Is time travel possible theoretically ?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Plato, Apr 12, 2000.

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  1. Plato Registered Senior Member

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    Every one of us has probably pondered this question but do we really know what we are talking about if we say time travel ?
    Suppose I invented a time machine and I went back to the time when I was making the device and destroyed all the plans and blueprints to make it. What would happen to me ?
    When we ask such questions we are actually wondering whether or not the universe is deterministic and if there is only one universe or several. You see there are many ways out of this apparent paradox :
    1. one might argue it would be somehow prevented that I destroyed the plans because otherwise I could never have traveled back to the past.
    2. the whole thing is simply impossible because there is no way time travel is possible, this might involve some kind of presently unknown law like the one we know that prevents us to go faster then the speed of light
    3. I do go back and destroy the plans but by doing this I destroy my future and therefor am stuck in the past
    4. I don't really go back to 'my past' but to the past of a universe in a parallel dimension, anything I do there has no effect what so ever at my own universe therefore making time travelling more like dimension travelling.

    One final remark before I let you all lose on this subject : if time travel is possible then where are all the travellers of the future ? Are they prevented to interact because of some mysterious mechanism like in explanation 1 ? Have they perhaps (like our famous aliens who controll the ufo's

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  3. Boris Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Plato,

    You didn't expect me to stay away from this one, did you?

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    Ok, I know how valuable my opinion is in these matters, but whadaheck -- I'll put it out for the fresh people to see. I strongly feel that time has an ill-gotten reputation as a dimension. In science, it is a mathematical abstraction that has managed to turn into a runaway process. In folk terminology, the illusory coordinates of the future assured by inductive prediction in the context of thermodynamic evolution of the universe combined with the memory-derived coordinates of the past generate an appearance of a continuum, or a flow along some landscape of time. In either case, I do not think it is any more correct to think of time as a dimension, than it was to think of the sky as a crystal sphere.

    Time is only useful when applied to describing the evolution of matter and energy. Without matter-energy, and I suspect something even more fundamental that also involves space, the concept of time is meaningless. In relativity, we learn that time is a relative measurement of rate; i.e. I compare the rate at which events occur in my reference frame to the rate at which they occur in another frame. I measure time by making use of an oscillatory process that changes states at a standard rate. Relative rate of events goes to 0 when the observed frame approaches lightspeed -- and little wonder, since everything's so busy flying forward at lightspeed, there is very little latitude left for motions orthogonal to the dominant velocity. So it seems that time is simply a characterization of rate at which events occur -- which is itself defined in terms of lightspeed and possibly a couple of other fundamental constants. Now, ask yourself -- does it make any sense to talk about traveling backward or forward in <u>rate</u>? Granted, you could possibly speed the rate up or slow it down, but this gives you nothing in terms of visiting the past or discontinuously jumping into the future. In fact, I don't even think the past and the future can be construed as existing (or as destinations, in other words); the former is merely a memory trace within the present, and the latter is merely an inductive expectation of the present.

    Anyway, it's early and I can't sleep, and I probably am not writing very coherent prose -- so I'll just stop here before I loose not only my audience but even myself in my own jumble of thoughts. Hope this did make some sense though (I'll be kicking myself later if it didn't

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  5. Krusher Registered Senior Member

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    Plato, what you have described is the grandfather paradox.

    "A man goes back in time and kills his grandfather before his grandfather had any children"

    Therefore his father was never born, therefore he was never born.

    Here is another possiblity:
    You are suddenly blown apart and all your atoms go back to where they would have had you not been born.
     
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  7. Krusher Registered Senior Member

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    Oh yeah, ever watched the movie "The Terminator".
    The grandfather paradox in reverse.
     
  8. bobbapink Registered Member

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    On the lighter side, snipped from your post

    “1. one might argue it would be somehow prevented that I destroyed the plans because otherwise I could never have traveled back to the past.”

    But you can’t travel back to a time before the device is invented because the invention requires a receiving chamber. The best you could do is travel back to a time just before you left and prevent yourself from leaving, do you remember anyone trying to prevent you from leaving just before you left? Did that person look anything like you?

    "2. the whole thing is simply impossible because there is no way time travel is possible, this might involve some kind of presently unknown law like the one we know that prevents us to go faster then the speed of light"

    Time travel could be possible; there is nothing so far that prevents it theoretically, only practically.

    "3. I do go back and destroy the plans but by doing this I destroy my future and therefor am stuck in the past"

    see response number 1, it can’t be done

    "4. I don't really go back to 'my past' but to the past of a universe in a parallel dimension, anything I do there has no effect what so ever at my own universe therefore making time travelling more like dimension travelling."

    Cool!


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    bobbapink
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  9. Rambler Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Boris,
    I'm not sure what you are trying to say. I understood it to mean that time is only a local event reference which is only relevent to the event you are concerned with, and therefore there is no interconection between each events time reference, other then an implied sequential contiunation......(now I'm not making sense to myself, but you'd be used to that by now

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    Ok what if we called it "event hopping" instead of time travel. Also there is a strong argument for negative time in a wormhole system.

    BTW I'm posting this message on the 13/4/2000 9:30 AM. YOUR FUTURE (unless your from NZ then its from your past). So don't worry guys tomorrow will come I'm already here to tell you it does

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    Bobbapink,

    if you needed a receiving chamber to travel through time or hop from event to event then you can't go into the future either, you'd be stuck between the present and the event that created the time machine.

    The Gradfather paradox,

    IMO the paradox doesn't really exist. It can only exist if time moves in the forward direction only. i.e. if time travel were possible then you can no longer say that killing your father before you are born would not allow you to be born. If time was to move forward only then this would be true but if you CAN manipulate the direction then the sequence of events that brought you to the point where you COULD kill your father would still hold and the only thing that you would achieve by killing him would be to not have a father. In summary: Time travel or event hopping does not have the effect of erasing events, all that happens is that history no longer follows a sequential path in the forward direction. Although the events that lead you to YOUR present are sequential the sequence is no longer synchronised with a forward time reference. Man I hope this makes sense to someone.

    Illustration:

    Event 1: (1948) My father is born
    Event 2: (1971) My Parents get married
    Event 3: (1974) I am born
    Event 1156: (2000) I invent and build a time machine
    Event 1157: (2001) I "hop" back to 1970
    Event 1158: (1970) I kill my father
    Event 1159: (1970) I return to 2001
    Event 1160: (2001) I hate myself for killing my father to prove a point


    sequence of events still holds but the event sequence is no longer chronological due to time reference manipulation. History would hop from time reference to time reference however going back in time creates a new event which is independent of the original event within that time reference and hence does not alter cause-n-effect as we know it.

    [This message has been edited by Rambler (edited April 12, 2000).]
     
  10. Krusher Registered Senior Member

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    Bad luck rambler, it was my past too.
    You forgot that other aussies would have it in there past (or current time depending on how you look at it)

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    .

    I like ramblers idea.
    I was toying with that kind of idea.

    The fact is we won't know until we've done it.
    And even then we probably won't find out due to the person being rocketed off to another dimension or something.
     
  11. Boris Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Rambler,

    What I was trying to say is that the "flow" of time is only an illusion. The past doesn't exist, and neither does the future. There is only the present, which undergoes sequential changes. (is that more comprehensible?

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  12. Plato Registered Senior Member

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    Mmm, a lot of different opinions with one thing in common : if we want to address the possibility of travelling in time, we need to establish the nature of time.

    Boris,

    my man, I was sincerely hoping that you would bite into the bate

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    I see that the nature of time with you is still firmly founded in Kantian theory even though you try to present your case from a relativistic standpoint
    This is very nice but the only thing you have done here is used an other word for the same thing, it makes as much sense to talk about time as it does about rate. Why however can there be a thing as different rates for different observers if a rate is nothing more then a mathematical parameter that we use to describe periodical processes ? Why does general relativity describes the universe in four dimensions and does such a good job ? Is it only for the sake of argument because the equations are more beautiful ?
    When you say that time, space, matter and energy are very closely intertwined I couldn't agree more with you. But when you claim that time is nothing more then an illusion you are making the same mistake that Kant made. Think of it this way, if time is not a dimension then why can't I see Napoleon losing his battle when I stroll along the fields of Waterloo (which is only 10 km from where I live). I claim it is not there because it is physically in an other place with other coordinates : Waterloo 1815 in stead of Waterloo 2000.
    However relativity also shows us that time isn't just a dimension as the other ones, the three space dimensions make up a Euclidian space but if you add the time dimension, you get a Minkovsky space. This is not just a mathematical trick but a very profound way of how time and space are related.

    Krusher,

    I know it was the gransfather paradox but I just wanted to give it a new look (like it?)
    I don't like the blown apart bit though

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    bobbapink,
    (any relation with bobbafet ?)
    why couldn't I build a timemachine without a receiving chamber ? Do you know something that I don't regarding the basic principles of making such a device ?

    Rambler,
    You are going back to an even older theory about time then Boris does, does the name Parmenides rings a bell ?
    Of course you do realise that cause and effect in such a universe as you describe it doesn't exist at all. It is a pure coincidence that the event that follows on me pressing the light button is an event where the light in the chamber is switched on. This endangers our beliefs that the universe is knowledgable and would make all the assumptions that science made about the world invalid. Are you willing to take this step ?



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    Isaac Newton
     
  13. Boris Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Plato,

    How delightful, another debate on the nature of reality! Kinda brings back the good old times, don't it?

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    You are right, I merely used another word for "time" -- and I did it intentionally. The problem with "time" is that it is associated with the concepts of "past", "present", and "future". Rate has no such problems, and it conveys much more clearly what I mean when I talk about time.

    Why would there be such things as different rates? Well, why are there such things as different gear settings in a car's gear box? It's the same box, with all the gears made of the same stuff, and fundamentally there is nothing about the box that relates to speed; yet the different gear ratios translate into different rotational rates of the axle. Same with event rates. Events are merely results of interactions between matter-energy, spacetime, and whatnot. The original substrate has nothing to do with rate -- or, if you like, we can postulate that for the substrate everything always happens at a fixed rate. What we observe as events are superficial phenomena on top of the fundamental substrate. What we observe as differential event rates in different reference frames are merely a manifestation of the difference between the reference frames -- namely, that they are traveling at a certain rate with respect to us, or that they are in a strong gravitational field, etc. Basically, think about it this way: if the speed of light is the limit, then if something is moving away from you at 0.9c, then they can only move laterally at a maximum speed of (1-0.81c^2)^0.5. This would slow down the rate of any events in a travelling frame relative to the frame of the observer. In fact, I wonder, if the summation is carried out properly over all directions of motion, whether such an effect alone will not be enough to derive relativistic time dilation.

    Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In my view, it is actually more beautiful to view time as a mathematical artefact that derives from the way we process our experiences, and not as one of the fundamental pillars of existence -- because the fewer fundamentals there are, the more elegant the model. This does not mean that the math has no connection to reality -- because it derives from reality -- but I don't think the math literally stands for what is happening; I think math is merely a linguistic representation that abstracts away from reality and cuts corners on realism.

    Well, that's one way to answer the question. Another way is to say that the past doesn't exist; the only thing that exists is the present. There is only one copy of the universe, and it undergoes fluid change. Once upon a time, the configuration of the universe was such that Napoleon was indeed in the process of losing his battle -- but the configuration has continued to change, so that now it is something altogether different (and there is no more Napoleon.) The reason you don't see Napoleon at Waterloo is because you are looking at the current configuration of the universe, which no longer includes Napoleon at Waterloo or any other location on Earth.

    Well, I'm not saying that rate and space are not related; in fact I tend to hope that rate and even space itself are artifacts of something yet more fundamental -- similar to how temperature is an artifact of inertia.

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  14. Plato Registered Senior Member

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    Boris,

    my pleasure indeed !

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    So you claim that time or rate is a non existing dimension that only manifests itself because we see the three "real" dimensions changing and retain a memory of how it used to be and compare this mental image with the current situation.
    The funny thing is I can make the same argument with any other dimension.
    Actually our eyes only enable us to see two dimensions because the images we see are projections on our retina. I now claim that only these two dimensions and time are the only real existing dimesions because as time goes on, I turn my head and therefore have the illusion of seeing a third dimension while in fact time simply changes the world for me according to this third dimension. Therefore I say that we are actually two dimensional creatures who think we live in a three dimensional world because time creates this illusion...
    The knife cuts both ways

    I think what you mean is (1-0.81)^0.5 c as maximum lateral speed with c outside but I get the point, you basically have a triagle of the speed vectors with c being the hypothenusa, 0.9 c the realtive speed and 0.43 c the lateral speed. If you want all the speeds then (suppose the triagle was drawn from the origin) simply let the hypothenusa vector rotate around the origin then make an other circle around the 0.9 point with radius c, then all the points from the first circle who lie within the second one are allowed speeds, each speed vector is drawn from the 0.9 point to the first circle.
    However I don't think with this only you will find the Lorentz equations because you are only talking about speeds, you will need one more thing since Lorentz gives the equations for time and space separatly.

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    You have me lost there, I thought temperature was kinetic energy but what has kinetic energy got to do with inertia ?

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    Isaac Newton
     
  15. Boris Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Plato,

    Well, the 2D picture doesn't exactly wash, since the third dimension is measured rather convincingly both through perspective and through stereoscopy (which we 2-eyed creatures are experts at.)

    Yes, you're right -- the space component is missing from the picture (but you do have to wonder how velocities get affected strictly along the line of travel, and whether the "space contraction" cannot be derived from the extreme difficulty of forward-directed interactions. But even if this is not correct (probably not, as it is too simple and someone would have figured it out by now) -- it conveys my idea. The idea is that time is not a coordinate and not a dimension -- but rather a local property of rate.

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    Well, think about it: what is kinetic energy? Remember Newton's first law -- objects at rest remain at rest (which is just another description of inertia.) Once you get an object going, it acquires "kinetic energy" -- but what is that energy other than resistance against being stopped? In fact, the direct proportionality of kinetic energy to inertial mass paints it squarely as a manifestation of inertia.

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  16. Plato Registered Senior Member

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    Boris,

    That is exactly right and the same solution works for time for what is stereoscopic vision else but combining two images taken from the same view on the same time but from two different spacepoints. If we apply this and take two different images at two different times on the same spacial point then we have an impression of the fourth dimension : time.

    Very clever, I like it ! Doesn't this imply however that heavy mass = inertial mass ? Actually this brings us back to one of our previous discussions about what inertial mass actually is but let's stick with time for a while longer. (pun unintended

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    Let me argue from the stance of a philosopher here. At first glance both views, look at time as a simple variable or as time as a dimension, are equivalent. However if you claim that only the present really exists then the past really has no value anymore. This means that we might as well forget everything that happened in the past, this puts your graduation form highschool at the same level as the extermination of the Jews in Europe, both don't exist and are completely erased. Does it make any sense to contemplete history ? Something that really doesn't exist ?
    What I'm saying is that looking at time as a physical dimension makes that things that happened to make us the way we are, are so much more real. This is of course not a valid proof but since the two views are on equal footing I prefer the latter one.

    [This message has been edited by Plato (edited April 13, 2000).]
     
  17. Boris Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Plato,

    And a "very clever" back to you about the dual-measurement pickup! Though you'd have to concede that perspective can be measured with just one eye, and besides, we can do things like radar or sonar ranging. No, the third dimension is just as fundamental as the other two; I don't think there is a way to make it any less fundamental. In fact, if you persist with examining the precise point at which measurement takes place, then you will have to conclude that there are no dimensions at all! After all, even a single eye is an array of photoreceptors arranged in roughly 2D. If you then consider just one photoreceptor, you can only measure points -- zero-dimensional objects. The very fact that you can arrange your sensors in 2 (or even 3) dimensions is a direct indication that those 3 dimensions are fundamental dimensions that matter can traverse or occupy. Time, however, does not fit under such classification.

    To make any kind of a time measurement, you necessarily have to rely on memory of some sort. And memory is merely a stored state contained in the present configuration of the universe. You cannot define (nor indeed conceive of) time without usage of memory. Hence, my conclusion follows that time is but a cognitive illusion generated through memory.

    You're right that my stance clashes with many folk notions. However, and at a risk of self-aggrandisement, I would remind you that the Copernican solar system, the Newtonian revolving spherical Earth, the Einsteinian relativity of space and time, and many other things used to equally clash with folk notions. So I'd argue that what used to make sense in the past provides a poor measuring stick against what actually might be real. But history is not useless or non-existent even in my framework; it is encoded in the current state of the universe, since the "present" is a direct sequitur of the "past". Indeed, history is part of our knowledge, and knowledge is primarily useful as a starting point of induction. Hence, it still makes sense to try and learn from "past mistakes", so that "history repeating itself" can be avoided.

    As to the gravitational/inertial mass thing -- it's darn amazing that the two are related linearly, is it not? One just has to wonder what the constant of proportionality is, and more importantly where it comes from...

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  18. Rambler Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Plato,
    The point that I was trying to make is that IF time travel were possible then the sequence of events is important not the time at which they happen, and that if YOU went back in time and killed your father I don't see how the event of you being born would be erased. I described this point to my wife last night (something on TV prompted the conversation). I gave her the example in events like I did above. She asked OK, what does your mum think happened to your father. Got me thinking, and the answer is she would not know me or my father after the event that kills my father. So cause and effect as I see it is very real. Isn't the whole mechanism for cause and effect simply the sequence of events that lead up to the effect. So going back to the example I am not saying that time travel in this model would not have consequences but I don't see how the grandfather paradox can exist if time were able to be manipulated. I guess this model is hard to comprehend because our understanding of time is sequential. If you say well the paradox must exist because if you look at the history involved your father never had a chance to make you. Well I say you haven't gone back far enough in history (history being the sequence of events rather then the date in which they happened). For the time traveler obviously time would still be going forward all the way through it.


    Parmenides: Never heard the name before, sorry

    I would realy like to hear the errors in this thinking. I don't want to slow down your discussion but I'd really be keen to know why cause and effect doesn't exist in this kind of model.
     
  19. Plato Registered Senior Member

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    Boris,

    Ok let's look at a proposed time machine and look for its validity.

    There is a thing, for the moment just in theory, that is called a worm hole. In order to make one we need something very exotic like negative mass (this could already be a weakness since no negative mass has ever been made until this point). It actually consists of a hole in the time-space continuum like a black hole but unlike a black hole it does not end in a singularity but in an other worm hole mouth sort of speak. (This is all old news for you I know but I just state it any way for other readers

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    ) Both mouths look like spheres so don't think on hole in the normal sense here because we are taking it one dimension higher.
    What we have in effect are two openings who are connected with each other via the worm hole. This is for example a way to go faster then light, the worm holes may be lightyears away from each other but the time to get from one mouth to the other is simply going in and out again, this might take just a few seconds. They might however also work as a timemachine, in order to do this is you take one mouth and drag it along with you at a relativistic speed (assuming you have a device to take you to these speeds of course) say 0.99 c. You fly a few years on this speed and come back to the other mouth that you left behind.
    The mouth you took with you will now have a connection with the mouth you left behind as it was several year ago, this due to the timedilatation that occurred between the two mouths.
    This whole process doesn't make any sense if the past doesn't exist as a physical place. So or the whole theory of worm holes is bull and with it general relativity since that is the underlying theory, or you have to admit (which I know is very hard

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    ) that you have it wrong on this one...
    (I just know what your answer will be

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    Rambler,

    The way I thought cause and effect worked was : Action A happens at time t_a and is the cause of effect B which happens at time t_b (with t_a < t_b). If you now go back in time and prevent A from happening then in your model effect B will just happen without any cause. What is to stop from cars just blinking into existince and running you over next time you cross the street ? Do you dare come out of your house again ? Of course that might also just vanish as if it has never been there or be replaced by a tobacco factory (I'm just raving here

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    Isaac Newton
     
  20. Boris Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Plato,

    I must admit that although I had heard of purported time machines using GR, I never looked into the details. However, with respect to the particular description you provide, I don't think it works at all.

    This sounds like a form of the twin paradox. In this construction, the mouth you are dragging with you experiences a slowdown in time, while the other (stationary) mouth ages at normal rate. When you subsequently pass through the wormhole, you emerge into the "future" within the stationary frame (where the rate of events was higher than at the moving end.) So there's no timetravel -- this is equivalent to just traveling away at high speed, and then coming back (the classical twin paradox setup.) In fact, there's some interesting dynamics in a wormhole system where one mouth is moving -- since the mouths evolve under differential rates. I would have to wonder if such a system can in fact be at all sustainable.

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  21. Rambler Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Hi guys.

    Boris,
    The way you describe cause and effect sill holds. Time (not date) as observed by the time traveler would still progress for them in a linear direction and therefore cause and effect would still hold true for the traveler......I have to give this some more thought. For time to work in the way you describe the traveler would only be able to go back in time as far as they were born, and as they went further back (still only as far as their birth, and still no paradox cause you can only kill your father AFTER you are born) they would get younger. The way I'm thinking about it suggests that the traveler still ages however he/she is able to hop from event to event and to any date.

    Wormholes:
    I have just recently read an article claiming a russian relativistic physics guru has just mathematicaly discovered a wormhole big enough to allow intergalactic travel. His wormhole PRODUCES the exotic matter needed for stability out of NOTHING via the manner in which it bends space-time. I will post the link as soon as I find it.
     
  22. Boris Senior Member Registered Senior Member

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    Rambler,

    Actually, if time worked in the way I describe, no kind of time travel would be possible at all. In my construction, time == rate, and it is not something along which you can travel.

    P.S. regarding the wormhole article, here's one: <A HREF="http://www.newscientist.com/news/news_223420.html">http://www.newscientist.com/news/news_223420.html</A>. In case it gets outdated, the paper it refers to can be found at: http://xxx.lanl.gov/ (archive gr-qc, abstract 0003092). And despite reading the paper, I still don't understand how the author reconciles two starkly contradictory measurements of time conducted across the wormhole (one via regular spacetime, and another through the wormhole) -- see Remark 1 on pg 5 of the paper, and the preceding discussion on pg 4.

    Plato, is this the type of time machine you were trying to describe?

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    [This message has been edited by Boris (edited April 17, 2000).]
     
  23. Plato Registered Senior Member

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    Boris,

    I think Rambler ment to write 'Plato' in stead of 'Boris', hence the confusion...

    Let's call the dragged one D and the stationary one S. If you follow the procedure as I said and bring D back to S then going into D will make you emerge in the past of S while going into S will make you emerge in the future of D ! This scenario brings back the paradoxes I have described in my opening message. Here I would like to refer to solotion 4, the alternate dimension.
    What we would have is that the wormholes wouldn't really give us acces to our own past or future but to a possible past or future that exists in a different or parallel universe if you will.

    Where do these parallel universes come from ? They are created the moment that a possible paradox arises. This however creates nightmares of infinite universes and infinite Plato's who are tying to convince an infinite amount of Boris's that timetravel is possible at least some form of it. However Feynman comes to the rescue here ! If I remember his theory correctly he states that a particle actually follows all possible paths AT THE SAME TIME but only one is observed because all the other paths cancel each other out because for each path with a certian wavefuntion there exists an other path of which the wavefunction is 90° out of fase and thus is destructive for the other. This is why the infinite parallel universes ultimatly are just one universe, the one we see. However in making a wormhole we could very well disrupt this cancellation and make one of the infinite possibilities real.
    So in a way I must concur with you, Boris in that no true timetravel is possible. But I'm convinced you are not at all satisfied with the way I come to accept your stand

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    Rambler,

    You describe cause and effect as a local event but actually it is a global one since no violation is tolerated for the universe as a whole if our understanding that we gained through studying is correct.
    About the russian guru (you are not talking about Boris are you

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    ) I would very much like to read more about it, you got my curiosity.

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    Isaac Newton
     
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