Time Travel: No spaceships, no wormholes

[kokain]

Just a thought.

Space-time consists of three special dimensions (x,y,z) and one temporal dimension (time). These four dimensions are warped within another special dimension (hyperspace) which is perpendicular to the three perpendicular x,y,z dimensions. The warping occurs around anything with mass, the higher the mass the more the warping. Time is bound to the three dimensional space-time.

Hopefully this is kosher with relativity, if not I am just an idiot.

Walking on the ground in a straight line is a one-dimensional motion. If a post is in your way, you stop. If you evolve to “see” two dimensions, you may now step to the side and pass the post. And in effect disappear as seen by everyone else. If you now come to a wall (here is where time comes into play) you may walk around the wall with everyone else, but if you evolve to “see” three dimensions, you may now jump over the wall and save the time it takes everyone else to walk around. Being the only one who can jump, you move faster than time. By that I mean, time has to flow around the wall as nothing is able to jump over it. To everyone else you can disappear by jumping and reach far away places by jumping. All you had to do was evolve to “see” in three dimensions.

Now since we can all step around and jump, so can time. So we must do what time cannot. Step or jump “upsilon” (not my term, I forget where I heard this) around or over the obstacles that time cannot pass. These obstacles are the warps in space-time. If we go through a massive obstacle we will move faster than time, which has to move around the obstacle. Let's say John is walking past a building, and I am next to him. If the sidewalk is exactly straight (to him) he will walk exactly straight. But he is actually walking some portion of the “diameter?” of a hyper-sphere that goes around the building. (Very little warpage, I know, but warpage nonetheless) Now if I am capable of moving in a direction that combines x,y,z and hyperspace, I can walk a straighter line than John. I will move through the four dimensional void left by the warp and arrive at our destination before John. He will see me disappear and then reappear further along than himself.

In order for this to work we must evolve to “see” how to move in a direction other than x,y,z. I think that upon the instant that someone truly visualizes four dimensions they will have the ability to move freely through them.

I love to think about crazy things like this. Not only time travel but think about a hyper-surgery. No knives. Just a reach in the right direction… and here is your kidney.


This maybe an Acidic thought and maybe that is the key.

 

[Mark]

Did you see the star trek where they were warped in time with a bunch of particles, and until they destroyed them time was messed up?

 

[franznietzsche]

Just a thought.

Space-time consists of three special dimensions (x,y,z) and one temporal dimension (time). These four dimensions are warped within another special dimension (hyperspace) which is perpendicular to the three perpendicular x,y,z dimensions. The warping occurs around anything with mass, the higher the mass the more the warping. Time is bound to the three dimensional space-time.

Hopefully this is kosher with relativity, if not I am just an idiot.

What you say does conform with relativity, but t is not necessary, the four dimensional manifold can be embedded with a higher dimensional space (greater than four for the four dimensional manifold) mathematically, but it does not have to be, the mathematics does not require an embedding, it simply allows it. As a result the theory itself cannot tell us if there is a higher dimensional space whtat spacetim is embedded in, and anything about the nature of the extra spatial dimensions is beyond the theory's ability to address.


The rest of your post though seems to based on the physical existence of the embedding which as i said is not actually required by relativity (mathematically speaking).

 

[kokain]

Isn't GR based on this "embedding"? I may be wrong.

If it is I have another question.
If we could "step" out of x,y,z, and we found a place with a great amount of gravitational waves (maybe that would be everywhere equaly on Earth, or at the poles or whatever) and we let ourselves pass through them. What would happen? I am kind of tired and can't think, but I assume it would be awesome.

 

[Cecil]

This maybe an Acidic thought and maybe that is the key.

I think you're right. I'll try reading this post again this weekend and maybe it will make more sense.

 

[chroot]

You're basically just asserting that space and time dimensions are equivalent, and thus moving through time should be as easy as moving through space. In one sense, that's correct -- you're always moving through time rather effortlessly. As it happens, you can describe the trajectory of a particle in space-time as always going the speed of light in some direction through space-time. When you're "at rest" in space, your entire velocity is in the time direction and you experience the most time passing; when you're moving quickly through space, less of your total velocity is directed in the time direction, and you experience less time passing.

However, there does not seem to be any way to circumvent this and simply "jump" from one time to another, and never any way to go backwards in time. In fact, such possibilities would undermine all currently understood physics all the way down to the postulate that energy is conserved.

- Warren

 

[turin]

Isn't GR based on this "embedding"?

This is almost the opposite of the truth. GR is based on 4-D being non-Minkowskian (kind of like non-Euclidean) rather than a "rubbery" 4-D "surface" in a higher dimensional space. It is almost essential to GR that no embedding space is necessary. Perhaps this string theory or LQG says that space-time is actually embedded in 10-D or something, but this is not a feature of GR.

 

[kokain]

chroot,
I am not syaing that we move through time. I am saying that time moves along independant from anything that we do. Its only rules are to move forward and stay within its boundries. If we step out of time's boundries, it will continue to move forward. Personal time, such as aging and atomic decay ext., will still continue on our time scale.
Above I did not mean to describe time as a thing. Time is a measurement. Or not, whatever you think. I just mean that we can "outrun" time by taking a shortcut. Think of two cars side by side, speeding at 80mph in a straight line. There is a bend in road to the left followed by another to the right. One car (as well as every car ever to drive on this road)follows the contour of the road and measures 10 minutes to arrive at whatever destination. The other car cuts out the bends and reaches the same destination in 2 minutes. NONE OF THESE NUMBERS MATTER (I hope)

 

[NiBu]

Nice job. That's very good cake.

 

[christian_dude_27]

kokain, i must ask you to look for my own theory, if you have not already done so. what it says is that time travel is acsessable with the mind. i believe you would find it interesting. you will have to look up two theories to understand it completely thoguh. look up- by christian_dude_27: time travel with the mind?-by ****ashi: jellotivity. these are extremely interesting theories, not to be bragging, but they are very good.

 

[kokain]

Christian Dude,
Our theories are similar. Both deal with a higher level of thought. Have you ever dropped? You sound like you have as you talk of spirits and OBE's. Unfortunatly, OBE's have no place in my theory(I wish they did). I will have to read jellotivity's post.

 

[christian_dude_27]

well, jellotivity does not talk of OBR's and spirits, only my theory does. his tells of another way, actually a better way, of how spacetime really acts and how the universe creates matter and how just about everything works in reality. my theory uses that plus it uses the idea of the power of our own mind and spirits to do things that are unimaginable to just ordinary people. one thing that i have usually always been good at doing is puting the puzzle together. i don't leave things out, unless of course i haven't ever heard of it. many people just throw me out with the trash because of this. i am quite a strong christian, but i believe science is with everything, including my religion. so i mix the two together. christians today really have no hope. for centuries they have been given a bad name, and have been trampled over time and time again. I'm just trying to show the world, we are all of one people, christianity has its bad times, just as everyone else does. no one person place or thing is perfect. but one clue that christianity is true, no other religion but christianity does not have their prophet's body still in the grave. this does not mean that he wasn't real, because they have records of him appearing to hundreds of people AFTER he was dead. but anyways, off of religion, back to science. your theory, it is quite interesting. I'm going to have to read over it again, because the first time i read it, i only skimmed through it, and i want to get a god understanding of this. to get the entire theory of jellotivity, you will have to go to google and type "jellotivity". there, you should get both part one and part two of jellotivity. read them, and enjoy them, because the man who wrote them is extremely intelligent. one of the most intelligent men i know.

 

[franznietzsche]

This is almost the opposite of the truth. GR is based on 4-D being non-Minkowskian (kind of like non-Euclidean) rather than a "rubbery" 4-D "surface" in a higher dimensional space. It is almost essential to GR that no embedding space is necessary. Perhaps this string theory or LQG says that space-time is actually embedded in 10-D or something, but this is not a feature of GR.

All manifolds can be described as embedded in a higher dimensional euclidean space. It is not necessary though, as for GR, but it is still premissible in GR, there is nothing that forbids it.

 

[kokain]

I may be misunderstanding "embedded". I am talking about space-time curvature. If it curves, then there must be something (in a higher dimension) where space-time is not. Well I suppose there doesn't have to be.

 

[The Bob]

I think that.....

Can I say that 'Seeing 3-D' is different to 'Seeing 4-D' mainly because time is a factor created by humans. Before we invented the clock it did not exist, in a manor of speaking. So you must never see time as a measurement when talking about physics, I don't mean a unit like m/s but when talking about its affect on events. It must be seen more as a way of linking two different objects relative to each other. If on object moves in 'Time' and the other moves in 'Time' then they are both moving relative to each other and the effect that each has on each other increases, as no event is independent. (This whole section might have made no sense so I apologise now).

So now we can look at time travel without the time part. A simple traveling to a different place faster than everyone else. I can see where the idea of it comes from but visualising is different to seeing. If I see a cake then I see it. I see if it has currents in or has iceing on the top. If I visualise a cake then I can only think if what it should look like. This is different to 'seeing' in the fourth dimension. Although I have spent many a lesson thinking of two objects linked by 'time strings' (as I call them) and how they affect each other I cannot see it as being possible to 'skip time' as we know that traveling at the speed of light near a black holes does do this, but obviously it is not possible for mass to travel at the speed of light (E=mc²).

Hope this helps because I got lost as well.

I am new to these forums and only 15 so that is what I think and is what tried to put across to you boffins, which you are likely to discard.

Hope I can become as intelligent as you all.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[kokain]

Bob,
You confused me a little, but I felt some of your meanings. My use of words may have been wrong. By "see" I mean to understand how to move in another direction. If we can only move our arm left and right, we need to understand the spatial relationship of "up/down" in order to make the movement. So we need to visualize the spatial relationship of a fourth spatial dimension with respect to xyz in order to move our arm in that direction. We must "see" the direction, understand where that direction is, then be able to move that way.

 

[The Bob]

I understand that and I feel you have an excellent point. I would never have thought of it
However I have been thinking about this and talked to friends and there simplier questions made me think. Now (unless I am wrong (and tell me if I am)) unless we can make solid objects with no will (e.g. A building) see in this dimension as well I feel that we could only ever do this action in open spaces.

Just a thought

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[kokain]

Tb,

I am not sure where you are going with this, but I am interested. Why would the building have to see in 4d? Keep in mind that the rocks, grass, dirt, the Earth in general creates warpage. So an open space is non-existant on Earth. But then again, I am not sure of anything. I make it up as I go.

 

[The Bob]

Kokain,

I know where I am taking this but I think you need to explain to me what warpage is on an xyz and a time-space diagram (or simply what it is) because for me to formulate a reply I need to really undestand it (not have a small knowledge about it).

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[kokain]

Space-time IS xyz and time. Time is not the fourth spatial dimension. Time is a temperal dimension. The fourth spatial dimension is an axis that is perpendicular to x, perpendicular to y, and perpendicular to z. If you try now, you will not be able to visualize this axis (no one can). Because this axis extends into the fourth spatial dimension, it can be perpendicular to xyz (which seems impossible). The warpage occures when an object with mass exists within space-time. Space-time with curve around the object, and other smaller objects will "fall" into this curving space-time (GRAVITY). Time is just flowing, as I "timetravel", I am not going back in time, I am just moving faster (via the short-cut) than time.

 

[The Bob]

Space-time IS xyz and time. Time is not the fourth spatial dimension. Time is a temperal dimension. The fourth spatial dimension is an axis that is perpendicular to x, perpendicular to y, and perpendicular to z. If you try now, you will not be able to visualize this axis (no one can). Because this axis extends into the fourth spatial dimension, it can be perpendicular to xyz (which seems impossible). The warpage occures when an object with mass exists within space-time. Space-time with curve around the object, and other smaller objects will "fall" into this curving space-time (GRAVITY). Time is just flowing, as I "timetravel", I am not going back in time, I am just moving faster (via the short-cut) than time.

Ok this makes sense. So graivty is actually the warpage (curving of space-time around around an object) of space-time and holds me and everything in the xyz axis (space)?

I see how this is a problem now. We must imagine the 4th spatial dimension to be able to move faster than time. Isn't moving faster than time 'time travelling'?

I must say I love the theory (and even more now I understand warpage and space-time better) but imagining a dimension perpendicular to xyz. That would form a straight arc in four directions, surely. And then an infinite amount of line left. Intresting.

The problem with the theory is that no one really knows what the space-time diagram should look like. Just because we can draw our idea of it doesn't mean it is right.

I will think on it a bit but I don't know enough to question it too much. May be posting some more question for you What fun you will have.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[kokain]

What if we constructed a "mass machine"? Create LARGE mas in a small space, and then walk through the curve. Seems that we could go back in time pretty far. Is that right?

 

[Muddler]

I think the main problem with time-travel is, what you mean by it.

"Shortcuts" that could take us to some point in the future should be possible to realize. You could even do that without any spatial considerations by some technical device that is able to "preserve" a living human body and "reanimate" the timetravellers body some time in the future. To this person the process should feel like some sort of time travel.

But I know that's not what you meant.
The problem with "real" timetravelling is the ability to go back in time.
Now what does that mean?

I think, from a relativistic point of view, it seems possible, that great masses might result in such a curvature of spacetime, that two "points" are connected (or very near) whose "local time" (whatever that may be) is different, thus enabling some adequately equipped person to pass that curvature and by that experiencing a timetravel.

But I don't think that's what we are really intersted in.

What we would like to do (and what would be the only real useful ability) is to go back in time here on earth (or near it).
And that is the tricky part:

1.)To my understanding, going back in time means to reach a certain state of the universe that is no more existent. To be able to make this state existent again, we would have to reverse all events in the whole universe back to that certain point (otherwise it wouldn't be the "real" past - or would it?).

2.)We would not only want to do that, but take somebody (or something) in his/her or its current state, do the whole reversion without that "piece of the universe" and reinsert this "piece" unchanged into the reversed universe.

Pooh! That sounds like quite some effort to me! The energetical considerations alone are giving me nightmares (Change the whole universe? Sure! Just got to tap some others to get that damn beeping box goin'...)

Then there is the idea with infinitely many quantum-universes, which would theoretically open the oppertunity to do a time-like-travel by actually doing a spatial trip to some other universe that seems to be similar to some state of our universe's past.

But to my eyes that would be no "real" time travel.

For "real" time travel should be that I (and really me, not some "like-me-other-quantum-space-person") am able to travel to some point in the past of my universe, which should include times and places I have actually been at.

I know, my point of view might seem quite extreme, but I have been thinking a lot about timetravelling (and really hope I am wrong and it is possible!), but by now I have reached a point where I think, that it can't be done...

 

[AcEY]

Time is something humans created to call what happens as we age, but what if your think of it that time doesn't exist and things outside of our 4-d's don't move and all that's happening is us getting older, then you can see that time travel isn't possible, going where time can't go is impossible because time goes where we go, where-ever humans go we will measure how long things take and the only place where time doesn't exist is where we don't exist. If we reach somewhere outside then time will be created for us. that's what i think anyway, i hope you understood. I am just saying that if time didnt exist somewhere then it would have to be somewhere where we didnt move or couldn't think of such a thing of time.

 

[kokain]

AcEY, I don't mean time does not exist for me as the traveller. My time is just moving with me, but I am taking a short cut to outrun your time.

 

[Alkatran]

You're basically just asserting that space and time dimensions are equivalent, and thus moving through time should be as easy as moving through space. In one sense, that's correct -- you're always moving through time rather effortlessly. As it happens, you can describe the trajectory of a particle in space-time as always going the speed of light in some direction through space-time. When you're "at rest" in space, your entire velocity is in the time direction and you experience the most time passing; when you're moving quickly through space, less of your total velocity is directed in the time direction, and you experience less time passing.

However, there does not seem to be any way to circumvent this and simply "jump" from one time to another, and never any way to go backwards in time. In fact, such possibilities would undermine all currently understood physics all the way down to the postulate that energy is conserved.

- Warren

I thought you moved more rapidly through time when you increased in speed? (you end up "above" others on space time diagrams, with your reality skewed downwards so they're still moving slow for you.

 

[kokain]

Look at it this way and tell me if I am crazy. If you roll a piece of paper around an iron rod (lets say diameter=3"), let the diameter of the paper cylinder =7". Now, point "A" is two inches from the left side of the unrolled paper and point "B" is two inches from the right side of the unrolled paper. When rolled (I am not interested in math!) the two points are closer together if you can walk a straight line between the two (in the air between the rod and paper) instead of walking around the paper on the surface. If we were 1/100000000th of an inch tall (effectively, this would be two dimensional), the surface of the paper would look flat (we would not be able to see point "B", but as we walk to it, we would not notice the curve). A journey through the paper would take less time, our body would age with respect to our own time and everyone else's with respect to theirs.

 

[Muddler]

Hi kokain!

You are not crazy, but your thoughtexperiment does not provide any useful aspect.
The idea of spacetime-curvature enabling "shortcuts" is not new, the question is how to create such a "rolled piece of paper" or how to do the travel...