Time travel?

[cy7878]

When I was in college, my math prof said that time travel is possible by the mathematic proofs involved. I never asked him to show me how, does any one here know?

 

[DTing]

"travel" is possible depending on how you interpt the word...

google: twin paradox

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: DTing
"travel" is possible depending on how you interpt the word...

google: twin paradox

The only thing that came up for me is in regards of special relativity and time dilation. I haven't heard anything regarding mathematical proofs though. Google does say something like there's two solutions to maxwell's equations, but I couldn't make any sense of it.

 

[Cattlegod]

you can't go backward in time, you can only go forward at different speeds. from time being frozen to extremely accelerated time.

 

[wfbberzerker]

Originally posted by: Cattlegod
you can't go backward in time, you can only go forward at different speeds. from time being frozen to extremely accelerated time.

actually, it could be argued that time travel to the past is possible, if you consider the idea of parallel dimensions/realities.

 

[uart]

Time travel into the future is definitely possible. I'm doing it right now at a rate of 60 seconds per minute.

 

[imgod2u]

Sure it is. All you need is a flux capacity, a Delorean that's going up to 88 mph and 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.

But in all seriousnss, there is a working theory of timetravel in the way of wormholes. However, to produce such a thing would be pretty drastic.

 

[3WAYsplit]

You can checkout these two sites for time travel...

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

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

 

[Mday]

It is possible to generate a set of physics equations which establishes a time T-alpha which comes before T-zero (the starting point). However, it's physically impossible since it imposes restrictions on things that we can't control. One of them gravity, and another is a massive amount of energy.

 

[Fandu]

Mday is correct. Current physics theories that I'm familiar with say that you can stay still in time (or infinitesmily close to), but you cannot go back in time without being able to travel faster than light. Steven Hawking recently changed his theory of black holes and now believes that time travel through parallel universes is not possible.

 

[Cogman]

as far as human knowledge goes, traveling to the past is impossible. As far as going to the future is conserned, It has been proven that as you travel faster time slows down. (I believe they put a clock in one jet and set it off at supersonic speeds with a syncronized clock on the ground the clock on the plain was a couple of seconds, or milliseconds slower then the first)

 

[Kondik]

Time travel INST possible,becoause the time really dosnt exist. Think about it, everything is a natural process not a work of time, if we havent found time we lived whitout it. So the time travell cant be true, but the space-time is better that is maybe possible, its simple. Try to be faster than light and you can rule the time

 

[jagec]

Eh, I think time travel to the past would be possible from a philosophical standpoint, even without parallel universes. The explanation is that, since changes in the past would instantly propagate into the future, we're currently living in the future after all changes have been made. For example, if someone was going back in time to kill Hitler, we already know they failed because Hitler lived.

From a scientific standpoint? who knows.

 

[Cogman]

ahh, but heres the paradox, If someone killed hitler before he rose to power, then they would have not reasion to kill him in the future. So we might be living the alternate of a future where someone went back to kill him. "A paradox that could DESTROY the universe, Or just make her pass out."

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Cogman
ahh, but heres the paradox, If someone killed hitler before he rose to power, then they would have not reasion to kill him in the future. So we might be living the alternate of a future where someone went back to kill him. "A paradox that could DESTROY the universe, Or just make her pass out."

Assuming one timeline, the determinism comes in that if someone went back to kill Hitler, they would fail somehow (be discovered, have another time traveller stop them, etc).

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Cogman
as far as human knowledge goes, traveling to the past is impossible. As far as going to the future is conserned, It has been proven that as you travel faster time slows down. (I believe they put a clock in one jet and set it off at supersonic speeds with a syncronized clock on the ground the clock on the plain was a couple of seconds, or milliseconds slower then the first)

just one little thing to add to that: "as you travel faster, time slows down with respect to an Earth frame of reference." If you were travelling at 90% the speed of light, a minute would still be 60 seconds long, and you would not notice your watch ticking any slower. In your frame of reference, time has not slowed down.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Not exactly a proof, but what if it is publicly announced that anyone who manages to travel back in time in a controlled manner leave a sign, such as a container with a note that says "We did it" at a precise location (lat/long?) Then we immediately drive to that spot and dig. If we find a capsule with the note -- yah! -- it is possible, so we'll keep working on it. If we find nothing, that doesn't really mean anything, and we keep working on it.

 

[silverpig]

There are some things involving (I believe) rotating Kerr black holes which allow for time travel to the past. Same thing with negative energy. But yeah, not in our lifetimes at least. Forward isn't a problem though. Wanna go to the year 10000? Just travel with a gamma factor of ~8000 for a year

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: silverpig
There are some things involving (I believe) rotating Kerr black holes which allow for time travel to the past.

You're correct that General Relativity permits time travel, including backwards time travel, in such an extreme metric. However, you cannot travel backwards before the time machine itself was constructed, which eliminates Gunslinger's method of attempting to figure out if time travel is possible.

 

[MalikChen]

There was a good article in a sciam about time travel. It had all of the major theories about time travel. It did give a theory about travel to the past. If you could create a wormhole, and rotate it somehow to slow time down in and around it, when you entered that wormhole later you be taken back to the time when the wormhole was created (well, plus a little bit, because you can't slow down time completely).

Of course, this could all be rubbish, because even though wormholes are a consequence of Einsteinian physics, they could just not exist. Same with the turtle that is carrying the disk-shaped earth on its' back.

 

[Farvacola]

Ive read that time travel is possible when the flow of time is viewed as a large u shape. At some point in the gap between the two ends, there is a point,
or path of conveyance in which it would be mathematically possible to go back or forward in time. This path is more commmonly known as a worm hole
and is a flux in the space time continuim. The question is, does anything really hold water when it is theoretical and not practical? Only time will tell.

 

[Turkish]

I hope time travel will be possible on day. Just so my grand-grand-kids can come back to the past and meet me

 

[1EZduzit]

If we move back to our distant past, no one would have thought that going to the moon was possible. Who can sit here now and definitvely say is't not possible? I hope that time travel to the past isn't possible and assume it isn't because I've never met a time traveler or anybody else that has. As far as moving ahead in time, relativity says you can distort the time space relationship by going fast enough. It wouldn't really be "travel" in my opinion, but it would get you to the future. Of course you wouldn't be able to come back if you don't like it.

 

[GiLtY]

Didn't Einstein predict that time travel is not possible, but seeing into the past/future is?

--GiLtY

 

[imported_cwbaker]

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