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

[Jezzascmezza]

Me and my dog fight 'em off, but one gashed my ear open. This made me ponder time travel..

Wait... What?
You were clutching your bleeding ear, probably in a lot of pain, and the first thing you could think about about was time travel?
In other news, I ate a carrot this morning, and it made me remember that time I went wind-surfing.

 

[Tdc2182]

People thought that the Earth was the center of the Universe

People thought that the world was flat and you would fall into space.

People thought that the first space shuttle would never make it into outer space.

People doubt we will ever make it past mars.

People tend to be negative about these things, but if history has shown us anything, its that humans find a way.

Granted, its gonna be a long while, and will most likely be made illegal up to a certain point in time, but if humans are still around in the next 500 years I won't be so quick to put that idea behind me.

 

[Swift-panda]

I would just like to pop the dream many of you seem to have about black holes. This might have already been said but i can't be arsed reading through five pages and i saw it refereed to on this page so if it has been dismissed it needs to be again.
Aiden my friend, your logic is more flawed than swiss cheese unless you accept the fact that by your definition we are time travelling currently. You are correct in layman's terms in your understanding that relatively time slows down near a more massive object than us and that if we come back we will travel time. This is theorized I think due to gravity creating a "dent in the blanket of time" where your wrong is that you have not thought your idea through. All you are doing is simply slowing down time relative to the majority of humans on earth, then when you come back you are speed time back up. The time gained from sitting in the area of slow time will be gained again if you like coming back to earth.
Secondly your idea of surviving a black hole is to say at the least ridiculous. there is a point of no return around a black hole at this point light cannot escape (hence their blackness) this point is still a long way out you would have to be able to go incomprehensible speed to escape a black hole not to mention what it would do to your atoms. I don't think you understand just how riduclous black holes are. I can't be stuffed writing anymore so thats it.
Thans for reading,
Moss

 

[Maximushski]

Impossible.

Everything in the universe is made up of the same basic building blocks, atoms, which are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. At any one time there is a finite number of these particles in the universe. For a person to travel back in time the number of particles would need to instantaneously increase to bring the physical form of that person into existence. This is effectively creating something from nothing, which our current understanding of physics does not allow.

It may be possible to assemble existing particles into the form of a person, though this begs the question - has time travel really been achieved or has a mere copy been generated? Don't even get me started talking about effect of a paradox.

 

[Smooth Operator]

With our current knowledge the idea of time travel seems rather ridiculous.

But it's important to note that we're barely scratching the surface of what there still is to know and discover, so I wouldn't call it all hogwash just yet.

 

[randomsix]

Electron ship:

Electrons repel each other... require massive electric fields to keep them in place... so require much equipment to create fields. Also cannot control fields very well... making a specific (useful) shape is unwieldy. Also you can't touch the walls or floor or electrons will kill/burn/melt you.

 

[olendvcook]

There's no such thing as time. It's a tool, much like a ruler. Sure, you can change how long an inch is, but that doesn't make everything shorter or longer. You're just changing a fake tool you use to keep track of things around you, the tool is never those things themselves. Time is the same thing, a tool used to track the movement and progression of everything.

your analogy doesn't work. time isn't the tool a minute is. time would be comparable to length in your analogy not an inch

 

[DeadEy3]

If time travel ever did exist... where are all the time travelers?
The closest thing to time travel would be cryogenic freezing or high speed travel.
You can change the relative speed of time but not it's direction. only futureward.

 

[maswell]

The What you ought to know guys did a video on time travel. Give it a watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx4GZJpL8W0&

 

[maswell]

If time travel ever did exist... where are all the time travelers?

lol, ok this wins.

 

[maswell]

EDIT: Grr, double post, how do I delete posts?

 

[ENKC]

If humans ever invent time travel, we would have met them by now.

 

[olendvcook]

If time travel ever did exist... where are all the time travelers?
The closest thing to time travel would be cryogenic freezing or high speed travel.
You can change the relative speed of time but not it's direction. only futureward.

causing 911 and hurricanes and even Hitler was a time traveler!1!!1!

 

[interspark]

holy crap this is a close poll! i think no-one can ever truely understand the way the universe works, no matter who they are or even what planet theyre from, i think in this infinite universe there will always be new discoveries and surprises. so yes, i think time travel will one day be possible

 

[interspark]

If time travel ever did exist... where are all the time travelers?

well you've seen it in the films, when you go back in time you're not allowed to run around screaming "IM FROM THE FUTURE!!!" and even if you did, no-one would believe you. the point being that for all you know, the answer to your question could be "all over the place!"

 

[interspark]

do we really want time travel? i dont wanna live the rest of my life running away from skynet =[

i would have to go with black hole for time travel though

my idea would have to be "temporal tides" where collosal areas of the universe have time behaving slightly differently, going slower, faster or even backwards (yes, red dwarf reference)

 

[Jatyu]

This is my issue, let's say you can achieve a speed high enough to distort time. Now how do you prevent peoples' bones from damn well liquefying from the g-forces.

"G-forces" are caused by acceleration, accelerate slowly enough and you will be fine.

You can easily travel forward in time at an accelerated rate, just go fast enough. Hell there is already a formula for it:

Basically, the time you actually experiance is equal to the time that passes for the rest of the world divided by the root of 1 minus your velocity divided by the speed of light.

Seriously, if you hop on an aeroplane, you are travelling through time ever so slightly slower than the people on the ground. Like nanoseconds, but still. People have actually proved this via atomic clocks sent around the world on aeroplanes.

You may notice that if you travelled at the speed of light, time would not move at all for you. Unfortunately you would also have an infinite mass and be infinitely thin. So for anything with mass, travel at the speed of light is impossible.

And... If we did happen to go like 99% the speed of light, our mass would become so great that any stars or planets near us would either orbit around us, or just crash into us. We would screw up Earth forever if we tried to do that near the planet.

Also, black holes are so dense that light cannot escape, and since we can't even travel as fast as light, we would be screwed if we tried to go close enough to one to travel through time.

Essentially, time travel is really really hard to do.

 

[Korolev]

I'm certain that if you even could travel back in time, you would be unable to alter the past. The past is set, and any attempt to alter it would be met with failure. The past is the sum of all the actions of all the time travellers, ever - if tampering with history is possible, the past we have now is the sum of their efforts, and it was the best they could do.

But I'm convinced that you can't change the past. Say you go back in time to kill Mr. A so that he won't create company B. If you succeed, you alter the past significantly. Assuming you are still born, you would have lived your whole life never knowing about Company B, or Mr. A, so you would never have gone back in time to kill him.

If history could be changed, it would have been. This is essentially what I'm saying - if there were time travellers, then there's a limit to how or when they can travel and what they could do. They certainly can't travel back in time to kill Hitler or Stalin - because Hitler and Stalin weren't killed by assassins.

I can guarantee you that if you tried to go back in time to kill Hitler, you will fail. Someone or Something will stop you. The fact that Hitler ended his own life in a bunker shows that any time travelling assassins failed.

I'm dead certain about this - you can't change history.