Time Travel possibility.

[Nylarathotep]

I have speculated and pondered over the kanundrum that is time travel for many many years.

I have come to the conclusion that it shall NOT be possible to travel back in time, due to the butterfly effect. If you WERE to travel back in time, and were to change ONE thing, the future would change.

Assumeing that the future changed, your ability to travel through time might go away. If it went away, then you would no longer have been able to go back in time, and therefore, the future would remain consistant, and then the cycle of circular logic comes into play *curses, logic!*...

Now, as far as travelling FORWARD in time... IN THEORY, see above posts about faster than light, reciever on both ends, etc, etc. Also, see the book "Time Machine," it kinda shows some of what could happen, a possible machine that would not need a reciver on both ends, yadda yadda yadda.

I've also conducted an ongoing experiment with myself, leaving a note for my future self, or my children, or my childrens children, etc, assuming time travel ever IS possible (either direction). Assuming it IS possible to travel BACK in time in the future, I've not met any of my future kids/grandkids/etc, so yeah. Laugh if you like, it's SCIENCE!

Ah, you have stepped on THAT anthill.
Any changes you make in the past, MUST have been carried forward all the way to your own time up to and including the instant you "got in" your time machine. So you'd never know anyway.
So, while it may in fact be possible to travel back in time, it should be absolutely impossible to alter it.

 

[barash]

It is proven that time is affected by gravity - the more gravity, the slower time passes.

So in theory, circling a black hole at a certain distance will keep you and your vessel intact but slow down time relative to those not affected by the increased gravity of the black hole.

The random scientist who explained it had calculated something like 10 years circling and 50 years would pass on 'the outside' iirc.

Seems as plausible as anything else imo (except religion! )

 

[jasoncyrus]

Well, actually it's pretty simple. In order to time travel, you'd need a device on both ends. (The present and the time you want to travel to) So once time travel is invented, we'll only be able to travel around Post-time travel-invention-time. Read it again, it'll make sense eventually.

Whats makes you think you'd need a device on the other end? The possibility for a temporal worm hole still exists.

 

[KindOfnElf]

What if going back in time creates an alternate timeline? Thus eliminating paradoxes.

We don't know it's impossible.
[small][sub]I want to believe![/sub][/small]

This.

In order time travel to be considered as possibility, first of all the concepts of time and space should be mastered. About time: it does not exist, per se. It's something we "invented", put a label on the process of our planet circling, and the changes of the day and night. Maybe the only "place" (or happening) where we witness "time" is the aging of our bodies, but even there it was us, humans labeling and prescribing the process of aging as a consequence of "time passing", which again is a linear concept. Point is, we know next to nothing. For the sake of truth, we have absolutely no idea is the changes of our body that we call aging anyhow linked with concept of time.
I once read this sort of "provocation" from a genius scientist in a book about quantum physics and mechanics (regrettably I forgot his name) and he was saying that we, as human are only aware that our decisions impact the future, but we have no idea do our decisions and act affect the past. Again, we are not aware and developed enough (yet) to know the answers of such questions. A thing that really impressed me was this: he said - if history is any guide, than what we now know simply isn't true. Humans thought that the Sun is orbiting around the Earth, that the world is flat... etc. so now we think we know time just because at this moment we can "confirm" it's linear.
I think time travel inevitably will happen when we'll understand the issue further.