9 replies to this topic

[Kung-Fu Barbie]

What is your opinion on time travel? Do you believe it is scientifically possible (or could be)? Or do you think it is just fiction?

[Mathieu]

I believe that time travel into the future is possible, but I don't believe it's possible to go back in time.  I have reasons.... but am too lazy to write them at the moment.

[Godless-Liberal]

Why not?  I say yes.

[Mathieu]

I don't see how anything could travel BACKWARDS in time... forwards I don't see to be that difficult, all we as humans need to do is find a way to propel something at speeds very close to the speed of light.  

Time is an incredibly relative thing, and getting into Einstein's equations and stuff is interesting, but so very terribly confusing.  I understand it like this...

If I were to jump on a rocket right now, and accelerate away from the Earth at the speed of light, and head towards the nearest star, (which is a little over 3.5 light years away) it would take me 3.5 years, travelling at the speed of light to get to that star.  To me, traveling at this speed my watch would count for 3.5 years.  If I got to the star and immediately turned around and came back to Earth maintaining the speed of light, I would arrive back to Earth thousands or even millions of years in the future, even though my watch would read only 7 years of total flight time.  This is because time is a dimension like any other and it completely relative.  My experience through time will be different than someone else's if we do not both experience it in the same frame of reference.  

So, random tangeant that I find interesting, is that looking through a telescope into the deepest parts of the universe are like time machines in a way.... we can see the past, but we will never be able to travel to it.  A star that is 10 million light years away, as can be measured... needed 10 million years for that light to make it all the way out to us to reach our eyes.  it took ten million years for that light to leave the surface of that star and make it here to Earth, or we wouldn't see it.  This means that when we see this star at 10 million light years away, we are seeing that star as it was, 10 million years ago, because that single photon that is now entering out eye, left the star 10 million years ago.... So in a way I guess we can see into the past... because that star now, that we're looking at, at that extreme distance is already long dead and gone because stars don't live for that long.  So for all we know, that incredibly faint spec of light that is starlight, may no longer have a star that it came from.

[SuperSven]

I think going back in time is a fun little fantasy, but I don't think it's very realistic

[Nick]

Kung-Fu Barbie, on Feb 22 2008, 11:09 AM, said:

What is your opinion on time travel? Do you believe it is scientifically possible (or could be)? Or do you think it is just fiction?

I don't think we should mess with time at all.

[Stupendous Man]

I'd like to think that the future is indeterminate, thus making true time travel into the future impossible

[The_NuttyTart]

i don't think it's possible

but it would be fantastic if we could go back in time!!!....to be able to go back to some momentous moments in history and see it unfolding would be awesome!!!!!!

[Robulosity]

lol the only thing that close to light speed travel does is change perception of time in a localized feild with the potential to "slow" time in the pocket your traveling in...(For time travel to come into account once reaching the destination star you'd have to pull a follow a path around the star in its closest orbital path increasing speed to 2x-3x the traditional speed of light to returning to your destination solar system, which in technicality is not possible even if you GOT to the speed of light, you would have to be able to project a accelerated light wave and hope it could travel at its natural speed + the projected volicity...)

Reality aside,  the closest thing possible to time travel currently requires the theory of infinite universes to exist, where as one does not really time travel but simply shifts to a reality that existed before ours (So creating the possibility the big bang happened earlier or even that the universe decided to create it self in another method)

There's also the infamous theory of "warp 10" (Infinite speed) travel, which would permit you to exist everywhere and any time with in time.  Giving you the over sight of every possible universe, every possible future, past .. (Before dying about 10 seconds later) but I'm not going to go into the inherent flaws behind the pyshics of warp drive travel (although completely possible) its incredibly unlikely the human race will ever be able to do it

[Geo]

Since we know so very little about science and we leap forward every few years,, I wouldn't doubt that in 1000's of years we will figure out many things we never though possible today..