Time Travel: Is it possible?

[JediKnight707]

I s'pose this could be posted in Ahto, but I decided to post in Kavar because I think that this is a very important topic, in the sense that it decides our entire future.

 

Is it possible?

 

I don't think it is. I sure as hell hope it isn't, because I don't like the thought that someone could change my future by altering my past. Though, maybe our past has been altered, and we just don't know it. How would we? We just assume that our technology is a result of our growth in knowledge, but isn't it possible that someone just added something to our past?

 

Am I the only one who thinks this?

 

But back to my original point: I don't think its possible. We think of time as on a line (hence the name timeline), but more and more the smartest minds are thinking that its a plane, not a specific line.

 

So, our past, future, and present are all around us, thus we have no way to travel back because there is no back. Or forward. Or side, etc.

 

Your thoughts?

[True_Avery]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel

 

Well, in order for time travel to be technically possible the plane of time and space would already need to be laid out. I'm not going to bother explaining that mess, so look here: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=179402

 

If there is both a future and a past already mapped out before us, the matter of bending time and space around, lets say a person, and allowing them to travel to a certain spot in time is far beyond any form of engineering that scientists can even begin to think about. Some believe things like wormholes in space could do this, but how do we find such a wormhole and how do we prove that even if we found one, it would lead to another point in time?

 

The theory of presentists is that there is no past and future. The past is destroyed every moment that passes and all that remains is memory, and there is no future because there is only present. If the present is all that exists, then there is no time plane to travel back or forward upon. Thus time travel is impossible.

 

There are other theories that state that there is only present, but the past still exists. So, if we went back in time what would happen? If we changed anything, even the movement of a single grain of sand, the results could echo through time to the present day. But would that be our present day, or would it create a parralel universe that flows on the new timestream we may have created, or does do we affect our own timestream?

 

So, we do something in the past and it changes time. How do we know? If time changes, then present day changes and we have no proof, memory, idea that time was any different. Someone could blow up a city in the past, and us in the present would no longer believe it existed but that it was blown up in the past along with anybody living in that city in the present disapearing from time itself. But if you change something drastic enough, could it change time so that you yourself are never born, or that the time machine was never built and thus you yourself would blink out of existance, creating a time paradox to which time has been changed, but the person that changed it never existed?

 

What would you do if you could go back in time? Kill Hitler as a child, stop the uprising of the Nazi's and WWII altogether? So, you stop WWII from happening. Do you then blink of out existance because events from WWII somehow infuenced the meeting of your family and your birth? And if you blink out of existance, does that mean that you never existed to take the possibly now non-existant time machine back in time to stop WWII? All I can see from that is a huge circle that ends up with WWII happening anyway because you no longer existed to be born, go back in time, and change history in a way that makes you non-existant, thus you never went back in time to change history.

 

If time travel to the past was done, all I can think would happen if you changed something is that the time machine and yourself would blink out of existance, leaving time the exact way it was before you changed anything. But that is under the thought that time travels on one plain of existance.

 

And if you travel to the future, are you not part of the actual timeline of the future in what you do and thus any action you make is still pre-determined? Time travel would prove that the universe is pre-determined alltogether, and for theories on that look back at the second link I posted.

 

Could we travel through time? Meh, probably not. I doubt you would still exist if you went back in time, and if you went to the future you got a whole list of other problems ahead of you as well as humanity.

 

I loved the way Back To The Future did it personally

[JoeDoe 2.0]

I will like to time travel to warn Lucas about Ep 1 and 2, I would save many peoples expectations...

 

But on a serious note, time travel would not make much of a difference, who would have wanted to alter time, it could be done for good causes, but it will create a ripple that will affect other things, like in a movie I saw...

 

In conclusion, it would be some of the things that we should discover if it is possible to do but never use

[Totenkopf]

Well........the smart@ss answer is yeah, verrrrrry slowly. But, I think that what is more likely is that what has occurred is set. You might travel into a parallel universe and change it's "past/present/future" such that you're actually part of the fabric of that timeline, but doubtfully in your original. Otherwise you end up with too many paradoxes. Perhaps you could travel into your own past, but essentially be powerless to affect events, an ethereal observer of sorts. Equally possible, whatever you could do in that time line was already part of the timeline to begin with anyway. So, maybe you can't kill Hitler, but perhaps Eisenhower is actually your b@stard son, a closely guarded family secret. My two cents, fwiw.

[Fredi]

Time Travel can be done ... you just need to manipulate the dimension... It’s like space, the galaxy has many dimension that’s away to travel … worm holes are gates between 2 dimension that connects… Just manipulate dimension and you can time travel … the only problem is that nothing can control dimension(that is know) except a worm hole or black hole.

[Emperor Devon]

In theory the concept is impossible. Example: Someone goes back in time, changes reality to something else, and when he returns to his time he finds reality has always been that way.

 

...so, why'd he even have to change it in the first place if it had always been that way? You're operating under the assumption that multiple dimensions of time all exist at once under that concept. Does that means there are billions of different mes in the multiverse?

 

Is there even such a thing as time, at least on the scale we imagine it? It's really just a way to measure the rate at which matter changes when reality itself never does. Time travel is basically rewinding all the matter in the universe to a previous state it was in (which sounds even more ludicrous and impossible than time traveling IMO).

 

Fairly moot to debate it, tho. Humans have proven themselves capable enough of messing up our present and our future. No need to extend that to the past as well.

[adamqd]

I think our ability to predict the future and recreate the past Scientifically will advance to the point of a virtual world/reality, but physically stepping through time is Sci-fi, at least in this millennium.

[Darth InSidious]

Insufficient data.

 

Even if it were possible, no one has said that it must therefore be possible for humans

 

Any discussion of this subject at present requires the use of Einsteinian relativity. Therefore it is virtually impossible and theoretically impossible, AFAIK.

 

If Einstein was wrong, we might have some leeway. But we don't know that yet.

[Prime]

You can go forward, but not backwards.

[Ztalker]

Imo,timetravel is very difficult. Foremost, it requires elements we haven't discovered yet (According to Stephen Hawking). Then again...he implies they CAN be discovered, or else he would've said 'impossible.'

 

And with those rare elements, I don't mean a Delorian, a Flux capacitor and Michael J. Fox

 

Moral issues are a bit more difficult though. For every single thing you change in the past, a thing in the future will be different. Just watch 'A Sound of Thunder' (sucky film, but very cool story) for a little preview.

I couldn't live with the thought that time-travel is possible. It makes humans into 'temporal' things, like computer games or movies. After a week, you dispose of them. Human life would be devalued.

 

Imo: Timetravel=cool in theory, but morally impossible

[mimartin]

I do not believe it is possible and even if it was I would not trust mankind to use it. No, one should be trusted with that kind of power and control. I wouldn’t even trust my own self.

 

Of course if it were possible I’d like to visited the 1980’s version of myself and tell him not to sell his Apple Stock.

 

There is no use trying to change history, the best thing is for us to learn from our mistakes so that we do not keep repeating the same mistake.

 

You can go forward, but not backwards.

So you can go into the future, but there is no way to return to your own time? Kind of defeats the purpose of time travel.

[Fredi]

Hmmm Ok what if this is the condition.... We have man in a station right above Earth , and In earth a asteroid falls and kills every single human in earth the only remaining are the humans in the station and they are all men ... so now do you think time travel is needed? As hard and risky it is... it will be a great savior too... Some day Earth will end and provably we would be already living in another planet like Mars or in space stations orbiting other planets … but if you know millions of people will die... Would you at least try to save a few of them?... I would and I would use time travel if I can to save the one’s I love and more people for the recreation of the human race.

[Pavlos]

So you can go into the future, but there is no way to return to your own time? Kind of defeats the purpose of time travel.

 

If you travelled at amazingly fast speeds then yes, it would have an effect that could be referred to as travelling into the future - time being relative to motion and all that causing, say, a day to go past for you and several thousand for others not moving at that speed. Isn't a very insignificant form of this observable for someone travelling on a train and someone standing on the platform?

[Fredi]

If you travelled at amazingly fast speeds then yes, it would have an effect that could be referred to as travelling into the future - time being relative to motion and all that causing, say, a day to go past for you and several thousand for others not moving at that speed. Isn't a very insignificant form of this observable for someone travelling on a train and someone standing on the platform?

 

If you travel at amazing fast speed and defy the dimension when you return It will be like if you have gone for hundreds of years ... While you move at mega speed the world dose it too so what it my be for you 1 second It can be 100 years for other's here in Earth.

[Gargoyle King]

There are things that man will never know about the Universe, and the secret of timetravel could very well be one of these aspects. If it's out there then man will find it one day, it's just a matter of time (excuse the pun). Even if we did however, time travel would be a dangerous thing as the slightest thing that is changed in history (even a positive change) could create a new present, with disastorous consequences.

[JediKnight707]

If you travel at very fast speeds, you begin to go faster than time itself (or something like that, my science teacher explained it to me awhile ago, so I don't remember all of it).

He explained it like this:

Earth is moving at the same constant speed, and has been all our lives. Time for us moves as fast as Earth, so if you go faster than Earth's constant speed, it takes time longer to catch up to you, meaning you could live longer, because the effects on our body wouldn't happen as quickly. The people in the International Space Station could live just a little bit longer if they were staying on the ISS for their whole lives (and if a human's body could stand being in space for that amount of time).

[Fredi]

Thats true

[Prime]

So you can go into the future, but there is no way to return to your own time? Kind of defeats the purpose of time travel.

For some maybe, but to everyone?

[mimartin]

For some maybe, but to everyone?

Very true, thanks to your question I can now see how it could be not only practical but useful. What if I had a disease that society was very close to curing, but I would die before it became available is one example I thought of immediately. I didn’t think it well enough though before hitting the keyboard. Remove keyboard from mouth and slink away.

[SilentScope001]

Aren't we time travelling right now into the future?

[Totenkopf]

from post #4

Well........the smart@ss answer is yeah, verrrrrry slowly.

[Fredi]

Aren't we time travelling right now into the future?

 

ha-ha yes we are but very very slow!

[John Galt]

I think a form of time travel-- forward only-- would be possible, involving travel at relativistic(near/faster than light) speeds, in that a given period of time would be percieved shorter by the man travelling at lightspeed than the rest of the universe.

 

however, given current understanding of the universe and how it works, time travel is quite impossible in the conventional notion(time warp machine, etc.)

[Wonder Bread]

No it's not consider this.... You go back into time to visit your grandfather before he has kids. You shoot him and he dies. How can you have been there to shoot him if you were not born because you shot him. My conclusion- let time travel stay in Back to the Future.

[SilentScope001]

You shoot him and he dies. How can you have been there to shoot him if you were not born because you shot him.

 

Simple. You never was born. You are a person that jumped out of the timeline and therefore, you technically never was born.

 

You still exist as a human, that why you killed your grandfather, you just never was born in the first place. You JUMPED out of the timeline in the first place, so you never actually worry about consquences for you, since you are no longer subject to the timeline's rules.