Poll: Time Travel is Impossible, or at the Very Best, Highly Unlikely

[Leemaster777]

Theoretically, I suppose time travel COULD be possible. There are a few theories floating around about how it could be done.

The problem mostly lies in making it PRACTICAL. The amount of energy something like this would consume is insane, just to do it once. Not only that, but as the TC said (which is something I've always pondered myself), this could ONLY be done in space, as any earth-based time travel would result in the subject ending up who-knows-where in the cosmos after the jump. And that includes ending inside a star, or something equally bad. Hell, even ending up just alittle to close to a planet would have fatal consequences.

And after these problems, we'd still have to get around the rather large hurdle of learning how to CONTROL the jump. How exactly does one judge this? This isn't simple science, the amount of calculations one would have to do to even BEGIN to understand how to control the destination time of time travel could probably cover the surface of the earth in equations.

In summary, could it be done? Maybe. Will it be done? Almost certainly not.

Honestly, I believe we'd get personal teleporters and inter-dimensional travel LONG before time travel becomes even the slightest bit possible.

 

[Fidelias]

I just hope it never happens. Sure, it SEEMS cool, but think of all the stuff someone could change by going back in time. And someone WOULD try to go back in time, whether it's a nerd, or a nazi, or super calculator. And then we'd all be screwed.

 

[Mogg01]

I'd like to preface my post with the fact that I have a Bachelor's degree in Physics, and am currently working towards my Ph.D. in physics, with research in black hole detection and galactic evolution. This in no way means that I'm correct in opinions, but there are a few things that physics is pretty sure about.

1. Time travel into the future is, in a way, possible. This has been covered very well by other people. I'd like to point out that it is essentially the same as somebody cryogenically freezing themselves, though, and isn't time travel as most people look at it.
2. Time travel into the past is theoretically possible, but requires an object to be moving faster than light. This is currently impossible, as the amount of force required to cause an object that has mass to accelerate to the speed of light goes to infinity (this is due to the fact that traveling at high speeds causes the mass of an object to increase, as seen by an outside observer).
3. Time travel via wormhole (a stable black hole that allows travel through it to another point in space-time) could be possible, but stabilizing a wormhole absolutely requires an object that has negative mass. We've never seen that, and no current theories (that I know of) predict anything.

Having said all of that, I'm gonna finally go into my opinion. I personally think the idea of time travel is silly. It would require that all matter in the universe be both four dimensional (it could be, but it's unlikely), and that it be completely static. That is the only way that we could go backwards along the time axis and see anything even remotely recognizable as our universe. To see why, imagine that the universe only has three dimensions; two of space, and one of time. Now imagine that everything in that universe only existed in the two special dimensions, and moved along the third. Taking one object in that backwards along the time dimension would separate it from everything that it had been able to see before. Nothing would be the same as it was.

There are some issues with my view of things, so feel free to argue against it. The entire second paragraph is just my opinion. If you'd like to do further reading, PM me and I can send you some papers/links about the info that I put in the first paragraph.

Oh, and I forgot to address one point in the original post that was really bothering me; electrons are not pure energy. They are particles, they have mass, and they cannot move at the speed of light, or above. It's a common misconception, due to the fact that we use them for electricity. If you wanted to make a ship like that, it would have to be out of photons (light) or gravitons (which nobody can prove exist, yet).

 

[moose_man]

If it was possible, we'd know. There'd be time travelers EVERYWHERE IN HISTORY. And NOW, TOO

 

[Singularly Datarific]

Well, not backwards to the best of my knowledge.
My favorite theoretical model (That probably will never exist) is the wormhole kind, you know, link 2 places in SPACE AND TIME, so all you have to do is figure out the time bit.
However, theory of relativity also means going really effin fast means time moves slower to you, so throw yourself in a particle accelerator, and wait a few minutes, and you could come out some time in the future (Provided you survive the ride, which you won't)

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

It'll happen some day. Just you wait, these things you call physics and science will be defied. Just don't go back in time. You'll invoke:

[link]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel[/link]

 

[LittleWings]

If it was possible, we'd know. There'd be time travelers EVERYWHERE IN HISTORY. And NOW, TOO

I refer you to my earlier post. Just because It's possible doesn't mean we will discover it. It may be possible but Humans might never utilise it.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

Scientists know if you are close to a powerful gravity well, like a black hole or dense star, your time slows down. Spending a few days orbiting a super dense star will slow you down several hundered years, so you will put yourself into the future. It's not that complex.

 

[Doc Theta Sigma]

It's impossible because it requires the combined energy of roughly half a universe to even be feasible. It's theoretically possible but not practically.

 

[LightningBanks]

The problem is, change something back in time and were pretty much fucked. Maybe tis not such a good idea after all

 

[The Singularity]

EDIT2:So I had dinner, and I spoke with my dad on the phone about this, and he told me about electrons. Pure energy. If we made a ship out of electrons (Bare with me here) We could potentially move really close to the speed of light and therefore... travel through time. Also I found interesting was the Multiple Dimension idea as I mentioned before. After learning a bit about it, it made me ponder if we could, I don't know, touch or move to other dimensions. Would this be considered Time Travel?
Thanks to @crudus for telling me more about Multiple Dimensions.

Multiple dimensions is not generally agreed upon, as in it has no proof or disproof whatsoever, so I will have to ignore that. However as your father said about making a ship out of pure electrons that is impossible. A: Electrons by definition push each other away and will never ever ever bond purely with each other. B: You would have to be in the ship so it would not be pure energy.
However in theory you could travel through time, but its really beyond my comprehension. By time dilation(Confusing!) you could stop time(Only for you, time would be just super, so much that nothing moves slow outside by flying into a black hole.) The other way to travel foreward in time would be to speed up to near light speed and fly away then back to earth, where time would have passed more quickly than it did to you.

 

[Macgyvercas]

Snip

While I must chastise you for ruining the fantasy of time travel, I do love numbers, andyou used a lot of them, so I give you kudos for that.

Hopefully we'll figure something out someday to make time travel possible, but I doubt anyone alive today will live to see it happen.

 

[Romidude]

Time isn't a real thing, therefore you cannot travel it.

Time travel is not impossible. Just find a black hole that can be able to withstand the travel, you can be rewritten within God'st channel and travel into the past or future.

 

[Isalan]

I read a little about what Stephen Hawking has said on the matter a month or 2 back, and if I remember correctly his theory is travelling back in time is impossible due to the paradoxical nature of going back in time, though going forward could be possible.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Time isn't a real thing, therefore you cannot travel it.

Time travel is not impossible. Just find a black hole that can be able to withstand the travel, you can be rewritten within God'st channel and travel into the past or future.

I don't care what you think and your ignorance amuses me

 

[Romidude]

Time isn't a real thing, therefore you cannot travel it.

Time travel is not impossible. Just find a black hole that can be able to withstand the travel, you can be rewritten within God'st channel and travel into the past or future.

I don't care what you think and your ignorance amuses me

And your simplicity amuses me.

 

[Caff]

Well I have read some of the things here and I find it interesting.

My 5 cents about it is actually from an episode of Eureka (they have done time travel 2 times in that show and ill talk about number 2)

In the show the leading cast is first sent back in time because of a machine build back in ca. 1945 or something, because that is the time that it was turned on first and never since. they happen to reactivate the machine in 2009 and WHAM the link is made and they are sent back to the time where it was first activated.

So in my childlike belief I think time travel is possible, but only in a one way sense. you would need the machine activated in said time you leave and it need to be intact and operational for you to go back... for the whole getting forward in time I dunno... Lightspeed?

 

[DanielDeFig]

Personally i don't think time exists. The present (the current instance) exists, but the future definitely doesn't, and while the present is completely dependent on the past, it doesn't technically exist (having already passed. Hence the word: past).

This makes me think that time travel is impossible. There might be a way to travel into the future (travelling close to the speed of light theories), but all this would achieve physically would be to ultimately just preserve your consciousness (one way or another) in a state of hibernation, to be awakened at a later date.

Travelling into the past is completely impossible unless the physical universe is regressed, at which point you would only end up in an infinite loop of regressing your act and memory of achieving that, and thus repeating it infinitely.

 

[Lucane]

Time Travel being possible? Sure.
Humans learning to master it in any present possible future? Not bloody likely.
We wouldn't have the mental copasity to comprehind the mechanics of time travel well enough to not tear appart the fabric of time and space 1st especially since time (as we tell it)isn't even a universal constant.(Being based on the rotations of a single planet as it rotates around an eventual dying star.)