Poll: Do you believe in time travel?

[Rockchimp69]

I think likely not. I find the idea of time as an actual existing dimension (the notion that time exists simultaneously allowing travel between times) highly suspect. It seems more plausible to propose that this sort of "time" is a useful abstraction with no real empirical existence. We can never observe the past or future and can only make statements about either by making assumptions about causality. The thing is, if you have a concept of causality, you don't really NEED any sort of "time" dimension with different times existing simultaneously to make sense of the world.

Personally I think that as time has been observed to warp or "dialate" in situations such as fast moving atomic clocks in orbit showing different times to those on earth, it may also be able to be affected in other ways, e.g. Bending it or folding it to send a body to a different time.

This is a somewhat mistaken view of time dilation. Time moves at different speeds in different inertial frames of reference, but it's not as though anything ever goes BACK in time or as though the two frames fail to exist simultaneously (it's very hard to define what I mean here by simultaneously, but, if I'm not mistaken, a frame of reference encompassing the other two should suffice). Dilation is to do with the "speed" of time, not the "position" in time.

Perhaps an example would help. If you were to board a spaceship that had launched in the past and had traveled at high speeds for an extended period of time, you would be in the "past" with respect to calendars. But once you got on the ship, you would be in the present because those moments with you aboard never happened before, despite time-keeping devices suggesting otherwise. It's not as though you got on the ship sometime in your past without realizing it, you just got on a ship that experienced slower time for a while.

Saying that dilation suggests time travel to be possible is like saying that brakes slow you down, so really good brakes might allow you to slow down so much that you go backwards.

Oh well I understand that time dilation is just two things going at different speeds of time. I was jut saying that this suggests there may be other ways to manipulate it. Aside from that little mis-communication, my knowledge of physics is fairly limited as I'm only 15.

 

[eljawa]

If we are to believe in time travel we also assume that time is all predetermined, and that all time happens simultaniously and only our perspective of it changes. Neither of those sound appealing to me.

 

[Matt-the-twat]

I'm going to say no. Apart from anything, if it ever does come into fruition people would have gone back in time to now, or maybe even later and made their presence known in some manner. Since this hasn't happened, then time travel will never be possible.

AFTER-THOUGHT: Perhaps Jesus or Mohammed, or whatever other prophets exist were time travellers from the future! Oh noes! No but seriously I don't really believe that, just the best example of someone joining a society and having a really huge impact on it.

 

[Kokujo Long]

I think its possalbe but at the same time i think if people could go back they would have killed Hitler as a child or mebay people how will time travel can't chage things.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

Spoiler: Wow! No-one mentioned this?!

Chaplin never lies..

Anyway, it could exist, but a paradox is extremely likely thus, it isn't possible in the near future.

 

[Rockchimp69]

As the subject says, post if you believe that time travel is/could be possible or not, and why.
A few rules for this thread:
Firstly your reason has to be either scientific, logical or a gut feeling. It can't be something retarded like "time travel is just in movies so it can't be real!!!"
And secondly, no insulting other people's views as there is no definate answer for now.

Personally I think that as time has been observed to warp or "dialate" in situations such as fast moving atomic clocks in orbit showing different times to those on earth, it may also be able to be affected in other ways, e.g. Bending it or folding it to send a body to a different time.

But that's just me what are you views?

There is a definite answer- it is possible.

The reason those atomic clocks are different in space than on Earth is gravity. If a human were to orbit a black hole for 10 years, when they came back, they would be 150 years in the future. The Cosmonaut that was on MIR for 18 months is 0.048 seconds in the future. Gravity warps time. Traveling backwards is not possible in our 11 dimension universe, only forwards.

As I explained in my last post, I understand that traveling forward at varying rates is possible, my question is whether direction can be changed.

Edit: Also are you sure its not the speed the object is travelling at? Or maybe a mixture of the two?

It's an educated guess, but I don't think that travelling back in time is possible, simply because matter can't be created. Let me explain how I see this...

At any given moment in the universe, the amount of energy and matter is constant. Nothing is created, only transformed. Travelling "in the future" by increasing your speed still is possible, since you don't exactly disappear from a moment to reappear in another: you're always there at any given moment.

Travelling back in time, however, would mean subtracting yourself, with all your matter and energy, from a given moment, and adding all that energy and matter to another moment in the universe. Travelling back in time would basically create variations in the amount of energy in the universe, which is not possible according to the laws of thermodynamics.

But it's an educated guess. What do I know, I'm just a programmer!

Woah, you just changed my views on this entirely.. Can't believe I didn't think of that before

 

[Rockchimp69]

I think of it like this:
has the past ever changed? No? Then obviously time travel is either impossible or never discovered.

Prove that the past has never been changed.

 

[Amphoteric]

I don't think Chaos Theory would like time travel. It would create too many paradoxes.

 

[Rockchimp69]

For fucks sake, can people please stop labeling threads as polls, when they aren't polls, but just discussions? You're annoying the heck out of me, and if the board had such a feature, i'd autoignore all threads that say poll without having one.

Obligatory discussion value:
I don't "believe" in time travel, simply because i have seen zero evidence for "time" to be more than a mental-VCR (Translation: Time as people imagine it, doesn't exist).

There WAS a poll but it didn't show up. Actually think things through before you start having a go at people.

 

[forsinain42]

I used to believe in time travel. That was several years from now mind...

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Well whether time travel exists I see only two ways of it working out. First way is that you already traveled through time (you were in the past already) so you can't really change anything. Or you can change things, which could be totally worse. Because then through some accident you could make it so that you never existed or time travel wasn't invent when you use it thus creating some paradox which could do something really bad to reality.

Plus there's that whole "travel through time, but not space" aspect that would be troublesome. You could travel into an empty void or into a space which was already occupied. Although if you can manipulate time, I would imagine it wouldn't be that hard to manipulate space as well.

I like Harry Turtledove's idea of cross-time travel. You can't travel back and forth through time, but you can travel sideways, meaning you can travel to alternate timelines. That would be fun and would skip all those problems I mentioned earlier.

 

[Fursnake]

I flat out don't believe time travel is possible...and quite frankly sick of seeing Star Trek fall back on it time and time again as a plot device.

 

[mattttherman3]

The Vulcan Science Institute has disproven the theory of time travel.

 

[Rockchimp69]

If it was possible, we would have seen some by now

I was a time traveller I wouldn't go back in time and screw up the future by making myself obvious.. Also your assuming that our time is even worth visiting.

I think of it like this:
has the past ever changed? No? Then obviously time travel is either impossible or never discovered.

Prove to us that the past has never been changed.

 

[Rockchimp69]

The Vulcan Science Institute has disproven the theory of time travel.

<3 This ^^

 

[Rockchimp69]

I flat out don't believe time travel is possible...and quite frankly sick of seeing Star Trek fall back on it time and time again as a plot device.

Rule number 1, there's point in having a discussion thread if you don't argue why you think that. Although I totally agree about the Star Trek thing, the only decent time travel plots were the DS9 Trials and Tribilations episode and that one from TNG where they find data's head.

I think its possalbe but at the same time i think if people could go back they would have killed Hitler as a child or mebay people how will time travel can't chage things.

Personally I wouldn't kill Hitler because if the holocaust hadn't happened then it might happen again further forward in the future when Superior weapons and technology could bring about the apocalypse. Imagine if Hitler had Hydrogen bombs!

The Vulcan Science Institute has disproven the theory of time travel.

<3 This ^^


Edit: AHH i'm double posting in my own thread!

 

[Talshere]

No, of course it isn't. If you were to time travel to 6:15 AM on the 5th of December, 1926 then at that moment, you would both be there and not be there, creating a paradox similar to dividing by zero.

There are no specific equations in our current understanding of the universe that explicitly state time travel is impossible. In fact there are several rather promising theories that are allowed within these theories. It is important to understand however that currently we use different functions of math to explain different phenomenon we have witnessed. No one theory can yet encompass all of our understanding, so until we have this we can know nothing for sure.


In short:

There is currently no reason to believe that time travel is impossible.

 

[Mr. Google]

As the subject says, post if you believe that time travel is/could be possible or not, and why.
A few rules for this thread:
Firstly your reason has to be either scientific, logical or a gut feeling. It can't be something retarded like "time travel is just in movies so it can't be real!!!"
And secondly, no insulting other people's views as there is no definate answer for now.

Personally I think that as time has been observed to warp or "dialate" in situations such as fast moving atomic clocks in orbit showing different times to those on earth, it may also be able to be affected in other ways, e.g. Bending it or folding it to send a body to a different time.

But that's just me what are you views?

There is a definite answer- it is possible.

The reason those atomic clocks are different in space than on Earth is gravity. If a human were to orbit a black hole for 10 years, when they came back, they would be 150 years in the future. The Cosmonaut that was on MIR for 18 months is 0.048 seconds in the future. Gravity warps time. Traveling backwards is not possible in our 11 dimension universe, only forwards.

11??? Id really love for you to name off all of those hahaha

 

[Hazzaslagga]

it is entirely possible to travel forwards in time, sort of (though technically you just make time go slower). just run really fast and you'll see what i mean. However to go back in time requires you to travel faster than the speed of light which is not possible acording to some smart person because you gain mass.

 

[CaptainCrunch]

Yes. However, only in the case where you can go back no further than when the time machine was turned on. Assuming it's never turned off, as well.