[speakeasy]

Problem with time travel is even if you could go back to the past, how would you make adjustments to wear you would reappear in three dimensional space. If I had device that would teleport me back 1000 years, I'd be floating in the middle of deep space because the earth did not occupy the exact coordinates I'm standing on. The earth goes around the sun, it rotates, the sun itself is moving around the Galaxy, the Galaxy itself is moving and the very fabric of space is expanding. If your coordinates don't take all these movements into account with millimeter precision, you'll teleport yourself into the middle of space. If you went back in time even one minute, you may re-emerge within solid rock or thousands of feet in the sky depending on what part of the earth you're standing on.

[Yatagan]

(06-30-2015 03:15 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Problem with time travel is even if you could go back to the past, how would you make adjustments to wear you would reappear in three dimensional space. If I had device that would teleport me back 1000 years, I'd be floating in the middle of deep space because the earth did not occupy the exact coordinates I'm standing on. The earth goes around the sun, it rotates, the sun itself is moving around the Galaxy, the Galaxy itself is moving and the very fabric of space is expanding. If your coordinates don't take all these movements into account with millimeter precision, you'll teleport yourself into the middle of space.

Not to mention, the possibility of teleporting inside solid rock, deep in the ocean or high up in the air.

[speakeasy]

(06-30-2015 03:20 AM)Seboist Wrote:  

(06-30-2015 03:15 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Problem with time travel is even if you could go back to the past, how would you make adjustments to wear you would reappear in three dimensional space. If I had device that would teleport me back 1000 years, I'd be floating in the middle of deep space because the earth did not occupy the exact coordinates I'm standing on. The earth goes around the sun, it rotates, the sun itself is moving around the Galaxy, the Galaxy itself is moving and the very fabric of space is expanding. If your coordinates don't take all these movements into account with millimeter precision, you'll teleport yourself into the middle of space.

Not to mention, the possibility of teleporting inside solid rock, deep in the ocean or high up in the air.

I just edited and mentioned that right before seeing your post!

[Captainstabbin]

(06-30-2015 03:15 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Problem with time travel is even if you could go back to the past, how would you make adjustments to wear you would reappear in three dimensional space. If I had device that would teleport me back 1000 years, I'd be floating in the middle of deep space because the earth did not occupy the exact coordinates I'm standing on.

The wormhole idea is locked to 1 place in spacetime. So, no matter when (or where) you enter, the other side is locked at 1 point and that point can be viewed before the trip is taken. If it's a lab in 1982, it will always be the same lab in 1982 no matter where the entrance has traveled.

The other ideas involve FTL travel so correcting for place wouldn't be too difficult. 1000 miles or across the galaxy would be equally short trips.

[Guitarman]

This confirms my opinion of Hawking that he is an idiot who only became famous as a Physics professor because he is disabled and in a wheelchair with a funny voice. Equal opportunities for the disabled gone OTT!

Idiot because we are travelling in time as we speak, we are always moving into the future as time progresses.

And this stunt does not even prove that time travel to the past is possible or impossible. His "precise co-ordinates in time and space" were nothing of the sort. Time yes, but the coordinates were only for that point on the earths surface not for a specific point in the universe. As the earth rotates, orbits the sun and the solar system itself is moving thorough our galaxy and our galaxy itself moves throught the universe and the universe is expanding we can conclude that any point on the earth is never in the same physical place in the universe again. Therefore a time traveller from the future would end up trillions of miles away in the vacuum of deep space, not at those longitude and latitude coordinates on the Earths surface.

Either Hawking is a complete idiot or he is so arrogant that he thinks the rest of us are complete idiots!

[Socrates]

(06-30-2015 03:15 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Problem with time travel is even if you could go back to the past, how would you make adjustments to wear you would reappear in three dimensional space. If I had device that would teleport me back 1000 years, I'd be floating in the middle of deep space because the earth did not occupy the exact coordinates I'm standing on. The earth goes around the sun, it rotates, the sun itself is moving around the Galaxy, the Galaxy itself is moving and the very fabric of space is expanding. If your coordinates don't take all these movements into account with millimeter precision, you'll teleport yourself into the middle of space.

Timescape by Greg Benford works on that premise. Scientists beam information back in time but to do it they have to calculate the exact position of the earth at the time they are trying to reach. Kind of an interesting idea, but the book fell a bit flat overall.

[RexImperator]

I've thought of that, too. Then the question becomes, what are the coordinates relative to, since there is no such thing as an absolute coordinate system in space and everything is moving. And there are conservation of momentum problems.

The only thing that makes some sort of sense for a "fictional" style time machine that allows travel into the past is that you can only go back in time as far as it was created.

Imagine that right after someone turns it on for the first time some alien Ghengis Khan from the future comes through the door.

[Eirykr]

(06-30-2015 09:46 AM)RexImperator Wrote:  

I've thought of that, too. Then the question becomes, what are the coordinates relative to, since there is no such thing as an absolute coordinate system in space and everything is moving. And there are conservation of momentum problems.

The only thing that makes some sort of sense for a "fictional" style time machine that allows travel into the past is that you can only go back in time as far as it was created.

Imagine that right after someone turns it on for the first time some alien Ghengis Khan from the future comes through the door.

More than that, imagine every person who wants to go back in time to the moment the first time machine was turned on. Suddenly potentially infinite time travelers are trying to occupy one place.

[Comte De St. Germain]

(06-30-2015 04:38 AM)Guitarman Wrote:  

This confirms my opinion of Hawking that he is an idiot who only became famous as a Physics professor because he is disabled and in a wheelchair with a funny voice. Equal opportunities for the disabled gone OTT!

Idiot because we are travelling in time as we speak, we are always moving into the future as time progresses.

And this stunt does not even prove that time travel to the past is possible or impossible. His "precise co-ordinates in time and space" were nothing of the sort. Time yes, but the coordinates were only for that point on the earths surface not for a specific point in the universe. As the earth rotates, orbits the sun and the solar system itself is moving thorough our galaxy and our galaxy itself moves throught the universe and the universe is expanding we can conclude that any point on the earth is never in the same physical place in the universe again. Therefore a time traveller from the future would end up trillions of miles away in the vacuum of deep space, not at those longitude and latitude coordinates on the Earths surface.

Either Hawking is a complete idiot or he is so arrogant that he thinks the rest of us are complete idiots!

Fucking hell man it's a joke calm down. There's probably a better explanation.

[RexImperator]

I have it a little more thought and perhaps the mobile time machine could be slightly more realistic but it would basically have to be a spaceship in order to conserve momentum. So you would get in this craft and launch into space, heading for the coordinates of earth at some time in the past. The time travel happens somewhere in "empty" space and you return to earth. If I were writing the story I'd have it so that any atoms or particles of matter which happened to be at the exact location when you time travelled created microscopic wounds in your body, holes in the ship, or something. An asteroid would be catastrophic. Timeline had a somewhat similar "degradation" side effect as I recall. Though I think it was quantum mechanical. It's been years since I read that book.

But what about time travel to the future, which is possible?...it could be a cool form of tourism. Say, for people with a terminal disease, or who have nothing to lose, they could get in a spaceship which travels really fast or orbits a black hole, and the come back down to earth 1000 years in the future.

[BortimusPrime]

(06-30-2015 12:46 PM)RexImperator Wrote:  

I have it a little more thought and perhaps the mobile time machine could be slightly more realistic but it would basically have to be a spaceship in order to conserve momentum. So you would get in this craft and launch into space, heading for the coordinates of earth at some time in the past. The time travel happens somewhere in "empty" space and you return to earth. If I were writing the story I'd have it so that any atoms or particles of matter which happened to be at the exact location when you time travelled created microscopic wounds in your body, holes in the ship, or something. An asteroid would be catastrophic. Timeline had a somewhat similar "degradation" side effect as I recall. Though I think it was quantum mechanical. It's been years since I read that book.

But what about time travel to the future, which is possible?...it could be a cool form of tourism. Say, for people with a terminal disease, or who have nothing to lose, they could get in a spaceship which travels really fast or orbits a black hole, and the come back down to earth 1000 years in the future.

I think it'd be really disappointing if you had a terminal illness and took a jaunt around a black hole, only to discover that in the future instead of curing your disease humanity went extinct and was replaced by giant non-sapient jabba the hut slug monsters that evolved from lesbians gay marrying each other and breeding via genetic engineering.

[Parlay44]

Well technically you could travel forward into the future but not backward.

If you go into space and travel close to the speed of light then return to Earth after say 20 years you would be like 100 years in the future in Earth time.

And if you were cryogenically frozen the whole trip you would be the same age as when you left.

[RexImperator]

Yes, time travel into the future is allowed by relativity...would you take the gamble if you knew you didn't have long to live? This way you would be able to find out all kinds of cool things before dying. On the other hand, there is a risk the Earth might have been destroyed when you come back.

[Soothesayer]

Time travel will exist, you just won't be able to interact with what you see in the same way you would a video game, movie set or civil war reenactment. In every movie about time travel, the scientist is interacting/manipulating/corrupting the shit out of the time stream and jeopardizes his own existence. You need to think of it in less direct terms and think in multiple dimensions with massive energy sources. You are outside of that time stream. Outside means you can see in, study, hypothesize but not interfere.

It's reaching inside and popping that bubble that makes it impossible.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(06-30-2015 09:24 PM)Soothesayer Wrote:  

Time travel will exist, you just won't be able to interact with what you see in the same way you would a video game, movie set or civil war reenactment. In every movie about time travel, the scientist is interacting/manipulating/corrupting the shit out of the time stream and jeopardizes his own existence. You need to think of it in less direct terms and think in multiple dimensions with massive energy sources. You are outside of that time stream. Outside means you can see in, study, hypothesize but not interfere.

It's reaching inside and popping that bubble that makes it impossible.

That may be possible in the future. A device that just projects images and sounds form the past without the ability to actually touch and interact. But this is beyond space travel technology in my opinion - far beyond our technological level.

[BortimusPrime]

(07-01-2015 01:55 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  

(06-30-2015 09:24 PM)Soothesayer Wrote:  

Time travel will exist, you just won't be able to interact with what you see in the same way you would a video game, movie set or civil war reenactment. In every movie about time travel, the scientist is interacting/manipulating/corrupting the shit out of the time stream and jeopardizes his own existence. You need to think of it in less direct terms and think in multiple dimensions with massive energy sources. You are outside of that time stream. Outside means you can see in, study, hypothesize but not interfere.

It's reaching inside and popping that bubble that makes it impossible.

That may be possible in the future. A device that just projects images and sounds form the past without the ability to actually touch and interact. But this is beyond space travel technology in my opinion - far beyond our technological level.

I guess if you had a warp drive and a really good telescope just go x light years away and you can see x years backwards. At the very least you could catch past radio transmissions.