when something with mass approaches the speed of light, it gets infinitely massive. Because of that, the amount of energy required to go even faster increases infinitely.), and with our body mass, we'll need our body temperature to be absolute zero (0 degrees Kelvin, -459 degrees Fahrenheit, and -273 degrees Celsius) in order to survive such extreme velocities (Stephen Hawking came up with this theory).

So...if we get the technology, we may be able to time travel. But realistically, that's never going to happen.

I'm a Geologist who has a great interest in Physics. Weird, eh?

[iconoclastic cat]

60. Information (signals), yes. People? Alive? No way.

We will see it happen with information, though. It's more like bending time than traveling in it, but it will happen.

[ThoughtCriminal]

61. I few good stories based on that

"Timescape(?)" and "Thrice Upon A Time".

Interesting bit: All you need to do is build a receiver. If it's possible, the scientists in the future can solve the transmitter problems.

[johnnie]

62. Yes

I don't have the explanation, but I am convinced that we are still in the early stage of existence. We still beat each other over the head with clubs for shiny things and we can't put anyone on other any planet so far.

[VIVIsectVI]

63. I think Astral time travel is possible

I do not know about physical though.

[wyldwolf]

64. links

http://freespace.virgin.net/steve.preston/Time.html

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

[Cadence]

75. Are you certain Time exists?

If you didn't have the "rise" and "set" of the sun to go by how would you prove the passage of time?

[Heyo]

79. Entropy.

And sequences of events.

[Cadence]

84. I'm not following entropy but

"My ideas about time all developed from the realization that if nothing were to change we could not say that times passes. Change is primary, time, if it exists at all, is something we deduce from it."

http://www.platonia.com/ideas.html

"In 1905 Einstein published his theory of special relativity, which introduced the then radical idea that simultaneity is relative. Frames of reference may be thought of as invisible "coordinate map grids" attached to every observer so that the observer can measure the position of surrounding objects. Special relativity tells us that observers who are in a state of uniform motion with respect to one another are in "inertial frames of reference", and that they cannot use the laws of physics to distinguish the frame of reference of one observer from the frame of reference of the other."

http://ws5.com/spacetime/

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

76. I don't know if it is possible or not

but the idea of it is something I find absolutely intriguing.

Just this morning I thought of how cool it would be to go back to the 1920s, find my great-grandparents (who were young parents) and see how they lived, see how they looked as young adults, etc.

Also cool to go to the future (though a bit scarier, I will admit).

I had a dream one time that I was brought into the future by my great-great-great grandson (WAY into the future) and I was in his house and asked where the TV was and he didn't understand me and his wife said "Oh I learned about that in history," then turned to him and whispered "she's talking about a dirty screen!" and he gasped and said "we CERTAINLY don't have one of THOSE!" and I found out TV had gotten so horrible, so screechy and so raunchy and vile that society had a huge backlash and TV companies went out of business from a total lack of audience.

Isn't that wild?

[Heyo]

77. Forward, yes...(in a sense)

Backward?... I haven't seen anything yet that would tell me it can be done.

Heyo

[CanuckAmok]

85. Look, I answered this thread last week. I'm not going to type all...

...those formulae again, so you'll just have to figure it out on your own.

Sheesh.

[Guy Fawkes]

86. If * can be elected twice, anything is possible!!