I read somewhere that even if a time machine was invented, and actually worked, you could not go back in time even 1 millisecond before the TM was invented. Traveling into the future is something else.
There doesn’t have to be a ‘grandfather paradox’ in time traveling. Think of it this way:
The time line is like a river. You’re traveling down a river in a boat and experiencing all the rapids and turns (events). If you place a bunch of boulders in the path of the river 10 km upstream, you’re not going to stop flowing downstream. You’re boat will keep traveling down stream. If the river changes course because of all the boulders, another boat coming by later might take a different path, or experience different rapids, but that doesn’t mean you have to experience them unless you choose to ride in that boat. (if you stay in the past, you can witness yourself not be born, but in you’re own boat, you were still born (not still-born))
If you interpret time travel my way, there is no paradox (challenge me, please - I have tons to say). There is an interesting question left though - are we at the head of the river? Are we following a course already traveled? are we following an altered course? What happens if you travel past the end of the river?
Interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox
Oh my God! I just have the most tremendous time travel experience. I held out my hand at arms length and saw my thumb as it was a couple of nanoseconds ago.
I feel…well…I don’t know: like I just met my great grandfather.
[QUOTE=maestro8;1248237]
There was a time where speaking of man’s capability to fly was considered fantasy. But that didn’t stop man’s dream of flying.
It’s much easier to say “it’s all tosh” than to actually think through the consequences… but you aren’t going to get anywhere that way. QUOTE]
Man still cannot fly. He has made machines that fly and carry him, that’s all he has done. As he sits in that seat on the 747, revving its engines on the runway, looking out at the swifts and swallows flying gracefully by, all he can do is to keep on dreaming.
And unless you can in some way change the basic way time works, you will never meet great grandad. The wilder theories of physics are very much science fiction, no matter how much you may dream about them. They may make great books and movies, but nothing else.
Dream as much as you wish, but you also are not going anyway, not if the destination is even one microsecond into the past.
Discuss all the paradoxes you want, but whilst they are built on a fallacy, you cannot really expect a logical explanation for them. It is like asking why bananas are blue.
[quote=“JayS,post:26,topic:106342”]
and time travel is possible, we just haven’t figured it out yet.
Someone hasn’t heard of a wingsuit, it seems.
Thanks for the encouragement, Mr. S!
Many scientists have been working on the problem, and some have had a small degree of success. Time has been stopped and even reversed at the particle level.
This is a technology that can only grow by baby steps, but the first steps have been taken.
You must be a lot of fun at parties.
Time bends in space. Traverse across that space, find a solution to two incongruent points, and traverse time.
I don’t think complex structures with a unique dependence on their immediate environment would survive the energies involved in that sort of travel, but sub-atomic particles, items smashed into singularities, common sum existences, could, with enough energy and opportunity, make that leap.
Can you (physics) send sub-atomic particles back in time to create unstable bonds, which would then lead to a present availment as the same sub-atomic particles? (Is this an infinite paradox?)
Follow-up thought:
Doesn’t infinity imply that all abstractions, all time, is meaningless and that everything is happening all at once (MWI)? Infinity-everything-always is at least an absolute, a singularity in philosophical terms.
Edit: You beat me to particle time travel
[QUOTE=maestro8;1248534]
Someone hasn’t heard of a wingsuit, it seems.
Hmm. it may not have any gears of cogs but is in essence still a machine wrapped around you. It is not just a man flying. However as to it flying: well, hardly. It allows you to glide, by providing enough lift to reduce the rate at which you plummet. Don such a suit yourself Mr Maestro, stand outside your front door, and use it to fly to my next party. If you succeed I would guarantee you a great night AND reimburse you the cost of buying the wingsuit. You are too easily taken in by all the media hype it would seem Maestro. Start to think like a physicist .
[QUOTE=maestro8Many scientists have been working on the problem, and some have had a small degree of success. Time has been stopped and even reversed at the particle level./QUOTE
That page has an abstract:Abstract
We propose a mechanism to stop and time-reverse single photons in one-dimensional circuit quantum electrodynamics systems. The circuit can be designed to be of deep sub-wavelength scale, and can stop and store two photons in the system at the same time.
Note the word “propose” and the phrase “Circuit can be designed”
This sounds like more speculation to me. Doesn’t look like anything has actually been achieved. Not being an IEEE member I cannot access the full article of course, but would the abstract not have been more positive had success been achieved?
:D:D
QUOTE=BluntRM;1248536]Time bends in space.
[/QUOTE]
Moreso than it bends in solids or liquids?
Do you have a point, or are you just here to piss in our pool?
No, you’d still be a negative nancy about it.
And, yes, the scientists were successful. But Google would’ve told you that, if you bothered to look.
I find time behaves strangely when saturated with a good amount of bourbon whiskey. Bends, twists, loops, the whole song and dance.
They will be quantum processors. No more of just being 1 or a 0, it will be both.
Oh dear Maestro. I know you to have a level of intelligence quite sufficient to have seen the point. I had hoped that you might have accepted it gracefully, rather than have resorted to such insulting behaviour. How sad. However to re-iterate the point simply:
Wearing a wingsuit does not enable a man to fly. It just lets him fall more slowly. And without it he is even further from achieving anything like true flight. Do you need any more help in seeing the point? If you wish to use man’s historical dreams to illustrate that those dreams will eventually come true, you need to choose your dream with more care. And as a general scientific method this falls well short of the ideal. You cannot validate a fallacy by the use of a combination of poorly researched evidence and insults.
[QUOTE=maestro8 No, you’d still be a negative nancy about it.
And, yes, the scientists were successful. But Google would’ve told you that, if you bothered to look.[/QUOTE]
I did bother to look. And the first site that seemed relevant suggested that their time reversal experiments were not due to start until 2011/2012. I saw little need to look further, and certainly do not have the time to do so, either now or in the near past.
I was surprised that you, an apparent self professed expert, might not have taken rather more care in quoting your supportive sources. Once again, if you quote a source, make sure it does what you have written on the tin.
Is everyone who dares to disagree with you a negative nancy…or was that just another of your argument-winning techniques?
+1
Let’s back up here. We were talking about paradoxes related to time travel.
To contribute to the discussion, Mr. S posts “it’s all a bunch of faff!” We appreciate your contribution, but this doesn’t do much to help us with the Grandfather paradox, or anything else we’ve covered so far.
Instead of ignoring your post as I shoud’ve, I politely reminded you that one may have made the same observation about talk of flight some years ago.
To counter, Mr. S begins an argument of semantics, where he should’ve supported his argument that our discussion was a waste of time (IMO).
I’ve yet to understand what you’re here to contribute. This thread was created to talk about time travel, and you seem insistent on starting an argument over something else.
I’ve written nothing on any tin. Again it seems you’re looking to start an argument of semantics, but I find that about as interesting as what I flushed down the toilet this morning.
No, but people who charge into a thread and try to drag it off topic, kick it at the first sign of threadjack, and toss it in the gutter are, IMO, negative nancies.
Unlike you suggest, I’m not here to win or lose anything. Such concepts are entirely subjective, and anyone who’s spent time in this forum knows, we’ve quite the range of subjects. I’m not even here to argue. I’d just like to explore the concept of time travel. If you’re not interested, tough titties.
Just to make sure I’m following you, you’re saying that one cannot ever experience the stoppage of time? Or that one continues to observe the passage of time no matter what events occur?
This sounds like the MWI, but one has the ability to see another world-line from their own. I don’t think this is possible, as the very act of “seeing” requires photons to bounce off that which is “seen” and arrive at the viewer. Are you suggesting that photons can traverse world-lines?
According to the MWI, every quantum even creates a new river, to use your metaphor. So we’re continually at the head of a tributary. It’s tough to say if there even is a head to the river. What was the first quantum event?
A course already travelled… this is a curious question. How can a course have already be travelled if it is yet to exist?
By the MWI there are no altered courses… and I don’t see how there is an end to the river. Here is where your metaphor may begin to break down. Rivers definitely end. I can’t say that time may ever end.
I’d compare that question to asking if space ever ends. Perhaps it might fold back upon itself (are we trapped in a giant Mobius strip?) but I don’t see it ending.
…except that when measured, the particles involved in computation will only indicate 1 or 0. After all, if you don’t get a concrete result, what’s the use of computing?
I’m just posting these here to read when I get a chance. I think they may be good fertilizer with which to grow this discussion (are you reading this, Mr. S?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle
Yup, it says:
Stated simply, the Novikov consistency principle asserts that if an event exists that would give rise to a paradox, or to any “change” to the past whatsoever, then the probability of that event is zero.
…therefore there can be no situations that invoke “time travel” based paradoxes.
So Novikov has another way of saying:
"The best you can do is to precede all this tosh with a “what if”… "
Your other post I shall ignore. Others may view it as a lesson in how to say “black is white”.
I heard this today, 6/20/09, during yesterday’s future:
If I walked into a bookstore and purchased a copy of “A Tale of Two Cities” and subsequently traveled back in time, prior to the 1850’s, to deliver this copy to one Charles Dickens before he would begin work on the title, he could publish it, as he would have done historically, but without actually authoring the book during this interval. In this line of history, a book would then be published that was never actually written.
Piggybacking on this idea, if an item with mass would find time travel difficult, implausible, could pulses be sent through time? --Something that could survive the gravity of bent space, something that could pulse in rhythm, a rhythm that could be interpreted as binary, Morse, etc… In this way a line of coherent logic, information, could be translated across temporal planes.
A physical paperback copy of Dicken’s work may not make the space connection, but a coded version could find transport that much easier. Then could a book with no author be written?
Also, I neglected to read everything in this thread so if time travel has already been negated by the unicyclist community, whatever.