[stSpringer2003]

Hi All,

I am new to this forum. I watched s Stephen Hawking episode on Nat Geo last night 04/24/2010. It was about time travel. He said "my simple translation here" that if one could travel in space close to the speed of light that one could travel into the future.

For example, If you were able to travel close to the speed of light in a space ship around the Earth for lets say 1 week, then 100 years could pass on Earth from the time when you left.

My question is:

If this could happen some day wouldn't the space traveler who comes back to Earth be of no real use to Earth's work force since He/She would know nothing about all the new technology from the time He/She left the Planet? You would be like a real young kid who doesn't know much about the real world.

I can think of 1 good reason to want to do this. If you were sick with Cancer and a cure may have been found on Earth in the 100 Earth years you were gone. Other than that all you family and friends will be dead and you may kick your illness. I don't know what do you think?

Please advise.

Thanks

[Zolar V]

I am going to take this time to pounce.
IMO

You cannot travel into the future, or the past for that matter, because our universe does not operate on our idea of time. Our idea of time is just that it is our IDEA, it is flawed and has no real substance.

And here is where i input a set of Logical Paradox: If you one day you could travel into the future then later you could travel to the past. If you can travel into the past then you could: A) screw with stuff, and B) travel to the Current(2010) present and give all the wonderful technological advances that the human race has achieved.
Now, we have had no crazy people from the future coming back with their time traveling device, nor have we experienced any wild and crazy inventions from some unimaginable future.

End logical paradox set.
IMO, if we were to eventually learn how to travel into the future it WOULD NOT be future as a function of time, it would be due to a multiverse or some similar concept.

[vordhosbn]

I don't think relativistic time dilation requires multiverse concept...
And "traveling into the future" does not bring any kind of paradox.

[Luminatus]

Well.. if we traveled into the future through a manmade rail system for example.. we couldn't travel back further than the point the track was built or also during a time period when anything else was traveling in the opposite direction on it.

[stSpringer2003]

"And here is where i input a set of Logical Paradox: If you one day you could travel into the future then later you could travel to the past."

Stephen Hawking said you couldn't travel into the past because of the paradox

This post has been edited by stSpringer2003: 27 April 2010 - 01:01 AM

[swansont]

Zolar V said:

And here is where i input a set of Logical Paradox: If you one day you could travel into the future then later you could travel to the past.

I fail to see what's logical about this. We travel into the future already because time progresses. Today becomes yesterday. There are very limited circumstances that would hypothetically allow travel into the past, and none that permit you to screw with stuff.

[ydoaPs]

Zolar V said:

I am going to take this time to pounce.
IMO

You cannot travel into the future, or the past for that matter, because our universe does not operate on our idea of time. Our idea of time is just that it is our IDEA, it is flawed and has no real substance.

And here is where i input a set of Logical Paradox: If you one day you could travel into the future then later you could travel to the past. If you can travel into the past then you could: A) screw with stuff, and B) travel to the Current(2010) present and give all the wonderful technological advances that the human race has achieved.
Now, we have had no crazy people from the future coming back with their time traveling device, nor have we experienced any wild and crazy inventions from some unimaginable future.

End logical paradox set.
IMO, if we were to eventually learn how to travel into the future it WOULD NOT be future as a function of time, it would be due to a multiverse or some similar concept.

You need to follow the rules for time travelers, since your 'paradox' is really just bad thinking. You're trying to follow the traveler rather than the timeline.

Whatever happened happened. If the time traveler in the future goes to the past, he or she is ALREADY a part of the past and thus our present is already affected by the trip through time. It's not as though one thing happens and then you can go back and change it the next time around; there is no next time. So, no, you can't screw with things that already happened. Thus, no paradox.

[Zolar V]

ydoaPs said:

You need to follow the rules for time travelers, since your 'paradox' is really just bad thinking. You're trying to follow the traveler rather than the timeline.

Whatever happened happened. If the time traveler in the future goes to the past, he or she is ALREADY a part of the past and thus our present is already affected by the trip through time. It's not as though one thing happens and then you can go back and change it the next time around; there is no next time. So, no, you can't screw with things that already happened. Thus, no paradox.

Thus your statement actually proves my point. If he were to bring technology that has been discovered from the future "back" to us then we would discover it sooner. basically if we could travel to the past then we could in theory poses every technology available to us for the entire period of time that time travel is available.

[Icefire]

Zolar V said:

Thus your statement actually proves my point. If he were to bring technology that has been discovered from the future "back" to us then we would discover it sooner. basically if we could travel to the past then we could in theory poses every technology available to us for the entire period of time that time travel is available.

If we could, but could we?

[Zolar V]

stSpringer2003 said:

"And here is where i input a set of Logical Paradox: If you one day you could travel into the future then later you could travel to the past."

Stephen Hawking said you couldn't travel into the past because of the paradox

if you cant travel to the past, then how could we travel to the future?

IE. you start at point A in time 100 you travel to Point B at time 110 but time 110 has already passed and now its 111,112,113. therefore you traveled into the future from Point A's perspective but the past from Point B's perspective.

[swansont]

Time is relative, and you cannot simply ignore the fact that we are already traveling into the future. Proceeding from a false premise makes for lousy conclusions.

[Zolar V]

swansont said:

Time is relative, and you cannot simply ignore the fact that we are already traveling into the future. Proceeding from a false premise makes for lousy conclusions.

My premise does not stand on sandy ground, because it does not rely on the concept of time. However to illustrate my point i used time thus making my point false with lousy conclusions.

[Farsight]

Whoa, guys. Time travel is science fiction. It's pseudoscience.

I'm afraid you can't even travel forwards in time. People say things like "we all travel forward in time at one second per second". But it's just a figure of speech. This travel is notional, it isn't travel in any real sense. There's no motion through time, none whatsoever. Because time is a cumulative measure of motion through space. Look inside a mechanical clock, and you don't see time flowing. You see cogs and sprockets whirring. Because clocks clock up motion. Every measure of time employs motion, be it the motion of the earth, the motion of a pendulum, the motion of a crystal, or the motion of light. It always comes back to motion, and that motion is motion through space. That's the only "travelling" that's taking place. We don't "travel" forward in time, and we'd need negative motion to "travel" backwards in time. And there is no such thing as negative motion. Motion is motion. Backwards motion is still motion.

Ever heard of a stasis box? It's science-fiction too, but it's useful to demonstrate something: get in the box, and the "stasis field" prevents all motion, even at the atomic level. So you can't move, your heart doesn't beat, and you can't even think. When I open the box five hundred years later, to you it's like I opened the box as soon as you got in. You "travelled" to the future by not moving at all. Instead everything else did, and again, all that motion, be it the motion of planets or people or atoms or light, is through space.

[michel123456]

Farsight said:

(...)There's no motion through time, (...). We don't "travel" forward in time, (...)

To be so sure of yourself, you must have a better explanation on what is time. Have you?

[swansont]

Farsight, you've posted here enough to know that using your personal beliefs/views to answer mainstream science questions is not permitted.

michel123456 said:

To be so sure of yourself, you must have a better explanation on what is time. Have you?

This discussion WILL NOT take place anywhere but in speculations. Don't answer it here.

Michel, use the search function or the "find all threads started by" feature in the profile tab if you want to read what Farsight has previously written on the topic

For discussion on Farsight's post, go here

This post has been edited by swansont: 7 May 2010 - 08:09 PM
Reason for edit: add link

[phyti]

stSpringer2003 said:

Hi All,

I am new to this forum. I watched s Stephen Hawking episode on Nat Geo last night 04/24/2010. It was about time travel. He said "my simple translation here" that if one could travel in space close to the speed of light that one could travel into the future.

For example, If you were able to travel close to the speed of light in a space ship around the Earth for lets say 1 week, then 100 years could pass on Earth from the time when you left.

The same number of universal events are occuring for you and the earth. Your clock is just slicing time into longer intervals, and you (like the clock) age slower. You're still observed from earth for the duration of your motion, i.e., you never leave the earth's 'now'.

[elas]

Surely the simple answer is that the past and the future do not exist and therefore cannot be traveled to. The speed of light enables us to view things as they were, but that is not the same as saying they still exist. The only time that exists is 'now' all other times are measurements of (no longer existing or yet to be created) history.

[Emilio Primo]

The problem is nobody truly understands time. Time to me seems as though it is an aging process of matter, nothing more. To try and travel backwards in time to me would be the equivalent of trying to travel backwards in gravity or electromagnetism.

If traveling back in time were possible which I do not think it is, you would have to go outside of the our physical universe to accomplish this, if this is even possible or probable.

[swansont]

Emilio Primo, on 21 July 2010 - 01:33 PM, said:

The problem is nobody truly understands time. Time to me seems as though it is an aging process of matter, nothing more. To try and travel backwards in time to me would be the equivalent of trying to travel backwards in gravity or electromagnetism.

If traveling back in time were possible which I do not think it is, you would have to go outside of the our physical universe to accomplish this, if this is even possible or probable.

This is only true in the sense that we do not truly understand anything, i.e. there's always more to learn. The behavior of time is fairly well understood. Time travel is a more well-defined problem than many make it out to be.

[Emilio Primo]

swansont, on 21 July 2010 - 02:21 PM, said:

This is only true in the sense that we do not truly understand anything, i.e. there's always more to learn. The behavior of time is fairly well understood. Time travel is a more well-defined problem than many make it out to be.

Not entirely true.

We only understand time in that it's a continuation of a sequence of events, That's about it. Our understanding of gravity and electromagnetism far more. We use what we do know of how time works for measurements and calculations, but this has nothing to do with time itself.